Easter

Easter was lovely. Matt and I did a photo shoot with Hannah on Friday, then took a few pictures in both her dresses on Sunday. Yes, she had two. One of them we picked out and bought ourselves. The other was a hand-me-down from a friend that I just threw into the diaper bag on a whim.... just in case. I was glad that I did.

The Easter photo shoot

The Easter dresses

There was spit-up in between the dresses.

There was also a nap, hence the peppier looking Hannah in the second picture.

Two decisions and pictures!!

A quick update on my last two posts.

First, I'm on the pill. It's the mini-pill which is approved for use while breastfeeding and it somewhat of a compromise since in theory, it shouldn't mess with my cycle. A number of the women on the August rav boards are on it, and many of them still haven't gotten their periods yet. So it's not going to dictate my cycle. I'm not horribly thrilled, but it is what it is. Matt and I are both somewhat getting what we want.

And spontaneous sex is awesome.

Second, we let her cry. We didn't do it for the initial put-down. She slept for a few hours after that. It was the multiple wake-ups between one and four that finally did it. There was a misunderstanding between Matt and I and I ended up pissed off and then he tried to put her down and she immediately woke up and cried, and we'd finally had it. It wasn't how I wanted to do it; I didn't want CIO to be something that we did out of anger, but honestly, we were just burnt out. We had tried just about everything the nurse suggested on Friday and we we were out of options. So we held her and snuggled her until she was super sleepy, then put her down and left the room. At that point, we just let her go.

It was awful. She cried for half an hour and I'm pretty sure I cried for most of it. Honestly though, half an hour isn't bad, from what I'm hearing. I was surprised when she woke up less than hour later. We did the same thing, and she went to sleep. Last night was rougher. We left her in her car seat, normally a guarantee of sleep. Unless someone knocks the remote off the bed onto the hardwood floor. That set us up for a long chunk of time spent trying to get her sleepy again and she even had a bottle. Eventually we did the soothe then leave, and it took about ten minutes. Tonight we put her down sleepy and she woke up about 45 minutes later. I picked her up, rocked her until sleepy, then set her down. She cried for less than five minutes. So hopefully this will help get rid of these silly wake-ups in the middle of the night.

On a happy cute note, pictures!

Our first dinner as a family at the dinner table. We've been pretty good about keeping it up, even on the nights when we get take-out.

It is possible for bathtime to be fun!

Playing by herself in the pack 'n play while we did laundry did not go over very well.

We opened up all the toys left from the baby showers. Now that she's old enough for them, we cleaned up her room so there was room on the floor to play.

She also played with the new toys in the crib so that I could sort through her clothes and swap out the stuff that wasn't big enough.

Seven months old..... man, where did the time go??

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

The Talk

Matt and I had a conversation about birth control and our future baby plans. As far as he's concerned, he's fine with just having one baby, and if my opinion didn't matter, we would go back on birth control, he would work on his music career, and we would get this whole parenting thing under control. Then once we were a little more stable, we could discuss baby #2.

I don't do well with open-ended plans. I'm not saying I want to set a date for when we're going to start TTC again, but I'd like something a little more specific than 'when we're more stable' and 'his music career is more established'. Especially since he's been on working getting said music career established for almost as long as we've been together: 12 years ago, yesterday. I don't particularly want to be adding another baby after 35. Not saying it can't be done, but I just don't want to be pushing 40 with a kindergartner.

He also doesn't think I'm going to be ready to be done after #2. I am a self-declared planner. I'm always looking for the next thing to plan. I've always been like that, and he's convinced that we're going to have #2 and I'm going to decide that our family just doesn't feel complete, that I need more to plan.


And if I'm brutally honest with myself, deep down, I think he might be right. And it makes me sad. Not that he's right, but because some of my reasons for having a second baby are selfish. There has been so much drama and negativity surrounding my pregnancy and the first few months of Hannah's life that I want a do over. I want a chance to just enjoy being pregnant, not worrying about jobs and my thesis and where we're going to live and how we're going to pay for XYZ. We'd have a better idea of what we're doing; I feel like Hannah and I don't have a great connection and I can't help feeling like I did something to cause that. But that's selfish on my part. I'd be bringing another human into the world for something for myself.

He also wants to be able to have spontaneous sex and we can't since condoms are just not comfortable for us. So we have to wait at least 15 minutes for what we're using to kick-in if I'm not the one initiating. He realizes this is a selfish reason for me to go back on birth control. But he also made the very good point that if we're not talking about #2 any time soon, my whole reason for not going back on birth control (to figure out what my cycle is going to do on its own now that I've had a baby so we have a better chance of conceiving faster next time) is pretty much mute.

*sigh* I have never thought of only have one. Not there is something wrong with it; it just has never been the plan. I'll admit that spontaneous sex would be nice again. Especially since sometimes all we get is 15 minutes. And while I don't miss getting my period, I would be less stressed if it just would follow some sort of schedule.

As much as we needed to talk about it, I didn't come out of the conversation feeling any better. If anything, I feel worse. All of his points were very valid, and I find myself running out of logical arguments. All I've got are feelings. There's nothing wrong with making decisions based on feelings; they just don't always stand up in the face of facts and logical arguments.

I wish there was a zone of compromise when it comes to having children. Either we're both going to be happy about having a second one or we're both going to be unhappy about not having a second one (me about not having one and Matt for making me unhappy); there is no middle ground. If he puts his foot down and says he's confident that he is happy with one, there isn't much I can do about it.

Busy busy....

This post is going to be rather piecemeal. It's the work of a few early morning sessions with Hannah plus some random venting.

It's been a busy few weeks. School has been a little crazy and work on my thesis is increasing. I have a definite deadline and somewhat of a plan to get there.

I also had mastitis which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Fever, body aches, localized inflammation of the breast, the red spot on my breast; I had all the the text book symptoms. They didn't even have to see me to diagnose it, that's how textbook it was. I was exhausted all the time and I would fall asleep on the couch in the evening. It hurt to hold Hannah; it just royally sucked. The general thinking is that the clogged duct I had about a month ago never really fully cleared so it got infected. And the antibiotic was a pain in the butt. Do you know how hard it is during the day to find a time that is not less two hours since you last are and more that an hour until you eat again? It may be a first world problem, but I guarantee you, I took those pills an extra day because I kept missing a pill in the middle of the day.

Mastitis messed with my supply on the right side. It's always been lower, but now it's at least an ounce if not closer to two ounces behind. Oh well, I'm still producing much more than she is drinking in a day, so I'm not too worried. We're still freezing a bunch and I've been able to keep up with donations. I did mark the milk that had the antibiotics in it, and I don't plan to give any of that to the families I donate to.

Hannah has also been having difficulty sleeping. At first we thought it was just a random thing, but over the last three weeks or so, she has slept through the night exactly three times. It's been awful. Matt's been a zombie, and for the first time since she was born, we had a serious conversation about CIO. We don't think that it would work for her since she tends to escalate when left to cry, and I cry when she cried while I'm holding her, so I know I would be a MESS if we tried, but we had to have the conversation. We're just doing what we can. Our second hypothesis was that it was my antibiotics from the mastitis. But there have been nights where it was okay and it has continued even though I'm off of the antibiotics. We think it's a cold, so we picked up a soothing vapors bubble bath. It seems to help. It doesn't fix 100% of things, but anything that helps is worth it. Last night was better, so hopefully there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Hannah also struggles with settling for me at night. She definitely has a sleep association developed with Matt. We've been forcing the issue as much as we can even if it means me holding her for 20+ minutes while she cries for Matt. He's been trying to stay out of the livingroom to give her less fuel for the fire. It's been rough, lots of crying from both Hannah and I. I sometimes wonder if this stubbornness on my part is more trouble than it's worth. But then we have nights like last night when I sang her songs and she fell asleep and slept until after 8 this morning. Parenting is like golf: you go for long stretches where you feel you can't do anything right and you'll never get good at it, but then you have a great storytime or reach a milestone during playtime or bedtime goes exactly as planned, and you are reminded that it's not all poopy diapers and fussiness.

We've stepped up the solids in Hannah's diet. She's had fish and spaghetti and oatmeal now plus different puffs and yogurt melts. So far the only thing she hasn't liked is chickpeas. So we'll try that again in a week or so, but for now, she's a great eater. She also has been having one bottle a day out of a sippy cup. We will gradually be transitioning her over, and my hope is to have her done with bottles around the time that we are done with breastmilk, so about a year. We also have upped her bottles to 5 ounces. She'd been holding steady at 4 ounces since early October, so we figured it was time.

Overall, things are going well. Hannah is growing and is mostly happy.