Of Milk and Beer

Breastfeeding has been a rocky road.  Not in the chocolate ice cream with nuts and marshmallows sense, but in the sense that it has been way more difficult than I would have thought.  My body can't seem to get it right. I'm sure that I am somewhat to blame for it - I haven't been taking the best care of myself recently since I am exhausted trying to take care of Gwen.

My main difficulty is milk supply.  I can't quite get to that happy medium.  Some days I produce too much milk.  On those days, my overactive letdown becomes a problem.  Sometimes Gwen will break her latch because she is choking only for me to see a stream of milk spraying her in the face (no wonder she was choking).  Other days I don't produce enough.  Once again, this is likely because of operator error.  I give Gwen at least 2 bottles a day because I mix her medicine with milk.  Sometimes I will give her fresh milk, but sometimes I just thaw out some milk from the freezer so I can rotate the stock and replace it with new milk (milk will only keep in the freezer for about 3 months).  When I thaw milk, I should pump immediately so my body thinks that it is feeding her the very same amount of milk I am thawing.  Usually, however, I get busy and try to make up for the 4 ounces of thawed milk at the end of the day.  When I do this, I am often only able to pump about 2 ounces.  I wouldn't mind using up some of my stored breastmilk (I have about 150 ounces in the freezer), except that I have gone through about 50 ounces in the past 1-2 months.  Prior to that I had 200 ounces.  If I keep on doing this, I will be completely out of stored milk (and will thereby be unable to go out of town with Keith for a couple of days until G is weaned) in about 4 months.

The problem was exacerbated by me getting sick a few weeks ago.  The stress on my body diminished my supply even more and I was having trouble recovering.  I finally decided to go with a piece of advice that I wasn't sure if it was going to help but I figured it wasn't going to hurt: drink a beer a day.  It kind of sounds like weird advice, and there is no scientific backing, but I figured, "Why not?"  I started with it a couple of weeks ago.  I got some Leinenkugel's and some Stella Artois, and gallantly suffered through drinking all 12 bottles over the course of a couple of weeks (okay...I may have enjoyed it).  Suddenly, I had extra milk and was able to keep up with what I thawed as well as storing a few extra bags!  Admittedly, I also recovered fully from my illness and hydrated well during this same period.  But then I ran out of beer this weekend and figured that I could end my experiment.  Once again, it could be coincidence, but yesterday, after going a few days without having a beer, I fed Gwen more milk than I was able to feed her and pump.  So I ran out to the store last night and bought another thing of beer.  I drank one last night, and today I was able to feed her and pump 1.5 extra ounces.

I don't know if it's a coincidence or not.  It might be.  However, I know of several people who swear by this.  If it does work, I have no idea why.  I've heard people say it's the hops or the fact that you are able to relax a bit with a beer a day.  Maybe I'm just drinking more fluids.  Whatever the reason, I think I'm going to continue exploring the tasty world of beers.  Tonight's flavor: Summer Shandy.

The Computer Sticky Thing

Having grown up using computers my whole life, I sometimes take my natural abilities on the computer for granted.  While I may not know how to do certain things on my computer (defragging the hard drive, for example), I do know how to google it and figure out how to do it on my own.

Our parents, however, grew up with typewriters and record players, rather than microsoft word and iTunes.  My mom didn't learn how to turn a computer on until she went back to college when I was in high school.  Keith's mom didn't learn how to use a computer until the job that she started shortly after Keith and I started dating (about 5 years ago).  My dad actually knows a fair amount about computers, as he has worked on them his entire adult life.  But he is certainly the exception and not the rule.

This post, however, is about Keith's dad, Big Guy. (note: I did not make that nickname up on my blog to protect his identity.  That is what we actually call him.)  When Gwen was first born, Keith's parents made the comment that we took more pictures of her during her first day of life than they took of Keith his entire childhood.  That, of course, is the beauty of digital cameras.  Not only can we take more pictures, but we know immediately if they are good or not.  If you look at the first picture of Keith when he was a baby, he looks like he got into a run in with a truck.

The vast number of pictures that we took (thanks in part to the rapid fire ability of our camera to shoot pictures in rapid succession) required good data management.  I put Keith in charge of that in our household because he organizes well, is able to find where he put files long after the fact, and backs up data.  Big Guy is in charge of data management in his household.  He explained that his system involves putting all of the information (files, photos, videos) on his computer onto flash drives and then deleting the data from his hard drive because he doesn't want to "fill it up."  We explained that flash drives are one of the worst ways to back up data because if you look at one funny it is liable to erase itself out of spite.  Our warnings, however, fell on deaf ears.

A couple of weeks after our first flash drive vs. hard drive discussion, Big Guy showed up at our house with a container full of flash drives.  It seems that he must have gotten on the bad side of a couple of them because where once there was data there was now none.  Despite this setback, he still has not lost faith in his system.  And that is one of the things that we love him for.

Wonky Teeth

Gwen is teething.  She has been miserable and wants to make sure that everyone else is right there wallowing in misery with her.  Yesterday I was near my breaking point.  She had been cranky all day and couldn't sleep.  I kept on looking inside of her mouth, but couldn't see any of the tell-tale redness and swelling that people told me that she would get with teething.  This led me to doubt that she was teething. I told Keith, "I really hope this is teething for two reasons: 1.) at least all of this misery would be for some end goal, and 2.) if this isn't teething, I don't want to know what our little monster is going to be like when she finally does get teeth."

This morning I woke up at 6 to find a sweat drenched Gwen.  She was wearing the normal amount of clothing that she usually wears to go to bed.  The temperature in the house was the same as usual.  I couldn't pinpoint anything that was different.  Except for the possibility of teething.  Other than crankiness, she hadn't been showing any teething symptoms.  But then I thought her sweat could be from her having a fever overnight (I came to this conclusion as I was sick last week and woke up sweat-drenched every night for about a week from my fever breaking).

She was a cranky mess this morning.  We made it for about 90 minutes before she started rubbing her eyes.  I decided it was time for a nap (I was hoping I could catch some Zzzzz's, too).  But it was not meant to be.  I spent the next 75 minutes trying to calm a screaming baby.  Once again, Gwen's misery wanted some company.  I finally got her to sleep...only for her to wake up 15 minutes later, crying hysterically.

I decided it was time to get some baby Motrin.  She had been taking baby Tylenol, but it hadn't done anything (causing me to doubt my diagnosis of teething even more...shouldn't Tylenol help with pain?).  I also grabbed a few more baby items: baby thermometer, baby orajel, and a diaper bag sized spray can of lysol.

When we got home I gave her the Motrin.  Then I decided that I should at least try the Orajel, in case she was, in fact, teething.  But I didn't see any teeth coming in and so I didn't know where to rub it.  I decided to play it safe and do both her bottom and top gums (note: Orajel is pretty useless in a baby.  It is difficult to apply, it tastes awful, and it wears off in just 10 minutes.  You can only apply it up to 4 times a day, meaning that, at most, it can provide 40 minutes of relief in a day if you apply it properly.  Save yourself time and money and just skip it).  After I gave the Orajel a minute to take effect, I set forth with some detective work.  I pulled down Gwen's bottom lip.  No teeth.  Then I pulled up on her top lip.  No tee...wait...what the???

Thankfully, during February and March I babysat a friend's baby, who happened to cut 4 teeth during her time in my care.  She was super cranky one day, so I looked in her mouth to determine if any teeth were on their way through.  I looked at her bottom gums: 2 little chicklets were present.  Then I looked at her top gums and made an important discovery: top baby teeth look wonky.  What does wonky mean?  It means what it sounds like.  They look kind of weird.  They aren't located where you would think.  They kind of look like little buckteeth.

When I lifted Gwen's top lip I saw that her teeth weren't coming out of the bottom of the ridge of gum that ran along the top of her mouth.  The teeth were getting ready to pop out of the front (the anterior aspect, for all of you science folks)!  Yikes!  More wonky top teeth (I think anyone who has seen top row baby teeth at least has an idea of what I am talking about).  If you think of your own mouth, the gums on the front and back of your bottom row of teeth are pretty even with one another.  If you examine your top row of teeth, the gums on the back are much lower than the gums on the front.  This is because the teeth don't come straight down out of the gum ridge (unlike the bottom teeth that come straight up from the gum ridge).  They kind of come out of the front.

This brings about some unforseen teething challenges.  First of all, it takes much longer for the top teeth to traverse the front of the gums than it takes the bottom teeth to poke through the top of the ridge.  Second, chewing doesn't help much.  Another reason that I doubted that she was teething was because, while she does chew a little bit, she wasn't gnawing away on things like I had been told she would do.  But if you think about the fact that the top teeth grow out down the front, it makes sense that chewing won't help too much.  It does help to chew when the bottom teeth are coming through, because you can put pressure directly on the bottom gum ridge.

Gwen's teeth are coming in "out of order."  Most babies get their bottom front teeth first.  Gwen's top front teeth are coming in first.  This, at least partially, explains why she hasn't been the typical teething baby.  If you baby doesn't have teeth yet, or if you wonder why your baby did something while teething, I hope that this post has provided some elucidation.  

Boys don't understand phrases like "Too matchey-matchey"

A couple of weeks ago, Keith and I went to Pittsburgh to do some house hunting.  I like to dress up a little bit when I look at houses.  First of all, I like to look like I could afford to buy a house.  Much of the time I still dress like a student because I am one.  When I dress like a student, I do not look like I can afford to buy a house.  I barely look like I can afford Ramen.  Second, I don't get out of the house too much anymore, so I try to look good when I do.  Finally, I know that I was usually circling the neighborhood or sitting in my next door neighbor's house when people were looking at our house.  This served two purposes: 1.) I could go home as soon as they left, instead of staying out of the house for the full 1-2 hour window, and 2.) I could spy on them.  Spying gave us an idea if someone was a serious house-buying candidate (the people who we are in contract with looked promising - they appeared to be empty-nesters and stood across the street from our house for a few minutes pointing and talking).

I packed a dress to go house hunting, but came down with a virus the day before we left for Pittsburgh.  Therefore, I decided that I wanted to dress comfortably rather than fashionably.  I had been ambitious when I was packing, hence the dress.  But when we woke up at Keith's parents' house that morning, ready to depart for the Burgh, a dress was the last thing that I wanted to put on my feverish, aching body. The only other thing that I packed, however, was a pair of goucho exercise pants.  I didn't even have a t-shirt to wear with the pants (I had a t-shirt, but Gwen spit up on it the night before - I am willing to go house-hunting in a t-shirt, just not one covered in spit up).  I asked Keith if he could acquire a shirt for me from his closet.

Keith's closet, in his parents' home, is a treasure trove of t-shirts and sweatshirts memorializing events in his life.  There are several firefighting t-shirts (departments that he has worked at and training that he has undergone), cross-country t-shirts, race t-shirts, and miscellaneous t-shirts.  He keeps more t-shirts at his parents house than I own, period.  I asked him to grab a shirt for me since I tend to choose the wrong shirts.  He is quite particular about what different t-shirts can be used for.  Some are work shirts.  Some are sleeping/lounging shirts.  Some are nice t-shirts.  I, inevitably, pick out the "nice" t-shirt to wear to bed, to which Keith asks me to change so I don't stretch out the neck (I don't know how I would stretch out the neck, but this is a common complaint of his; also, I can't tell the difference between his sleeping and nice t-shirts, as they all look the same to me).  So Keith tromped up the stairs to get a t-shirt and to save me from my poor packing.

A couple of minutes later, Keith reappeared with a gray t-shirt.  There is nothing wrong with gray t-shirts, but I was going to wear gray goucho pants.  Here is how the conversation unfolded:

Keith: Here's your t-shirt.
Sara: It's gray.
Keith: Yeah.
Sara: I'm going to wear gray pants.
Keith: I know.  It will match.
Sara: No, you can't wear gray with gray.
Keith: Why not?
Sara: If they are just the slightest bit different in the type of gray they will clash instead of match.
Keith: But it might match perfectly.
Sara: That would be even worse!
Keith: I don't understand.
Sara: It would be too matchey-matchey.  It would be like wearing denim with denim (what my friend Nate used to call a Canadian Tuxedo).  Or like wearing one of those matching top and slack combinations that your grandma buys from Macy's.
Keith: *Blank Stare*

Then he went back up the stairs and brought me a red t-shirt.

Packing Up and Starting Over

At the end of this month, Keith, Gwen, Simba and I will be moving to Pittsburgh so Keith can continue his residency in anesthesiology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.  I started packing today.  Thankfully, when we staged the house to sell it, we packed up about half of our possessions (which are currently split between a storage unit and Keith's parents' house), so I technically started packing last summer (after we found out that Keith had matched at UPMC for his 2nd-4th years of residency).  But that's just splitting hairs.  Today I started the post-sale packing.  This morning I packed the first three boxes since we got a contract on our house.

Packing and moving is a little bit daunting and a little bittersweet.  This is the longest that I have lived anywhere since before I left for college in 2003.  This is the first home that Keith and I shared.  This is the house that we brought Gwen home from the hospital to.  This is the house that someone tried to break into while I was home alone...wait for it...which led to us getting Simba.  (Okay, so not everything about this house has been great, but overall, I've been pretty happy.)

Even more daunting, however, than packing are all of the unknowns.  I can handle packing.  I know that I have a set number of boxes and a set number of belongings.  I have to put said belongings into said boxes, tape them shut, and label them with a Sharpie marker.  Piece. Of. Cake.  What kind of scares me is starting over.

This morning when I was heating up my oatmeal, I watched it through the glass as it nearly bubbled over.  For anyone who doesn't eat oatmeal, or chooses to make it on the stovetop instead of the microwave, if you heat it to long, it bubbles over the edge of the bowl and makes a huge mess.  For quite some time, I would stand next to the microwave and stare through the window with my finger poised over the stop button in order to make sure that I caught it as it started bubbling (indicating doneness) without it bubbling over.  If I used milk instead of water, different amounts of oats, or warm vs. cold liquids to make my oatmeal, it would cause it to bubble over at different cooking times.  However, after dozens of bowls of oatmeal, I figured out that if I use 2/3 cup of oats, refrigerator temperature milk, and set the microwave for 2 minutes, I get a perfect bowl of oatmeal.  I don't even have to watch it anymore.  I can walk away and go about my day for those 2 minutes.  This morning, however, I stood by the microwave contemplating our impending move.  It occurred to me that I don't know how our new microwave is going to cook!  What if it is a different wattage?  What if it takes me several more months to figure out the magic formula of liquids, oats, and time?!?!?!  What if the popcorn button on our new microwave cooks the popcorn too long and causes it to catch on fire, unlike our current microwave that cooks popcorn with no burning and minimal kernel waste?!?!?!?!?!?!  I realize this may seem like small beans, but it is just one of many concerns about moving to a new city.

A second concern is finding good radio stations.  You may ask, "Why don't you just scan the stations until you find a song that you like, and stay on that station if it continues playing songs that you like?"  While this may sound like common sense, I remember that when I moved to Columbus, it took me a couple of months to figure out which radio stations I liked.  It wasn't until just this year, 5 years after moving to Columbus, that I finally settled on which stations to program into my car radio.  I know that it will just take time, but it is another layer of unfamiliarity.

It worries me that in order to run any errand, I will have to run a google search and them program addresses into my GPS.  Furthermore, my GPS is horribly out of date, and, given the often changing street patterns in Pittsburgh, it will likely lead me down the wrong roads.  You might wonder why I don't just use my smart phone.  Well, I only own a dumb phone.  It only has the capabilities of making phone calls and sending text messages.  When I say text messages, I literally mean text messages.  I cannot send or receive photos or videos.  I can only send and receive text.  With my phone's ancient technology, I certainly can't give it a voice command and expect it to find me the nearest Starbucks.

Finally, a much bigger concern is finding a new church.  The only people we know in Pittsburgh are Catholic.  With all due respect to the Catholic church, we are not Catholic.  We are protestants, and we really aren't all that picky about denominations.  Growing up, I went to Baptist, Methodist, and Assembly of God churches, finally landing at a Wesleyan University.  Keith grew up in a Presbyterian church.  We currently go to a Baptist church.  If we at least had it narrowed down to a denomination, the search would be much easier.  We could just google "Baptist Church Pittsburgh" and choose from a list of search results.  Unfortunately, what we are looking for you can't just type into Google.  We want a church home in which the people are a family.  We want to be involved in the church ministries and want to be a part of a church body in which the other members want to be involved.  We want a doctrinally sound church with a pastor who is a good teacher, good leader, and good steward.  Thankfully, we found that at Mountview Baptist Church.  I am just worried that we are going to have trouble finding it again.  Honestly, when Keith was ranking programs to match into, one of the big considerations that we had was leaving our current church.  We finally decided to rank Pittsburgh first, and our current home, Columbus, second.  But it was a difficult choice knowing that if he matched at Pittsburgh we would be leaving our church home.

The biggest concerns are not packing up.  They are starting over.

Always ask for a business card

I have done my fair share of traveling.  My first big trip that I took without the guidance of my parents or a professor was to India.  Of course, I didn't pick someplace conventional, like California, or even Europe.  I chose India.

I went to India with two friends from college.  We were there to work at a rural hospital and experience third world medicine.  I don't think any of us knew quite what we were getting ourselves into.

During our first day in Mumbai, I learned two very important lessons about travel.

1. Be very selective about what you choose to pack in your carry on luggage.  For some reason I thought travel Scrabble (which was never played during our entire 2 months abroad) trumped tampons.  Bad call.  Our luggage was lost in Moscow, and there were only 2 flights a week from Moscow to Mumbai on Aeroflot.  That meant I would have to wait several days to get my suitcases and 2 tampons were not going to last that long.  It was kind of awkward, just a few minutes after meeting the pastors sister, asking her where I could buy tampons. (Cultural note: apparently they don't use tampons in India, making the conversation even more awkward.  I had to describe why I needed tampons since she didn't know what tampons were.  If you ever run into a similar situation in Mumbai, ask for "Sanitary Napkins.")*

2. Always ask for a business card.  To get to the shopping area where we were to purchase Indian clothing (and sanitary napkins), we had to split up into two, separate autorickshaws.  Jenni and I got into one.  Brittany and the pastor's sister got into the other one.  The pastor's wife was the only one who knew where we were going, and she gave strict instructions to our driver to keep up with the autorickshaw in which she would be riding.  After riding about 2 blocks through the congested streets of Mumbai, however, we got separated.  Jenni and I realized that Brittany and the pastor's sister were no longer ahead of us.  This is when the panic set in.  We didn't know where we were.  We didn't know where we were going.  We didn't know how to get back to where we started.  We could tell that our driver was lost and didn't know what to do.  After driving for a couple of more minutes, he decided to pull over and motion for us to get out, hoping that we had not noticed that our guide was nowhere to be seen.  Jenni and I started emphatically telling him that we would not get out of the rickshaw (difficult given the language barrier, but the panicked pitch of our voices probably gave him an indication of our message).  He started driving again, and after just a couple of more minutes, we saw Brittany standing on the side of the road looking for us.  Thankfully, she was easy to spot because she was wearing pink. Oh, and she was caucasian, too.  The pastor's sister was, understandably, shaken.  She was afraid that she would have to call her brother and tell him that she had lost 2/3 of the girls who she was asked to take shopping.  It was then that she taught us an important lesson: take a business card from your hotel. If you get lost, show someone the business card and, even with the language barrier, they can help you get back to the hotel.  Or, at the very least, remember the name of your hotel.

*Another note on "Sanitary Napkins" - when I was departing from Delhi, India for England at the end of our trip, I was pulled aside by airport security.  Apparently, I had a suspicious item in my bag.  The security man searched my bag and pulled out the offending item, a tampon.  He asked me what it was.  I told him.  He didn't understand.  So then he raised his voice at me and asked me, again, what it was.  Once again, I said it was a tampon.  This only angered him more.  He raised his voice a little more.  Finally I told him it was a sanitary napkin.  He looked embarrassed, put the tampon back in my bag, and told me I could go.

The Great Nap Experiment: The Saga Continues

As things often go with having a little baby, as soon as I decided to intervene in Gwen's naps by using a swing, we had a little hiccup in our experiment.  She got sick.  On a regular basis if she is slightly uncomfortable, or you just aren't doing what she wants, she will complain.  Plus, since she is not a good sleeper, feeling bad just made her wake up more often and insist on getting out of bed (or swing) more loudly.

I was understandably a bit discouraged.  Less than a week after getting the swing, she was back to waking up after just 45 minutes.  And I couldn't get her to go back to sleep for an extended nap by just singing, as I had grown accustomed to doing.

Thankfully, she is all better now.  A few days ago she started consistently taking 90 minute naps again (by consistently, I mean greater than 50% of the time; while that is not truly consistent, it is consistent enough for me).  I just couldn't get her over the hump of taking 3 good quality naps in a day...until today! This morning she took a 90 minute nap.  This afternoon she took a 105 minute nap.  And she has slept for 90 minutes for this nap!!!!!  The swing is working!!!!!!

In addition to her change back to quality naps this week, she has started sleeping in!!!  For the last couple of months, I have been getting up with her sometime between 5 and 6.  Some days she has even tried to get up at 4, but I would insist that she sleep longer.  This week she started sleeping until after 8.  She isn't even the one waking me up in the morning now.  I wake up when Simba decides he should lick my face to tell me it is time for him to go outside (I'm hoping to get him to sleep in later too).

I feel much more rested for these two reasons.  But there is also a third reason for my newfound rest that I can thank my wonderful husband for.  Gwen still wakes up every hour or two during the night.  Not cool.  She is nearly 6 months old and should be able to make it through the night with only 1-2 wakings.  I understand it though.  She didn't feel good with her reflux for so long that she got used to waking up every 90 minutes to eat to calm the pain.  Now it's a bad habit that we have to break.  She was a pretty good sleeper when she was about 10 weeks old.  At that time she would sleep for 7 hours at the beginning of the night.  I am hoping we can get back to that.  Our current strategy is that if she wakes up and it has been less than 4 hours since she has eaten, Keith gets up and holds her until she goes back to sleep (we would try just keeping her in the crib, but she gets hysterical when we do that, so we will just have to break the rocking to sleep habit after we get the eating every time she wakes up habit under control).  She is only brought to me if it has been 4 hours.  I have tried rocking her to sleep, but she won't fall asleep for me, likely because she knows that there is milk for the drinking when I am near.  Keith has been a real trooper for the past two nights, and she cut her number of wakings in half from two nights ago to last night.  I am hoping that in a couple of more nights, she will only wake up when it is time to eat, for all of our sakes.

Keith did really well waking up the first night, but last night he somehow fell asleep in the few seconds between me telling him that she was crying and getting out of bed.  He is now napping on the couch, where he has been for the last 2 hours.  Apparently the night feedings are starting to get to him.  It does make me feel a little bit stronger that I have been able to endure this frequent of night feedings for almost 6 months, with very few naps.  It wasn't worth taking naps when she would only sleep 45 minutes.

But for now I am going to sleep 4 hours straight between feedings, I'm going to sleep in until after 8, and I'm going to take luxurious hour and a half naps during the day.  That is, until she starts teething, goes through another growth spurt, gets sick again, or just decides that she doesn't want to sleep.