I had a bad morning. When I woke up I thought it was going to be a good morning. Gwen had slept in until 6:15. Simba didn't stir until Gwen woke. So I got to "sleep in." But that was the high point.
I decided to check my email a little while after waking and found a cell phone bill. I just got my own cell phone, separate from my dad's plan, last month. After quite a bit of shopping I bought an iPhone 4 for $0.99, and chose a plan with 1 GB of data for $85 a month. I wasn't sure if 1 GB would be adequate for my needs, but I was hesitant to purchase a more expensive plan. When I signed in to my account I found a bill for $212. Yikes. I knew there was an overage charge of $15 per GB, but I didn't think I could have possibly used an extra 8GB of data. I called AT&T and spoke with a helpful customer service representative. The good news was that I had only used 445 megabytes of data. Way to go, me!!! The bad news was that my bill was, in fact, $212. Apparently cell phone plans are more complicated than I originally anticipated. I had an activation fee, a prorated bill for October, a bill for November, taxes, fees from the FCC, and a $1 911 fee. While my bills will be higher than I thought, when I subtract the extra month and activation fee, it will only be $105 a month. *sigh of relief*
As I was making this panicked phone call, I was on Keith's computer in his office and Gwen was playing on the floor next to me. I was trying to entertain her as well as possible given the brain power I was directing towards my phone bill and customer service. Gwen was pulling her toys off of the bookcase shelves and using her newly acquired toddling skills. As I was finishing my phone call, Gwen was playing in the doorway. She took a right down the hall. The only thing to the right was the staircase.
The stairs are about 6 inches from the doorway of Keith's office. I have a system to ensure that I close the gate and remembered closing it (I do a mental check each time we are upstairs and she wanders out of my line of sight) so I wasn't worried about finishing what I was doing before retrieving her. About 20 seconds after she left the office I followed her. My heart stopped. She had opened the gate and had one leg swung over the edge to go down the steps (note: she doesn't know how to go down steps without falling). When I swooped down to pick her up she was working on swinging her second leg over the edge.
When she was safely in my arms I closed the gate. Then I nearly vomited. Then I cried. Then I thought about what would have happened had I waited 5 more seconds to get her. Then I wanted to vomit again. She doesn't know how to go down the steps and was wearing her most slippery pair of footed pajamas on hardwood.
How did Gwen, an 11 month old, open the gate? While I, like all moms, believe my child is smart, I believe that opening gates is beyond her current abilities. She has been working diligently for the last few weeks on trying to figure the gate out, however. She stands at the gate and tries shaking each bar. With this method she determined which part of the gate is mobile and which part is immobile based on sound she is able to make at certain bars. Even with that knowledge I didn't think she could open it. After I calmed down and made a freaked out phone call to one of my friends to decompress a bit I got onto the floor to investigate the conditions that Gwen faced. Within a few seconds I figured out how she had accomplished this dangerous feat.
When Keith and his dad installed the gate, his dad commented that it was a piece of junk. I had done my research for weeks and knew it was one of the best gates on the market, so I brushed his comment aside. The reason he believed the gate to be junk is that it comes out of the box with a gap between the side of the gate and the door in the gate. If you install it correctly the gap disappears and all of the safety features are active. Keith and his dad installed the gate, but given the fact that our home is 70 years old and that the walls are nowhere near to being square, one of the safety features was not engaged. When the gate works properly, you have to slide a switch back with your thumb while lifting and pulling back. I have seen many adults struggle with coordinating these movements, so I was pretty confident that infants and toddlers would not be able to open it. However, the thumb latch was not blocking the gate from opening due to our non-square walls. All you had to do was lift and pull. You still had to put forth a decent amount of effort so I still believed it to be safe. I even called my friend Jessica after this incident and discovered that they have the same gate with the same fit problem and she had made the same assumptions about her daughter's abilities. (She is going to fiddle with their gate when she gets home tonight). When I got on the floor and pretended to be a determined, curious 11 month old, I was able to open the gate way too easily.
In all fairness to my parenting safety, I keep a close eye on Gwen. But when you are with a child that much you sometimes do things that take your eyes off of them for a few seconds at a time. And it seems it is those few seconds that children decide to get into shenanigans. Dangerous situations happen much more often when Gwen is under my watch than Keith's, but then again I am responsible for watching her 95% of the time and Keith watches her 5% of the time (because he is usually being a wonderful breadwinner which allows me to stay home with our daughter and put her in dangerous situations...in case my sense of humor is currently a bit too dark, that was a joke). Plus, I read an article last week that 50% of moms lie about how many sweets their child eats and how much screen time they get. I doubt these mothers would admit what I admitted in such a public way in this post. So while I sometimes worry that I practice irresponsible parenting, I know these things happen to everyone.
This whole experience changed my day in a few ways. First, I have been shopping both in stores and online all day to purchase a new gate, carpeting for the stairs, and other child safety items. Second, I have been evaluating my child's problem solving capabilities realizing that I have, perhaps, underestimated her. Third, I have been contemplating how precious and precarious life can be, how much I love my daughter, and how devestated I would be if anything ever happened to her. I will be spending the rest of my day giving her extra cuddles and hugging her extra tight.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Pumping problems
When Gwen was first born and until she was 5 months old, I had an over active milk letdown. While this meant that she would often choke once every 30-60 seconds each time she ate and she learned to gulp her milk to keep up with the flow, it also meant that I was able to fill a bottle when pumping in 3 minutes flat. Sometimes I would fill a bottle before the letdown phase on my pump ended (2 minutes). I called a lactation consultant for solutions to Gwen choking while eating. She asked me how quickly the milk came out when I pumped. When I told her that I was able to get 5 ounces in about 2 minutes and she responded with "whoa!" I knew I had a bit of a feeding problem.
Right around the time that Gwen turned 6 months old my letdown slowed down. Thankfully my little monster stopped choking while eating. Unfortunately, she had grown accustomed to the quick speed of milk consumption and had partially corrected for it. When the milk slowed, Gwen was not a happy camper. She wanted her milk and she wanted it NOW!!!! My once frantic eater now had to wait patiently, a fact that did not make her happy. With each feeding, she would turn into a grunting, growling milk-eating monster until her thirst was slated. My mother-in-law, a former pediatric nurse, said she had never heard any baby react that way to breast feeding.
When my milk slowed I also noticed drastic changes in pumping. What once took 2 minutes was now taking 20. But Gwen didn't need bottles as much anymore so I eventually took a 3 month break from pumping, hoping that I wouldn't have to return to it until baby number 2.
After a few months, we had to put Gwen back on Zantac. This meant two bottles a day. I also was giving her Tylenol and Motrin with increased frequency due to pain from teething and diaper rash. Around the same time, Gwen also suffered from 2 ear infections requiring 2 antibiotics. The antibiotics gave her diarrhea, resulting in a need for her to take probiotics. All this meant that she needed quite a bit of expressed milk since she spits out medicine that we give her by syringe or dropper.
I am very thrifty with milk in bottles. I don't want to put her medicine in several ounces of milk because then you run into the problem of baby not finishing her dose of medicine. So I put all of her milk in 2 ounce portions to freeze and thaw one bag a day. Each time I give her a dose of medicine I give it in one ounce (about 30 ml) of milk. On a regular basis this results in a 32 ml bottle: 30 ml of milk and 2 ml of Zantac. This week she has been receiving a cocktail of medications: 3.5 ml augmentin, 4.25 ml Tylenol, 4.25 ml Motrin (note: if your baby is in serious pain, as Gwen currently is with her diaper rash, you can give both Tylenol and Motrin. Tylenol is metabolized by the liver and Motrin is metabolized by the kidneys. I only do this occasionally as I try to avoid giving Gwen unneeded medication. However, when she is suffering as she has been this week, I will give both at the same time), 2 ml Zantac, and 1 packet (250 mg) of Florastor Kids probiotics. If you do the math you will see that she is taking 15 ml of medication in 30 ml of milk. She has not been happy about the taste of her last few bottles. She will drink them, but it usually takes some coaxing, especially since florastor is yeast and so her bottle smells liked warm yeast.
Even though I am thrifty with my milk, I would go through it all in about 2 months if I stopped pumping completely. Gwen might need to be on Zantac for several more months, and I want to keep a small stockpile in case of babysitters, so I continue pumping.
Gwen, always the one with a strong opinion that she makes known, has taken to standing next to my chair, clawing at my leg, and crying bitterly each time I pump. She can be the happiest baby in the world, playing nicely on the floor just after eating, and she will abandon everything in order to protest my pumping. I've calmly explained that this is where all that milk comes from that she eats in her bottles, but this logic does not appease her. While Keith was home on vacation last week, I would have him play with her while I pumped. But she managed to weasel out of whatever game they were playing, crawl to mommy, and sob as her precious was pumped into a bottle. I don't know if she hates the fact that I am unable to play with her at that moment (a fact that was not important to her mere moments before as she played alone or with daddy) or if she is upset that I am stealing her milk. Since she was not daunted in her mission to complain by Keith's distractions, I am going to assume it is the latter. As you can imagine this is a little stressful, thus slowing milk collection even more.
Despite all of these problems, there is something that is addicting to me with pumping. It is a bit of a game: how much more milk can I pump each day than I use? How much can I stockpile? I just feel so accomplished each time that I am able to fill a bottle. I guess this is a better addiction than betting on the ponies.
Right around the time that Gwen turned 6 months old my letdown slowed down. Thankfully my little monster stopped choking while eating. Unfortunately, she had grown accustomed to the quick speed of milk consumption and had partially corrected for it. When the milk slowed, Gwen was not a happy camper. She wanted her milk and she wanted it NOW!!!! My once frantic eater now had to wait patiently, a fact that did not make her happy. With each feeding, she would turn into a grunting, growling milk-eating monster until her thirst was slated. My mother-in-law, a former pediatric nurse, said she had never heard any baby react that way to breast feeding.
When my milk slowed I also noticed drastic changes in pumping. What once took 2 minutes was now taking 20. But Gwen didn't need bottles as much anymore so I eventually took a 3 month break from pumping, hoping that I wouldn't have to return to it until baby number 2.
After a few months, we had to put Gwen back on Zantac. This meant two bottles a day. I also was giving her Tylenol and Motrin with increased frequency due to pain from teething and diaper rash. Around the same time, Gwen also suffered from 2 ear infections requiring 2 antibiotics. The antibiotics gave her diarrhea, resulting in a need for her to take probiotics. All this meant that she needed quite a bit of expressed milk since she spits out medicine that we give her by syringe or dropper.
I am very thrifty with milk in bottles. I don't want to put her medicine in several ounces of milk because then you run into the problem of baby not finishing her dose of medicine. So I put all of her milk in 2 ounce portions to freeze and thaw one bag a day. Each time I give her a dose of medicine I give it in one ounce (about 30 ml) of milk. On a regular basis this results in a 32 ml bottle: 30 ml of milk and 2 ml of Zantac. This week she has been receiving a cocktail of medications: 3.5 ml augmentin, 4.25 ml Tylenol, 4.25 ml Motrin (note: if your baby is in serious pain, as Gwen currently is with her diaper rash, you can give both Tylenol and Motrin. Tylenol is metabolized by the liver and Motrin is metabolized by the kidneys. I only do this occasionally as I try to avoid giving Gwen unneeded medication. However, when she is suffering as she has been this week, I will give both at the same time), 2 ml Zantac, and 1 packet (250 mg) of Florastor Kids probiotics. If you do the math you will see that she is taking 15 ml of medication in 30 ml of milk. She has not been happy about the taste of her last few bottles. She will drink them, but it usually takes some coaxing, especially since florastor is yeast and so her bottle smells liked warm yeast.
Even though I am thrifty with my milk, I would go through it all in about 2 months if I stopped pumping completely. Gwen might need to be on Zantac for several more months, and I want to keep a small stockpile in case of babysitters, so I continue pumping.
Gwen, always the one with a strong opinion that she makes known, has taken to standing next to my chair, clawing at my leg, and crying bitterly each time I pump. She can be the happiest baby in the world, playing nicely on the floor just after eating, and she will abandon everything in order to protest my pumping. I've calmly explained that this is where all that milk comes from that she eats in her bottles, but this logic does not appease her. While Keith was home on vacation last week, I would have him play with her while I pumped. But she managed to weasel out of whatever game they were playing, crawl to mommy, and sob as her precious was pumped into a bottle. I don't know if she hates the fact that I am unable to play with her at that moment (a fact that was not important to her mere moments before as she played alone or with daddy) or if she is upset that I am stealing her milk. Since she was not daunted in her mission to complain by Keith's distractions, I am going to assume it is the latter. As you can imagine this is a little stressful, thus slowing milk collection even more.
Despite all of these problems, there is something that is addicting to me with pumping. It is a bit of a game: how much more milk can I pump each day than I use? How much can I stockpile? I just feel so accomplished each time that I am able to fill a bottle. I guess this is a better addiction than betting on the ponies.
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