Make your own nursing necklace!

Hi everyone!

Sorry I've been out of the picture a bit - but, like you all, I've been more than happy to enjoy Cameron's stories (and gorgeous photos).

Thought I'd finally chime in and suggest a fun craft project: nursing necklaces.



My friend Catherine and I made these as display items to inspire other moms for the first Breastfeeding in the Park event here in Athens, Georgia (Catherine made those beauties with the sea shells).

More than one mom asked me what a nursing necklace is. It's simply something to occupy busy (or pinching!) hands and roving eyes when you would like nursing sessions to be a little more focused (ie: nursing in public with a clothes-tearing octopus baby!). Obviously, you can use any sturdy necklace you already own, but it's a great project for moms (and friends of moms, and moms of moms!) who are crafty.

Here's the instruction sheet we had at the event. Go to it!

Owen Photos!

Time for more cuteness. I have a video that I'll try to download later. These photos are already a 2 weeks old!! I'll get back to photographing him more often.
Daddy and Owen with their Woodman's t-shirts

Circumcision

You want my opinion: here it is...Don't do it. Sorry to offend family and friends who have chosen otherwise, but unless you have a religious purpose to circumcise your boy, it's purely a COSMETIC procedure. You are snipping your boy's genitals, genitals, I might add, that have a purpose. Foreskin actually helps to extract lubrication from the vagina to make sexual intercourse easier. Sounds good, right ladies? There is all this "old" poppycock about the penis staying cleaner with the foreskin removed. If you can teach your child to clean behind his ears, he can clean his penis. How about the "I want my boy to look like me" argument. Seriously? Would you detach his earlobes surgically if yours were detached and his were attached? What about the "I don't want my son to be teased in high school/college"- Thirty years ago, up to 90% of American newborn baby boys were circumcised; currently, around 60% are circumcised. On the west coast, this figure has gone as low as 40%, and in parts of Canada, 25% and less. Worldwide, the uncircumcised penis is clearly the norm: 85% of the world's male population has "intact" (uncircumcised) penises.

In 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a policy statement that says the benefits aren't strong enough to recommend routine circumcision for all male newborns. Today, the AAP leaves the decision up to parents — and supports use of pain relief for infants who have the procedure.

If you choose not to have your son circumcised, simply wash your son's penis with soap and water during each bath. There's no need to clean beneath the foreskin until it retracts on its own, often by age 5. Then teach your son to clean beneath the foreskin during each bath — gently pull back the foreskin, clean the area with soap and water, rinse and pull the foreskin back over the head of the penis. After each bath, pull back the foreskin again to dry the area.

Please read this article for a really good unbiased facts including the history of circumcision.

American Consumerism

I hate stuff. I like to reuse things. I hate lots of trash. I love this video about The Story of Stuff. Please click here to watch a great video that explains why I live in a small town that cares about the environment.

Here are 10 things you can do.

I can say honestly that I do the following religiously... I use my own bags at the grocery store, use my own coffee mug at the coffee shop (or ask for a mug 'for here'), ask at restaurants for tin foil instead of a "to-go" box of Styrofoam (if you know me, you know I HATE Styrofoam), I use cloth diapers and biodegradable diapers, I power down my computer and unplug unnecessary devices, buy local foods, I don't shop at Wal-Mart and I recycle glass and electronics, plastics and paper. Oh and when possible I support green companies like Patagonia, ship everything GROUND instead of overnight, live in a community where I can use alternative transportation: ride my bike and walk.

Things I should do: get a compost bin and compost food (every gardener should have one), buy an outdoor laundry line, purchase used clothing, get a plug-in hybrid vehicle, have an awesome garden with my own veggies, install solar panels in my home and have a rain water collection system.

Things I do that I know are bad that I try to do less of: fly in airplanes, use my car, buy things at big box stores, ship express packages, replace electronics and vehicles.

If we all try really hard, we can change things, slowly.

My first article on babygooroo.com

I'm excited to be a contributor to a great baby blog called BabyGooRoo. Please check it out. The post is about embracing a natural birth.

Vaccines, Innoculation and the TRUTH

Okay so Owen had his 2 month check up. He's 11 pounds 3 oz (naked) and 23.5 inches. That's 50% for weight and 75% for height. He's a growing boy!

Since we had a home birth, Owen didn't get the hep-B shot that hospitals give babies at birth (we also opted out of the eye ointment, the Vitamin K shot and he's not circumcised just to bring you up to speed). I need to write a post about circumcision.. I will. So we are just now crossing the vaccination bridge. Oh what a bridge it is! I am diving in head first into both sides of this gnarly issue. Man, parenting is really cutting into my pleasure book reading time. Our doctor will let us make our own decision about the vaccinations so long as I'm informed. Our state will allows parents to opt out of vaccination.

So I went to the 2 month appointment pretty sure I was going to do the DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis) and Hib (nasty new meningitis: infections of blood, brain joints or lungs). I couldn't do any of them, Yet. I'm definitely caught between a rock and a hard place on this issue. I don't want Owen to be a public health risk nor do I want him to die of the measles but I have to do more research before injecting my son with all sorts of random medical acronyms. I just can't ignore some personal accounts I've read and heard. I just can't take the FDA and CDC at face value. Everyone has a motive, right? Hopefully the conclusion will be that FDA and CDC has the best intentions in mind for my son, right? I know it's way more complicated than that. Where vaccines are concerned, big drug companies are making a huge profit when their vaccine makes it to the "must-have" list, right? Where money can be made, greed will flourish, when greed is flourishing the bottom line is not what's really truly BEST for my son, or yours, but rather what's best for someone else's pocket. Money, I believe, is the root of all evil, so with that in mind, I must dig deeper and find out the advantages and disadvantages to both sides. If anyone has opinions or resources, please, let's get this conversation started. I just believe deep down this industry is reactive instead of proactive. That's it's history, anyway. You can't dispute that. It's hard to know what epidurals, ultrasounds, mercury and increased inoculations have done to our kids until a generation or TWO or THREE have gone by. It seems that we have eradicated polio, measles and much much more. What a public health success story! Then again, we have new strains of old diseases and many more cases of Autism and ADD/ADHD and more. Oh, but maybe they weren't "counting" the cases of Autism property before recent times. Okay, then, where are all the Autistic adults? Don't eat tuna when you are pregnant but it's perfectly safe to shoot your 8 lb baby up with mercury laced vaccines. Something is fishy here and I intend to find some truth, maybe not the whole truth, but enough truth to make a decision. Stay tuned....
Read this: Origins of the Autism Epidemic
or
MSNBC article
or
What to Know
or
CDC website
or
FDA website recalls
or
FDA vaccine info

Change is constant | BE FLEXIBLE and you can win the lottery

Today I feel like I won the lottery. First, Owen slept a 5.5 hour stretch last night and only woke up twice ( if you count 4:45AM, which I do) Yippie. He also put himself to sleep with wide awake eyes this afternoon.

I wanted to write a quick post that if something isn't working with your child, try, try again. Babies and kids change so fast, so you never know. I'm a huge believer in "if it didn't work this week, try it again next week." So today, we were out taking more photos with KDI studio (she had an intern in town and offered to have the intern shoot Owen for free) sooo we were NOT following his normal morning routine. I was thinking it was going to end in disaster, but I was willing to push it and be flexible.
Which brings me to my next point, BE FLEXIBLE. If something interrupts your schedule for the day, GO WITH IT... just get back on your schedule the next day (just don't do it every day, right?). So he had been up for 2 hours and I was just so SURE he was going to scream bloody murder any second and especially when I put him the car seat to go home. Instead I nursed him off his 3 hour schedule and he fell asleep during the photo shoot on my shoulder, something I haven't allowed to happen in a LONG TIME, that is, if you consider 3 weeks a long time. So, I put him in the car seat and, of course he woke up, but was just sitting there sweetly. So then I'm thinking "great, he'll scream when we get to the car." Nope! He was fine all the way home, mind you, he didn't sleep in the car seat, but I got him home, changed his diaper and then he seemed wide awake... so I put him down in his crib (of course on his belly) and he's looking at me with big eyes, so I'm thinking, "GREAT, now he's going to scream bloody murder and only get a 15 minute nap on my shoulder and my day will be a hellish cycle of an overtired baby trying to catch up. Nope. He put himself to sleep. Yes, you heard it here first, he talked himself back to sleep at 10 weeks old. I know, it's hard to believe, but it's true. Now, yes, he's been working on this skill and admittedly, he has been drowsy but awake when I've put him down in the past, but he hasn't been WIDE EYED and bushy tailed. I stuck to my guns, though, and crossed my fingers and I shut the door. I knew he was tired and I guess he knew it too. He didn't even whimper, just goo goo ga ga, and then boom ASLEEP. I'll relish in this moment, thank you very much-- why? Because it could be different next week, so I'll remind myself to take my own advice, change is constant with babies and kids.

Newborn Sleep Schedule Owen vs. Sleep part IV

So over the last three weeks, I've been working on transitioning Owen (now 9.5 weeks) from co sleeping nights and day napping in his Moby wrap to sleeping in his crib full time. This was a kid that I was SO SURE would never EVER go to sleep drowsy but awake. So take heart, stick to your program, it's possible. I am proud that he's now sleeping full time in his own crib and going down for naps without crying and I put him down awake.

Refresher: the child would NOT sleep well at all in any other fashion so I resorted to wrapping him in the Moby. He loved it. It worked well to get us out of the "overtired" state and into the "I'm-more-willing-to-try-new-sleep-places state." That took about a week. He napped in the Moby twice a day, sometimes more, if needed. I, of course, did not want to get stuck later with a 20 pound baby that has to sleep on you, so I took advantage of his first nap time in the morning... he's most well rested and feed then. At first I swaddled him (when he liked it) and let him sleep on his side with a sleep positioner, then one day when he was fussing a lot, I decided to unswaddle him and flip him to his tummy and POOF, the child put himself to sleep. It was also during this time that I was diligent about putting him down (mostly swaddled on his side) in his bassinet beside our bed for any night awakening. It was hard because before I was nursing him in bed and we were both falling back asleep. Luckily we have a comfy chair in our room that I utilized so I wouldn't resort to nursing in bed. When he was successfully sleeping all night sessions in his bassinet (took several nights) and doing well in his crib during the day, I moved him to his crib at night. This took about a week and a half. No matter how much I wanted him to sleep beside me, I resisted because I didn't want him to get a mixed message.

During the day, I also slowly transitioned from the "rock him to sleep" and pat him on my left shoulder to being firm about when I put him in his crib to pat him a few times, let his eyes open and close and then let him cry (unless he SQUAWKED like an alien, then I picked him up and start over). I found it much easier to let him cry if I close the door and sit in the next room on the computer to pass the time. Five minutes goes by fast when you are responding to emails. At first it was hard to hear him cry (but really, not THAT hard) but Sleep Lady really reminds you if you are going to make a rule/carry out a plan with your child STICK TO IT. Owen would cry some naps but not others... If you stray from the plan it's called intermittent negative reinforcement (or something) and babies get confused and learn to manipulate you (ie. they know if they cry 2 minutes Mom will pick me up--they can be very stubborn). So once I put him down, I don't pick him up and he goes to sleep (I should mention I never let him cry more than 10 minutes). Now I can put him down and he'll turn his head from side to side, make some little noises, move his hands and put himself to sleep. It's amazing the difference from a couple of weeks. Most of the naps and bedtime, he doesn't cry anymore.

**Our nap time routine also DOES NOT involve breastfeeding because I wanted a babysitter or my husband to be able to duplicate the same system so Owen doesn't become dependent on me to sleep.

Highly alert babies sometimes sleep best on their belly because it "shuts" out the rest of the world. I am certainly not advocating folks start putting babies on their belly, but for Owen, it was his only comfort. If you suspect this to be the case with your child, consult with your midwife or doctor. If you are reluctant to put them on their belly, (believe me it still scares me) remove the mobile from the crib, make sure your crib sheets are pastel colors (or at least not black and white, or patterned) and try to create a soft comforting environment for each nap session. Try a routine each time doing the same thing: ie, change diaper, sing same song, rock for certain amount of time in chair, then off to bed.

During the day, I always breastfeed him when he wakes up (if it's been over 2.5 hours since last nursing) and make sure he takes a full feeding. He's nursing about every 2.5-3 hours now. I really try not to nurse him in a 2 hour window unless I can tell he's hungry. If I do end up trying a nursing session early, I make sure he's not snacking (you can tell by time). This way I don't "fall" for those same signals again.

My biggest problem right now is a regular bedtime. Sleep Lady recommends a gentle bedtime routine and regular bedtime (within 30 minutes) starting at 6 weeks including but not limited to massage, a bath, singing the same song, rocking, a kiss then down in the bassinet or crib. Many people can keep their child up from 8-10PM and put them down each night at 10PM... I struggle with this. I think Owen is ready for an earlier bedtime like 8:30 or 9PM but it's hard because his last nap can be from 7-9 or 8-9 and then he'll wake up VERY sleepy much as he does in the middle of night, ready only for breastfeeding and back to bed. So sometimes we miss the bath at night because he's too sleepy. I guess I can try to keep him awake if he wakes up in that late evening but before 10PM time frame. I look forward to the time when he takes 2-3 regular naps and night time is a tad more predictable. This should be around 4 months.

It was hard for me to find a basic schedule of a normal infant online, so I'll continue to post sample Owen schedules as they change all the time.

last night worked out like this:
7PM up from 3 hour nap (YIKES-- nursing 20 minutes)
7:20-8:30, up with Daddy playing, taking
8:30 down for his last "nap" short fussing, not crying (missed out on bedtime routine: ie bath, etc)
11:45PM-- nursed 20 minutes and back to sleep
3:45AM awake-- nursed 10 minutes and back to sleep by 3:55 then chatty by 4:10 so I nursed him again until he took a fuller feeding (maybe he'll eventually skip this one)
5:45 AM awake talking, cooing, Dad pats him, tried to put him back to sleep. 10 minutes later, flips him to his backside: 15 minutes of talk to himself in his crib
6:00 AMMom goes to get him, and talks to him in our bed, I nurse him around 6:30 ( I would like him to sleep from 3:30-7AM, eventually, but pooping wakes him up)
7:30AM, seems sleepy, 1st catnap (no crying)
8:40 AM awake, nurse + playtime on new Baby Einstein mat with hanging toys (loves this but is easily overstimulated with it at night)
9:50AM looks sleepy makes a couple 'unhappy' sounds, change diaper, put down (no crying)
10AM first good morning nap (I expect this to be his usual nap time)

I hope this helps out there. I'm interested in what works for other people. Please feel free to comment. That's the hope of this blog. :)

Baby hates car seat

Now I know every other parent in the U.S. is able to drive his/her child around the block and the baby just gets drowsier and drowsier and falls asleep. Not mine. He loathes the car seat. Owen cries the entire time he's in the car (okay that's an exaggeration, 90% of the time). I did another test today (just for giggles) and he cried for 15 minutes, which was the whole car ride. It's hard to hear him back there wailing so we don't get in the car much. My new strategy is to purchase the car seat adapter that is available for my stroller and begin breaking him in with that (he doesn't EXACTLY love the stroller either). Ah Owen... We did have some groundbreaking moments in the stroller yesterday and today. I can put him in the bassinet part on his tummy and he sleeps then when he wakes up, I roll him onto his back and he's happy (or hungry). If you aren't privy to the fabulous stroller I own, check it out at Uppa Baby.

Remind yourself that we live in a downtown community where I can walk to the doctor, hair appointments, dentist, bank, grocery, etc. etc. Thus the stroller is essential to Owen's portability. The car; however, is not. He didn't even ride home in the car from the hospital since we had a a home birth.

My experiments will continue. I am told they "grow out of this" but it's seriously limiting for a Mom and Dad who like to go on adventures that are usually further than walking distance away.

I have found the positive in this. Owen sleeps well in his crib and is getting lots of great non-motion sleep that all the experts say he needs. FYI: sleeping in car seats while they are in motion is poor sleep according to all the experts I've read. They recommend keeping your errands to the late afternoon or at least only once a day, but infants who sleep exclusively in their car seats are NOT getting proper deep restorative sleep. Good thing I'm accustomed to working from home and spending lots of time in our house. Good thing I love our house. Good think we live downtown.

Swimming during Pregnancy, Birth, and make the Olympic Team?

If anyone thinks I exercised a lot during pregnancy, how about training for the Olympics? My new hero, Dara Torres, did swimming workouts during her pregnancy and will attempt to make the Olympic team, AGAIN but this time with a 3 1/2 month old. Oh yeah, and Torres is 40 years old. Please, if you want to feel inspired, read this article. Just for your information when I was 7 years old I could swim 25 meters in 20 seconds allowing me to be make the "B" meet. My best friend, Kathleen, could swim it in 19 seconds. Dara Torres does 50 meters in 24:63 seconds. Thanks to Karla, my sister-in-law, for sending me this article.

In my "Mommy exercise news," which seems to pale in comparison, I completed my first mountain bike ride yesterday: 1 hour 45 minutes. YEE HAW! It was the inaugural ride on my custom made Coconico bike, which is pink, thank you very much. It felt great to feel the cool Flagstaff mountain air rushing through my lungs again. I was smiling the whole time. Owen slept at home while Mommy got to stretch her lungs, I mean legs. I can feel the residual fat melting away. On a weigh loss note... I'm down to somewhere around 145-147 pounds. I don't have a scale but occasionally stop by the midwifery to weigh myself (it's 3 blocks away). I have lost approximately 33 pounds in 8 weeks! I assure you I haven't done anything special to accomplish this. I have been walking about one hour a day maybe 3-4 times a week. My "usual" weight is about 135lbs, so I've got 10 pounds to go (I was 140 when I got pregnant, which is WHY I got pregnant but we won't get into that). I can't say I'm chomping at the bit to get back to teaching spinning (indoor cycling) but perhaps in July I'll be ready to put the mic back on. It depends on if Owen can handle the nursery and if it fits with his schedule.

Bottle update: Owen is still fighting it but I have another short wedding on Saturday (my last until June 6). I just got a Playtex drop in style, so we'll try that one today. I've spent a small fortune on bottles.

Sleep update: Owen is now sleeping 3-4 hour stretches at night. Yippie. Ex: down at 7:45, up at 11:45PM, down at 12:00 up at 3:30, down at 3:50 up at 6:30. He did wake at 1AM but Matt put him back down quickly and quietly. I accomplished this by focusing on Owen taking a full feeding on a single breast each nursing and having quality daytime naps. For nursing: 12-18 minutes each time. I have always done single side nursing to avoid the extra lactose (can make for colicky babies) that is found in the 'fore milk*,' but hadn't been watching the clock or him closely enough. Now I try to offer the breast to him until he's at least reached 10 minutes and usually he'll go for an extra 2-8 minutes. This affords him the 'hind' milk, which is rich in fat, proteins and apparently stuff that makes them sleepy. I also focus on nursing when he awakes from a nap during the day and conclude the session with playtime, so that he's more tired when he goes down for a nap, thus he naps longer.

* if you didn't know, one of the most amazing things about breast milk is that it's composition not only changes as the baby gets older, (ie: milk for a 6 week old baby is totally different than milk for a 3 month old baby) it changes as the baby is nursing. First comes the fore milk, which is mostly water, next up is the richer creamy hind milk, which has more protein and fat. If you find your baby gets hungry quickly, you might focus on single side nursing with some burping or diaper changing to keep him alert. You can witness this phenomenon by expressing some milk. If you cannot see the difference with your own eyes during expression, try refrigerating it and you'll see the hind milk separate and rise to the top. Note how much time it took to express that milk and you might have a guideline about how long your baby should nurse. Take into consideration how the pump relates to your baby's suck.