Nursing Tuesday: Maternity Nursing Top

Ugh it happened! We’re having our son baptized next weekend and my mom offered to pay for the food for lunch after. I said “great, let’s get pizza!” She said pizza wasn’t good enough. She asked if we had any good Chinese around. I sent her the menu of the Peking duck place. She then said “oh, what if B just makes lasagna! It will be so much less expensive!” (B being my stepfather.) B is a terrific cook, but he mostly makes Italian food and my husband doesn’t like Italian. Cooking is a whole thing for him, which involves buying lots of special ingredients from lots of different stores. Then we have all these leftover ingredients taking up space in our cabinets (I usually throw most of it out, which is wasteful, but our cabinets are overfull as it is). And he occupies the kitchen in its entirety while he cooks, getting flustered and asking for things we don’t have. Then my mom complains that we don’t have this kind of pan or that kind. And then sitting down to eat is a whole ordeal. My mom is a music person and she’s offended that we don’t have a decent sound system and therefore can’t really play “nice” music while we eat. She doesn’t like the lighting in our kitchen. She wants different linens than what I’ve put out and is put out when I say that that’s all that’s clean. When my son was born, she and B came down for a week and B offered to fill our fridge. He did. With food everyone knows my husband doesn’t like. And then every evening they wanted to open a bottle of wine, light candles, put on nice music and have this whole meal. WHen my husband and I hadn’t slept at all and could barely sit up straight. We just wanted to shovel something down and maybe grab a few minutes’ rest instead of having to have a lively dinnertime conversation. I’ve told my mom “no” to the lasagne, but it’s going to be a whole thing. I love my stepfather very much, but I wish he’d keep cooking to his own kitchen! I knew, knew, knew this was going to happen the instant she offered to pay for the food. Ugh.

Can I vent to Internet strangers? I’m 40 weeks, five days and still at work and I’m a mess. My husband and midwife begged me to take Fmla now, but it’s only 12 weeks and I feel like I’m cheating my baby bc every day home is a day he’ll be in daycare at less than 3 months old. A coworker who I’ve known for years insisted on helping me last week and instead stabbed me in the back. So my boss just chewed me out. Everyone is taunting me (omg! You’re still here!! Will you be pregnant forever?!) the possibility of induction/csection is becoming more and more real and suddenly, it’s terrifying. My husband and mom keep saying that all that matters is a healthy baby, but there’s little chance they’ll be strapped down and gutted while wide awake next week. I feel so broken and lonely. For whatever reason the baby seems so abstract and far away and all I can think about is how something really, really terrible is about to happen. Oh and I have a court appearance thursday in a county 3 hours from my midwife and hospital. Boss said her hands are tied and I have to go or take Fmla. Evil coworker will be there too. Im trying to keep it together but just spend my lunch hour sobbing in my car.

Ladies, I need some advice/commiseration/something. I have a 7-month old baby, and I work full time. I love my LO dearly, and I am so grateful for him . . . but he is a challenge. He is a mediocre sleeper, and a terrible eater — he has fought nursing from day one (unclear why exactly), barely tolerates bottles, and has hardly any more enthusiasm for solids. He’s also just in general a fussy, hard-to-please baby. I feel like every day I spend with him consists mostly of battling him to nurse/otherwise eat, battling him to try to get him to sleep, and getting through the day without me melting down. I’ve started to dread spending time with him, and I cry on the subway on my way to work almost every day, having spent the morning with a baby screaming at my b**bs. I’m also exhausted from his night wakings (though incidentally those are the only times he nurses without incident). I feel like a terrible mom, a terrible employee, and a terrible wife/friend/person.

Please tell me this will get better? I love my little guy so much. . . but I just don’t like him much of the time, and it is just tearing me up inside.

My LO is a little over 3 months. I usually feed him around 6:00 when I get home, and then again around 7:30/8 when he gets sleepy. We often do bedtime-y activities before that like a bath, reading books, and/or lowkey play. The “bad” part is that after that we often keep him downstairs with us, letting him sleep in our arms, until we go to bed around 10. Then he gets a diaper change, put in his jammies/Merlin, and another short feeding, after which he quickly and easily goes to sleep in his crib in our room. He then will sleep until 6:30/7am with one wakeup for a feeding around 3/3:30am (after which he goes back to sleep in his crib easily).

This works well for me, as it allows me to snuggle him for an extra hour or two, and for me to get a good chunk of sleep before the 3am feeding. But I imagine this goes against lots of recommendations, and we should be putting him down earlier in his crib. The problem is that when we try to put him down at 7:30/8pm it takes much longer to get him to fall asleep in his crib vs when we do it at 10pm, and then he is up every 2-3 hours throughout the night (like 10:30, 12:30, 2:30, 4:30, then 7am), and seems to have really restless sleep inbetween. Granted, we often only try this for a night or two before we get freaked/exhausted and go back to our old routine, so maybe if we stuck with it longer it would work itself out, but it’s tough when the other way is so much easier.

So how bad am I messing up by not really putting him down until 10pm? Or is this an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ situation? I know we’re approaching the dreaded 4 month sleep regression so figured we’d make it through that and then figure out a good routine, but could use some feedback.

Just got confirmation that yes, our youngest also has severe hearing loss in one ear, just like his big brother (and possibly me as well, although maybe not as severe).

On one hand, we kind of knew this was coming, as we’ve suspected for a while but he wasn’t old enough for a conclusive test (its harder to test with little kids when its only in one ear). But his has been fluctuating for a while, so I was holding out hope that it was more related to seasonal allergies and could be fixed with decongestants or maybe tubes in his ears, as the pediatrician suspected when he was 2-3. Nope. Round 2 of testing and hearing aid fitting and 504 plans here we come. At least the oldest was 5 and a calmer kid when we found out – the younger one is 4 and much rowdier and energetic.

At least we have the money saved in an HSA, because, joy of joys, insurance won’t cover it, and the older one probably needs a new one too. Maybe early intervention will, but I’m not holding my breath. Oh, and we may have to find a new audiologist and ENT as well, as the ones we used before that specialized in little kids have moved. Time to go bump up the HSA contribution and raid the vacation fund in case we have any more medical issues this year. Its crazy – insurance would cover a cochlear implant surgery and the CI device if he was a candidate (which he probably won’t be) for tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, but not a hearing aid for a couple thousand. Sigh.

Good morning! It looks like I’m going to be induced in the next few days — I’m already planning on having an epidural but beyond that, any tips or words of wisdom? Specifically wondering if there are any good or bad “last meals” before going in. I find myself most concerned about how hungry I’m going to get!