My first blow out and Olivia's new schedule

Today I experienced my first blow out with Olivia. It wasn't too bad but she did get poo on her clothes. I guess I have more blow outs to look forward to.

I did have Olivia on a schedule then I decided I would just let her keep her own schedule and feed her when she was woke up and was hungry. So last week she decided to only eat at 8 pm and sleep until 3 am. She did this 2 days in a row. The following day I decided to wake her up at 10:30 pm to eat hoping she would sleep until 5:30 am. That didn't work. She woke up at 3 am and 6 am anyway.

This week she decided to eat at 6 pm and wake up at midnight which is always followed by a 3 am and 6 am feeding. I was hoping she would drop her 3 am feeding first followed by her the 10:30 pm feeding. Oh well. I should be happy that she is able to sleep for that long of a stretch. I just have to be patient and hopefully her schedule will adjust to night and day.

Pictures of Olivia

Olivia with her cousin Addie.


Olivia smiling in her sleep

Olivia trying to wake up


Olivia peacefully sleeping

Olivia is 4 weeks yesterday. I decided to dress her up in a dress last Saturday and take some pictures since all she wears is pajamas sleepers all day to accommodate her harness. She is quite the cutie.

We are doing well. I sort of have a routine going which has been helpful. I have also started giving her a bath every other day. The good news is during her nightly feedings she just eats and goes back to sleep and she consistently wakes up around 3:00 AM.

Analogy of motherhood

I just had to post today with my analogy of motherhood. When I was in college I joined a sorority my freshman year and I had to pledge for an undisclosed amount of time with 7 other strangers. We had a bunch of rules to follow and activities to do. It was hard and time consuming and I didn't get very much sleep.

I decided having a newborn is like pledging but instead of joining a sorority you are joining the ranks of being a mom. Everyone has a different experience but we all learn a great deal from it. I can't quit because I have a baby relying on me. And even though it is hard right now hopefully I can look back and appreciate this experience. And if it is anything similar to the sorority, this pledging period is only preparing me for the future which is actually more stressful.

Surviving

So Olivia is 3 weeks old today. I would like to thank everyone for all the great advice. I have been letting Olivia eat and sleep on her own schedule which is great. There are some days she gets fussy but other than that she is really calm.

I have been pumping instead of breastfeeding for the past 3 days. I am hoping that in a few weeks we can figure out the breastfeeding thing again but if not I will be pumping exclusively. Pumping is definitely not as rewarding as nursing and it takes up a lot more time since I have to feed Olivia then pump after wards. I was worried that I wasn't feeding her enough and I didn't want her to lose weight since she is already so tiny.

On the weekdays I do the feedings at 11 pm, 3 am and 6 am by myself because I want Mike to be able to get rest for school. Thankfully he helps me out on the weekends so I can get some sleep. I know that I should be pumping 8 times a day with 3 hours in between but time gets away from me and 4-5 hours have passed. Thankfully I have been taking fenugreek (3 capsules), blessed thistle (3 capsuleds) and brewers yeast (2 capsules)three times a day and that has helped me increase milk production. On the humorous side Mike told me the other day while I was pumping that he would never look at my boobs the same way.

On Monday I took Olivia to the orthopedic surgeon and he readjusted her harness since she has grown so much in the past 2 weeks and from his short assessment he said that her hips feel so much better. I guess it helps that she has been in it 24-7 for the past 2 weeks. We will be going back in 2 more weeks to get an ultrasound to see how much progress her hips have made.

Her belly button fell off last week and now it is safe for me to give her a bath. Before I was just giving her sponge baths. She can be out of the harness for 30 minutes a day for a bath. Now I have to figure out how to give her a bath.

I think a lot of the heartache I am having or was having is because this is my first baby and I had no idea what to expect and I am basically learning everything for the first time. Granted every baby is different but hopefully with the next babies I will have a better understanding of what to do/expect and won't have to learn anything new. Plus the baby blues were killing me and the lack of sleep wasn't helping either.

I would have liked to go to church on Sunday but between getting myself ready and the baby and coordinating a schedule to church it seems next to impossible. If you can get your newborn to church in the first month you are freakin' awesome.

Since I have been so short on time recently I will probably be posting less frequently but I will miss reading everyone's blogs. Take care.

The saga continues..

Thank you to everyone with all the advice about newborns. I only tried the crying it out thing once because it was pretty hard to listen too. I think the crying it out at 2 weeks is too good to be true. So I am basically taking everyone's advice and I am going to rock Olivia to sleep and hold her as much as I can.

I have been trying to feed her more consistently i.e. never let her go more than 3 hours in the day time without feeding. Even though I have to wake her up and it is really difficult sometimes it is better than letting her sleep until she is starving. And even though it is hard to get her to stay awake for the feeding atleast I know she is getting fed.

I have been having problems with Olivia latching on correctly so I called my doula and she came over and took a look at things. For some reason Olivia isn't able to get enough of my breast into her mouth and when she nurses she makes a clicking noise which means she is sucking air. My doula thought a nipple shield would fix the problem and train Olivia to suck correctly so I went and saw a lactation consultant today.

The LC checked to see if Olivia was tongue-tied or her palate was to high. Then we tried the nipple shield and unfortunately that did not fix the problem. The assessment is she isn't as coordinated with her tongue and is not sticking her tongue out far enough to massage the breast to get the milk out.

Now I have to train her tongue to suck correctly and maybe with age she will learn how to nurse correctly and suck harder. I have to let her suck my index finger and when her tongue curls back I am suppose to turn my index finger and pull her tongue forward. I tried it once today and she doesn't like when I do it and it is a lot easier said than done.

I am suppose to keep nursing her and then pump every time I breast feed so I don't lose my milk supply. I must admit that my nipples do hurt a lot sometimes and waiting 2 weeks for Olivia to learn seems like a long time. And sometimes it is really hard to keep her awake for 15 minutes to nurse from one breast and another 10 minutes on the other. I am even burping her almost every 5 minutes to keep her awake.

I really want to breastfeed Olivia as long as possible and I am a little worried that I might lose my milk too soon and disappointed that it has been so difficult. I guess you could say that I am a little frustrated because she has to wear the harness and now I know she isn't breastfeeding correctly.

Need some babywise advice...

Since so many of you recommended babywise I went out and bought the book yesterday and I am in the process of reading it. I started Olivia this morning on the feed, wake and nap schedule. The first nap went great no crying at all but she was pretty tired. The second nap not so great. I had to let her cry and it was pretty difficult. She would cry then stop then cry then stop and 2 or 3 times she was wailing for a 30 seconds or so but eventually would stop and she finally went to sleep.

A lot of the books I read said that you couldn't spoil a newborn and you shouldn't let them cry and during the first two weeks I held her all the time and I would always rock her to sleep and there were quite a few times that I let her nurse to sleep when I shouldn't have.

I had mixed feelings about pacifers but I caved in and gave her one. She loved it. This past week I would give it to her and she would fall asleep and as soon as it fell out of her mouth she would cry bloody murder. That is when I decided I needed to do something because I wasn't getting hardly any sleep during some nights.

Babywise makes sense that I need to get her on a routine and teach her how to sooth herself to sleep. I do have a couple of questions:

1. What is the longest amount of time you let you baby cry? It is hard to hear her cry but I am assuming in 3-5 days it will get better.

2. How long did you keep your baby awake after a feeding during the first couple of weeks? Did you increase the awake time once your baby was older? I haven't come across how long I should keep the baby awake. Right now I am trying to nurse for 20-30 minutes, keep her awake for 15 minutes then put her down for a nap so she can learn to wind down. I was planning on keep her awake longer once she learned how to soother herself to sleep quickly.

Any advice is appreciated. Many thanks from a very tired but determined mom.

Sleeping schedules

Like most parents I am hoping that Olivia will learn how to sleep through the night sometime in the near future. That being said I know that it is a learned behavior and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions or experiences they would like to share on what they tried with their kids or what was successful and what failed.

I bought the book "The Sleep Easy Solution" but any advice anyone has would be greatly appreciated.

Vaccinations

Anybody else out there concerned about vaccinating your kids at such a young age with so many different types of vaccines. I am looking into doing an alternative schedule and I found a website with a recommended schedule that recommends starting at 18-24 months instead of 2 months and only receiving one vaccine at a time. Here is the website: http://generationrescue.com/vaccines.html. Anyone with any info or insights, I would love to know.

I guess I am a little nervous about waiting so long but the good thing is my pediatrician is willing to do whatever I want.

Added 10/8 at 5:23 pm

So I have been doing some research and I found a book by Dr. Sears that I am going to read. From what I have read so far his schedule encourages vaccinations but Olivia wouldn't have to wait until she is 2 years old but she doesn't have to get all the doses at once. It seems to have a lot of great information. Here is his website if anyone is interested: http://www.askdrsears.com/thevaccinebook/

I never know what to expect...

Baby Olivia is really laid back and hardly ever cries. The first couple of days all she did was sleep and eat but our pediatrician warned us that that newborns change after the first 5-7 days. I have noticed a few differences.

She doesn't fall asleep as easy as she use to but it depends on the day. Some days she is so tired but she fights it and those are the worst days because she doesn't get very much sleep and I don't get very much sleep. Luckily the pattern has been if she has a sleep deprived day, the next day she sleeps most of the day and night.

Sometimes when she is nursing she fights with my boob. She will latch on and then it seems like she gets angry and pushes it away. If she does that a lot I try to burp her but sometimes that doesn't help.

Some times if I haven't had very much sleep and Olivia isn't nursing great or having a difficult time sleeping I get discouraged and wonder "Is this normal?" But I figure all babies are different and everyone's experience is different. Overall Olivia is a really easy baby to watch and I know that Mike and I are blessed.

Good news is Olivia and I are learning to nurse using the cradle hold. Originally I learned how to nurse using the football hold so I could control her head. Yesterday I tried the cradle hold and that was so much easier now that we have some idea of what we are doing. We still have a ways to go but that relieves some of my paranoia about leaving the house and having to nurse outside the home.

Moms who breastfeed deserve a medal

My observation thus far is breastfeeding is not an easy thing to do especially for first time moms. I read a book on breastfeeding and it said it would be painful but I had no idea. At its worst I contemplated stopping but I told myself that I would keep doing it for one more day and see how it goes. Luckily for me I had gotten over the worst of the pain while in the hospital.

Then 3 days later the milk comes in and I had no idea that would be so painful too. Luckily I had a hand pump and was able to relieve some of the pressure. Good thing that only lasts a few days.

I am glad that I stuck with it. Olivia and I are still learning together and I have yet to master nursing in public. We still have feedings that are difficult but luckily there are good feedings too. It helped to tell myself that breast milk is so good for Olivia and hopefully it would help lose those pregnancy pounds.

FYI: One thing that has helped is using lanolin cream to keep the nipples lubricated and using cabbage leaves to relieve soreness. I don't know how the cabbage helps but I know it was a life saver and I am still using cabbage leaves over my nipples until they toughen up.

Olivia's appointment

On the first day after Olivia was born the pediatrician noticed that one of Olivia's hips was dislocated and he said that was normal for a breech baby and we would look at it closer at the 6 week appointment. The following day he said he was a little concerned and had her get an ultrasound. The ultrasound showed that both of her hips were dislocated so our pediatrician referred us to a pediatric orthopedic surgeon in
Salt Lake City. All the local doctors recommended that we go to a specialist.

So we went to Primary Children's Hospital and had her get another ultrasound and had the orthopedic doctor look at her. There are 4 risk factors for dislocated hips in newborns and Olivia meets all 4. Risk 1: Females are at a higher risk for dislocated hips because they are affected by the hormone relaxin that mom is releasing in addition to the hormones their body is making. Risk 2: Breech position. The breech position is working against the bone slipping into the socket. Risk 3: First born. The uterus is the tightest with the first born so there isn't much room for the baby. Risk 4: Someone in the family has had a problem. My little sister Kanika had a dislocated hip but it wasn't as serious. My parents just double diapered her and a few months later she was fine.

Olivia has to wear a harness that holds her legs into a frog position so that they can hopefully slip back into the socket. One hip is completely dislocated and the other hip is partially dislocated. The doctor recommended she wear it basically for 24 hours and to give her a sponge bath only. This also spoils my plans of wearing cloth diapers for the time being.

Olivia has to go back in 2 weeks to see if she is making progress and in 1 month she will get another ultrasound. If this doesn't work we will try again at the age of 5 months and if that still doesn't work she might have to have minor surgery and have her hip manually put back and put in a cast.

I am praying that the harness will work for her. Even though she isn't in any pain it still breaks my heart to see her in her harness.