Christmas...

...is getting closer by the minute. Due to endless colds (wifey and I) and teething (baby J), a lot of the christmas shopping is yet to be done.
Sunday is the 4th of advent, Lucia has come and gone. Wifey, I and baby J are going to fight our way through the stores on Sunday to do some shopping. Hopefully baby J won't remember what we buy him by Christmas Eve.
Also the shopping will be brief, since living on maternity leave is like living on student loans. Except that you need to repay your student loans at the same time, and have lots of baby expenses. I read in the paper that Christmas shopping was down 15% this year. Possibly due to my maternity leave.

Atleast the freezer is full of lussekatter (Swe. christmas buns) and knäck (Swe. christmas toffee).










Wifey and I have been very good and not had any sweets since September. We're gonna wait until the day before Christmas Eve.

I have been too tired and wrapped up in breastfeeding/pumping/not getting any sleep to get rid of my pregancy weight. But I thought that eliminating sugar from our diet would be a good first step.
After the Christmas holidays baby J will be about 8 months old, and eat even more solids, not be so dependent on breastmilk and I might be able to eat less and exercise more, without freaking out over it affecting milk supply.

And by the way; don't believe the myth that you will mysteriously lose all your pregnancy weight due to breastfeeding. This might work for some women but it sure didn't work for me!
And let me tell you I breastfed for hours on end. For a period baby J nursed for about 5-7 hrs straight daytime with short breaks.
I couldn't even go grocery shopping with wifey but had to wait in the car, nursing, while she did the shopping.
Instead of losing weight I actually gained weight after pregancy.

Oh well, in a previous life this might have felt disastrous. But all considering, I'm so happy over my baby the weight issue is only a small set back.

2012 will be the year of Lesbo Fitness Mama!

I need to get around to working out anyway. Baby J is getting heavy and I want to be able to carry him around in our Baby Björn without getting back problems.

Other issues concerning Christmas is if I will still be allergic to the Christmas tree now that I'm not pregnant anymore.
We're gonna get a small tree this year. In case we have to throw it out like last year.

Top 3 Things To Do With Your New Tooth

1. Bite your mother's nose
2. Bite your nursing mother's boob
3. Look completely adorable when you smile so they forget the pain of child rearing

Tiny Tooth... and more on Mama Milk

Like a small grain of rice nestled into baby's lower jaw is now his first tooth. We had a night or two of very cranky baby. But now he seems to be back on track. He is drooling a lot, so I suspect another tooth might be on it's way.
Other than that we have been very lucky, so to speak.

Since birth baby has been a sound night sleeper. In a way it's easy for us, no need to introduce night routines. By 7-9 o clock he's fast asleep and sleeps until morning.
However, I would rather have had him nurse all night through and gained better weight and me not getting any sleep.
I've been up at night pumping so I haven't gotten much sleep anyway.

All the things I now know about breastfeeding I wish I had known back then... Oh, well, if we ever dare to try for another baby we will be so much better prepared.

In hind sight, we DID get some good advice at the hospital. But we got so many DIFFERENT advice, and were so in shock after the birth we had difficulty sorting through and know which ones we should listen to.
And maybe it would have been all the same even if we've done differently, since no one saw that J was tongue tied.

One advice I can give though is; if you have a baby that have trouble nursing, and your milk doesn't come in; no matter what people or hospital staff say; PUMP!
It's the only way to get the milk going if baby can't do it on his/her own. And don't get one of those lousy hand pumps (they told us to get);





But demand to get an electrical pump. Buy your own or rent one at the hospital;



















I don't know why, but a lot of the "experts" say you shouldn't pump. My mom said I shouldn't pump either.
When I was born, in the 70s, all mothers were told to pump at the hospital, and my mother had difficulty with too much milk for the rest of my infancy.
From what I read, how much you stimulate milk production in the first week after birth is in someway determining how much milk you will be able to produce at all.

If you have trouble getting your milk production up, this is the best advice I have found online
http://www.kellymom.com/bf/supply/milkproduction.html#autocrinecontrol

I so wish I would have found this straight away, and believe me,the pump and I would have started our intense relationship much, much earlier...

Mama milk

Well, hello there. Erradic mama blogger here. The baby is asleep, who knows for how long. He is not a man of routines my little bundle of joy.

He is almost 7 months now. And no, we actually did not return the breast pump. And yes, I am still pumping and nursing.
Though not as feverent as before. Baby J is a very unpredictable nurser, and my milk supply seems very sensitive and needing routines. Plus we have the issue of J being tongue tied. Though partially fixed, I suspect he still has some trouble nursing as efficiently as other babies.
Thus, I'm not giving up the pump after all.
Milk supply has dropped dramaticially since I stopped pumping every 3 hrs around the clock. But there still seems to be enough for baby J to live off of, plus the lunch and evening meals he gets.
I try to get atleast 4-5 hrs of sleep every night, and sometimes it goes up to 6-7 hrs between pumping and nursing sessions.

The reason I want to keep the milk flowing, or rather dribble in my case, is that there are still so many benefits for a baby to get his/hers mother's milk.

Last time we went to the pediatric, for his 6 month's check up, they asked if he still breastfed. As if breastfeeding is to stop after 6 months.
Hello? Have you read the WHO's recommendations?
Breastfeeding is preferable continued to atleast 1 but rather 2 years of age.

Among other things, recent reserach has shown that breastmilk contains stem cells (try to copy that, formula factories!), awesome, right!? And that Swedish children are much more likely to be gluten intolerant due to introducing gluten too soon and ending breastfeeding (which protects against gluten intolerance, and other allergies) too early.
So, no, I'm not done nursing yet.

And besides, both me and baby J love it. Most of the time. When there is something exciting going on, he has no patience for the old boob.

Well, someone is awake over here. Blog you later!

Baby love

My darling baby is sound asleep in a very rare afternoon nap. It must be the rainy weather, the cold that always seem to be on the verge of breaking out but then recedes after nursing, or just a new, welcomed routine.

I tip toe around the house (which takes some skill living in a studio appartment). But somehow managed to make a cup of tea without waking the baby.

In just a couple of weeks Baby will be 6 months. Time has passed so fast, and yet seems eternal, as it always does when something significant happens.

What did I do before I was a mother? Who was I? What utterly unimportant things did I fill my days with when I didn't have my darling J to snuggle, nurse, feed mango purée, change dipers, watch the rain fall under our dotted umbrella?
Where did my heart live when not held by his tiny hands, soaked by his toothless smiles and comforted by the rythmic movement of his tiny lunges?

A journey nearing it's end. I decided that even if I had to live in my pyjamases, I was going to do what it took to breastfeed, pump and give my baby as much breast milk as possible until he was 6 months old. Then he would have to nurse to the best of his abilites and I would return to semi-normal life, not consisting of nursing and pumping around the clock.

And now all those weeks of darkness, fatigue and bone chilling lack of sleep bordering on insanity is almost over.

And what a contradictory journey it has been.

My darling baby;
The hospital birth was a hellhole where the only thing that reached me through the chemically induced lightning sharp pain was wifey´s voice and the thought of you.
Yet, giving birth to you is the most magnificent victory my body has ever won.
They stood by in awe, all the cold, lifeless, professional people, waiting to cut me with knives and drag you out into this world. And watched us birth as if I was not shaking with cramping muscles, blinded by 3 days without sleep and lost in the realm of my worst nightmare.

The parking lot outside the hospital. Where I sat. Confused and shattered. With you, like a little bean at the bottom of the infant car seat. And I decided that this what not the time to fall apart, but the time to iron clad my panic and hold myself together for you.

Nursing you for hours without end, worrying about your slow weight gain, crying with despaire over having to give you dried cows milk with syntectic nutrients. Failing you, the dearest, most precious gift I have ever recieved. Not being able to give you what I wanted and what you needed. The constant guilt and anxiety.
Still, nursing you has be the closest to heaven I've ever been. Your tiny mouth working on my breast, your tiny hands holding my fingers, clutching my soul. Holding you in my arms as you fall asleep and slowly let go.

You know you are on maternity leave...

...when you go to an appartment viewing dressed in sweatpants and a poncho. Either that or you're a hobo. The faint smell of urin and vomit makes you lean towards the latter. The baby in a carrier and eating a box of cookies, the former.

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful...

...boy.

Yes, Baby was a boy. And today he turns 4 months.
Blogging has not been possible so far, but I am thrilled to see that my blog is still being read.

The birth was just one big, hospitalized, medically induced nightmare. The hospital has later appologized for uneccesarily medically forcing my birth. But what is an appology to the trauma our family suffered. The hospital machinery will surely go on, chewing people up and spitting them out with no consideration.

If you feel the least bit inclined to have a home birth (in Sweden), please do not make my mistake and think you can have a "home birth in hospital" in this country. You can't. They will do what they do, with no regard to your wishes and threathen w your baby not being well to get their way.

Baby was excellent all through the 3 days of labour, but hospital staff kept telling us he might not be to get to do their medical interventions.
Why, I will never know. Since Baby was in excellent health all the time, there seems to be no reason for their actions what so ever.
Perhaps they just needed the room for another patient and wanted to speed things up.

Maybe one day I will share my birth story. But for now the trauma is still too overwhelming.

I leave you instead with a song for the miracle that is my happy, healthy, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful baby boy.