Family

Matt and I don't have family here in town.  Our closest family members are my parents, who live 2-2-.5 hours away.  That's not far, but it's also not super-close.  And while my family has been able to come up and see Eleanor and help out some, it's just not the same as having family here.  But having Eleanor has helped Matt and I realize that even though we may not have actual family here, we do have a family, a community.  Family isn't necessarily defined by blood, but by relationships.

-Family is having meals brought to your home three times a week from the week after we brought Eleanor home until mid-February.  I'm not kidding.  With the exception of last night, every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday someone brings us a cooked meal.  And usually there is enough food that we can have leftovers the next night.  It is such a blessing to not have to worry about making dinner while trying to adjust to our new normal.

-Family is our house church giving us cans of formula that they haven't used after we had to make the switch to bottle-feeding.

-Family is members of our house church emailing or calling to check in and see how we are doing.  This is after we made it back to house church for our first time since having Eleanor and I cried a lot, since this was the day after we made the switch to formula.  It's so nice knowing others are thinking of us and care about us.  And that we can be vulnerable and honest with them when things are hard.

-Family is people reaching out with their stories of struggling to breastfeed and having to switch to formula.  It's the reassurance that things will be okay and that it's okay to grieve the loss of breastfeeding.

-Family is spending an entire Saturday afternoon with friends who are incredibly excited to meet your daughter.  We were able to spend the afternoon with the family that I started babysitting over seven years ago and it was amazing to watch their entire family love on Eleanor all afternoon. 

-Family is friends offering to come over for a morning or an afternoon and being willing to sit downstairs with Eleanor while I take a nap.  This happened a few times the first two weeks that Matt was back at work and it was such a blessing to be able to get a solid hour or more of sleep and know that Eleanor was in good hands just downstairs.

-Family is getting phone calls from coworkers just to check in and see how things are going.

Matt, Eleanor, and I are so lucky to have amazing family - both in our blood relatives and in our community here in Indianapolis.  It's definitely a reflection of Jesus for us.

Our first ER visit and sick visit to the doctor

Friday night Matt and I ended up having to take Eleanor to the emergency room.  I'm sure that's not the last time we'll be there with her, but I would be completely fine if it was.  Toward the end of last week we noticed Eleanor choking when she was eating.  She has a really hard time getting her breath back after this, and she was also breathing really heavily a lot of the time.  We called the on-call line at our pediatrician and were told to take her in to get things checked out.  We spent several hours there Friday night and into early Saturday morning.  Eleanor was great the whole time we were there, even through the x-rays they took.  The doctors in the ER didn't find anything and thought she might have reflux.  We were told to follow up with our pediatrician this week.

I called this morning and was able to get an appointment with Eleanor's doctor today.  Again, Eleanor is checking out healthy (they listened to her chest, looked in her throat and ears, etc).  Eleanor got hungry while the doctor was in the room so I started feeding her while the doctor watched.  She thinks Eleanor is taking her bottle too fast, which is causing her to choke.  So we are using a special slow-flow nipple (even slower than the infant nipples sold in stores) to see if that helps at all.  If it does, the doctor wants us to use that for a month and then try introducing regular nipples again to see how it goes.  If this nipple doesn't seem to help then the doctor will order a swallow study to see what's going on.  The doctor does think Eleanor has some reflux, but since she doesn't seem to be in pain when she's spitting up we are holding off on medicine for now since the medicine wouldn't help the spitting up but would only make it painless.  Neither the doctor nor Matt and I want her on medicine if she doesn't need to be.  Eleanor has her one-month (!!!) appointment next week so we'll follow up with the doctor then to see what our next steps are.

Some good news, though - Eleanor is up to over 8.5 pounds!  Woo hoo!  We started using the Mo.by wrap this weekend now that she's finally big enough and she LOVES it!  Plus, putting her in the Mo.by on Sunday allowed me to actually stay in the whole service at church because she slept the whole time :)

At 3 weeks old...

Here are some things I don't want to forget about Eleanor at this stage...

-Her "pirate eye."  When Eleanor is waking up or going to sleep she does this thing where she opens only one eye at a time.  It's cute.

-Her hands.  Eleanor LOVES her hands.  They are constantly on the move.  And when Eleanor sleeps she likes to have her hands straight up in the air.

-Her noises.  She makes the funniest noises, especially when she's sleeping and starting to wake up.  Eleanor has one noise that sounds like an elephant, which is made even funnier when she lifts an arm straight up into the air when she does it :)

-Her faces.  Oh, her faces.  They are hilarious.  She has this one that she does where her eyes get big and she makes an "O" shape with her mouth.  Adorable.  And when Eleanor is waking up she makes all sorts of funny faces.  Here's a series of pictures Matt took during one of her waking-up sessions.  Too funny!

-Her hiccups.  When I was pregnant with Eleanor she got the hiccups quite often, and a lot of the time you could see my stomach move with the hiccups.  She still gets pretty violent hiccups that shake her whole little body.  If she's asleep or anywhere near it when she gets the hiccups, you can count on her waking up.  And when she's awake with the hiccups her eyes get so big and sometimes her mouth makes this "O" shape, kind of like, "whoa, what are these?"

-Eleanor is starting to look toward us when we are talking while holding her.  She's also starting to sort of look at a rattle and book that we have that are mostly black and white - the contrast is easy for her to see.  It's fun to see her start responding and being interactive.

-Most of the time Eleanor likes her swing and bouncy seat.  If she's awake when we're eating dinner she'll hang out in her bouncer on the floor next to the table and she just looks around with her eyes wide open.

-Eleanor loves sucking on her hands and fingers.  LOVES it.  When she's really upset it's almost a frantic thing.  So as much as I hate it, we've started using the pacifier some to soothe her.  I'd rather her not use a pacifier or suck on her thumb/fingers, but if I have to choose I'd rather the pacifier because at least I can take that away at some point.  But we are still only using the pacifier as a last resort.

-Right now Eleanor is eating 2.5-3 ounces roughly every 3 hours.  She'll usually get in a 4-5 hour stretch at night, which is great!

The diaper sprayer to the rescue!

So what happens when Eleanor poops?  That's a question I've gotten in regards to the whole cloth diapering.  There's this amazing contraption called a diaper sprayer that has already come in handy more than once in our house!

It looks like this:

This diaper sprayer attaches to the toilet.  When Eleanor has a diaper that has poop in it, we just hold the diaper over the toilet, turn the sprayer on (though not on high - that thing is powerful!) and spray the poo into the toilet.  Then the diaper just goes into the wet bag with all the other diapers. So far we haven't had any problems getting the poop off or with stains.

Washing the diapers is also not a big deal.  We just do a cold rinse, a warm/hot cycle with cloth diaper friendly detergent (we use Rock.in' Green), and a cold rinse.  Then most everything can go into the dryer, at least for now.  We will line dry the covers to help them last longer.  It's only a few extra minutes every other day to wash the diapers.

Goodbye disposable, hello cloth!

Matt and I knew we wanted to cloth diaper before we even started trying to get pregnant.  We know many families who cloth diaper so we've been able to watch them over the last few years to see how it went.  I'll be honest, when my best friend first told me she was going to cloth diaper her kids I thought it was gross and there was no way I would ever do that.  But after watching her with her two kiddos, along with the other families we know who use cloth, I realized that it's really not that different than disposables.  And in the long run, using cloth is cheaper than using disposables because you can reuse diapers for more than one child.  Then when you're finished with diapers, you can sell your cloth ones.  I won't buy used, as it kinda weirds me out, but a lot of people will.  And usually you can get fairly close to what you paid for a diaper when you sell it.  We're mainly cloth diapering for economical reasons, but the environmental impact of using cloth is pretty great, too.  Do you know how long it takes for one disposable diaper to decompose in a landfill?  500 years.  That's a LONG time. 

We started cloth diapering on Monday of this week.  We had planned on starting sooner, once we ran out of the few small packages of disposables we had and Eleanor's umbilical cord stump fell off, but with all the issues with feeding we bought one more giant pack of disposables to use until feeding got figured out so that was one less thing on my plate with Matt going back to work.  So we are on day 3 of cloth and doing great!  Right now we are using mostly prefolds, which is what most people think of when they think cloth diapers.  It's the cheapest way to cloth diaper a newborn.  We are just using the fabric with a plastic snap and a cover over it.  Like this:

(courtesy of Goo.gle Ima.ges)

We also have a few Lil Joe.y diapers, which are much more like a disposable.  These are more expensive, so I only have 4.  They look like this:

(courtesy of Goo.gle Ima.ges)

Eventually we will move to one-size diapers.  These diapers will grow with Eleanor and we will be able to use them until she is potty-trained.  However, it will be a while before she's ready to fit into these.  Even the prefolds and Lil Joe.ys look huge on her tiny body right now!  OS (one-size) diapers have snaps that allow you to make them shorter/taller.  Most of our diapers have velcro closures like disposables, though a few have snap closures (like the Lil Jo.eys above).  Here's a picture of our current "stash" of mostly one-size diapers.  Most of our diapers are Bum.Gen.ius, with a few other brands thrown in that I've found on sale (Swa.ddlbe.es, Bum.Cheeks, and Hap.pyHeinys).  The polka dotted fabric on the left is one of our wet bags, and the white things on the far left are extra inserts for added absorbancy.

Today I ordered a few different brands in size smalls, since miss Eleanor is so small and the OS diapers will swallow her.  I'm pretty sure even when she's big enough weight-wise (which she almost is) the diapers would come below her knees!  As it is, the prefolds and covers come almost to her knees and are making the newborn size clothes a little small because they make her little bottom fluffy :)  I'm excited to try out some different brands and figure out what really works for us.  I'd mostly bought Bum.Genius because I found the best deals on them and they're what most of our friends use.  The ones I ordered today are a few different brands that I'm excited to try out.  They should all be here by this weekend, so we'll see how those work.  They're supposed to be good up to 15 pounds, and by then hopefully Eleanor has filled out enough that the OS diapers start to fit her. 

Plus, as an added bonus, cloth diapers are so cute! I mean, look at that owl print!

What really matters...

I got an email from a friend this morning about our breastfeeding struggles, and a paragraph in it really hit home for me.  It was definitely what I needed to hear/read this morning.

When we're still pregnant, it's engrained is us how important breastmilk is, so when we have to take that step toward formula, it almost seems sinful. But when your baby is happier, fuller, and sleeps better at night, you can't argue. In the end, we always do what's best for our baby girl. Chalk this up for another 'sacrifice' we, as mothers, will continue to make for the well-being of our child. There'll be many more tears to come about sleeping, pooping, rashes, vomit, fevers, ear infections and whining, but in the end, all you really pray for is that someday she'll learn to love Jesus. And the moments of pure JOY far outweigh those moments of tears. I promise.

So true.  In the end everything else is secondary.  We love Eleanor and will care for her the best way that we know how.  This isn't the last hard decision we'll have to make in raising her.  And while we'll pray for wisdom in making those decisions so that we're making the ones that are best for her, I know we'll make some mistakes.  But in the end, as long as Eleanor knows and loves Jesus, we've done our job as parents.

Thanks for the words of encouragement and truth, R. :)


 

An update to feeding...

Thanks for all the words of encouragement and support after our last post.  As of yesterday I have mastits - again.  So my quickly-dwindling milk supply has been almost completely wiped out.  I mean we're talking I'll pump for 15 minutes and get maybe a quarter of an ounce total, whereas a day or two ago I was getting between 0.75-1 ounce.  Still not much, but much more than what I'm getting now.  I have a feeling my pumping days won't last a whole lot longer.  Right now I'm pumping every 4 hours at the advice of the lactation consultant/nurse practitioner at the pediatrician's office, in hopes to not get a third round of mastitis.  I'll gradually stretch this to every 5 hours, then every 6, etc. until I'm completely weaned and not producing anything.  At the rate I'm going I don't feel like that will take long.  I'm on a different antibiotic for the mastitis and hopefully this will clear it up once and for all.  It's definitely not fun.

I'm still really grieving the loss of breastfeeding Eleanor.  It's something I so badly wanted to do, but I'm not sure we could have done anything differently to make it work.  When there's not much milk and it's not letting down and your child doesn't have enough to eat...well, there's not a whole lot you can do.  The LC at the pediatrician yesterday made me feel better about our decision to switch over.  I was slightly nervous to tell her we weren't breastfeeding anymore but she was completely reassuring that we had made the best decision.  She said that as parents we have to make hard decisions and sometimes what's best for our kids isn't the choice that we would prefer.  She reiterated several times that we had made the choice that was best for Eleanor, even though it's not the choice we wanted to make.  And I can already tell a difference in Eleanor in the few days she's been on mostly formula, with some bottles of breastmilk thrown in.  She's sleeping better, is more alert, acts full when she's finished eating, and just all around seems happier. And she's gaining weight!  As of yesterday Eleanor is weighing in at 7 pounds 9 ounces!  Woo hoo!  That's almost big enough for me to wear her in my Mo.by wrap and the Er.go carrier :)

And because it's not a post without a cute picture of little miss Eleanor, here she is enjoying some tummy time - she loves it :)