Milkscreen Revisited

Curses. Curses on you, Milkscreen strip.

How dare you tell me that MY breastmilk is no good!!!

After a very nice date night last night, and one (I repeat, ONE) glass of wine I came home to feed the baby. Now, I will admit I was feeling the wine the teeniest bit, so I jokingly said we should use a Milkscreen strip. So, I do, and promptly start to feed the baby. Moments later, I hear Daddy P say, "Babe, you might want to look at this..."

Sure enough, after two hours of my glass of wine:



So I pumped and dumped, and Daddy P gave her a bottle. The next morning all was back to normal:

She's a mover and a shaker!

Kate has been sooo busy this week! She's hardly been home! She's gone to a half dozen restaurants, Grandma and Grandpa's house, the mall, and miscellaneous other places. She was so tired from it all that she slept all day today. Poor little girl. This evening she finally woke up with a few smiles for Mom and Dad... and the dog... and her stuffed horse... and the wall... She's become indiscriminately social. It's every father's nightmare of what his young daughter will be like. She also rolls around on the floor a lot and seems to have no concern about who she shows her diaper to.

Shame.

Shaaaaame.

Kate's young, hip aunt and uncle have offered to babysit for us this weekend so we can have some time together at long last. Daddy P and I have spent all day trying to figure out what in the world we will do together. It's been so long it's hard to remember. We finally settled on trying a new Italian restaurant and then seeing if we have enough energy to stay awake through a movie.

Kate's been consistently sleeping six hour blocks at night. We love it. My body is still adjusting, and as a result I have to wake up before she does (sucks) but soon I am hoping I can wait until she wakes up to get up myself. She's been waking up happy in the morning and babbling away to whatever will listen.

Today she seemed like she knew her hand was hers. She looked like she was honestly trying to grab hold of something. By the time I retrieved the camera she'd decided she was done with it and wanted to eat, but I'll try try again soon.

Merry Xmas!

We got our present this year...



Here's wishing you a happy holiday!

Happy Holidays!

Here's to giggles and grins during your Holidays! Love, Mamacita, Daddy P, Kate and the forgotten dog, Elly.

Meeting the family

Kate met her great Grandma this weekend. So, she's met Mamacita's whole side of the family now... Daddy P's family is a little too big for her to meet all of. But there is a certain uncle who is slacking... We put his picture up for her to see so that she can get used to his ugly mug.

She's filling out her bouncers and swings a little more now, and enjoying them a lot more. She spends her time trying to crane her head around to see new things. It's very cute. She's getting much better head control and spends her mornings smiling.

First Fever

Well, we had the milestone of first fever this week. Come and gone (luckily). And just in time for her to meet her Great Grandma this week! Along with the milestone of first fever (or rather, after it had come and gone) we experienced the milestone of second night of sleeping through the night! What a way to celebrate feeling better!

So, when not caring for the sick baby and disinfecting like a crazy woman, I have been preparing for company, and Christmas... they happily go together...

Although I have no good pictures to show for it yet, baby has been holiday-ized and I hope to deck her out and take some cute pictures soon. In the meantime... I just have my current favorite picture to share.



We had our second test of the Bummis Super Brite cover and it passed! It is very happily working with the gDiaper inserts so far. Not as well as the gDiaper itself, mind you, but good enough. My current problem is, the Super Brite runs about $13 a pop, and fits to 15 pounds. Do I splurge and buy a couple in the name of using up our gDiaper liners? Dilemmas, dilemmas...

gDiaper revisited

Since the gDiaper band is just too rigid on Kate's sensitive belly, I ventured to the baby store to learn about cloth diapers. Who knew they were so complicated! The sales woman spent about 15 minutes explaining all the many many options to me. There are waterproof liners with inserts (then various styles and fabrics of inserts to choose from), then there are all-in-one diapers that are both the waterproof liner and an absorbent inner filler that can be thrown in the wash, and so on and so forth for ten more minutes. I bought two different types to try out with the inner gDiaper liner. The first was an all-in-one diaper. The downside of this one is that it would need to be washed after every change and costs a whopping $25 each. The plus side is that it will fit her until she reaches 35 pounds so we could use it throughout this process. The second is just a waterproof liner. We tried that one first.



It worked surprisingly well. It contained a massive blowout bowel movement that would have challenged any diaper. I was really impressed. The gDiaper liner stayed in place for the most part, and soaked up the urine pretty well. It is a definite contender. However, because of the bowel movement it had to be laundered... So we're going to give it another go. The hope is that we would only have to wash it after bowel movements and not for just wet diapers. If that's true, we'll probably stick with it.

I was pretty impressed though, with the all-in-one diaper. If we didn't live in a drought area, I'd be more inclined to go that route and launder our own diapers. Daddy P doesn't really want to deal with the whole poop-disposal issue of cloth diapers though (which, I do understand), which is how we ended up at the gDiaper solution in the first place.

Anyway, the new diaper was MUCH more comfortable for the little one. She's continued to share smiles.

Out for a Walk

Baby Kate, out with Mamacita and Daddy P for a walk around the lake... Good times, good times... and yes, that is a pacifier in her mouth. We have officially given in. She HATES her carseat so we use it mostly in the car and on walks... so far we've held out and haven't used it for sleeping... we'll see if that continues!

A Christmas Present, love Kate

Kate gave us the best present ever last night. She slept from 11pm to 6am. Woo hoo!!! She woke up around 4:30am and talked for a bit but went back to sleep. Then, she ate at 6am, talked in bed for another half hour, and slept until 9am. Who is this baby?!?!

I don't know if it is because we got rid of the swaddle, or she's on her GERD medicine, or just because she knew how zonked we were after a week of being sick... but, thanks, Kate! We love our Christmas present!

Milkscreen -- try it for free!

Our Babies R Us sells Milkscreen. You may remember me mentioning it before... it's used to test how much alcohol is in a mom's milk. After a very yummy (but rather strong) margarita on Sunday (thanks, Charlie!), I decided to invest in a try of it. Who knew that it would be a FREE trial! That's right folks, you can try it out for FREE right now. There's a mail in rebate that lets you do so, so consider it license to drink without worry. Or, something.

I decided that I needed a baseline, you know, just in case my milk naturally has alcohol. Well, turns out it doesn't. But now we know.



I am a fan of the idea of the product, however, the instructions were written for a consumer with a 2nd grade reasoning capability. Actually, that might insult a second grader...

For instance, some examples from the instructions include:

- "persons who are color blind or visually impaired may experience difficulty in using the test..." -- okay, so blind people may have trouble, uh, seeing the strip? yeah.

- if you choose to express your breastmilk, do not do so into your beer can. Seriously. It says this. Okay, in slightly different words. But the message is clear.

Other interesting notes:

- it picks up alcohol *fumes* so it advises that you do the test outside to be sure of your results since household cleaners can give off such fumes.

- it will pick up the alcohol in cold meds, so if you are ODing on NyQuil it will tell you.

Baby Grip

Kate will now hold onto something for up to a minute. Not too shabby. She's following us with her eyes around the room now (though there is a slight delay before she finds us). Daddy P has used this as an opportunity to play hide n go seek with her. The family has been under the weather to various degrees this week. Daddy P had an all-out stomach flu. I have never ever seen him so bad off. I had a few days of queasy-ness, and baby Kate seems fine, but is a bit fussy. So far, this antibodies thing seems to me (personally) the most compelling reason to breastfeed.

Trying to roll

Well, since Mamacita and Daddy P are both sick with the stomach flu, a girl has to entertain herself. Here's Baby Kate trying to roll...

Kate's tummy update

At our last doctor's visit, we got some samples of antiacid meds to give to Kate to see if we can help with her tummy troubles. Her severe gas and stomach pain make her arch her back while eating, and cause her to wake up in the middle of a perfectly good nap simply wailing. So we will see if the meds help. In the meantime, after carefully administered trials, we have come to the conclusion that the gDiaper only exasperates her tummy troubles. The gDiaper has a very hard, thick elastic band that is not very forgiving for a tiny tummy. Now we are investigating if we can make the gDiaper liners work with a cloth cover... to be continued...

2 month update

The 2 month update:
21 inches
11 lbs, 3 oz (OMG!)

50th percentile weight, 10th percentile head, and 10th percentile length (up from 10th in weight and 3rd in head!)

Wooo wee! All that eating has paid off! She has also decided to sleep in a four hour stretch, eating at 9pm, 3am, and getting up at 6:30am. We are hoping she will soon decide to drop the 3 am feeding since she's hardly eating at that time anyway.

Everything checked out okay. Doc thinks her umbilical hernia is healing up. He says she's still jaundiced, so she goes for a full panel of blood work tomorrow to check up. But she's all shot up with vaccine's and ready to face the (increasingly un-vaccinated) world!!! Daddy P even got his whooping cough vaccine the other week to be extra sure she's protected. (Apparently it is coming back now that people are not getting their babies vaccinated!!)

2 Months Old!

Kate is the big 2-point-0 (months). She posed by her volleyball so we could compare her growth from last month.

Tomorrow she gets all her shots. What fun... Poor gal.

To mark her new maturity, she has chosen to make some political statements. We support her whole-heartedly in her outspoken-ness.

Big Bed Now

Kate spent the first night in her crib without her co-sleeper. Woo hoo! She was outgrowing it pretty fast, but we'd been using it to prop her upright so she wouldn't spit up after feedings. I decided there was no time like the present to risk a transition-night-sleep, so I took it out and threw a couple of pillows under one side of her mattress. She adjusted perfectly! Not only that, but she napped in it today without being swaddled! She must be trying to show off before her 2 month birthday tomorrow... I haven't been able to snap a pic of her in her crib yet since I'm too scared I'll wake her up. Don't want to mess up a good thing! She looks super duper tiny in it though compared to the giant she was in the co-sleeper.