There's a highchair in my dining room

There's a highchair in my dining room, and a big boy sitting in it, and I don't know where the time has gone. Wasn't I just pregnant? Didn't I just give birth? How has half a year  gone by since Cillian and I first locked eyes??? I sound like a broken record, but time is really flying by too fast.

In a couple weeks Cillian will (hopefully) enjoy his first solid food. We are all prepared physically: bowls are purchases and washed, highchair is assembled and in place, cereal has been purchased. It's the mental that is the problem: I know that as soon as he takes his first bite, we will be taking our first step towards weaning.

Yes, I know, I know. These first few months are just an introduction to solids, and his full nutrition is still going to be coming from my milk, but as soon as he starts solids, I'm not his only form of food. I should be excited for this, but I'm actually fearful and weepy.

Introducing food is going to be our chance to show Cillian how to have a healthy relationship with food.  Chris and I don't always have that healthy relationship with food, but Cillian is our little blank slate.  He has so much potential, and we both feel it's so important to teach him through example that food is meant to be enjoyed, but not overindulged.  This might be our most difficult task as parents.  Now that he is watching every single thing that goes into our mouths with fascination, it's time to look at what we are actually putting into our mouths.

Project clean eating starts now.

Changing my point of view

While chatting with my chiropractor today during a treatment, we got on the topic of nighttime feedings.  He is a father of two boys and works at Mount Sinai hospital, the largest birthing hospital in Canada.  He sees a lot of very pregnant ladies, who inevitably complain about sleep problems late in their pregnancies.  We discussed human nature, and how he believes the last month before delivery, when you can't sleep, is your body's way of preparing for all those sleepless nights with a newborn.

Only, you can't prepare for sleepless nights.  No matter how much people try and explain what it's like to get up every two hours to feed a tiny baby, you have no idea how hard it is until it happens.

When Cillian came home from the hospital he wasn't latching on to nurse.  Chris and I would set our alarm for that first week, and every two or three hours we would drag ourselves out of bed, Chris would feed Cillian with a tube and I would pump milk for the next feed.  We would put on CP24, or episodes of New Girl or How I Met You Mother from our PVR.  By the end of the first week we were in and out of bed in about 25 minutes.  I would reset the alarm, and we would get up somewhere between 90 minutes and two hours later and start all over again.  It was hard work, but we worked together and our delirium helped us move from feed to feed.  All of it is a blur.

As the weeks wore on, Cillian started sleeping longer and longer stretches, until he would go down at 7:30pm and sleep until 6:00am.  I was so excited that he was sleeping so well, and I thanked my lucky stars for a baby that loved to sleep as much as I did.  And then the gas pains started, and my amazing sleep turned into me suffering from PTSD from waking up to a baby screaming like he was being tortured.  I began to grow angry that my sleep was being disturbed, I was irritable during my middle of the night nursing sessions, and I started to be resentful towards Chris, since he didn't have boobs and couldn't feed Cillian. This middle of the night anger wasn't helping me fall back asleep after I fed, and I would wake up exhausted.

Something had to give. My sister-in-law Katie lent me Mayim Bialik's fascinating book on attachment parenting and I started reading it during the afternoons while Cillian would nap on me after having a snack.  She basically said that she changed her attitude toward nighttime feeds, and everything changed.  She just decided one day to stop being upset, or angry that your baby needed to eat/be soothed/have their diaper changed in the middle of the night, and instead feel honoured that you created this little life, and they sometimes need help getting through the night.  This might sound hokey to you, but to me it made all the sense in the world, and starting that same night I changed my attitude.  I looked forward to Cillian waking up for his first feed of the night, and instead of harbouring anger, I cuddled him as I got our Boppy pillow ready for a nurse.  Two weeks later, if I wake up in the night and Cillian is still asleep, I secretly hope he wants to wake up to feed so I get to spend some quiet time with him.

The moral of this story? I'm not really sure, but I do hope that Cillian will continue to cry out if he needs me, whether it be in the middle of the day, or in the wee, small hours of the morning.

Happy Friday!

Chris and Cillian tube feeding during Cillian's first week at home.

Five months!

Our big, little boy is five months old today!!!

Again, I cannot believe five months have passed.  If I said that last month you were turning into a little boy, I really, really mean it this month.  You have started to laugh without coaxing now, and you  find it especially funny when I have my hair in a ponytail and it bounces towards you.  Your position of choice is standing on someone's lap, or being held in a sitting position.  Being held cradled is now only for nursing, although you now much prefer lying down to nurse.  Your "excited legs" come out whenever you get to lie on your back, and they really get going when you recognize someone.  You are becoming great at playing by yourself, but you always prefer someone to play with.  This week we tried you on a swing for the first time, and you loved it.  I can see many a park day in our future.

Your likes: Sophie the giraffe is still your number one friend, but Sophie the teething ring, and the Lifefactory teething rings are a close second.  You love being in the Ergo carrier, or in mommy's arms, so you can see everything. You could listen to as many books as we would be willing to read, and you really take the time to study the illustrations, as well as our mouths as we are reading the stories.

Your dislikes: You aren't great at putting yourself to sleep for naps these days, but you have nice, long naps if you are nursed or rocked to sleep at naptime.

Mommy and Daddy just can't believe how big you are getting, and we can't wait to see how much you will grow by the time you turn half a year next month!!! We love you Cillian.

That time I gave up dairy and found a new baby.

So, I've been away for a while. I can give all sorts of excuses of where I've been, but the truth is I've had a screaming baby. It's been tough, I've been exhausted, and the last thing I wanted to do was sit in front of my computer and write anything.

Cillian, starting his St. Pat's cheer early.

My sweet, sweet boy has been having tummy pains.  He would go from the happiest baby in the world, to screaming and withering in pain as soon as I would put him down to sleep.  If I managed to get him to fall asleep, he would wake up shortly afterwards screaming.  His belly was constantly rock hard, he started to fuss and pull as he nursed, and his poops became so explosive we could barely contain them. No one at our house got any sleep, everyone was irritable, and I felt so helpless.  I got used to being woken up every hour or so at night to Cillian screaming in pain, and we tried every trick in the book to try and get rid of his gas.  We burped him for extended periods of time after eating, I changed the way I was nursing, we used exercises to get him to pass the gas.  After an especially bad screaming session one Sunday afternoon (3 hours of screaming in gas pain) we called the after hours clinic at our doctor's office and asked if we could use gripe water, or if they had any other tips.  The only advice they could give us was to wait it out, he would eventually outgrow it, and to make sure we were getting support, because they know it's hard to live in a house where a baby screams.

The problem is that I didn't believe that Cillian was just suffering from colic.  His symptoms didn't seem to fit the bill, especially because he appeared to be screaming in pain.  I would do leg exercises to pump the gas out of him, and even after getting an insane amount of farts out of him, he would still scream in pain.

And then we found blood in his diaper.  It was Oscar Sunday, so we called the after hours on call doctor (Thank you Canada and OHIP) and he said the likely culprit for blood in his diaper was a dairy intolerance.  I was recommended to take all dairy out of my diet and see if his symptoms improved.

Within 48 hours he stopped screaming, his diaper rash went away, and his poops went back to normal. He started sleeping better, and just became an all around happier baby.  We went to see our family doctor, and then a pediatrician the week after we found the blood, and it was confirmed through the elimination diet that he has a diary intolerance that he will likely outgrow by twelve months.

So what does this mean for me? It means I have seriously cleaned up my diet.  You would be shocked to find out how many products contain dairy.  I have chosen to completely eliminate it in any form, so no milk, yogurt, butter or ice cream, but also all the hidden dairy that hides in processed foods too.  The first few days were hard because I didn't realize how much I was relying on cheese and milk to fill me up with fatty protein, so I was pretty starved.  I was so desperate to help Cillian with his gas pains, that I cut out the dairy without any research or proper stocking of my pantry.  Within a few days I found that my body started to feel different, better and slimmer without dairy in it.

So what happens now? The doctor recommended cutting dairy completely out of my system, and Cillian's diet,  until he is eight months old.  If the symptoms don't return, I can add it back into my diet.  They are hopeful he will be able to "stomach" dairy eventually.

The moral of the story? Two weeks into the dairy elimination diet I accidentally ate some cheese.  That night my belly bloated out and was rock hard.  The gas was awful, probably the kind of gas that poor little Cillian has been dealing with for the past few months.  The following day Cillian fussed all day, his poops became looser, and he had a lot of trouble going down for naps.  The proof was in the pudding.