LAST attempt..... seriously

Okay, I lied. About half thru the night on January 1st, I had a change of heart on the quitting nursing thing. It would be best for Liam's stomach if I nursed exclusively, so Im going to give it one more week. Im going to do everything as close to perfectly as possible and if things still arent working, then I have to surrender.

Is it so lame that some part of my identity can be so damaged at failing at this?

oh well



UPDATE, January 14:

Im still pumping off and on, but it looks like my supply is finally up! It seems to slack after a day or two of only nursing, but it is easily fixed by pumping when I have time. For the first time ever, I have milk in the freezer thats from me! Im so proud, its silly. 'Bout time!

Two Months

Well, a lot has happened (and a lot has not) in the last month. Liam is now 2 months and today is New Years Day. The last post, I wrote about my frustrations with nursing. That very afternoon, I found someone who was willing to donate breast milk to me and loan me her electric pump. She even gave me a list of supplements to take and really good instructions on how to get my supply up. So I have spent the past month trying to adhere to those instructions, putting aside many things (and neglecting my other 3 children) in an effort to get my milk supply up. I was determined.

Thats why it makes me terribly sad to say that I have decided today that Im done trying to build up my milk supply. Im really disappointed with myself, but I realize that after struggling with it for so long, I have to choose: the rest of my life or continue to pursue nursing exclusively. There is only so long that I can neglect my other children, husband, home and school for and it is really starting to take a toll on my overall satisfaction and sense of accomplishment. Every waking moment of my day was consumed with nursing, pumping, taking supplements, drinking tea. If the baby slept, I had to choose between feeding my children, attempting to get some schoolwork done with them, or cleaning to keep the house in a state of semi-order. And the baby only sleeps twice a day for an hour or so! There isnt much time in there for anything resembling a schedule. And I dont deal well with chaos.

So as I put away the Christmas decorations today, wash the last pot from dinner last Friday(!) and promise my husband I will get his laundry done this weekend some time, it is a bittersweet decision I make to not pursue this anymore. My baby will still be healthy and I will have time and energy to put into being a better wife and mother. And I can stop calculating my self-worth based on this one aspect of my life.

I am going to keep up with my supplements. And I did learn that I dont have a let-down reflex (for all you who speak lactation-ese). That is terribly important when it comes to milk production. I really wish I would have had someone to guide me thru all this with Baby #1. Or 2, or 3. But I am coming out of this with more knowledge and a goal that if I ever have another baby, I will use all these techniques to get my supply built up in the first 2 weeks of nursing.
And hey, if I make it to 7 months nursing alongside the bottles of formula, I will have beaten my last record of 6 months. Maybe someday I will get this down.

One Month

Today our baby is one month old. Today is also the first day I have given him a bottle, with formula in it. It was not an easy decision to come to. The last month has been wonderful, but also full of fussing and a never ending demand to feed. It has been, at times, completely overwhelming and frustrating. There were days that I literally spent 90% of my waking time with a baby attached to my chest! And that makes for a grumpy, hungry mom, especially when the baby doesnt seemed to be satisfied after all that work.

Now, as I type this, he is sleeping peacefully on the bed next to me. There has not been a time when he has slept this soundly, at least not in the last week or two. At the beginning of this nursing adventure, he had days when he would sleep for an hour or two. Recently it has only been when he is in the car seat while we are running errands. I cant believe I waited this long to give him what he wanted: more food! I really wanted to exclusively nurse this time though. The last 3 babies have all been bottle and breastfed, at the advice of my doctor who decided that they were just not gaining weight at a good rate. Then there was the suggestion that maybe my doctor was just a "formula pusher" and my milk would have been enough if I had just hung in there a little longer (not that I quit nursing when I started bottlefeeding). So this time I held out, taking all the nursing advice I could, convinced I could do it. Apparently, I cant. The determining factor was that today, at one month, our little guy is not back up to his birth weight. I am thankful that my husband helped to make this decision and has been encouraging this whole time.

It makes my chest hurt (both figuratively and literally) knowing that I just cant provide enough milk to sustain him. It shouldnt, but it does, make me feel like the littlest bit of a failure. On the other hand, I had the joy of sitting quietly with my infant, who was smiling and cooing, after taking 2 oz after nursing, and seeing the complete change in his disposition. I thought he was just an angry baby... He must have been hungry! And now he is sleeping.

I have several drafted posts from the last 6 months waiting to be published, some complete, some started and then forgotten. I will catch up someday. But let me at least say thank you for all your prayers during this pregnancy and delivery. They did not go unheard and my prayers were answered.

New Baby

So while my newborn is sleeping, I have managed to find a few minutes to let everyone know what Im up to and where I am in my walk. If I hurry, I may even get this done in one sitting!

It has been months since the last post. I dont think that I posted it before, but I was pregnant for the majority of this year. We kept is a secret until April, at which point I was past the first trimester and into the second. As pregnancies go, this one was great. I was able to be fairly active this summer, and in the end, gained about 35 lbs. Not bad, but I started out heavier than I should have been also. But thats another subject all together....

Well, now to announce the arrival of our newest son, Liam! He is nearly 3 weeks at this posting and a lovely little baby. He cries ferociously, eats ferociously and thankfully, sleeps very well at night! Maybe we should have named him "Lion" ;)

What I really wanted to share about this pregnancy and delivery is the many ways that God has answered our prayers! It has been trying, but amazing, to see God's hand in all of this.
First off, my blood pressure, which went up and was acting erraticly after having the last baby by c-section, leveled off at perfect readings in the third trimester! When does that happen?! Usually, blood pressure gets WORSE the further into your pregnancy. So that was an answered prayer!
Second, I was able to VBAC, which is so awesome and Im so happy I didnt have to go thru another c-section. No breech baby. The recovery from that was awful and just not the way I prefer to deliver children. So second prayer answered!
Third, labor was just not progressing, so I had to have pitocin, which is not normally recommended with a VBAC, but my doctor was confident it would be fine for me under the circumstances, so he insisted we go forward. The baby came VERY quickly, and in fact, I strongly believe that they could have cut the dosage by 75% and it would have been plenty. Liam was born in under 2 hours from the first of the pitocin and I would say that I was barely having contractions before, so from 0 to 100 mph in 2 hours is FAST!!! Had he been a 10 lb baby like the last 2, we would have both been seriously hurt I believe. But praise God, he was my smallest baby yet, weighing in at only 8.6! So delivery, while fast and frenzied, was still relatively easy! What, thats 3 answered prayers? WOohoo!
On top of those MAJOR things that we had been praying about, there were other things that we were concerned about and that God took care of. We were worried that he would have the cord wrapped, just like ALL of his big brothers (thankfully, the first two it was not a problem and the third it actually prevented him from turning and resulted in the c-section) but he was NOT wrapped and in fact the doctor commented that his umbilical cord was short! Before that, we didnt get lab results back for the Strep B test and that was something that had caused a lot of digestive and diaper rash problems for our 2nd, after having antibiotics in utero, and since we never got results back, we didnt have to have any antibiotics.

There we so many ways that God revealed Himself in this pregnancy and delivery. I have struggled with wanting to honor God by submitting myself completely to him, all aspects of my life, and reproduction is certainly a big part of that. I can see that He did all this for His glory and Im awed by it. I want to be obedient in this and to me, that means accepting the possibility of having a BIG family. Im okay with that. I just hope that I can use it to minister to other people and to lovingly accept their criticism, chastisement, and generally rude comments.

I hope you will find something to glorify God for in this story. Or at the very least, to stop and look at things in your life and give thanks for the things that came to be by the way God worked.

What to do with burned brownies...?

Well make chocolate bread pudding, of course! Earlier this summer, I made my favorite brownies but substituted natural sugar for the regular white sugar. You wouldn't think there would be a difference, but boy was there ever! They just wouldn't set up! They were oily, hard and way darker than they should have been. I considered them completely inedible, not even good enough to chop up for ice cream add-ins. Then I decided that I should try to use them, not dump them, and thought that maybe they would work in a bread pudding, if I let them soak a REALLY long time in the batter before baking. And hooray, it turned out great! WARNING: This should NOT be considered a breakfast food. It is far sweeter than a regular bread pudding and SUPER chocolately. This would make a great dessert to serve to company - custardy, chocolatey and with a scoop of vanilla ice cream!

Brownie Bread Pudding

Birch Tree Tapping

In April, I had the opportunity to take a class for teachers about teaching environmental subjects - habitat, resource preservation, environmental impact. These were all aimed at elementary kids, and when we completed the class, each of us was given a collection of curriculum for teaching these things to K-12. It was really neat. The class was centered on birch tree tapping, which I had always wanted to know how to do. Infact, most of my interest in ever visiting New England was to learn how to tap maple trees! I was thrilled to be able to learn how to use the trees in my own area, and how to get my kids involved and interested, from a scientific perspective. Explanation out of the way, here are some pictures of our first attempt at tapping birch trees!




From top to bottom: My group-mates at the class, Betsi and Kathy;
Betsi with Cal and Ed, tapping our first tree after the class! ;
Cal tasting the fresh sap;
one of our tree set ups.

I learned a lot about making syrup and tapping trees. Initially, we used my wine making supplies to collect the syrup. We now know that glass, while sterile, will heat up in even a small amount of sunlight, which makes the sap cloudy. Sap needs to be kept cool, and collected daily. Only use food grade buckets for collecting! Second, we were able to keep our taps from the class, which gave us three, and after all the cooking down, everyone ended up with a pint or so of syrup (divided four ways, collected for a week, about 3 gallons collected daily). We did find that it was a higher sap-to-syrup ratio than we had expected, partly because you cannot cook birch down to the consistency of maple or table syrup without sacrificing taste. Cooked down at just under 200 degrees F, it was pretty time consuming. We also discovered that the recommended tapping times vary greatly by area - farther north in the Matsu Valley, they tap in April, and southward in Haines, they tap in early March. We figure that for the peninsula, we should start no later than mid-march and finish mid-April. We caught the season a little late this year (and we had an especially warm spring) and so only tapped for one week.


Recently, my family used up the last of our syrup (goes pretty fast with 5 people eating pancakes!) and it was DELICIOUS! I am ready for next year, already planning how many taps, buckets and hoses to order, as well as planning a better set up for cooking it down. I am addicted! I cant wait to work this into homeschool - data collection, cooking ratio's, charts, charts, charts!




If we get a good amount of syrup, maybe I can even give some away next year :)

"Stop being the minority!!"

So I just got an email forward, most of which I dont have time to read, but this one was titled "Who reads the Bible?" It was about a gentlemen who sent ABC an email regarding their pro-homosexuality programming and the response he recieved to his letter. Basically, the representative told this man that he should stop reading the bible or using it to direct his moral compass. He said " You are in the minority in this country" and recommended the man follow United States documents, which "clearly" say he should be more accepting of what he thinks is wrong.

Um, correct me if IM wrong, but doesnt our constitution defend the minority? Its so sad that we live in a country where it is wrong for us to discriminate those who are in a racial minority, but its okay for us to offend people's religious beliefs? Isnt that as much of who we are as our skin color? Our gender? When did it become okay to trample other people in pursuit of your own rights? It shouldnt be American, but it has become the norm. It's definitely is not biblical!