Today's bottle-training stats

So, I have solved the milk storage problem, but now we have a bottle-feeding problem. Mini-Me wants none of it, especially when she knows she is close to the tap. This may take a while.

2.5 ounces of milk, 18 minutes of hysteria & protest, 5 minutes from starting to drink to finish line.

Guess who slept through the night?

All of us! 10:30-5 is a new record for Mini-Me. I woke up confused and very engorged, but feeling that the sleep did me a lot of good, especially since I am fighting off a cold.

I have solved the spoiled milk/lipase problem. Scalding the milk in the microwave, then chilling it in the fridge, has yielded milk that stays sweet at least 24 hours and doesn't separate as quickly. (I tried scalding it on the stovetop too but it tasted a bit funny.) Mini-Me is a bit out of practice with a bottle, after 2-3 weeks off, but we are slowly reintroducing it. Yesterday it came down to a battle of wills, and I won out after about ten minutes of her screaming and shrieking at me. The other mothers and nannies in the park looked at me like I sticking pins into her but eventually she gave in and drank the whole 3 ounces without further complaint. And I started pumping into glass bottles, so the milk can go from pump to microwave to fridge to baby without having to get trasnferred into other containers.

We are preparing for our first plane flight with Mini-Me, as we are visiting my parents for Christmas. It's a little amazing how much gear and crap such a small being needs!

Socks, revisited

I found socks that stay on and don't cost $25 a pair: tube socks from BabyGap. We got a few pairs of striped, but the white ones stay on even better. Get them one size larger.

Breastmilk mystery solved?

After weeks of agonizing over the sour breastmilk problem, and an embarrassingly short amount of time researching sour breastmilk on the Internet, I discovered that some women produce an excess of an enzyme called lipase, which breaks down fat in breastmilk to make it more digestible. It also accelerates the decomposition of the milk, so it sours and spoils faster. Basically the lipase starts digesting the fat in the milk, so by the time it gets to the baby the fat (which is what makes it taste so good) is all gone.

Now that I have started to see my milk production increase and I have a little more to play with, I've experimented with microwaving some pumped milk to scald it, which is supposed to stop the process of souring. I will taste it twelve hours after storing to see if it tastes better than unscalded milk, and then (the ultimate test) will try giving it to Mini-Me in a bottle for bedtime. She is struggling with the bottle a bit, after two weeks off, but she drank freshly pumped milk from a bottle today after getting started with a little from the original source.

Apparently if I scald the milk before I store it (either fridge or freezer) it will taste better, though the milk will lose some of the immune system benefits. This doesn't concern me, since we are mostly breastfeeding Mini-Me, with pumped/frozen milk to use for an occasional babysitter or when Papa takes over bedtime. I have discovered today, though, that scalding it on the stovetop rather than in the microwave keeps some of the nutritional and immunological properties of the milk intact, so I'll start doing that instead of microwaving it.

No room for dark humor

On Day 3 of Mini-Me being a pill after her shots, I walked in the door after trying to settle her down with a walk around the neighborhood. When I got home, I was exhausted, she was screaming and squirming, and Papa made up a little song to try to cheer me up:

If you're not good to Mummy,
I'll tell you what we'll do
We'll put you in your bear costume
And give you to the zoo.

If you're not nice to Mummy,
We'll put you in a pack
We'll cover it with postage stamps,
And we will send you back!

Unfortunately, it's not the kind of song you want to be overheard muttering while you walk around Babies'R'Us. It's the type of humor that may only be funny if you've been there, recently.

Shots and pills

Mini-Me got her first round of shots on Friday, and she has been a major pill ever since - maybe they forgot to give her the twerp vaccination.

Really, most of the time I am more sympathetic, but I have been short lately after much inconsolable shrieking, constant feeding and clinginess, and sleep in one-hour shots for three days. Thank goodness the sweet temperament is starting to come back.

The timing of this is particularly terrible, since for the past week my milk supply has been inadequate and I am trying to bulk up. I decided a few days ago to go off the Pill and to start taking Fenugreek, in the hopes that it will up my production a little more. Add to it that I had to throw out my entire stash of frozen milk and now I'm trying to get ahead, and it translates to a real toll on my body and mind.

Fortunately, Mini-Me is just getting to the point where she can entertain herself. She is starting to enjoy time on the toy mat, and has been hanging out alone in her swing, awake, for the past two hours, staring at a toy that I hung from the top of the swing.

Before Mini-Me was born, I spent a lot of time looking for a pediatrician who is flexible about vaccinations, since I did not want to be locked into the CDC's guidelines for baby immunizations. This is what we decided to do:

• Hep B - skip until required for school or until age 10
• Chicken Pox - may skip until school age as long as Papa can get vaccinated
• Rotavirus - skipping entirely
• Hib and DTaP @ two months
• IPV and PCV @ three months
• Hib and DTaP @ four months
• IPV and PCV @ five months...

and so on.

I found this book particularly helpful when I was investigating immunizations.

Breastfeeding in public

Looking back the past ten weeks, here are some of the stranger places I've fed the baby:
* in a changing room at Old Navy
* with the groom's bachelor party at a wedding
* in the back row of seats at same wedding
* on the floor of the climbing gym
* in a comfy leather chair in the "as-is" section of IKEA

Back on the wall

Went climbing today for the first time since 36 weeks pregnant... that makes... 14 weeks off. Have lost a lot of strength, most noticeably in my fingers. Have also lost all my callouses, which I'm sure will come back quickly. My climbing partner and I bouldered, since we didn't have a third person to help us with baby care. Mini-Me was great at the gym - interested in looking around, non-fussy, completely fine with being handed back and forth as we tried out different bouldering problems. A good omen.

Socks, an exercise in futility

How can it be that we live in such a technologically advanced world and yet no one can invent socks that will stay on Mini-Me's feet?

A few days ago, Mini-Me told me she was hungry by grasping my thumb and middle finger in her two hands, and, with an intense look of concentration on her face, guiding my index finger into her mouth. I am convinced I have given birth to the smartest person on the planet.