Year One in the Books

Dear Abigail,
Today you are exactly one year old.

You know, as you get old you will probably hear the saying that time flies by. Well, it does in a way. However, the days can be long but the months and the years go by fast.

You make it possible for one year ago to feel like yesterday but also an eternity ago. Seeing the difference you have made in not only myself, your father but also seeing you grow has been remarkable.

364 days ago, a day after you were born, your daddy and I were in the hospital with you at around 11pm and you were screaming your little head off and we looked at each other, terrified, thinking, what have we done?! She won’t stop crying! Breastfeeding was harder than I thought it would be and hurt. That first day you came home with us I had no idea what we were supposed to DO with you. I remember desperately wanting to go take a nap and leaving you with daddy, and yet I couldn’t sleep because I was still learning how to sleep with one ear open.

That first night you spent in our house I think mommy and daddy both took shifts sleeping downstairs in that bassinet you liked so much on top of the pack n play.

Mommy and daddy learned pretty fast how to clean poopy out of onesies (and just throw some away), go out in public with a baby, give a baby a bath, and live on very little sleep!

I loved our time together during maternity leave, but I am glad I had 3 weddings worth of picture editing to keep me busy, because I also learned I am not the type to just stay home all day. And you honestly didn’t too much besides nap, poop, tummy time and eat! But you already loved music and would love to spend some time in your swing listening to Disney castle shows on YouTube.

Going back to work was easy for me because I knew you were always in good hands with your Nana. Having a blank slate for me going back to work was something I really needed in my career, allowing me to see things in a different way and attack things with a new passion and vengeance. It was a hard adjustment learning to get through days without naps and snuggles and learning to pump at work.

The holidays were fun but exhausting. Halloween you were Wonder Woman, because to me, you were MY Wonder Woman and I think you’ll officially grow into that role. Thanksgiving and Christmas were certainly an experience and full of lots of love. You were about 3-4 months old and still too little to enjoy any good holiday food.

The winter was fun, seeing you see snow for the first time. You seemed to like it but were a little young yet to really quite grasp that it was something different. There were a few cold nights that mommy and daddy were anxious and had first parent syndrome worried about how cold your nursery was (even one night we brought you in our room in your pack and play and ran a space heater!) In our defense, it did get down to single digits here!

I started going back to school for my Masters in Predictive Analytics (hopefully by the time you read this in a few years I am done and doing a crazy cool job! I’ll tell you all about it!) which allows me to follow my true passion. Sometimes I think I am crazy going back to school with a baby under one, but Abigail, you’ve inspired me to do better. YOU have inspired me to BE better. That life is short. To get out there and GET IT DONE. Because having a baby shouldn’t squash your dreams but only augment them and inspire you to go chase your dreams even more. Abigail, I want you to know that you can follow your passion anytime you want and be whoever you want to be. Let me say it louder for the people in the back, you can be WHOEVER YOU WANT TO BE. I will always be on your side and your number one supporter.

This spring was when you really started showing your personality, learning commands and making signs back to us that we taught you. Your first sign was for milk! Mommy took her first work trip away from you and it was super hard! But Daddy was a superhero and survived the week with flying colors with you! A few weeks later in May we took our first trip to the beach to Ocean City, NJ with your nana and pop-pop and had a lot of fun!

This summer you started crawling, or rather, inchworming. You love to play, and are so good at independent play. You love to read books and will sit on the floor for quite some time reading through your books. You also love activity centers or anything that plays music. You love playing with your doggie sister Daisy, and have learned how to "pet nice". Daisy even helps you clean up all your food you throw off your high chair and even clean up anything left on your face!

In August we went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina with your grandma , grandpa, Aunt Alli and Rob. That was fun and it was quite the experience getting to see you play on the beach and in the water (you LOVE LOVE LOVE to splash in the water).

Tonight we are two nights away from celebrating your first birthday with all of the family and friends that love you so much and I can’t wait. Even though you won’t remember it, I hope you have a fun day.

I have overcome a lot of anxiety this year and still have a ways to go. I used to be terrified of the toddler years to come, and still am ( a little) but I have this overwhelming sense that based on your personality so far, you are going to be a calm child. You are incredibly curious and if anything, that will be what we have to monitor! You love to open things and see what happens when you do things so I am sure we will all find ours selves in trouble soon. So instead of fearing the toddler years, I am actually excited. As much as I LOVE baby snuggles and always will, I am so ready to hear you talk, answer your questions, play games with you, make artwork with you, show you all the Disney movies I love, and continue seeing you grow and learn.

Some days you make me feel like I’ve got this parenting thing down and we are all doing great, and other days you have me doubting my entire sense of judgment, self and decision making. I think this will be the pattern for quite awhile and thats okay! I keep reminding myself that all I need to do is show up every day, do my best and just keep trying. Be grateful for what I have and focus on today.
I’m excited for what the rest of 2019 and 2020 have in store for you and our family. I can’t wait to see you start walking within the next couple months.

I hope one day you will read all these entries and know how much I love you now, and forever more. I love you to the moon and back. Your smile brings light into my life and your laughter is so contagious.

The other day I was driving and a song came on that gave me goosebumps because each word rang so true in my heart. So I’d like to share it here.

"The Mother"
Brandi Carlile
Welcome to the end of being alone inside your mind
You're tethered to another and you're worried all the time
You always knew the melody but you never heard it rhyme
She's fair and she is quiet, Lord, she doesn't look like me
She made me love the morning, she's a holiday at sea
The New York streets are busy as they always used to be
But I am the mother of Evangeline
The first things that she took from me were selfishness and sleep
She broke a thousand heirlooms I was never meant to keep
She filled my life with color, canceled plans, and trashed my car
But none of that was ever who we are
Outside of my windows are the mountains and the snow
I'll hold you while you're sleeping and I wish that I could go
All my rowdy friends are out accomplishing their dreams
But I am the mother of Evangeline
And they've still got their morning paper and their coffee and their time
And they still enjoy their evenings with the skeptics and the wine
Oh, but all the wonders I have seen, I will see a second time
From inside of the ages through your eyes
You are not an accident where no one thought it through
The world has stood against us, made us mean to fight for you
And when we chose your name we knew that you'd fight the power too
You're nothing short of magical and beautiful to me
Oh, I'll never hit the big time without you
So they can keep their treasure and their ties to the machine
'Cause I am the mother of Evangeline

Thank you, and goodnight all. Thank you for reading!

Weaning Away the Oz

Hello Everyone!

So Abby is 11 months old (technically next Thursday marks 12 months actually!!) We are planning her first birthday party and I just can’t even believe it. It still feels like a dream most days, honestly. I try and root myself in the reality but some days my mother in law will send me a picture of her while I’m at work and I can’t even believe how lucky I am and that I actually am a MOM to this beautiful baby.

Developmentally, Abby is doing great. She’s high in her percentiles and she is very tall! She is wearing about 18 month clothes comfortably, which is in-SANE. She recently started “crawling” or more so I call it, “inch-worming”. She uses her arms to propel her forward and she pushes off with her feet, basically like an inch-worm. My theory is since she’s very high in her percentiles for weight and height, she’s so big that she can’t developmentally lift up her body to crawl in the sense we imagine how crawling should be. Same likely goes for walking, but we will see.  She will now stand up against surfaces but only for short periods. Just last week she started sitting up on her own after crawling. So exciting!

Abby is so smart and it blows me away every single day that simple things we teach her actually make a difference. She follows commands extremely well (when she’s in the mood) and will imitate a wide variety of sounds. Her favorite thing to imitate is “Ho-ho-Ho” (no kidding) so she’s in PRIME shape for meeting Santa! She will say “Dada” and “mama” now and seems to say it appropriately. She will also point to items, such as “where is the blue circle?” Or “where is the pink diamond?” Or “where is the red crab?”. I am so proud of her but not sure how we are going to afford Harvard! Haha just kidding. But who knows! Her cutest new trick is opening her mouth and saying “ahhh” when we say “What’s in your mouth??”. She also is appropriately signing “more please” which is super cool!

Anyway, my main struggle lately and motivation for writing is struggling with breastfeeding/weaning/eating. Quick backstory, when I first started our breastfeeding journey I had a HUGE oversupply. I would be able to completely feed her just from one breast and let the other breast empty to a collection container, often times up to 4-5 oz per session! I never thought that my overabundant glorious oversupply would someday become what feels like a barren wasteland. When I came back to work at first, I would need to use two bottles per pumping session, often times filling one at 5 oz and halfway filling another to about 3 oz, total of 8 per session. Now, at 11 months old, I am lucky if I pump about 3 oz COMBINED in one session, and this has been this way for approximately 2 months of trying lots of different supply tricks. I have felt like not being able to produce what my child needs has been one of the hardest parts along this journey and feels like natures attack on your ability to be a good mother. The voice in my head is constantly telling me “Do not measure yourself in ounces! Stop!” But it’s hard to not let it bother you. I feel heart pains when I send her off for the day with only a limited supply of milk and it literally kills me. I worry every day she’s not getting enough.

One of the hard lessons learned that I plan to fix for future baby #2, is that I let so much frozen milk go to waste. Here’s why. Like I said, in those early days I would get 4-5 oz just from the other breast draining. I froze that. I probably froze about 150 oz of doing just that. When I went back to work, I still had an oversupply and Abby couldn’t use enough of what I produced before it would need to go into the freezer. So about November more bags started trickling into freezer supply. From November to May, I never had to dip into freezer stash for her daily supply. Then I had to go on a trip for work and we had to prepare what freezer stash she would use. Although I knew the golden rule was safe for 6-12 months, part of me felt skeevy giving Abby the old August/September milk. Not only was it my oldest milk obviously, but I was worried on its collection process. Since it wasn’t pumped out, it likely had very little fat in it since it was just drained milk. Secondly, the device used to collect the milk was basically just rinsed in between sessions, not sterilized. Go ahead, Gasp. I didn’t even think about it at the time. My priority at the TIME was “how can I realistically collect 5 OUNCES of breast milk into a device so that it literally doesn’t SOAK my shirt every 3 hours??”, Instead of the thought I should have been having “am I collecting and storing this milk in the best manner in case I need to actually use it one day” (DUH).

So, for baby number two, I am going to do a system that right off the bat to use my frozen milk as soon as I go back to work, and freeze the fresh milk, creating a rotating recycling system. Somehow I had it in m head this whole time that fresh was exclusively better than frozen and I felt like taking frozen out of the freezer was a failure on my part, meaning I didn’t have enough supply. Now I know that’s preposterous and I wish I could use all that old milk!

My plan to wean has been interesting, as I still have no idea what I am doing. I started two weeks and it seems to be working well. Here is her current meal plan:

7 am-breastfeeds

9am- breakfast foods & water

12pm- lunch and water

1 pm- I pump at work

2 pm -6 oz bottle

5 pm- dinner foods and water

8pm- formula 6 oz

10 pm- I pump before bed

So the new addition is formula…The girl that naively thought she would have her oversupply forever suddenly found herself staring at all the formula options in a field of panic in target. I tried so hard to exclusively breastfeed but when it got to the point where it was stressing me out daily to make enough ounces, I bent. So now with giving her formula, I can make an extra 4 oz that’s not being used for her bed time, allowing me to essentially pump 7-8 oz a day now. I now see 2 fresh full bags in the fridge and I can take a breath. I no longer cringe if she doesn’t want to finish her bottle, thinking how the breast milk is wasted.

Update on pumping/ weaning: the above information was written about 2 weeks ago. Since then we have survived our first family vacation. Between stress, not pumping correctly, not drinking enough, my supply dropped even more. I decided to drop another pump session this week and I am officially on the slope to weaning down 100%. My new schedule for pumping is:

Breastfeed - 7 am

Pump - 6 pm (I no longer have to bring pumping bag to work YESSSSSSSSS)

Pump before bed.

I will phase out the bedtime one next week and basically breastfeed at 7 and  pump ~ 7 pm every day. I’ll only produce about 3 oz doing this but will supplement everything else she needs in formula.

I’m not sure what the rules are for nutrition after she turns 1 officially. I know they say you can start supplementing with cows milk instead of formula but I personally refuse to give abby cows milk just based on personal belief and research. So I’ve been researching other alternatives and haven’t come up with a decision yet. Based on preliminary research I have found that Pea milk (made by Ripple) seems to be a really good next in line milk with the necessary fats, protein, carbs and nutrients that kids need. I am hesitant about it because when I drink it it makes ME gassy, so I am afraid it will make Abby gassy. We’ve tried little bits so far and haven’t seen too many upsets so far.

As for solid foods, I feel like I am not feeding her enough. She seems content. But I find myself in a rut always going to serve what she likes and what’s easy to make. She loves grilled cheese like its her full time job, and she loves carbs/breads just as much as me. I’m trying to push the veggies but she seems to have lost interest in her solid veggies since introducing carbs (I wonder why lol). I try and counteract this by serving puréed veggies before offering solids. I follow some mommy toddler nutrition blogs and they are helping with some guidance !

I also started reading “Toddler 411” and I highly recommend! It really helps break down how to deal with what is about to come with entering toddlerhood.

Well, for those of you that stuck in here and read this whole post, thank you! I don’t write to satisfy anyone’s need for intense plot twists, I mostly just want to record my journey and hopefully, hopefully, help another momma out there that may find my journey helpful.

With love,

The new motherboard.