Tuesday, September 2, 2014

dang you boobies!

I hung in there and breastfeeding has gotten way better. I no longer hate it! I would read on the webs that around 6 weeks was the time when it would get easier and the net was right. She takes less time to eat, I'm not as sore in the nips, its just wayyyyy better.
The miss is not a good daytime napper. She will nap when being held or gloriously in her car seat be it in the car or in the stroller. Sometimes a swaddle, rocking, and some white noise in her room can convince her to nap in her crib. Sometimes I can get her to lay in her crib and she can get herself tired enough or soothed enough to nap for 1/2 hour max. It's a very deceptive nap because she looks like she is OUT for awhile but alas, looks are deceiving.
The wonderful BUT in this is that she is a pretty decent nighttime sleeper and Lord bless her. She can go for 3-4 hour stretches, wake up to feed, and go back to sleep with very little incident. The frustrating yet kinda miraculous thing is that I wake up about 5-10 minutes on my own before she does loaded with milk, often leaky, and uncomfortable. I lay in bed and wait for her to wake up so I can feed her and relieve the pressure and sure enough within minutes, she's up.
I am however, currently awake because of a strange occurrence. After a fun day of visiting friends where she was in her car seat a bit and had a good mix of awake and asleep she went to bed later than normal after midnight. We thought it was that I had too much caffeine that day and maybe so but she was way too awake and fussy and would not go to bed after we tried all our tricks. And while in the past this might have driven me insane I was high off a great day and feeling pretty patient. She was fed, changed, swaddled and Matt asked for any ideas. I shrugged, "Just stick her in her bassinet. She's still right now, just let her lay there." The freaking kid fell asleep on her own after a few minutes. We did nothing but continue to check on her for a few minutes and she remained asleep and so did we.
Without fail around 5am I woke up full of milk and with the holy crap is she still asleep let me check her breathing mini panic. Baby is fine and still out. Hmm. Surely she will wake up soon. Surely.

About 30 minutes passes by and still no awoken baby.

Now begins the frustrating dance of: I need to get rid of this milk. My boobs are hard. Should I pump? What if she wakes up and I just diminished her supply? Will the noise wake her? Agh!!

So I pumped enough to just alleviate the situation and waited for her to wake up. No dice. So I pump a little more and turn on the bedside light. Nada. I pick her up and put her on the nursing pillow and still no eyes opening. Minor stirring but not much. I finally get her awake enough to make her eat. She lazily eats, boob feels better, and goes right back to sleep when she's done. Now I am laying here typing at almost 7am not quite sleepy and thinking of game plans for the future.

I think I waste too much time deciding to pump when she's asleep and I should just do it. If she wakes up while I'm doing it then I can just stop and feed her and odds are she'll get full with what's in there and go back to sleep. Worst case: give her the stuff I just pumped via bottle. Right?

What happens when she starts sleeping for 6-8 hours and I'm full of milk? Will I be able to sleep that long? Will milk wake me up after 4 hours?

Why am I still awake now?!

- mobile blog post. spelling irrelevant.

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