*Noah is 9 weeks old!*
First of all, I was just revisiting the blog, and my belly picture from 38 weeks caught my eye. Oh my, I was HUGE!!! And I was still pregnant for three more weeks after that! I'm a *SO* thankful to have lost all my baby weight already. Yes, I said all. However, there are two types of weight - baby weight and IVF weight. I've lost the baby weight, but NOT the IVF drug weight. When I found out I was pregnant, I was at about 150, but when the whole IVF process started back in August 2007, I was just about 140. So at 148 now, I still technically have at least 8lbs to lose. I'd like to get to 135 - that's what I weighed when we went to Europe in the spring of 2006 before the whole trying to conceive thing started... Maybe I'll make a new year's resolution for once...
Anyways, SLEEP! It's becoming a common thing in our house, and I hope by typing this, I'm not jinxing it... I think we must have been jumping the gun with the middle of the night feeding. Noah would usually stir and make some grunting noises like he was waking up around 3am, and we would get up so Ben could feed him and I could pump. Well, since he started sleeping in the crib on Monday, he's been out cold until 6 or 7am! At first I thought maybe we were missing it - sleeping through a screaming spell or something, but I keep the monitor turned up so high you can hear the clock on the wall ticking in his room... If this keeps up, we will be *so* happy.
There are only a few glitches with the current sleep schedule. The main one is that we still can't get him down until between 9:30 and 10:30 (usually closer to 10:30). I think it's hard right now, for one, because I'm going out a lot during the day to run errands and do Christmas shopping, so he's napping a lot during the day. It's also hard because Ben doesn't get home from work until 6:30. Noah usually gets a bottle around 6 or 7, and we usually have dinner around 7 or 7:30, making it really hard to try to take the time to put him to bed after that bottle, so he usually goes to bed after the 9:00 bottle. I'm really hoping to make bedtime at least a bit earlier before I go back to work. As much as I'll want to be able to spend some time with him, I need to be able to get other things done too, like dishes, laundry, etc...
The other glitch, if you could call it that, with the sleep schedule is that I sleep through my pump session, making me incredibly uncomforable when I wake up in the morning. Usually Ben is able to feed Noah when he wakes up so I can go pump, but it makes me worried about my milk supply. Before 12 weeks, you're supposed to pump 8-12x a day with one being between 1 and 4am to get a good supply. By sleeping through that middle of the night pump, I could be killing my supply. It's good now, but I'm worried that it will drop around the 12 week mark... I'm up around 200oz of milk in the freezer, so at least that will keep us going for a little while after I go back to work. Like I think I said before, my first goal was to make it to 3mo with Noah getting breastmilk exclusively, and we're definitely going to make that goal. The next hurdle will be making it to 6mo. I'm feeling good about it for now, but like I said, we'll see what happens to my supply come 12 weeks.
Today, Noah went to see Santa Claus. Mommy & Daddy have been talking this guy up for weeks. Noah won't tell us what he asked Santa for - he's trying to make it hard on us. I mean, on Santa... I'll post pics soon!
2 comments:
I know it may be hard but you can either try and make him skip the nap he takes before his 6:00/7:00 feeding that way after he eats he konks out. You may have a crabby kid for a day or two but it may work. The other thing we had done is if Adie was up while we ate dinner we would play with her a lot and talk to her which gets her brain working and thus tires her out faster. Stimulation is key. As for your pumping schedule. You have a lot of breast milk stored up. I wouldn't worry to much about skipping the middle of the night feeding b/c sleep actually increases milk production too! Currently, I pump before bed and then 8 hours later when I wake up. I am full but my supply has not decreased at all. If you are pumping every 3 hours now and you slow it down when you go back to work to say maybe every 4-5 hours you will still be just fine. Once Noah gets to 4 months you can start transitioning to rice cereal and other foods so you won't need as much breast milk. Good Luck!
I find it hilarious that you and I are having the same problems right now, except Amelia will be 10 mos next week. I found myself leaking this morning (and hello, I'm nursing my THIRD kid who is nearing a year), and we just started putting her in the crib on Thursday to make it through at least half the night. We're hoping to get her sleeping through the night before Jan 5 when Patton goes back to school.
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