Mia: four months

My beautiful baby girl was a whole whopping four months last week. 

-weighs 12lbs 1oz (25th percentile), 23 inches long (10th percentile)

-finally fitting into 0-3 month pants...she wears newborn pants as capris haha

-her head is also in the 10th percentile which explains why I've had such a hard time finding a hat for her

-she has uber tiny feet, long and skinny like her Auntie Paige. I swear they haven't grown since she's been born. Shoes do not stay on at ALL, and all 0-6 month shoes are still clown shoes on her. Most of the time she wears socks outside or goes barefoot.

-she is pretty much sleep trained now. At this stage sleep training for me means that I put them down in bed when they're awake but tired and ready for a nap, and they are able to self soothe to sleep. Sometimes she makes these funny "brrrrrrr" noises when she's going to sleep. She also loves to lift her shirt up if she's not in a onesie and chew on it, so sometimes when I go to check on her, she's sleeping with her shirt up to her face and her little belly all exposed haha.

-she still wakes up once, sometimes twice a night to eat. It seems to go in spurts. 3 or 4 days of 7-9 hour stretches before she eats, and then 3 or 4 days of 4-6 hour stretches. The 4-6 hour stretches usually means she's up around 1-2am and then again at 5-6am. I just bring her to bed with me the 2nd time-so exhausted.

-she eats 4-6 oz every 3 hours, but it's usually dragged at over at least an hour and a half. Grazes like a cow this one.

-she loves when I read and sing to her. I just give her tummy time and read her stories and she'll be happy for 15+ minutes. Her favourites are "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?", "Are You a Cow?", and "The Paper Bag Princess".

-she went swimming for the first time and quickly warmed up to it, kicking her legs underneath the water.

-she's started to make strange with certain people, and can put a mean pout on.

-she is super giggly, especially when she's getting a diaper change or getting dressed. The complete opposite of her brother.

I love this little munchkin!

Yes, they're bottle fed.

Happy Mother's Day! My only requests for Mother's Day were an uninterrupted night's sleep and no cooking. Gordon got up to feed Mia, and then woke up to make me a crepe breakfast. I had a cute little card with my babies' handprints on them and a home video of Gordon singing me a mother's day song, while Mia wiggled around on his lap and Isaac kept pointing to the camera. It was perfect. Other things during my 18 months of being a mother to my own children, have not been so perfect. And this post is about one of the biggest challenges I've faced in motherhood.

I've been meaning to write it for so long, I've probably written and rewritten it in my head 100 times. It's purpose isn't to garner sympathy or pity, it's to educate. I'm going to share a not-so-secret with you.

My babies are bottle fed. 

Bottle fed with formula.

"The horror!" "Those poor babies!" "Doesn't she know breastfeeding is best?" (Yes I do. In fact, I get that nice little reminder every time I go to make a bottle, because it tells me so right on the formula can label).

No one has ever said those things to me. At least not out loud. They are all things I've said to myself, especially when I learned that exclusively breast feeding Isaac was very much out of the question for me. If you want to read more in detail about that experience you can go here or here. I was led to believe that the reason I wasn't able to breastfeed (BF) exclusively was because Isaac's latch was poor and he wasn't eating efficiently...which was true, but only a small part of the problem. "You need to pump more." They said. "Take this medication." They said. "Try these herbs." They said. "Drink this tea." They said. "Stand on your head and do the hokey pokey." They said . (Ok not really that last one, but it would have been just as effective). All these suggestions were given to me from very well-meaning and encouraging nurses, lactation consultants, friends with successful BF experiences, and whatever forums google search could drum up for me.

I did them all.

I hate tea, but I drank it. The medication is an appetite stimulant that made it super hard to lose my baby weight, but I took it. The herbs left this disgusting after taste and had to be taken 4X/day, but I choked them back. The pumped left me bruised, even after trying several different attachments, but I pumped anyway. 

Trying to BF my son consumed my day.

And after all that, my milk supply did improve slightly, but not enough to overpower the attractiveness and ease of the bottle, so Isaac eventually refused to nurse period at 3.5 months.

I eventually overcame the guilt that accompanied exclusively bottle feeding him and was able to wean him at 10 months completely from the bottle. I'm happy to say he is just as intelligent and healthy as I ever dreamed he would be. I hoped I wouldn't have to wean any more babies from the bottle-that this predicament was only due to poor latching the first 10 days. After all, all the other health professionals I had spoken with couldn't give me any other explanation as to why my milk supply was insufficient.

I didn't think I'd have to worry about BF again for a while. 3 months after Isaac quit nursing, we found out we had a little surprise on the way. I remained optimistic about my ability to BF this baby. This was my second go around and it wasn't that long ago that I did this with Isaac. But there was always this tiny nagging feeling that maybe I wouldn't have enough milk again. This time I was prepared with formula on hand, but I desperately hoped it would remain unopened. 

Mia latched like a champ before we even left labour and delivery, and I fed her every few hours while in the hospital. She seemed happy and satisfied. I thought to myself "Maybe I can actually do this!".  After about 24 hours, the nursing marathon seemed to start, just as it had with Isaac. No matter how many times I switched her sides, she was still vigourously nursing after 2 hours, and her swallowing was sparse. Grudgingly, I made her a couple oz of formula and she gobbled it down like it was her last meal. I didn't have enough milk.

I had to make a choice.

Did I go through all the pumping, referrals, prescriptions, herbs blah blah blah again?  Or did I nurse her as often and as long as possible and then supplement with formula after and call that good? The choice wasn't based on money or convenience. It was based on the fact that I had a toddler who still needed me. A toddler who was having difficulty adjusting and who already lashed out when I would start feeding her. If I tacked on 10-20 mins of pumping at the end of feedings, which were already 40-60 mins in length every 1-2 hours, I would never have any time with him. It made the choice easier. Maybe some of you would have made a different choice, and that's ok. 

This time, however, I didn’t have the explanation of poor latch or not enough nursing to explain my low milk supply. She was a great nurser, and by all means I should have had plenty of milk. It was my dear sweet friend, Jocelyn (who tragically passed away from cancer a few weeks after this conversation happened), who sent me a link to a support group for mothers with chronic low milk supply.

I didn’t feel like I needed the support group, this having been a situation I had already emotionally prepared myself for the entire pregnancy, but I was curious that there were others like me. When I looked them up, I found reference to a condition called “insufficient glandular tissue” or breast hypoplasia. Having never heard of this, I quickly started doing research.

It was truly a lightbulb moment.

The more I read, the more pieces started fitting together. Things I had questioned about my body as a teenager but never really thought about because I never had a reason to, started to all make sense. I read other mother's stories with these conditions and felt like I was reliving my own experience with my son. I looked at pictures, diagrams, research... until I was 99.9999% sure that this was what I had. The condition is largely self-diagnosed, but after speaking with other breastfeeding experts, they have come to the same conclusion. Essentially my body doesn't have enough "milk making" tissue. There's a great article here that goes into more detail! The tissue can increase with nursing and the more babies you have, until some mums have been able to BF exclusively after a couple babies, and maybe some day I'll be fortunate to have that experience. But maybe I won't. And I have to be okay with that.

Mia has just stopped nursing all together. I made it to 3.5 months, the same as Isaac. Both of them came to the realization that the bottle was what fulfilled their needs, so she would start latching for less and less time, until it got to be maybe 15- 30 seconds total. Now I'll nurse her for comfort, or if she really needs to go to sleep, but as far as milk goes, it all comes out of a can. A can that I'm so grateful for, because where would my babies be without it? They likely wouldn't be at all.

So next time you see me (or anyone else) whip out my little container of formula, and happily bottle feed my baby, please don't judge me. Although if you do, it only reflects poorly on yourself. I hope that my children will call me a great mother because of the things I have taught them, and the love I have given them, not for the source of the milk I fed them. We all do our best as mothers to provide what it best for our children. On this mother's day, I challenge you to cease the fault finding and to love each other a little better.

18 months. Feels big.

18 months feels like the point where they are officially out of the "baby stage"... I don't know maybe it's just the hair cut or the fact that he's in nursery now, but Isaac is so much more of a little boy now than even a month or two ago. Maybe it also has to do with the fact that he put on 1.5lbs in 3 weeks between his dr's appt and immunizations.

He now weighs 24 lbs and measures 31 inches.

He can count to 3. "Nun, tuh, tee". We're now working on 4 and 5.

He can answer the questions "What's your name?" (Isah) and "How old are you?" ("Nun!")

He knows all his shapes.

He's obsessed with looking at family pictures and can identify every person in our immediate and extended family (grampas, grandmas, aunts and uncles!). He doesn't see them very often, so I feel like this helps him warm up to them quicker when he does.

He's getting much better at using words spontaneously in the right context, and pronouncing them properly. He'll bring a toy he wants to play with to me and say "on". Today he said "poop" and then proceeded to do the deed (guess it's time to read up on potty training...). His "please" has gone from "puh puh" to "peaj" and I've now become "mommy" most of the time, instead of "mama". I've been working with him on putting two words together, besides "all done" and "thank you", and this morning he said "mommy no", when I asked him a question.

He's a little OCD like me and if there's a crumb on his highchair tray, a smear of nutella or some other mess he deems unacceptable, he points to it until I clean it up, then goes back to eating. The other day, the tea towel fell on the floor while he was eating. He says "uh oh uh oh", I told him it was fine and to keep eating, but he kept pointing at it. So I went and picked it up and then he resumed his lunch like nothing happened. I probably shouldn't be encouraging him, but I'm kinda glad he likes things clean!

He has a freakishly good memory and remembers where toys and other random things are that I forget about or that I haven't mentioned in months (literally months).

He's still learning to be a nice and gentle big brother, but he does love his sister and likes watching her or sitting with her.
 

He fell asleep cuddling with me before nap yesterday, which is something that hasn't happened since he was Mia's age.

He is a total clown and loves to entertain, but is also pretty shy and reserved around older kids and people he doesn't know.

He loves doing the actions to "Once There was a Snowman", "If You're Happy and You Know It", and "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes"

He loves being outside and we're hoping to get out lots this summer...if it ever decides to show up.

He's my crazy, busy, challenging, goofy, big boy.

Not sure why we try Isaac proofing

Found daddy's candy stash and chewed through the wrapper to get to the sucker, which he promptly demolished in 2 minutes.