Milk Storage

One of my milk donors and I were having a conversation about how long you could keep breast milk under various conditions. I came home and googled it and then she forwarded me this very helpful link from the Dr Sears website.

Based on this info, we decided that we're going to try non-frozen, refrigerated milk. Since she's very close by, I can drop by and pick milk up every couple of days. We have 8 days to use non-frozen milk, which should be fine. Sterling can drink as much as the donor can pump in a day. Non-frozen milk is healthier and has more immunological benefits, etc.

Wonder Weeks - Development

On the advice of one of my milk donors, I got a book called The Wonder Weeks. The premise of the book is that babies go through big periods of mental change at predictable times during their development. The first one is around 6 weeks, the second is around 8 weeks, the next is around 12 weeks.

The change around 8 weeks involves baby being able to recognize patterns in the world around him and in his body. As this change is taking place, baby gets cranky, cries a lot, and generally wants to be held ALL the time. The 8-week fussy period is apparently longer and more intense than the 6-week or the 12-week period.

I'm pretty sure we're going through one of these changes. This is probably the 8 week change, or (less likely) the 12 week change a little early. Sterling will be 10 weeks old on Friday. She's been unusually cranky, hasn't wanted to be set down very much (unless she's practicing her wiggling), and is way more high maintenance than she usually is. She also has been taking much more of an interest in what's going on around her.

Here's what she's probably doing developmentally. This is taken directly from the book, so I hope I'm not violating their copyright. Bolded items are things that I've observed her doing up until now.

BODY CONTROL - generally she seems to be very advanced in this category. She's been holding her head up fairly well for a while and she's been wiggling in a purposeful way on her mat for at least two weeks.

• holds head upright when very alert (she particularly does this when being carried in the wrap or when being burped)
• consciously turns head towards something interesting
• consciously rolls from side onto stomach
• consciously rolls from side onto back
• kicks legs and waves arms (she's an expert wiggler)
• kicks at plaything with jerking movements (her aim is getting better, too)
• allows herself to be pulled into a sitting position
• allows himself to be pulled into a standing position
• tries to lift head and body when lying facedown
• shows increased desire to sit
• is able to look left and right when lying on stomach
• makes faces

HAND CONTROL - I think this area is coming along right behind body control. When she wiggles, she's more adept at kicking at hanging toys than she is at batting them with her hands. However, she's getting much better at it with practice.

• swipes at toys
• attempts to grab objects within reach but does not succeed
• closes hand around objects within easy reach
• holds plaything and moves it jerkily up and down
• touches and feels objects while holding them

LOOKING AND SEEING - she likes to look at stuff, but I haven't observed most of these things. 

• discovers hands
• discovers feet
• discovers knees
• watches people moving or working
• is fascinated by children playing close by
• enjoys watching fast-moving images on TV
• watches pets eating or moving
• is fascinated by waving curtains
• discovers luminous object, such as a flickering candle (or lights)
• watches treetops outdoors and is particularly fascinated by movements such as rustling leaves (definitely - she was leaning way back in the wrap so she could look up at the trees when we went for a walk yesterday)
• looks at items on grocery store shelves
• looks at complex shapes and colors
• is fascinated by shiny things (she likes to look at herself in a mirror, I wonder if that's the same thing)
• enjoys watching people chewing food
• enjoys watching and listening to people talk
• watches facial gestures

LISTENING AND CHATTING - she's gotten very chatty recently. 

• enjoys listening to voices, singing, and high-pitched sounds
• makes short bursts of sound such as ah, uh, eh, mmm, and listens to self
• makes a series of sounds, mumbles, and gurgles as if telling a story
• repeats these sounds if encouraged
• sings along when you dance and sing with him
• chats to and smiles at cuddly toys
• consciously makes eh sounds to attract attention
• interrupts while others are talking

Babies apparently don't work on all of these things at once - they pick the things that are the most important to them. Based on this, I think she's working on gross motor skills, looking at people's faces, and talking to people. She hasn't discovered her hands yet, so she doesn't seem particularly interested in most of the tactile things. I started reading books to her every night and she listens intently, sometimes interjecting comments. She also looks at the pictures. She hasn't tried to reach out and grab the book at all yet. Hopefully she'll get over the fussy stage pretty soon. After the fussy stage is supposed to be a period of calm, happy baby time while she practices all her new skills.

Milk Report

Supplementing with donor milk instead of formula is going really well. Sterling hasn't had a problem with congestion since she started drinking mostly milk instead of mostly formula. We haven't had to suction her nose out at all, in fact I put away the Snotsucker.

This morning she was up to 10 lbs 14 oz, so obviously the milk is working out for her growth as well. I'm going to go pick up another 50 oz today.

Milk Donation

At this point, I think nursing is about as good as it's going to get, which is to say, not very good. During the past week, Sterling has had roughly 15 oz of supplementation per day. One day she only had 11 oz, two days she had 17. 

Just before we left for Granny's I decided that I wanted to look for milk donors. This was a big step for me... it involved sharing the fact that I don't make enough milk with people that I don't know. I know it's not my fault (as in something that I've done), but I still feel inadequate for not being able to nurse my baby. Deciding to look for milk donors involved the heartache of actually admitting to myself that I'm never going to make enough milk for her. And it involves admitting that same thing to other people; people that I don't know at all.

Before we left for Granny's, I emailed the mom's group that I'm a part of. I also emailed a pregnant friend of mine who I know made a lot of milk with her first child. I found the Human Milk 4 Human Babies facebook group and posted there. I posted on milkshare.com. I looked at Eats on Feets (also on facebook).

Within 24 hours of posting on HM4HM, two different women had contacted me offering to donate their milk. Since then, I've picked up milk from both of them and my freezer now has probably close to 100 oz of breast milk in it. Well, it had that much anyhow. Sterling has been drinking it for the past few days, so there's quite a bit less now. 

The generosity of these women is amazing. They're taking time out of their lives to pump milk for someone that they really don't know and don't care about. In doing so, they're providing something for my baby that most people can't. They're giving her a chance to experience all the health benefits that come from breast milk and not from formula. I'm extremely grateful, but at the same time it makes me feel a little bit sad every time I make her up a bottle filled with milk that's not mine.

Bed Time

All the books and websites I've read have said that you need to establish a consistent routine for bedtimes. That way, the tiny squee knows that it's time to go to sleep. I started my bedtime routine tonight.

I cooked dinner and actually got to eat some of it while it was warm. Then, Sterling wanted a bottle and ended up drinking 5 oz of milk. At about 8:30, we changed into the night-time diaper, a long-sleeved onesie, and a fleece sleep bag. We went into the bedroom and read two stories. She was mildly interested in the stories. She looked at some of the pictures. She did a little bit of crying and fussing because she was tired. After stories, I turned the lights out and we sang a couple of songs. Then I put her into her cosleeper. She lay there for a little while, then started crying, so I took her out. I nursed her a little bit, then tried again. She cried and I took her out. I nursed her a little bit more, laid her down, and left to go make a bowl of cereal. She cried before I got the cereal out. I picked her up and patted her for a minute, then laid her back down. She fell asleep, then woke back up and cried after a few minutes. I picked her up again and patted her and then put her down again. At this point, she's been asleep for 15 minutes. I'm watching her on our TinySqueecam.

Edited to add: She slept for about 30 minutes in her cosleeper. Then, she started waking up and moving about. I waited till she got her mad face, then took her in a binky. She happily sucked on it for a few minutes, but then that plan backfired when it fell out of her mouth and she started to cry. I picked her up and walked her around a little bit again, then put her in her swing. She's sleeping there now.

New Talents

Sterling has started blowing a lot of spit bubbles. The quantity of drool is increasing as well. I'm hoping that this doesn't mean that she's going to start teething early. I'm not sure I can handle nursing a 3-month-old with teeth.

She's at the very start of grabbing at things. She's put her hand up on her bottle a couple of times, but hasn't really grabbed it. She'll bat at toys when she's laying on her play gym. She's getting better at inserting various parts of her hand into her mouth.

She's much better at tracking things with her eyes. She will turn her head to follow something that she's interested in looking at (like a person's face).

Last night, we slept almost 6 hours in a row! The morning wasn't as much of a success though. Sterling woke up at about 5:30 to nurse. At that point, I noticed that the dog was making very suspicious gurgling noises. I pretended I didn't hear him, but he started whining to go out at 6. When I got back inside, the baby was awake, so I got her up, changed her diaper, and moved her into her swing so I could make her up a bottle. She promptly fell asleep, so there's a bottle warming and no baby to drink it right now.

I wish it was safe to put babies to sleep on their tummies. I put her down that way while I brushed my teeth the other night and she looked so much happier than splayed out on her back.

2 Month Well-Baby Appointment

Sterling is totally healthy. The Dr says that her congestion and snuffling is probably caused by reflux, but that it's normal in babies and that hers isn't bad enough to be concerned about. In my googling on the subject, I learned that it's good to keep babies with reflux more upright when they eat (I've started feeding her bottles in an almost sitting position) and to keep them upright for 20 or so minutes after eating. Both of those things seem to help with the snuffling. The thing that seems to help the best is not giving her formula. Breast milk really reduces the congestion, so I think there's also an allergy or sensitivity component to the snuffling as well.

She got the rest of her 2 months shots today, having gotten the DTaP shot before we went to CA. Turns out that one was by far the worst. The tetanus is apparently the one that makes the muscle really sore. She spent that night holding her leg still and sleeping in my lap. She'd startle, jerk her leg, it would hurt, and she'd wake up crying. I'd rock and nurse her back to sleep, then she'd do it again a half hour later. It was a long evening. For these two shots, she cried at the doctor's office, but has been pretty much fine at home. She's perhaps slightly more fussy than usual, but not nearly as painful as she was last time. Today she got her rotavirus vaccine (an oral one), pneumococcal, and hepatitis B.

Funny!

I'm almost positive that Sterling laughed for the first time last night. Then, this morning when we were changing her (ginormous, messy, poopy) diaper, she did it again! I'm excited. Baby laughing!

Likes and Dislikes - Week 8

Things Sterling Likes:

Still popular from the last edition of Things Sterling Likes are:

-being carried in the Moby wrap (she usually falls asleep)


-her swing

-eating - she sometimes downs 4 ounces at a time now.

-eating while being carried in the Moby wrap.

New entries:

-wiggling on her play mat


-making cooing noises

-baths - we cover her with a washcloth and pour warm water on it to keep her nice and toasty. They're starting to become more of a necessity because she gets sticky from milk / formula in her neck creases.

-traveling - she's been on several trips now. This was her first plane trip. She did some excellent eating while traveling.

-riding in her car seat either while in the car (as long as the car is moving) or while the car seat is mounted in her BOB stroller. The only problem is keeping the sun off of her.

Things Sterling Hates:
-not eating
-shots
-gas pains

Increasing our Baby Investment

Nearly 2 months ago, we started out with 20 inches and 7 lb 3oz of baby. Our quantity of baby depreciated to 6 lb 2oz. Since then, amount of baby has been on the upswing, with a pronounced increase in value recently. As of yesterday evening, we possess 10lb 5oz (165 oz) and 22.9 inches of baby. This is a 43% increase in the overall quantity of baby and a 68% increase from the lowest baby value!

It's always gratifying to see an increase in investments.

Visit to Granny's

We took Sterling on her first plane trip down to CA to visit her Great-Grandmother. She slept through the entire first flight, which was awesome. I was worried about her ears getting plugged up because she's been congested recently, but it didn't end up being a problem.

Granny was very excited to meet her great-granddaughter. Sterling was pretty excited too.

 

My mother was also down visiting, which was great. Sterling got to spend some time with her grandmother too.

Sterling slept in the bassinet that my brother and I slept in as babies. I'm not sure if my mother also slept there when she was little.

 It was pretty neat to have four generations of women in my family together in one place.

Wiggling

Sterling has become an expert wiggler. She's also really getting into interacting with things on her play mat. She likes to kick the hanging elephant because it makes noise. Today, she discovered that if she kicks the support beam thing, she could get the monkey to move. This was exciting because the monkey was hanging near her head. She also batted at it a couple of times with her hand and then tried to catch it in her mouth.

Sickness?

I think Sterling has caught her first cold. She's been snortly for several days. It's been the worst when she first wakes up (when she's been laying flat for several hours), then it gets better as the day goes on.

Yesterday, she was more congested than usual and she was cranky for most of the day. She refused to be put down for more than a few minutes and she cried more than she usually does.

This morning, she was even more congested. She makes a little snorting sound when she breathes. She woke up about 6:30 and we nursed and she had a bottle, I changed her, then she fell asleep and I took her back into the bed. She slept until about 9:30, then we got up and nursed / bottled / changed again. She fell asleep again and she slept till 11:30, then repeated. Normally she has a good period of awakeness after her first morning nap, but we skipped that this morning. She wasn't awake very long until probably 3:30, but every time I tried to put her down she woke up and cried. I held her the whole morning. I tried taking her axial temperature (underarm) around noon; it was normal.

She had a happy awake time around 3:30 and I put her on her play mat and she had a good wiggle. I'll post about her wiggling prowess next.

Mike brought home some saline nose drops and we dropped some into her tiny, tiny nostrils this evening. She found the experience to be quite disconcerting, which I'm sure I would have thought as well.


Then, we got out our Nosefrida and tried to clear out her sinuses. The way this thing works is you put the blue part up to her nostril and then suck the red mouthpiece. There's a filter to prevent anything from moving all the way up through the tube, but you'd have to suck really hard (and have a lot of snot) for that to happen. We didn't get much out, but it did seem to clear a path and she's not snorting as much as she did before.

Relatives

We visited my dad yesterday. He's totally in love with Sterling. He's decided that he's going to go by Doodad (my brother and I have called him Doo practically forever).

Two of my aunts and an uncle (my dad's brothers and sisters) were visiting and they were also very impressed with the baby. I learned something interesting talking to one of my aunts - she didn't produce enough milk to feed her babies either. She's the second one of my aunts to tell me that. I remember my aunt who lives in Portland mentioning it when she visited us when Sterling was probably about a week (or maybe two) old, but I apparently chose to ignore it at the time. But now, having heard about nursing problems from two different aunts, I think it's fairly likely that there's some genetic component to my low milk supply.

This news is both depressing and relieving. It's sort of a relief to hear that there's some physical problem 

and that there's nothing I could have done to prevent it or to have made it better if I'd done something differently earlier on. It negates a lot of the "what ifs" that I've had running through my head. On the other hand, it means that there's nothing that I can probably do to improve my milk supply beyond where it is. That's really depressing. I'm going through a grieving process about breastfeeding. 

6 week photo shoot

I got a coupon in the mail for a portrait package at Sears for $7.99. One pose, several prints; I figured I couldn't lose even if the pictures sucked.

She's actually trying to nurse on Mike's face.

I like this one, even though Sterling has a funny expression on her face.

What could be cuter than tiny feet?

We ended up being photographed for over an hour and buying the CD of all the pictures, plus 10 sheets of prints. It was way more than $7.99. However, I figure she's only 6 weeks old one time and now we have a couple of nice family pictures. Our next photo shoot is coming up at 3 months with Michael James again.

Carlton Crawl

Today was Sterling's first daytrip. We met my mother in Carlton for the Carlton Crawl, which I had found LivingSocial coupons for. It was basically a walking tour of wine tasting places. We went to eight shops and tasted things at each of them (mostly wines with tiny foods paired with them). All of the stops were excellent. We bought several bottles of wine and a very tasty pesto. I'm really looking forward to breaking into them soon.

Sterling had an excellent time and was very happy. So was her Daddy.

Baby's first wine tasting.

This was in a stop back at the car to nurse / have a bottle.

We put the car seat in the BOB stroller, which worked out great. It's pretty big, so it was slightly cumbersome in some of the smaller stores. It's very maneuverable though, which made up for it.

Pumping Experiment Results

The results of the pumping experiment are in. I nursed up until this morning. This morning, we had our last nurse right before getting out of bed. I wasn't quite ready to get up, so I let her nurse off of one side before I got up and changed her diaper. After she nursed, I pumped and continued pumping roughly every 2 hours for the rest of the day. Results can be seen below (of course there's a graph!).

There's a very strong correlation between time and ounces produced. Well, duh. That makes sense. Increasing time by 2 fold seems to roughly increase production by the same amount (60 minutes = 0.5 oz, 120 minutes = 0.7-0.9 oz, 180 minutes = 1.4 oz). There are also other variables that aren't being taken into consideration, such as time of day (I think anecdotally that I produce more in the morning), how much I've had to drink recently, and when I've taken medication / supplements in relation to pumping. So pumping more often doesn't produce a greater quantity of pumped milk, but it should help to stimulate further production (like tomorrow's results perhaps?)

The total pumped today is 7.3oz. Sterling consumed 24.5oz via bottle (including all of the breastmilk pumped). That's pretty much in line with what I had predicted, although the pumping results were on the low side. She took roughly 16oz of formula, which is on the high side of what she has been drinking. She is supposed to be more efficient at extracting milk than the pump is, so the results pretty much agree. I'd say that typically, she's getting about 50% of her milk intake from me and 50% supplemented via formula.

These results are sort of reassuring and depressing at the same time. I'm producing about 12oz of milk a day, which seems like a lot when I take into consideration that she only drinks 2-3oz at a feeding. However, 50% seems pretty low for the amount of effort that I'm putting into it. I pumped 8 times for an average of 17 minutes a piece. That means I spent 136 minutes of my day today attached to the breast pump.

Next Breastfeeding Experiment

Tomorrow, we're trying basically the opposite of the 24-hour breastfeeding cure. Rather than trying to breastfeed the whole day, I'm going to try to pump the whole day. It'll give me some idea of how much total milk I'm producing. It will also give us a baseline to see if production is going up or down (if we try the experiment again later on). We'll also see how much formula Sterling wants to eat during the entire day, which will allow us to sort of extrapolate how much she's getting from me.

Here's my prediction: I think I usually produce between 0.3 and 0.5mL of milk per hour. That means that I should be producing between 7 and 12 oz of milk per day. That agrees with Sterling's current formula consumption level - she usually eats between 10 and 15 oz per day. Most websites suggest that to determine the amount of milk a baby needs, you take 2.5 x pounds of baby. Sterling weighed about 8.5 pounds when we last weighed her. That means she should need about 21oz of milk per day, which fits in with my prediction.

Eating

Lacking sufficient breast milk, Tiny Squee is forced to seek other food sources.