J's food situation

Well, it's proving to be an eventful morning.

J awoke, had his diaper changed, took his medicine, ate some breastmilk, then played happily in his crib for about an hour while I studied. Then I got him up to feed him some solids.

Determined to win the formula debate, I made his cereal with formula instead of water. He squawked briefly, but he ate it. Cereal and applesauce. Yum, yum.

Halfway through bowl #2 of cereal, J decided he'd had enough. Really and truly, he'd had enough. He threw up. Twice. Then filled his diaper.

Too messy to carry any particular distance, I undressed him down to his diaper and sort of hosed him off in the kitchen. Then I brought him upstairs, changed him and plunked him in the tub. Bathtime was fun today! J really loves his tub toys. He clambers after them as they float on by.

So I don't really know how much food he ate and kept down. I hope it was sufficient. I'm really trying to get his weight to improve quickly. If he doesn't gain sufficient weight in 3 weeks, the doctor is going to hospitalize him with a feeding tube. That concept scares me. I hope we can avoid it.

Today, we are going to visit my parents. They have been missing J, as they haven't seen him this week since he's been sick. They sure do love their grandchildren!

Dear J

Dear J,

Today, you had your flu booster. You were a big boy, and you barely cried at all. Mommy was very proud of you. You were the smallest baby in the clinic. Mommy hopes your weight gain will pick up soon and you will grow a bit better.

Today, you tried a fruit mixture of bananas, grapes and plums. You seemed to really like it. Mommy will make sure you get that fairly often from now on.

All in all, it has been a good day. You napped well this morning, but not at all this afternoon. You played in your exersaucer. We played with your blocks, played patty-cake together, and Mommy even put on a small puppet show for you with your various Pooh Bear beanie babies. You were cheerful and sweet, and Mommy had lots of fun playing with you today.

However, Mommy must make one tiny little request. Would you please refrain from trying to do headstands during your diaper changes? You spread the poop so far you nearly required a bath immediately after your change! And somehow, you even got the poop all over the back of your little green Tigger jacket. It was on the outside of the jacket, too! I have no idea how you managed it, but I suspect the headstands might have had something to do with it.

You may do headstands after diaper changes, but not during. Deal?

Love you,

Mommy

Evening thoughts

Guilt by association sucks. Especially when no one is guilty of anything in any event.

Many people are stupid. I hate stupidity.

I also hate waiters who accidentally drop raspberry sauce on the seat of my chair while I am in the bathroom changing Mr. Poopy-pants.

On that subject, I hate bathrooms that are not equipped with change stations.

Raspberry sauce on the butt of a brand-new pair of tan corduroy pants is an ugly shade of purple.

When a raspberry sauce stain on the butt of a brand-new pair of tan corduroy pants is rubbed with a bar of Zest soap, the stain remains entrenched in the pants, but it turns a very ugly shade of deep green (almost teal, but uglier), even after it has been rinsed.

My baby is sweet, even when he screams.

Even the most tired baby will not sleep when his diaper is poopy.

Weddings make even the smartest and most logical person nutty.

Crepes are yummy.

J is not a big fan of corn.

In his little black, red and white tuxedo, with two small bits of shredded turkey hanging out of his mouth, J looks like a vampire. It makes me laugh!

Pepsi is not an adequate substitute for Coke.

It is bedtime.

Dear Sirs

Dear J:

I love you, and I understand that you are sick. I am sorry about that. However, I must protest your latest antics.

Warning: May be TMI for some.

I am sorry that you have diarrhea. I wish you did not. But when you have pooped and overflowed your diaper, would you please not try to put your feet in it? And also, while Mommy is trying to change you and keep your feet poop-free, perhaps you could refrain from reaching down and sticking your hand in it. And then grabbing my arm, thereby getting poop on my shirt. And then trying to stick your poop-laden hand in your mouth, forcing Mommy to let go of your feet to save you from ingesting it. And then kicking your feet frantically, spraying the poop all about in the process.

I will try to get your white sleeper clean, because it is cute and Daddy loves how the collar makes you look like Elvis. But I would appreciate it if you wouldn't do your very best to ruin and stain it first.

Love,

Mommy

*****************

Dear H:

One more time, for posterity. The empty toilet paper roll does not stay on the dispenser. It gets removed and thrown in the garbage. The new roll does not go on the counter. It goes on the now-empty dispenser. I can leave an instruction sheet in all of the bathrooms, if you wish.

Love,

T

(Note: To be fair, H is actually far better at housework than am I. This is just my own little pet peeve.)

*****************

Dear Cat:

When J is snuggling in my arms and you leap into my lap, you should not be surprised when J grabs your fur and pulls, or tries to pet it in the wrong direction, or anything else. He is a baby, and he does not know any better. I will try to protect you as best I can, but you are best to just avoid putting yourself in the situation. I can accept your being grumpy, and I love you very much, but if you ever react harshly to the baby, I will give you away. And if you spark my computer one more time, as appears to be your preferred means of retaliation, I will no longer permit you to sit in the office.

Love,

Your Human

*****************

Dear Tutors:

Please refrain from answering questions from students' quizzes prior to the quiz due dates. It is most inappropriate to essentially do a student's homework for him or her. Besides, it is not the job of the course tutor to spoon-feed the students.

Yours truly,

Student

*****************

Dear Blogger:

Please respond to my email. It's been days, and I feel this situation should have been remedied by now.

Sincerely,

Cryptic

An eventful evening

Two parties. Managed to hit them both (albeit one was hit really late). Impressed that we got to both, though. Busy busy. Nothing new on that front.

Party #2 was for the lovely and talented Miss Dottie P. Good to see friends. Good times. Good talks. Cute babies. J slept on Dottie's shoulder, and Dottie received her lovely pink frying pan to go with the wonderful pink spatula from theatre mommy and jugglepants. I learned that I need to be more attentive in reading my emails (it seems I am easily confused these days; oops). I was glad to be at the party, even if it was only for a small portion of the evening. It was nice. And Dottie will have a beautiful pink kitchen now! (As an aside, I suspect Dottie was a tad bit tipsy, 'cause she introduced me to Miss Shiny Gal, who I already know quite well. We all had a good giggle about it. Glad Dottie's party was such a smashing success. Woot!)

Party #1 was an annual Christmas bash put on by J&NH, one of H's oldest and dearest friends and his wife. They put so much work into that party each year, it's just unreal. Singalongs, skits, solos, instrumentals, JH singing "Any Dream Will Do" (not H's version, but the real version) in full Technicolor Dreamcoat regalia, and then later, performing the Dentist song from "Little Shop" (not Christmasy at all, but still most entertaining). Monty Python skits abound. Got to spend some time with several old friends who we just don't get to see very often. We need to see them more; they are so great, and I miss them when we fail to hook up for such a long time. Anyway, good food; good fun. Great time.

But I, of course, missed the entire cello orchestra because J made poopy. (*Pout*)

More Music to Diaper By

Changing J this morning, H once again burst into song.

Warning: It is about poop.

To the tune of "Smile":

Smile, when your bum is poopy
Smile, even though it's goopy
When there are clouds in the sky
You'll get by
If you smile, through your tears and sorrow
Smile, and maybe tomorrow
Your bum will stay all free of poo
If you
Just smile.

Thus far ...

... well, let's see...

J finally fell asleep at around 2 a.m. Woke up through the night and woke us up into the bargain. Numerous changes and feeds later...

J woke up at his usual time, looking for another change and feed. I changed and fed him, hoping he would go back down afterwards. After all, I reasoned, we had the same kind of night; he must be just as tired as I am.

Finished feeding him. Held him up for burping. Heard him poop. And at the same time, he threw up (not spit up, but throw up) all over the bed!

Stripped the sheets, changed the baby, put him back in his crib, changed my clothes, washed the sheets. Came back upstairs. Heard J start to cry. Went to check on him.

He had been playing (not sleeping) and had once again handcuffed himself together with his plastic rings.

Picked him up, got him unstuck. He spit up on me, then pooped again. I changed him again. Didn't even bother with myself this time; what's the point?

He now sits in my lap, chewing his fingers and telling me all about his night. I know about his night; I was there. But I love him, so will let him tell me again in his own words. Soon, he will drift off, cuddling in my arms, and I'll hopefully be able to put him down and get some work done. No more time for sleep today, I'm afraid.

Must do housework this morning; people are coming over. Must start Module 5 of course today. Must beat senseless the smugly self-satisfied, childless (I know because of earlier intros), prissy little classmate who went online to the Student Lounge last night to place a comment into one of the threads from all the moms struggling with the course, to inform us of how brilliant she is. Her post even came complete with the smug smiley face.



I genuflect in her general direction.

Mental note: when successful, be proud of yourself, but don't rub it in. I feel somewhat pleased by the fact that she made 11 spelling and grammatical errors in her two sentence post.

Babies are Fun

Especially when they do things like demand a clean fresh diaper so that they can poop in it immediately. Or insist that the diaper must be changed right now so that they may pee all over the place during the diaper change.

Or (my favorite) when they decide to pee, poop and vomit all at the same time while the diaper is off during changing. And Mommy's hands are busy dealing with one of these so she can't attend to the other two right away. And the baby, who is now covered with milk curds, takes advantage of Mommy's busy hands and wiggles around, getting poop all over his feet and his sleeper. And then he smiles and giggles at Mommy, all proud of his tremendous skill.

Babies are a lot of work. But no matter what their antics, and no matter how icky their various messes may be, that smile and giggle just mean the world. J smiles at me, and my heart melts and all of my frustration just disappears. He is such a sweet little boy, and I love him so much!

Medical Stuff

J is a breastfed baby. He is supposed to have poops that are very wet and kind of a mustardy yellow. It has never been a concern before. But all day yesterday and part of the day before, J had very green poops. They were kind of dry and green. We were alarmed and checked with the health line. They theorized that J was getting too much frontmilk and not enough of the rich hindmilk that he needs (it's a problem with "oversupply"). A suggestion I received was to express away some of the frontmilk before breastfeeding him.

Since he is really hurting me when he eats now, we are giving him bottles of expressed milk virtually any time H is home. But on Friday, when H was working, I had noticed that J wasn't eating as well as usual. He just kept fussing at the breast. I thought maybe the green poops were the after-effects from that, as it was entirely possible he hadn't gotten to the good hindmilk all day long and only received the good stuff in his bottle feed that evening. We decided to continue to bottle feed him yesterday and just keep a really close eye on it.

And as of now, his poops have returned to the usual color. I truly never thought I'd be so happy about poop! But we know that green stuff is cause for alarm, and I was really worried all day yesterday, and even at his 4 a.m. feed (which he woke for again today) when it was all green. Hopefully it will stay a normal color now and we won't have to worry about it any longer.

I have been baptized

J rocket-pooed me this morning.

We are actually not having the best morning so far. At both his 4:00 a.m. feedings and this most recent feed, he got frustrated and bit me. Man does that hurt! And I don't think he even got enough milk from either feed. After this most recent feeding, I went to change his diaper. He peed on himself and all over his sleeper, so I decided to get him dressed for the day. He then started spitting up (fortunately, I now just keep a burp cloth under his head during diaper changes, so it didn't get in his hair this time around). I dealt with some of the spit up, then returned to the diaper change. Had his diaper off, new diaper under him, and was just starting to put on his diaper cream, and that was when it happened. Rocket-poo!

We're all cleaned up now, and J is in his bassinet where he is happy. I'm about to grab him so we can get to the Medicentre when they open at 9:00 and avoid a long wait. Neither J's pediatrician nor my GP can see him before July 8, and that's just too far away when he's having feeding difficulties like this. So off I go, to the Medicentre's (somewhat questionable, in my opinion) doctors, to ask for a lactation referral. This time, I'm also going to try for a referral to an oral surgeon who may be able to treat J's tongue tie.

I have concluded that all the best doctors are not taking new patients and are overbooked, so you cannot see them when you need to. It's a shame that when we really need a doctor right away, we have to go to someone who's (maybe) not as good. When I really need a doctor right away, that's when the really good doctor would actually be handy.

J's Day (June 1)

Well, little J woke up yesterday morning needing to be changed and fed. I changed his wet diaper, and he peed during the diaper change all over his sleeper. Put him in a new sleeper, and then fed him. Then I started to burp him. Two minutes into burping, he pooped. I'm supposed to try and keep him upright for 15-20 minutes after feeding (he has some reflux issues), so tried to wait to change him. But I couldn't, as his diaper started to leak and the poop was on his little white sleeper and getting all over me.

So I went off to change him. Got the new diaper on him, and laid him back down so I could rinse out the clothes as best I could. Returned to get him and put him in a new sleeper, and discovered he'd vomited all into his hair. Washed his hair, got him dressed, and held him up to continue with burping as he was still spitting up some. That's when he abruptly moved off the burp cloth and vomited on my outfit. Continued to hold him upright (figured I'd change later), and he loudly pooped again ... but he was still spitting up, so I had to wait to change him.

15 minutes passes. So, I go to change him again. Before I can get the diaper safely away, he wrenches his foot free and puts it in the poopy diaper, then into the diaper cream. I clean his foot and his bum and start to get him changed. He then starts to spit up again. I get it cleaned up before he gets it in his hair, then put a burp cloth under his head to keep it from getting in his hair. He cries, not wanting a burp cloth under his head. (Babies!) But he gets changed and does not get more spit-up in his hair. (Score one for mommy.)

He seems to have finished spitting up, so I put him back in his bassinet and get myself into a clean outfit. I pick him up to take him downstairs, put his soother in his mouth, and start to walk away. And he spits up - through the soother - all over the clean outfit I am now wearing.
He then fell asleep in my arms and, though it had to be unintentional, I swear he was giving me the finger!!

On a bright note, that was all in the morning. In the afternoon, we went to see Madagascar with theatre_mommy and A. It was really cute, and J was a perfect angel during the movie. He just slept!

Anyway, he's finished his midnight feed now and is wanting his soother. Off we go!

Tub time

J's umbilical cord fell off this week. So he got to have his very first tub bath in his little baby bathtub. He hated every minute of it. We strove to finish quickly, but we just couldn't possibly be quick enough. He screamed and screamed!

We don't yet have a tub sling for J, and he's so tiny and the tub is so big by comparison. We were pretty nervous about him slipping under the water, even though the tub is very small really. But it took both of us to give J his bath, so we couldn't get any pictures of J in the tub. We'll pick up a tub sling soon, and hopefully bathtime will then be a one-person job.

After his bath, he was so upset that he pooped in his little hooded towel. Baby poop is bright yellow. The towel is white. I don't think that stain will ever come out fully.

While we couldn't get any pictures of J in his tub, we were able to get a couple of good shots of him in his little towel. I hope you enjoy them.