Nose Boogies and Other Accomplishments

Not every day with a baby is going to go perfectly. Just two nights ago our baby started getting sleepy-fussy (i.e. cranky) at around 7pm, but kept waking himself up or waking up when we tried to move him to his new Snoo bassinet for the evening. It took a full two hours to get him to sleep that night, then after a three-hour sleep he woke up for his past-midnight feeding and it took another two hours to get him back to sleep. I wondered if I had eaten something that disagreed with him--I didn't drink any coffee earlier, promise! It couldn't have been overstimulation either as we hadn't had any outings or visitors at all. It was just an off, not quite perfect, challenging day.

And then the day after that was the total opposite! Baby had a great morning nap (despite the caffeinated matcha green tea smoothie I drank right before). We were able to put him in his swing without him waking up and actually get a few things done around the house. I ate breakfast at a slow pace instead of in a rush to feed him! I pumped 2.5 ounces--a new personal best--in my slow quest to build up a stash of extra milk. I even froze a full 5 ounces! I got to revel in the mini accomplishments of a more successful and not quite as challenging day. And revel I did. After the breastmilk accomplishment I danced to "Feel it Still" in celebration as I capped extra "liquid gold" and stored it in our fridge.

I also documented other successes of the day. For example, there was a lot to do for our planned outing to visit my office later that afternoon. First: shower and get dressed in respectable human clothing. Because of the summer heat, I wanted to wear shorts outside, and it was a joy to discover my size 4 shorts actually fit! (This is definitely an accomplishment since I'd mostly been wearing maternity pants, gym clothes, and my husband's shorts during the first few weeks after Baby).

Then when Hubby wanted to take a nap before our outing and Baby kept crying, I took my son upstairs, bounced him, successfully removed a large nose boogie that we'd been unable to capture before, and got him to calm down and eat all before the time we had to leave for the office visit. It felt good that I had managed to calm Baby on my own (which is not always so easy) and that we were able to stay on schedule.

Remarkably, Baby didn't scream when we placed him in his car seat. On the 40-minute drive to my place of work he did start to cry, but I was able to help him get to sleep with a little massage on the sides of his head. He was an adorable angel in front of my coworkers meeting him for the first time--until he poop squirted loudly in front of them. But even that they didn't seem to mind, and cooed and smiled as we changed his diaper.

Baby slept on the ride home again without even needing an extra massage, and after just a little fussing due to more diaper poop, he was fairly calm for my parents who stopped by that evening. My mom was even able to successfully feed him a test bottle of the extra liquid gold!

Bottle feeding is a bit of a bittersweet accomplishment since it's necessary for when both Hubby and I return to work at the end of this month (so soon!). Our first attempts at bottle feeding did not go well either. Once I finally learned how to use my breast pump with the help of a lactation consultant, we tried three different bottles to see if Baby would be willing to drink my breastmilk from them. I tried feeding him with them. Hubby tried. My mom tried. Baby did not like any of them one bit. But after a little research, I purchased a pack of Nuk Simply Natural bottles and extra nipples to experiment with faster and slower flows of milk. At first we had to "bait and switch" the breast for the bottle during a regular feeding. While this hadn't worked with our other bottles, it worked with the Nuk! Next we tried having Hubby feed him from the bottle (he wouldn't take it from me unless I fed him sideways on the nursing pillow, which I worried wasn't the best position for a bottle). Upright in Hubby's arms, Baby drank half the bottle down! Sad as I was to prepare my child for my absence, I couldn't help but be a proud mama and take pictures of his accomplishment. Hubby's mother was able to later get Baby to finish the rest of the bottle, and now he has taken both a fast flow and a slow flow nipple, giving us a sense of relief that at least he won't starve while we're at work.

Now I just have to keep up the pumping so our child will have even more liquid gold to eat! While the last few days of bassinet training and breast pump practice have sometimes seemed like an endless cycle of feed, sleep, pump, repeat, I feel like we are starting to get into a rhythm. Each task doesn't feel quite so hard. It's kind of like leveling up in a video game (Did I mention Hubby and I are big gamers? Probably not as we haven't had a lot of free time lately...). Basically we do our best to rise to the challenges and maybe even have fun doing it.

Like with Baby now being two months old (in two days), we've decided to introduce a bit of a bedtime routine to help with the sleeping part (and to make sure we get our full money's worth out of our new bassinet). A little after 7pm we'll now take Baby upstairs, give him a bath or a lotion rub (young babies shouldn't be bathed every day, just three times a week), read him a story, sing him a lullaby (our favorites right now are "Remember Me" from the movie Coco and "Sunflower" from the movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse), place him in his Snoo sleep sack, and feed him until he falls asleep so we can place him in the Snoo bassinet for the night. Despite some fussiness during his bath yesterday (an anomaly since he normally likes the warm water), we were able to go through the steps, put him to bed at 8:19pm, and have him sleep in two bursts of almost four hours each, meaning almost eight hours of sleep for Hubby and me.

Just now I could tell that Baby was getting sleepy as well, so we put him in his sleep sack and waited for those blinky eyes and calm breathing. Then we took him upstairs and put him in his bassinet for a nap. He's sleeping there right now and I'm typing this blog post with two hands now!

That's definitely a successful accomplishment in my book.