wandering thoughts

I'm drinking orange juice to help with the tickle in my throat, the one from the cold I think I'm picking up from my daughter, who got it when her immune system was tired from fighting the fever/stomach bug. I'm not too worried about it though, since I know that every cold she has now will help her immune system strengthen and help her fight off those big things. Still hate hearing her little cough though, and seeing her uncomfortable.

I brought in one of her 3-month pro pictures (which we got in the mail yesterday) to put on my desk. I glance at it when I'm pumping in hopes that it will kick the boobs into high gear. After my orange juice, I'll switch to a big Nalgene full of tea... with the duel purpose of it being good for my cold, and it pumping me full of liquids which is good for, well, pumping.

A little afraid to put this out there, but you might notice from the update on the Gwen month-to-month page that the % stat for her weight has dropped a bit... she's still gaining, but not as fast as she was. I think this was just a fluke month, with starting bottles at daycare and us learning what she needs there, plus the stomach bug (which the doc also pointed out could be the cause), plus bf babies just tend to gain at a slower rate then non-bf babies (thus throwing them below the curve), but it hit me a bit and I felt like my previously rock star mammaries had let me and my daughter down. Hard not to beat myself up. Hard not to find myself in tears this morning when my poor unsuspecting husband told me that he did something different with my pumped milk then what I had planned for it. Yipes.

Excerpt from the email I wrote him after he left with Gwen, post tears:
"I'm sorry about this morning. I didn't mean to make you feel like I was upset with you. I am very tired, and was caught off guard (a recipe for tears)... I figured you would ask me what to do with the milk, since I had asked you to put that milk in the fridge this morning. [...] I know that we have a lot in the freezer, and that's good. But its really not as much as it seems... maybe only a few days worth. If anything were to happen, I want to know that it is there so she can continue to get breast milk. [...] The more we feed her at daycare, the less I'll be feeding her at home, and that can make my supply drop, which means I'll be able to pump even less. I'm worried about not pumping enough for her during the day, and worried about depleting the freezer stash making up the difference. I know that I need to not jump to worst case scenarios, and I'm trying to just relax about it and go with the flow... I guess it just upset me more then I realized to think that maybe I have not been doing as great with feeding her as I thought. I'm sure this month was just a fluke, but it still made me feel crappy. [...] I do know we need to feed her some more at daycare though. [...] Anyway, I'm sorry I got all freaked out, and I hope you understand."

He did.
Understand, that is. 

We're sending more in each bottle, giving her more at a time, plus the two nursing sessions in the morning and two in the evening, to see how that takes care of things. I'm going to make a huge effort to drink more liquids, and eat more healthy fats (to give my boobs more fats to choose from for making the milk) like avocados, nuts, fish, olive oil. I have faith that this will take care of things... but I've also resigned to NOT being able to breastfeed her exclusively until 6 months like I originally hoped/planned. I've compromised with the doc and we'll start baby cereal (well, oatmeal, because that rice cereal is crap and has no nutritional value) mixed with breast milk at 5 months... then we'll start baby food (well, we'll probably do a combo baby food and BLW) at 6 months as I always planned. But I do still plan to give her breast milk exclusively to drink for a while yet, and breastfeeding until at least a year.

I just keep reminding myself that I have a happy, healthy daughter and that this too shall pass. But encouragement is welcome. I was/am nervous to write about this, put it out there, afraid of judgment or disagreement with our decision. No one will ever agree with me completely though, and I/we are doing what we think is best for Gwen. In the end, as long as she is healthy and loved, it will be okay. As my own gentle encouragement, I've added countdown tickers to the bottom right side, to 6 months and to a year. Its actually very heartening to see that we have only 1 month, 3 weeks until 6 months... thought it is insane to me that it is only that long until my daughter is 1/2 year old.

As an aside, I'm reading Nie Nie now, and it heart wrenching and inspiring and depressing and uplifting all at the same time. I got there from the Pioneer Woman's post, which was also referenced at Friday Playdate where she talks about heros, and men who are heros in everyday life. It made me picture Trav last night, who had retrieved Gwen after she woke up about 20 minutes after I put her down for the night... I wanted to grab a drink and a snack for while I fed her some more. When I came out of the kitchen, he was standing in our darkened dining room, rocking our crabby, snuffly daughter who had fallen back asleep... secure in his arms. It made my heart flutter.

Now I have to get back to work... being out on Thursday, the back on Friday, then a three-day weekend since I was out on Monday has me all thrown off and made me less productive today. So off I go...