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.