My Week According to Google

I stole this idea from my friend Lyndsay. She just started blogging and I'm already hooked.


baby has to nurse to pass gas--breastfed baby pass gas--baby can't pass gas without nursing
As this would suggest, much of my week has been spent worrying about Hannah's gas. Much of the last six months really. Dr. Google didn't have the answer for me this time.

[sidenote: Ted wants me to warn my readers not to accidentally google nurses pass gas]

milk bank of mississippi
Darn it-it's not up and running yet. I don't want the 60+ ounces of milk I have frozen to go bad. Hannah can't have it because I froze it before I gave up dairy. Anybody out there need some breastmilk??

slr camera bags
Why would I be googling camera bags? To hold our awesome new camera!! It's amazing. I'm in love. We went to the park before Mass this morning to really test it out.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

And a D:

slr camera strap
See above. An awesome new camera needs a cute strap. I'm thinking this one.

do oreos have dairy
Believe it or not-the allergen warning on a box of oreos does NOT include dairy. At first I was a little disgusted that a cookie made of chocolate and cream didn't have milk. My disgust quickly turned to extreme excitement upon realizing that I could eat these milk free chocolate and cream creations! Ted had a few rough days with a fussy little girl this week (hence the googling of the gas) so I decided to treat myself him to-not one-but two boxes of oreos. After three full months of no dairy-oreos dipped in almond milk was about as good as it gets.

Fast forward to the next day-Hannah is miserable and it hasn't gone away yet. The only suspect is the oreos, despite the label not containing any milk ingredients. But she's acting like she did before I gave it all up and that's my only guess. After consulting google, I found that I'm not the only who has had issues with the disturbingly dairy-free cookie. The answer to my question? A definite: maybe.

holy baby dvd
Oreos only solved half of the problem of a stressed out stay-at-home dad. The other solution? TV.

If we're gonna brainwash her six month mind with television-shouldn't it at least be Catholic? I remember this DVD from a family I used to nanny for. It's very, very low budget-but it gets the job done. And we feel slightly less guilty for setting her in her jumper and turning on "Baby Bosco" instead of PBS.

Don't judge us.


how to cook butternut squash
Ted and I have really ventured out with our food over the last couple of weeks. Asparagus, okra, butternut squash, brussel sprouts. I had a recipe for Butternut Squash Crisp from the farmers we bought them from. The first direction: Cook squash.

Uhhh. You're gonna have to be a bit more specific. But thanks to Chef Google, we now know how to cook squash. And it's delicious!

[sidenote: who knew you could eat baked okra?? I thought this vegetable was only edible if it was fried. Not only is baked okra edible, it's delicious! I almost prefer it to fried! I hope no one read this and decides to kick me out of Mississippi...]

what are pork chitterlings
This one was Ted.

buffalo wild wings allergen menu
1-There is now a B-dubs in town.
2-Alisha's mom came to visit and offered to babysit Hannah while we all went out to eat. Free babysitting.
3-Then she offered to buy our dinner. Because she's the nicest person I've ever met. Free dinner.
4-Almost ALL of the wing sauces are dairy-free.

The perfect combination for a great Saturday night out.`Thanks Gigi!

What did you google this week?

Why I Love My Husband (8)

He scratches my back in the middle of the night while I'm sitting up in bed nursing Hannah. Sometimes I nurse her a bit longer than she needs just to keep the scratching going....

He is doing a fabulous job in his new role as Mr. Mom (I went back to work and he's staying home with Hannah while he looks for jobs).  This isn't the arrangement either of us would have chosen, but it's the card we've been dealt right now and he is making the most of it.

He sends me pictures of Hannah while I'm at work.

He's giving up dairy with me. Except milk-the boy needs his milk.

He appreciates the work I do for our family-be it laundry, preparing healthy meals, researching items before we buy them to save money-and tells me this continually.

His arms are really sexy when he pushes the stroller.

My View

On Breastfeeding

*It's world breastfeeding week! Thanks to a great Le Leche League, wonderful friends and family, great internet sites, and a supportive husband, breastfeeding has gone really well for us. If nursing is a sensitive subject for you, or if you don't want to read my rave review of my breastfeeding experience-don't read on :)

This post whirls around in my head for a few minutes every day. I want to use the best words, the perfect words,to describe my thoughts on one of the most amazing experiences of my lifetime. But eloquence is fleeting and if I don't catch it when it comes by me-this post will sound like a random assortment of mush.

But I'll try.

Hannah will be six months old on Sunday. And I'm damn proud that she's been exclusively breastfed for every bit of those six months.

Breastfeeding was a given. A choice that wasn't even a choice. Of course I will breastfeed my baby. That is what babies are supposed to eat.

I remember the first time I saw a woman nursing her baby. I was 22 years old. Twenty-two years of my life passed without my witnessing a woman nursing her baby at her breast. Even so, it was never a question.

I could list facts and data and studies that explain why "breast is best" but I'm sure anyone reading this already knows that stuff. It's the personal that begs to be let out of my mind. The emotional. The sacrificial. Those are the aspects that this post aims to describe.

I remember those last few weeks of pregnancy. Scared and stressed that it wouldn't work. I won't have enough milk. It will never "come in". It will hurt too badly. I had read about a dozen books on birth but had only cracked one book about nursing. I was running out of time! Must read more.

I remember my mother-in-law talking me off a ledge one night. "I breastfed three babies and I didn't know half of what you know! You know too much. Just do it."

So I just did it.

And I did it well.

Her slimy, squirmy little body flopped on my stomach and I scooper her up and held her tight to my chest. Heaven. Only a few moments passed and her little body had found its way to my breast. She knew just what to do. I let her. I even had the sense to do the "lower lip flip" and fix her very first latch. That got some "oohs" and "ahhs" from the nurses. That was the speech therapist part of me coming out.

I loved nursing from the moment she was born. I loved nursing her in my hospital bed. I loved staring at her little throat to see the change from suckle to swallow. I loved watching her poop turn to gold. I was feeding  my baby! We were doing it!

I remember making the conscious decision to put nursing before anything else immediately, thanks to the good advice of a friend. And although I wanted to play hostess when some of our friends came to visit, I forced myself to shoo them out into the hallway so I could get her latched and make sure she had a good feeding. This was all that mattered.

My face beamed with pride when the nurse did a weight check a few days after her birth and said, "and you're not supplementing?!" And the shock on her face when she looked at my nursing log and realized I had nursed her 12 times in the last 24 hours. It didn't seem like a lot to me-I just fed her when she stuck her little tongue out at me, which I guess was 12 times a day.

I really amazed myself at how "go with the flow" I was with it all. My very type A personality would normally want to schedule it, record it, analyze it endlessly. But somehow I let it all go and just fed her. And held her. And rocked her. And fed her some more.

Thank God for this, for it gave me the great supply that has sustained her for her entire, short little life.

And then the pumping. Damn pumping. Nursing a plastic tube when I should be nursing my sweet girl. But I thank God for pumping because it's allowed me to continue our breastfeeding relationship despite our separation. I've pumped in storage closets, cars, cafeteria kitchens, and Sunday school rooms. I've had not one, but two janitors barge in on me despite my calls of "shut the door!" and smiled at the guy who mows the grass outside my office, laughing on the inside because he can't tell what's going on behind that computer screen. Pumping can be my best friend and my worse enemy.

There are set backs. Of course there are. Tears at the sight of everything she just ate coming back up at me. Pain. But not for long. Oversupply and squirting and leaking that made me want to pull my hair out. Times when I really want to start scheduling her "just because she's older". Not being able to eat out due to her dairy allergy.

But I don't care. I just want to nurse her.

I am the only person on this earth who will ever see that little smile she gets in the middle of nursing that lets me know she is perfectly, perfectly content. I hope I never forget the way her sweet little body feels in my arms as she lays across my lap and drinks in my milk.

Next week we'll go in for her six month check up and they'll ask me how many times a day she nurses. I never have an answer for that. I stopped counting when she was five days old. Ten, 12, 18? I have no idea.

Breastfeeding isn't about just feeding her. I nurse her because she's tired but it's not quite bedtime and she needs help relaxing. I nurse her to help her tummy feel better from all the gas. I nurse to help her poop. I nurse her to help her fall asleep. And back to sleep. And back to sleep again. I nurse her because she missed me. I nurse her because I have no idea what is wrong and that's the only way I can think to fix it.

It wasn't always that way. She was a pacifier kid up until three months. Nursing was for food only and she got on and off as quickly as she could. I don't know what changed or how it happened. And there are times when I desperately want her to take her pacifier back. But most of the time I'm beyond willing to be that pacifier for her. I'm better than plastic. I'm mom.

Now I've lost my train of thought because, wouldn't you know it, she needed to nurse. Her tummy hurt. I made it better.

I realize that not all woman have come to love nursing as I have. There are as many reasons for that as there are women. That's ok. I'm just so glad that I did, in fact, end up falling in love with it.

We're planning to start solids this weekend. She's beyond ready and I can't hold her off any longer. And while  I joke about not wanting to do solids because of the extra hassle, I'm secretly dreading this small step of independence. I won't be her everything anymore. It'll be me and an avocado. But I'll be the one holding the spoon. :)

So I'm grateful that God designed nursing the way He did. I'm grateful for this experience. It's so powerful. So bonding. So strong. Our human nature experiences bonding through such physical means. A handshake, a hug, sex. And nursing. She was conceived with a physical bond and I nourish her with a physical bond. And  I connect to her on an indescribable level.

Does this all sound super cheesy? Eloquent? Mush? Maybe. I really do mean it though. Just my real thoughts on paper. I don't mean to romanticize nursing and make it out to be something it's not. But it really is pretty dang amazing. I haven't even skimmed the surface.

Thank you Lord, for the gift of breastfeeding.





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I’m celebrating World Breastfeeding Week with Natural Parents Network!


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My View