Connect Four

I'm happy to report that we are now a family of four. Ben was born on August 5th, and it's already as though he's been here always.

His was a relatively short, uncomplicated labour, and he was born at home, just as I'd hoped for. He was almost a full pound heavier than my daughter, weighing in at 8 lbs 13 oz, and he's taken to nursing as though he's in training for the breastfeeding Olympics, so I doubt that his weight will be a worry for us.

Thus far, he's a dream baby. He sleeps when he's not eating, and cries when he's hungry or needs a diaper change. Occasionally, he'll stay away for awhile and look around curiously. When he's awake, he's alert and content. Secretly, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.

We're going to take a couple of weeks to welcome him and just enjoy the sensation of being four instead of three, so any orders placed at www.nursingnecklace.com will not be processed until the 24th of August.

And now, some photos!



Ben on day two







Ben and his big sister - doesn't she look proud?

the countdown begins

Our magical transformation from family of three to family of four is looming - three weeks and two days until my due date, which means that he could come pretty much at any time, or not until the 20th of August.

The woman who taught our childbirth prep class when we were expecting the Monkey was trying to explain to the partners in the class how mentally and emotionally trying this particular part of pregnancy could be for those of us in the full-uterus set. She likened it to knowing that at some point in the very near future, you were going to break your arm. You wouldn't know when or how it would happen, but you could be certain that it would hurt, and that the circumstances surrounding it could be very public and embarrassing. That particular analogy has stuck with me all this time, and as I reach the point where it applies to me again, it just keeps popping back into my mind.

I find myself thinking tangentially most of the time, and I can't say that it's not weird or gross. [1]. Mostly though, I find myself contingency planning just in case my water breaks .... now. Or now. Or now. Who to call, how to get home in soggy pants - and then I wonder if that's what you do if you're planning a home birth - do you just go home, all drippy and stinky? Walk? Take the bus? Call a cab? Call Andrew and then sit for an hour, wafting Eau d'Amniotic Fluid and waiting for him to come from work to pick me up? (I didn't have to deal with this with the Monkey - my midwife had to break my water for me. Had I known, I would have seen about a dozen movies in the theatre in that last couple of weeks, but I was paralyzed at the thought of having my water break in public.[2])

Anyway. Other than the rapidly-mounting anxiety, the vicious heartburn that just won't go away, my fears over how our family dynamic will change and how the Monkey will react to her little brother when he's more than just an abstract idea, the mood swings, my almost complete lack of preparedness, the searing pain as the Stowaway stabs me directly in the cervix with his tiny knitting needle fingers and my inability to sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time, I'm doing really well. I spent part of last night sorting tiny little clothes, and marvelling at their size, and at the fact that there's a little person in my belly who will fit into them, and into our family. I'm excited. And nervous. And excited. And hungry. But mostly excited.

[1] Things that have crossed my mind, in no particular order:
- can your water break before you lose your mucous plug?
- does the Shoppers in my neighbourhood carry plastic sheets, so I don't have to layer my bed with IKEA shower curtains that crinkle irritatingly every time I roll over in the night? I really like my feather bed.
- would live-blogging labour be too gross? Would it be more entertaining than old CSI reruns or playing Ratchet & Clank?
- are the pushing parts of labour that much worse than the contraction parts if you don't have an epidural to make everything all shiny and wonderful and to help you forget that a strange man is pulling a baby out of your body with an enormous pair of tweezers?
- how many times will the midwife let me vomit before we go to the hospital? And do I have a pail somewhere for that?
- will she take one look at my slap-dash attempts at housekeeping and declare our apartment too germ-ridden for a home birth?

[2] Other things that are different this pregnancy:
- I ate bacon and sandwich meat and didn't feel bad about it
- I haven't yet accidentally eaten a liqueur-filled chocolate and then spent the next three months convinced that my baby would have FAS and it would be all my fault.
- I painted my fingernails twice and did feel a smidge guilty. Nail polish has formaldehyde in it that can cross into your blood stream and kill your baby!
- this baby is STILL moving around like a bull in a china shop - the Monkey was much too big to move by this point.
- I thought I was under-slept then. I think about that now and laugh and laugh.
- I've been ready for it to be over for at least a month now. I remember being content with it right up until week 41 with the Monkey.
- I haven't stayed at a hotel at the same time as a convention for parents of blind and deaf children, and therefore have only had moderately crippling anxiety about this baby being born with either of those problems.
- my "nesting instinct" is less about making everything pretty and more about making everything relatively clean, where relatively means that you probably still want to keep your shoes on, just in case.

still here, just gearing up for baby

I have a lengthy catch-up post planned for my upcoming pre-baby vacation, but until that happens, have a look at this FANTASTIC blog post about breastfeeding and the support (or lack thereof) that society gives to breastfeeding mothers. (I think that the blogger is in Australia, but the sentiments expressed are still so relevant to those of us in North America.)

Hoyden About Town: Gone Too Far?

(Check out the comments too - they're pretty great!)

A new necklace option, and sleep training - night 4

Bedtime tonight was even better than last night, with the monkey only needing to be reminded once that she's supposed to lie down during story time. We read the usual number of stories (4) which I'm thinking is one too many, as she was really good for the first three, and only needed reminding during the last one. She was also visibly sleepy, which is a first and is awesome.

We started talking tonight about how she's a big girl, and how when we come back from Grandma's on Sunday, the exercise ball will be all gone. I'm going to try to have this talk with her at nap time and bed time every night between now and then to get her used to the idea - she's much better with new and/or uncomfortable situations when she knows what's going to happen in advance. I'm still anticipating hours of unhappiness once the ball is gone - it's the only way she knows how to fall asleep, and she's pretty strong-willed. I'm actually going to deflate the ball and put it away though, so we'll have to figure out together how to make it work.

Anyway. She went right to sleep at 8:15 after only five minutes of bouncing, and is still asleep now, at almost 11 - unheard of. She normally wakes at least twice before I go to bed.

Now, on to something new and exciting: a whole new necklace option! The Custom Semi-Precious Nursing Necklace! Semi-precious stones are beautiful and are great for nursing necklaces! And there are so many different kinds to choose from! Now you can design your own meaningful and lovely necklace, complete with our special safety bead and super-strong spectra-fiber cord. If you think that the necklace pictured on the page is familiar, that's because it's our Winter To Spring necklace - we have a couple of orders on deck for Custom Semi-Precious necklaces, but until they're finished, the Winter to Spring necklace is doing double-duty.

So that's it for tonight. I'm off to bed early for once - I think I've earned it! Have a great Easter!

(don't) bounce with me

Tonight is night three of our new sleep routine for the monkey, and so far, I'm not sure how it's going.

A little backstory: when the monkey was very small, we determined that bouncing her on an exercise ball was the easiest and most reliable way to put her to sleep at night. Since it seemed foolhardy to change something that worked so well, I've spent anywhere from 5 to 95 minutes pretty much every night since bouncing her on an exercise ball to put her to sleep. (The 95 minute nights were entirely due to stomach problems or illness - she's generally a pretty easy baby to put to sleep.)

Lately, however, I've been noticing that my burgeoning belly (and boy, is it big for 23 weeks!) is making the bedtime bouncing more difficult. I'm shorter of breath, and it's been taking longer at night to get her to sleep. (This was actually due to an ear infection that was practically asymptomatic, and now that she's on antibiotics for it, it's much better.) I also realized that if my labour with this pregnancy goes anything like the last one did, it would be several weeks before I'd be able to bounce her to sleep. Given that everyone I've spoken to about having two babies under two has stressed the importance of routine for the older child, I decided that we'd be better off changing her bedtime routine NOW, while we still have four months to make it stick.

Our old routine looked like this: change into jammies with mommy, bedtime stories with daddy (and she was free to run around and sit on the floor with us during this part), night-night to the toys and the outside world with mommy, bottle of formula with mommy, bedtime songs and bouncing on the ball with mommy until asleep, and then into bed.

The main problem with this routine is that it's never given the monkey any mechanism to go from wide awake to drowsy on her own. She just doesn't know how to do it. I learned too late that babies work out how to do that between 3 and 6 months, so by the time we were ready to start sleep training, she was much too old - once your baby can get out of bed on her own, there's just no keeping her there short of duct tape, and that's just inhumane. Anyway.

We're reworking her bedtime routine with two goals in mind:

1) In a few weeks, Andrew will be taking over her bedtime routine, in order to prepare for the few weeks post-labour when I'm just not up to it. We'd rather this not be a big shock for her.

2) We'd really like for her to learn how to put herself to sleep on her own, or with minimal assistance from us.

To that end, this is what our current arrangement looks like: jammies with mommy, night-night to the toys and outside world with mommy and daddy, bedtime stories with mommy and daddy ONLY if the monkey is lying down in her bed, bottle of formula in bed with mommy lying down beside her, bedtime songs with mommy. If, once the songs are happening she asks more than 3 times to be bounced on the ball, I do it, because if I outright refuse her, she'll get so worked up over it that we lose any sleepiness we've gained in the preceding steps.

Tonight was night 3, and while she still asked to be bounced on the ball, she was much much better at staying in bed during stories - she only tried to stand up 3 times, and it was during a boring story. This is a definite improvement over the last two nights, where it was a real struggle to keep her in bed at all. I've also found that, while I do still have to bounce her to sleep, it's taken much much less time than it was before. My hope is that over the next few weeks, the time we can get her to stay in her bed will extend, while the time on the ball gets shorter, until she falls asleep in bed on her own.

What do you think? Is this totally off-base? Are we crazy to think that this will work? Andrew's aware that he may very well have to bounce her himself once he takes over, but we'd both rather he not have to do that. Any tips or tricks? HELP!!

Hang in there - summer's coming!

To celebrate the fact that summer is just a few weeks away, we here at Milk Please, Mommy have designed a new necklace that reminds us of lounging pool-side, with a cool plate of watermelon close at hand - the Juicy Watermelon Nursing Necklace!










Double-stranded in pinks and greens and accented with black "seeds", the Juicy Watermelon Nursing Necklace offers twice as many fun, textured beads to keep your little nursling entertained, and the additional strand makes for great grabbing! Your baby will enjoy making the sliding beads move, and feeling the smoothness of the vintage "watermelons" that we've used as the focal point for this necklace.

Check it out today at Milk Please, Mommy!

A frenzy of new reminder bracelets!

It's month-end here at Milk Please, Mommy, and that means only one thing - procrastination! Who wants to do the books when there are reminder bracelets to be designed? So, in the spirit of "why do today what we can do during the next daddy-daughter day", we're proud to present to you our newest Milk Please, Mommy reminder bracelets!


Kissed by Fire Reminder Bracelet



A Jumble of Blue Reminder Bracelet



Yellow Splash Reminder Bracelet



A Jumble of Purple Reminder Bracelet



Black and Silver Reminder Bracelet