I left the computer off all weekend. It was a wonderful break.

But now a new week is rolling forward. And a new month.
Hello March.

I woke up to a messy house, a bright blue sky and a baby with an exploding diaper. I’ve started supplementing Leah’s bottles. One bottle a day of mommy’s milk just wasn’t enough and I knew she wanted more. The problem is trying to figure out what to give her. We are a month and half away from being one year old. She’s much happier now with a fuller tummy but I’m not sure her bowels are.

This is happening in my front yard…

LOVE IT!

I took a blanket out to the front lawn today and spread it over the yellow dormant grass. Grabbed a book and the baby and soaked up as much vitamin D as we could. We watched brother zip around the circle on his scooter. It’s near 50 degrees. I can’t help but take a great big deep breath, lay back on the blanket and enjoy the warmth of the sun while the freckles pop out across my nose.

Feels so good…

…for a minute. And then I have to hop up and stop Leah from eating the flower beds. Does dirt and bark fill some sort of mineral deficiency in children? Hope so.

Yes, I’m feeling better. Getting on with things. I am looking forward to a new season of life but still enjoying Leah’s last little minutes of babyhood.

Ya know when you wake up in the morning, take a look at your little child and realize that they look different than yesterday; bigger, more intelligible, faster and swifter than you remember. Leah’s moving too fast these days. I had to put a lock on the cupboard under the sink to keep her out of the garbage. Super yuck!

Slow down, girl.

*** *** ***

I read this thought yesterday and it seemed to ring a bell with me. I thought that it was particularly a message I needed to hear. Thought I’d share…

“I urge you to examine your life. Determine where you are and what you need to do to be the kind of person you want to be. Create inspiring, noble, and righteous goals that fire your imagination and create excitement in your heart. And then keep your eye on them. Work consistently towards achieving them.”
–Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin, “Life’s Lessons Learned”, May 2007 Ensign

Pretty good, eh?

*** *** ***

I’m wishing I had some photos to share but just haven’t been taking anything worth sharing. I do have a funny little clip of Isaac playing his “drums.” I think it’s cute… but then again… I’m the mother. It does give a pretty good idea of how his speech is coming along.

I kinda feel like I owe you guys a post…

First I want to say thank you for all the wonderful comments I’ve received from my depressing last post. I certainly have been having a bit of a struggle this past week and so I appreciate all the support.

Thank you, thank you.

I hardly want to talk about Leah’s strike because it’s still pretty upsetting to me so I’m just going to say I’ve given it my darnedest best. I’ve done all I can do with Leah and her lame-o strike. I declared a 3 day war. I did everything I possible could and it just wasn’t happening. I was a wreck. Leah was mad as heck at me; not to mention hungry and sleeping poorly. Neither of us have been fairing very well. But I had to try it. I had to. I had to know that I did everything I could.

So… after a ton of prayers, I gave up. It’s over.

Boo Hoo.

I’m still planning on pumping as long as I can because

A) she loves my milk via bottle and

B) it’s free and

C) it’s healthy and she wont drink formula anyway.

So on with life. Ahhhh. I will leave you with a very short little clip of Leah crawling… It’s something to cheer me up.

Completely

totally

discouraged.

It’s day 16 of Leah’s strike. She turned 10 months today.

Nothing has improved and I’m getting tired of it. Every morning I wake up wondering if I’m going to give up or hope that maybe it will be my lucky day. It’s hard not to blame myself for giving into the bottle. She’s been particularly fussy at times and hard to comfort.

One day, I decided that I was going to give it 3 more days of a serious go. I had been to a La Leche League meeting and was feeling motivated. I was going to put away all bottles and pacifiers and deal with fussiness for 3 solid days. If she didn’t take me after that then I’d just give up knowing that I gave it my best. The day I decided to do it she came down with a fever.

Drats.

I thought I’d better get her healthy again. Whatever little bug she had, has cleared up and now it’s the weekend. I figure that I’ll wait until Tuesday when I have 3 uneventful days in a row. I’m so tired of this though. Honestly! I’ve had to have a couple crying break downs. Enough already.

Arggg.

Coming to the close of day 5 of Leah’s nursing strike.

She is continuing to get better and pretty much is just left with some congestion. She has her fussy moments but I think it is because she is hungry and secretly wanting to nurse.

I’ve learned a bit more about nursing strikes. It’s a real thing. I thought I’d even made up the term but when I checked out the La Leche League website they had a plethora of articles, advice and stories on the subject. I was both comforted and frustrated at the same time. So many women had very similar stories. One thing is for sure. This is not weening. A baby shouldn’t all of the sudden quit nursing. There is almost always a reason for the strike.

Here are some of the common triggers for nursing strikes.

• You’ve changed your deodorant, soap, perfume, lotion, etc. and you smell “different” to your baby.
• You’ve been under stress (such as having extra company, traveling, moving, dealing with a family crisis).
• Your baby or toddler has an illness or injury that makes nursing uncomfortable (an ear infection, a stuffy nose, thrush, a cut in the mouth).
• Your baby has sore gums from teething.
• You’ve recently changed your nursing patterns (started a new job, left the baby with a sitter more than usual, put off nursing because of being busy, etc.).
• You reacted strongly when your baby bit you, and the baby was frightened.

I think that Leah and I qualify for 3 of these triggers. She’s had an illness, she bit me and I screamed, and I’ve also been leaving her with a sitter more than usual. (Those fresh powder slopes were calling for me!)

Great so now what? La Leche suggests getting medical help for the illness (check), get extra help with household chores and older children so there is more time to spend with baby (uncheck),  try to relax and concentrate on making breastfeeding a pleasant experience (depends on the moment), make time for extra cuddling, stroking, and skin-to-skin contact (half check), try nursing when they are sleepy or in a dark quiet room (check but didn’t work), and put away all bottle nipples to avoid nipple confusion (tried super hard but gave in this afternoon because of all the crying and a super tired mommy.)

I guess the number one thing to do is be patient and persistence. This has been super hard for me. I have major moments when I want to just give up. It’s not easy but apparently babies will and should come back. I get the feeling that they just need to get over whatever made them strike in the first place.

Are there any types of organized unions for babies? Maybe Leah needs to get together with some friends and talk about her issues. Oh ya, I’m suppose to remember that it isn’t me she is rejecting. But apparently we need to “re-connect” somehow.

The amount of time I have spent pumping has been insane. My cheap pump and low supply have made it difficult. Ridiculous! But tonight I finally got my hands on a hospital grade pump and have finished the chore before this post was even finished. Yea! That’s a big difference compared to the hour and half it was taking before.

Thank you for all the well wishes. Leah is doing just fine. In fact, she wasn’t even acting very miserable today. She’d crawl around the house doing her usual busy exploring with an occasional wheezy cough.

My major cause for stress and frustration is this darn nursing strike. Leah only ate that one time yesterday. Today she continued to scream and arch her back whenever I tried to feed her. She acts like I’m trying to torture her. Arggg. I’m not sure what to do. I’ve been pumping and she loves the bottle but honestly there isn’t much there to give her.

I’m afraid of drying up while I wait for Leah to feel better. (If that is even the reason for the strike.) I have never had to deal with something like this and even have very little pumping experience. We went out and bought a pump but I just hate it. Hate it! It is uncomfortable and takes FOREVER!

I’m not ready to quit. I’m a nursing queen and enjoy nursing my babies well past 1 year. I can hardly consider the idea of having to give it up at 9 months. I know many moms are happy to make it this far but I’m just not ready. It seems like such a silly reason for quitting. Will she want me back? Should I not even offer the bottle? Will she ever get hungry enough? I’ve waited for hours for her to be interested and wondered how on earth she could last so long without milk but she’s done it. How do I keep my supply up?

Advice?

I also have really mixed feeling about the albuterol treatments we’ve been giving Leah. At times I feel like it does nothing for her but make her cry but then… I wonder if the albuterol is why she is doing so well. Sigh. What I’ve read about albuterol seems controversial if it even works so I’m not sure what to think. I worry about her not needing it but I worry about her being able to breathing well enough.

Honestly, I’m happy that she’s not in the hospital, but can we just start nursing again?

Leah came down with a little cough yesterday. I didn’t think much about it most of the day and just continued on with the usual course of motherhood. I did notice though how small and wimpy it sounded. Different kind of. It wasn’t the usual hacky, scary, head for the hills kind of cough my kids usually get so I thought it must not be much to worry about.

When evening came around, I realized that Leah hadn’t been willing to nurse at all that day. Whenever I tried, she’d just roll out of my lap and moved on to something else. I thought she was being “too busy.” I even showed Jer, “Look, she wont eat,” and sure enough she wanted nothing to do with it.

By bed time, the poor girl looked utterly exhausted so I chucked it up to having 2 itty bitty cat naps in the car instead of her usual long snooze. When I sat down to feed her and tuck her in bed she latched on for half a second and then clenched her teeth down on me hard. I screamed, of course, and  scared her into a big fit of tears. I suctioned out her nose, realizing that that was the problem and then tried to feed her again but boy was she mad.

I put her to bed hoping that she’d be interested in a few hours. She did wake up around 1:30 but still, nothing but tears and an arched back.

Morning came and I was so surprised that she wasn’t hungry enough to take me. So I pumped and she took the bottle. Bummer. I wasn’t so sure it was a breathing through the nose thing any more because she didn’t appear to have any trouble drinking the bottle.

But she was terribly fussy. I soon noticed that her breathing was weesy and a bit labored from her chest and belly. I thought I’d better make a sick appointment with the pediatrician.

After a quick phone call and the nurse hearing me say “labored breathing” they had me come in right away.

With the oxygen thingy on her foot, the doc was ready to send me off to the children’s hospital because her oxygen was so low. He suctioned out her nose and gave her an albuterol treatment with a nebulizer. Luckily her levels came back up and stayed at a normal level. He was happy and surprised that I wasn’t riding off in an ambulance and sent me home with antibiotics for an ear infections and my own nebulizer with an insanely large supply of albuterol.

I guess her diagnosis is RSV which I think has such scary stories to go along with it. I’ve had many friends with babies in the hospital for way to long because of it but I guess it’s more common then I realize. I’m just hoping Leah is big enough and tough enough to kick it quickly. My instructions are to go to the emergency room if she get any worse and he did say babies often get worse before they get better. Great.

I read on line the babies don’t really want to nurse while they are fighting RSV. It’s too laboring. I’m sure the ear infection wasn’t helping either. I was very happy when Leah woke up from her nap today willing to chow down.  A 30 hour strike isn’t too bad at all so I’m just hoping she’ll keep on top of it and keep being a willing eater.

It has been snowing here all week long. The wonderful thing about it is that the mountains are getting a ton of accumulation and my front lawn is barely even getting a skiff! And even that quickly melts away when the sun comes out. That is the beauty of Utah winters, my friends.

Now, if only we could get rid of the smog…

I think January and February have pretty bad raps for being the worst months of the year. Christmas is over, our New Year resolutions have already flopped and it’s mostly cold and dreary with no where to go.

This is normally a common feeling with me, but this year we have been enjoying this snowy month thoroughly. We have been watching the ski resort’s bases get deeper and deeper and are counting the days when we can get back up there to take advantage of any freshly fallen snow.

This last Saturday we took Emma and Isaac with us night skiing and we had a surprisingly great time. We had  prepared ourselves for complaining and begging to quit within an hour but Emma really caught on and couldn’t have been enjoying herself more.

I captured some great footage of her pizza-wedging-it down the bunny hill but I’ve been having problems with my camera connecting with the USB cord. I borrowed a camera so I could swap the SD cards but that camera wouldn’t recognize the video clips… so I only have these 2 photos for show. I’m hoping to fix the camera situation soon.

Isaac has extremely good balance and is a tough kid so we thought we’d try him out on the snowboard even though he is a bit young. He had no idea how to keep his edge up so I would just hold his hands and off we’d go down the slopes cutting back and forth. It worked pretty good and he thought that it was “Dodally Awwesdome!”

We agree.

There isn’t much going on with me today but so much is happening around me. Today is just another typical housewife-y day but I’m wishing with all my little heart that I could reach out and help those around me as well as those far away. It seems like everyone is going through something miserable right now and there just isn’t much I can do about it.

Instead of feeling trapped in my house, I wish I could zap myself to Haiti and work day and night helping with the relief efforts. I wish I could zap up to Idaho and help out my sister with her miserable health condition. I wish I could mend some broken hearts or give someone I love a million dollars. Wouldn’t that be nice.

I just can’t do those things, now, can I?

Instead I get to clean the playroom (again), hold a fussy teething baby, and be the mediator between the neighborhood boys and my rambunctious but sensitive boy. Instead I get to fix dinner, be the homework police and fold the never ending laundry.

I’m not complaining. I love that I have a roof over my head, food to eat, and sweet little ones to hug but it’s hard for me to do my mundane work when I feel like there is so much more need out there.

And as I feel like every post needs a picture, here is my latest page.

My baby is 9 months old as of yesterday.

What darling little ball of chub. I could chew on her cheeks all day if I didn’t have any other human obligations.

More teeth are coming in daily so I want to remember how she looks with fangs because the moment is fleeting.

As enjoyable as this age is I need to start remembering that she is now on the move. Here are some of her latest accomplishments:

1. Broke her first glass bowl.
2. Managed to spread a bag of yeast all over the floor.
3. Dumped Ajax all over my mother’s kitchen rug.
4. Grew enough hair for her first pony tail.

Needless to say my vacuum has been my newest constant companion.