Sixth Month as a Mom

Happy 6 months birthday to CC!!

I’m not sure why, but back when CC was younger and I was struggling with CC’s fussiness, I’ve always told myself, “It’ll be a lot better when he gets to be 6 months!” Probably because I was so looking forward to a baby who has strong enough neck control and can also interact with me. Now at 6 month-old, CC is way more than just “better”!

My little guy has the cutest smile in the whole world. With his big brown eyes and puffy cheeks, he looks more like a cartoon monkey than a human baby! Did I say I think he’s the cutest baby in the world?!

Six months, marks a tremendous milestone for everyone in this family.

Feeding
Yes, our favorite topic. So after the battle of the bottles in the last two months, he is now happily taking bottle at daycare and at home. But as 6 mo looms around the corner, we decided to break him into formula and solids at 5.5 month. We first started with the popular Similac fussiness and gassy formula. Unfortunately, it makes him more gassy! Not only that, it smells and taste like rotten fish! Who would want to drink that?! Not me, and certainly not Mr. CC! Instead of giving him 3 4-oz bottles of breastmilk daily for daycare, I made 3 bottles of 1:3 formula:breastmilk. So instead of drinking all 12oz, he ended up drinking only 9oz! Well, I might as well just give him 9oz of pure breastmilk then! So that was a defeat. What’s worse is, since we mix formula with breastmilk, we can no longer keep the breastmilk! Very wasteful. So we went and search for another formula. Well, we heard Enfamil is even worse tasting, but Gerber’s Good Start is decent. So we went and bought 8 tiny glasses of Good Start, and did a tasting testing ourselves first.  Hmm…actually decent enough that I would drink it! However, Mr. CC somehow still prefers his breastmilk, so we struggled a little more. Finally, I decided to give him one bottle of pure formula early in the morning. If he drinks it, good. If not, he’ll be hungry enough to drink the 9oz of breastmilk in the later meals. No verdict yet, but at least we won’t be wasting breastmilk!

So that’s the story of formula. I still hope to migrate to not pumping at all during work hours.

Next, the story of solids. We purchased Earth’s Best Whole Grain Rice Cereal with Apple. The first try I mixed it with cold breastmilk from the fridge and it ended with a disastrous puke. But every baby love cereal!! Well, not Mr. CC…until the second try, when we really warmed up the sweet formula. This time, he was all chilled and laid back, sitting on his lamb chair, opening his mouth when the spoon is near, like the King of Persia! The next few tries are not exactly so successful, but definitely better than formula.

School Activities
I never thought someone so tiny has so much to do at school! In the 2 months in school/daycare, CC has already made some incredible art works! He finger painted his brother Twilight, made some cutsie foot prints, and foot mold!

Less Than 99.99% Mommy

After breastfeeding exclusive for 5.5 months, CC had formula for the first time. He usually takes 4-oz of breast milk only at any given feeding from the bottle during the day. So now, I changed the content to 1-oz formula, 3-oz breast milk (25% formula). Surprisingly, for someone who is always super picky, he took it well. However, he seems to stop at 3-oz, instead of finishing the whole 4-oz. Needless to say, I felt cheated! “Could’ve just given you the 3-oz of breast milk instead of wasting .75-oz of breast milk and .25-oz of formula!” I think he would’ve taken all 4-oz of breast milk, if it were all BM.


And yes, when you’ve been hauling a bag of contraptions day-in and day-out to work, and pump diligently only to get 9-oz daily, you do nickel and dime the baby.


Part of me was really happy he took formula so easily (trust me, it smelled gross!) Part of me felt slightly guilty of depriving him 25% of his god-given rights to natural nutrients.
The societal pressure on Moms to breastfeed is acting up subconsciously, even for someone with strong self-will like me.


Coincidentally, I was reading an article on Golden Gate Mother’s Group magazine, about why we think breastfeeding should be easy, and what Moms wished someone had told them before they started the whole process. One of the most common sentiment was, “I wish someone has told me, while breastfeeding is invaluable, it is NOT at any cost.”


Note the key words here, “Not at any cost.”


I have mommy friends who stressed over breastfeeding for weeks until they finally gave up, full of guilt. I also have mommy friends who are so desperate they were willing to buy other people’s breast milk! To think feeding your baby someone’s bodily fluid! Yuck! Why do we think it’s better than formulated nutrients?


It is absolutely scary.


What people don’t tell you is, the journey of breastfeeding is tough. Exclusively breastfeeding makes it even worse. Our society has always given parents a lot of pressure in every possible way. But this one, breastfeeding, it’s all Moms’. We feel, short of allowing the baby to eat us away for 6 months 100%, we are being bad mothers.


Motherhood is NOT measured by how much you breastfed.


I know the WHO and AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) promote exclusively breastfed up till 6 months, and continues to breast feed until 1.5 years. In a perfect world, that would be everyone’s dream. But I have a feeling that these guidelines are written by people who are either non-Moms, Moms who don’t work, or Moms who just had an easy time breastfeeding.


Let me start from the top.


Your “suffering” starts at day 1. After the work of labor or c-section, you are immediately told to hold and feed your baby. And most importantly, “Make sure he has a good latch and make sure he’s swallowing!” What does that suppose to mean? If you think 3 hours of breastfeeding class can teach you how to do it perfectly, you are WRONG! We were lucky to have stayed in the hospital for 4 days, and therefore had numerous nurses teaching us the correct latching method. But not everyone has that “luxury”.


Then comes day 3-4, when your milk really starts to “come in”. “What? You mean the baby wasn’t drinking milk in the last couple days?” No, it was colostrum, aka liquid gold. But now when your milk really starts to come in, you will feel the engorgement. Best way to describe it is having two lead-feel-alike half balls bolted on your chest, making it hard even to breath. Yah, it was that good.


Then you go home, and the hard work has just started. You feed around the clock, every 2 hours. You feed for 15 minutes each side, diligently writing the feeding time down, and then burp for another 10 minutes, diaper him afterwards because most likely he’s soiled during the feeding, put him to sleep, and repeat after another hour or so. Good times.


Then at 3 weeks, you were told to introduce bottles and start pumping. But of course you have no idea how often to pump and when to pump. So now instead of just feeding him and getting it done in 30 minutes, you now have to pump while he’s a sleep. And let’s not forget bottle/nipple washing and sterilization. Your life revolve around your little man’s oral intake.


Then you say, “Oh, I’m not going back to work yet, so I’ll just do bottles once a week. At most twice.” Well…at 6 weeks post-partum, halfway through your maternity leave, you realized your baby now completely refuse bottles. Who was it that told you they’ll have nipple confusion and will prefer bottle instead of you?!!!


So you stress over the bottle feeding, have him throw fits when someone else tries to feed him, and have him looking at you with those big puppy eyes, pleading to have you instead of the bottle. Meanwhile, your pumping schedule is now all wrong, your milk ducts start to clog up, when you’re not feeding him you are trying to get the clogs out. Your life now is full of hot showers, hand-expression, cabbage leaves, peppermint, and lots and lots of PAIN. So much pain you almost wish to just stop breastfeeding altogether.


But he is still not taking the bottle, so that will mean he will starve…You now wish you never started breastfeeding and just went straight to formula.


Then, finally, you had to go back to work. He goes to daycare/nanny, it took him few days to learn to eat from the bottle, and he lost some weight in the meanwhile. It pains you to part with him every morning, it pains you even more to see him at the evening, looking much thinner. All the while, every day you carry an extra bag to work, just so you can pump at work. And hopefully your work place has a fridge to keep those precious yummies.


In a few weeks, your little man is now happily eating from the bottle. In fact, he’s eating A LOT from the bottles. More than you can pump at work. You start to dip into the freezer stash, and wished you had pump more during when you had over-supply problem. Every day your little man is eating more than you can pump. Every day you try to count calories but this time you want to hit 3000 Cal/day. Every day you see the digits on the scale goes down when you’re on it, but not necessary go up when your little man’s on it. Where did it all go???


Now at 2 weeks short of 6 months, you gave in. Yes that was me. I marched into BabiesRUs, spending money on food for CC for the first time. And for the first time in his life, he is no longer 99.99% Mommy.


Again, this journey was very very very challenging.


At any given time, I always tell myself, “Just one more day.” And the one more day has come to be 5.5 months. It probably will continue to go on for a few more days, weeks, or (do I dare to say it?!!) months. But now I have the comfort of knowing, even if I just vanished tomorrow, CC will not starve. He may not be 99.99% Mommy any longer physically, he will always be 100% the love of my life.


And that, is priceless, even more so than a few ounces of liquid gold.


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P.S. For all the Moms-to-be, I beg of you, PLEASE do not stress yourself over breastfeeding. Do what you can, go one day at a time. And remember, it is perfectly okay to do formula!!

Blessed

Today, I got my major dose of reality check.

I was searching for formulas and I came across this blog site: http://wwwourunexpectedjourney.blogspot.com/

At first I was just reading without much thought. I mean, it was just a blog site of a mom of three. Then, I realized it's a mom of a Down Syndrome baby boy.

I always have a soft spot in my heart for people with DS, and their families.

From a young age of a few months until I was 4, I had a nanny across the street from my house. Every day I would go over to her house while my parents go to work. She was my favorite nanny and I am pretty sure I was her favorite baby too. She, has a daughter with DS. Her name means "beautiful", and she is truly a very sweet and beautiful girl (and now lady). She was always very sweet to me, and she "protects" me when her brothers teased me. SHe was an older sister I never had.

Last year, they came to my wedding banquet in Taiwan. It meant a lot to me.

A year ago when I was pregnant with CC and was going through all the genetic testing, I knew I would never be able to keep the baby if he were to have DS. Not because of any prejudice, but because I didn't think (and still don't) I am strong enough to raise a baby so special. I do have full respect for any parents who choose to take on that challenge in life.

Amidst all the complains about how CC is not sleeping through the night still at 5.5 months and how he posed such a challenge of taking bottles, today, I had a hard case of reality check. If those are the only "issues" we're having with CC, we are truly blessed. Life could be a lot more challenging and there are people smiling and marching forward, even with those challenges.

Fifth Month as a Mom

I am quite ashamed. Although I have all the excuses in the world, I definitely have been less than diligent in keeping CC’s journal alive. Actually, come to think of it, this is MY journal which CC has hijacked!

Back to the subject.

Here is the 5th month as a mom.

Daycare


After the fiasco of resisting bottles, looking like poor orphan when Mommy leaves every morning, and eventual first illness, we have definitely turned a new page when it comes to daycare now. CC got a new primary teacher (Yoohoo! we secretly didn’t love the first one.) who absolutely adores him! All the other teachers love hanging with him as well! More importantly, he is enjoying daycare so much, sometimes I think he cries in protest on our drive home! Unfortunately, we may only be at the daycare for three more months…But that’s another topic.

Sleep Training and Battle of the Bottles


One of the most dreaded event in my life. Not because of anything else, but the need to have him “cry it out”. Part of me knows his cry is nothing but words of protest and not psychological trauma, it was still the hardest 45 minutes (or however long) in my life. But, such training wasn’t without any benefit. While he has yet to be sleeping through the night every night (and this is most likely because his demand for milk is surpassing my ability to supply him), he has learned to drink from the bottle very well. We no longer have a starving baby in school! We have also learned to decipher his “words” a little better. Well, money very well spent.

New Job


Well, this is “Fifth month as a MOM”, not “Fifth month as a baby”, right?! Yes, New job. I started a new job with a 4.5 mo. Busy? Most definitely. Crazy? Just ever so slightly. Mistake? Of course not. While I understand my new duty as a Mom and would do everything to play this role well, I also understand I am first and foremost, an individual. I’ve been wanting a new job, something in product marketing, for the last two years. This is my dream-come-true and therefore I will work extra hard to keep it a reality. Yes people have sarcastically teased about how nutty I was to do so, but what else is more important than being happy?! So now one months into the job, I am, still undoubtedly, very content with my choice.