Solids for Sammy!

Hanging out in the Tripp Trapp.
He really seemed to like sitting
up higher, more on my level.

For NaNoWriMo, I have uninstalled the Facebook app from my phone. A consequence of this is that I am not posting as many pictures of my adorable son and I know that this makes everyone very, very sad. So here is a photo dump from this week - the week we started solid foods! It's been a lot of fun.

That's a little piece of mango in his pulp.

And it was delicious.

 So we made a big order from our very favorite baby store and got everything we would need. We love our TrippTrapp, the Pulp, and the Dips. The Pulp and the Dips are very easy for Sam to hold and get into his mouth as you can clearly see from the many pictures to follow.

Please enjoy this string of pictures of Sam trying new food. If you scroll quickly it turns into a little movie. 

Obviously, this one is my favorite.

 As ever, please excuse our messy home. Just focus on the adorable baby.

 All in all, Sam seems to really like eating his fruits and veggies!

My Mentally Ill Mishaps : Kitchen Edition

Does your food ever skeeve you out? You are just in the kitchen minding your own business, preparing a meal, when all the sudden your eyes are not seeing the ingredients, but are instead seeing something macabre and terrifying? This could very well be my ugly OCD coming out (yeah, bet you didn't know OCD could manifest by making you obsess over nightmarish things, didcha?) It's a lot like this.

I remember when I was a kid, there was this one time that my dad was fixing hot links. For those uncultured swine out there that don't know about hot links, they have a very strong smell to them while they are cooking. Like hot, greasy, fatty, spicy hot dogs. Only not necessarily good. They are these spicy sausage links. Hot links. It's a thing, I swear. So my dad is cooking hot links and our house smells very meaty. While we are eating at the table, my dad tells this horrific story (that I'm pretty sure is a true story, but I think it might have been just an urban legend. I like to think it is just an urban legend. Anyway.) about these two LDS missionaries who were murdered at a meat processing plant and the only things they ever found were the missionaries name tags. I was unable to eat a hot link for about thirteen years.

Sometimes it's less scary than that. After I worked in the Brookshire's (east Texas grocery chain) deli for six months, I just couldn't work with raw chicken very well. I would do it if I wanted something made with chicken, but once I was done cooking, I suddenly didn't want that chicken dish I just made. I would be able to smell soapy dingy water and burnt grease, just like the deli at closing time. I couldn't shake it until my depression messed with my memory. Or if I eat something new and then I get really sick, I'm forever skeeved out by that food. Chicken sausages. Can't do it. No matter how good the sample may be.

Today, the kitchen creeps struck again. Our local grocery store's butcher counter sells these delicious little monsters called brat burgers. What!? They are amazing. David and I figured that if we bought the brats at Sam's, we could just remove the little sausage casings and then have our own brat burgers for a better price. I pulled one of the casings off a brat, all excited about brat burgers for dinner when my brain switched funny. No longer was I holding a sausage casing, it was a disgusting pork flavored used condom. I nearly ran from the kitchen and hid in my bed. But that's what I would have done when I was sick and, by golly, I'm not sick anymore. I can handle cooking! I can totally unwrap two more brats...It was terrible. I couldn't stop my brain from conjuring up all these ugly, ridiculous images. I fed the cases to the pup because I knew she would find it an awesome treat and what does she care that they are terrifying? She did love them. She ate them right up and then all my brain could think about was my Majzy being a mohel's garbage disposal. I tried to laugh it off, but I couldn't.

I wasn't able to finish preparing our burgers. That will be up to David after he gets home. Has this sort of thing happened to you? I guess it will now that you've read this. Sorry.

This is the kind of thing that I vaguely remember being very ashamed of while I was in the thick of my depression. I think it's important to open up dialogue. While I want there to be less of a stigma for my own sake, in case I fall back down the rabbit hole, I think it can benefit anyone dealing with their own mental illness or neuroses to be more open with and supportive of each other. I don't know.

How do you get your brain back on track in the kitchen?

My Breastfeeding Bust: Failing at Feeding

After Sam's nursing strike (which was the worst. If you think your babe might be striking read up here) my milk never recovered and it wasn't in that great of a place to begin with.

Before we left the hospital after Sam's birth, Sam had lost an entire pound. The doctors weren't worried, or so they said, but they kept talking about it every time they came into our room. It made me a little crazy. We popped open one of the little two ounce formula bottles that they give you to take home and fed it to our little boy. He sucked it down, happy enough, and spit it back up, happy enough. Two ounces was just too much fluid for his tiny tummy. The nurses tried to tell me that everything would be fine; Sam's latch looked good and he was doing a good job nursing, but the damage had been done. I was paranoid.

Once Little Hak was about two weeks old, we had made it through our first growth spurt, my nipples weren't killing me every time he latched and we were rarely supplementing with formula. But Sam's weight was still really slow and we were going to the pediatrician for weight checks and lactation consults. And thus began my dependence on my Medela. I was pumping after I nursed and if I woke up early enough in the morning, I would pump before the boys woke up. I even kept my manual pump handy in the night so that I could pump, quietly, after Sam's midnight meals.

Just as things were really looking up for us, David and I had to rush to the emergency room because I had a crazy pain in my back that made no sense. Blood clots, as it turned out. I was admitted to the hospital and I was there for three days. David would bring Sam to the hospital during the day and I would pump every three hours he wasn't there with me; we cuddled in my bed skin to skin, but there was a definite dip in my output. Once I got discharged and back home, things began to perk up a little, but two weeks later, I was back in the hospital with clots again, bigger and more of 'em. I cried each time I pumped because of how pathetic my pumping output was. By the time I had pumped three times, i had just enough to make a meal for Sam, and at that point he was only eating four ounces at a time.

From then on, we had to supplement every day, three or four ounces. Then the move. Sam went on nursing strike. I was too busy to pump like I needed to, even though I was pumping for four hours every day. I couldn't keep up. After the strike ended the best we did was about half breast milk, half formula, but we didn't do our best very often. And I was trying everything. Oatmeal, brewer's yeast, flax seed, More Milk Plus, Milky, tea, pumping as often as possible, and nursing as much as I could. I couldn't pump more than two ounces at a time even when Sam hadn't nursed and I felt sore.

So here we are, two months later, and I have finally thrown in the towel. Well, I'm trying to throw it in. I tried to pack up my pump yesterday and I was just overwhelmed with sad. I even cried. So I brought it back out and pumped out a measly quarter ounce. I find that I am having a very difficult time letting go of this.

I think it's an identity problem. While I was still pregnant, I was really looking forward to a natural birth, the pain and all. I was excited about it. I felt intrinsically connected to some deep well of womanhood as I prepared for my son's birth. But I had a c-section. I felt a little cheated. More on that later. But as a nursing mother, I found that connection. I was nurturing my child like some kind of bra-less, wild Mother Gaea.  But I haven't been able to do that either. None of this is to say that I am ungrateful for the age we live in with safe surgery and good nutrition for my child despite my body's failings, but it does feel like a failing. It does feel like I'm not woman enough for my Sam.

I don't know. I don't feel shamed by other moms or whatever for choosing formula, but I feel a deep, sad jealousy. Sam holds onto his bottle and eats, happy as can be, and I'm jealous of it. It's like when David was dating other girls, I was devastated, but under that I was just hoping that he would be happy. I felt like that with Sam's bottle. Then I immediately felt like a crazy person.

I guess at the end of the day, I'm glad he's happy and healthy, but still...

Any moms out there who have felt this way? Or am I just a crazy person? Any tips for getting over the breast milk blues, as I will henceforth call this?