Coach Kirstin

We officially made it to 9 weeks and celebrated a 2 month birthday. Most importantly, we are sleeping 7.5/8 hours a night with the occasional 10 sprinkled in.  Mostly I think it's because of cute PJs. In reality it's probably a lot of learning to self soothe. The Miracle Blanket also helps. A LOT. She is figuring out how to use her limbs, which means she busts out of the swaddle. Quickly. She and Dad do leg "exercises" after bath time, which encourages this. She is also learning to self soothe with her hand. Basically she attempts to put the whole thing in her mouth. So there is a lot of drool and outfit changes.  She has become super observant of the world around her. She prefers to sit forward and watch, though we are still working on body/ head control. So the boobs make great head rests while sitting in my lap. There are also "words" for every thing we do. Our conversations aren't great but we're working on it.  ...

Practicing our outfit changes I actually had a lot to write about for the first few days of this week. I made it to the gym. Twice.  Never knew that would be so hard. Getting to the gym At the gym Trying to leave the gym We had a meltdown at the store and didn't get to pick out any Father's Day cards. We made it through our first bath and getting dried off with no tears, though that only happened the once.  I was trying to reduce my formilk to reduce her spit ups by pumping before feeding her. Apparently the formilk is really sweet and if they don't get enough hind milk (which has more fat) it can cause digestion issues. So I pumped about an oz ahead of feeding her for about 2 days and then realized it was 44 hours without poop. So went back to feeding normally, a few very stinky farts and a couple hours later we had a very stinky and full diaper. We actually decided not to go out last Friday because we were anticipating it.  I went to s...

So we had our first growth spurt.  I thought it might be happening because she started sleeping a lot more than usual and going to sleep a lot easier.  I thought we were out of the woods until my sister in law mentioned that they usually cluster feed with growth spurts.  Saturday wasn’t too bad but she didn’t sleep for very long stretches Saturday night and by Sunday she was feeding every hour and intermittently sleeping.  Chris can’t really help much when she is cluster feeding but about 4 p.m. he came up to her room and brought a glass of wine.  He just said “she may not think you are but you are a really great mom.”  That was probably the best thing he could have said and done at that moment.  And then about 6:30 she fell asleep.  We normally have bath at about 7:15/30 so I was waiting until she woke up to do the bath.  But she just kept sleeping until almost 10, towards the middle of Game 6 of the Stanley Cup.  I fed her and s...

At least once a day, closer to every time I feed her and she sleeps milk drunk in my arms, I think how amazingly perfect she is. And that I have no fucking clue what I am doing. I feel like this is the most important thing I wil ever do (after all it is a little human life that could grow up to be a serial killer if I mess this up) and you are just supposed to know what to do. Thank god for the internet, my amazing stepmom and my amazing sister-in-law. The internet gives you lots of wacky information but can also be very helpful. My family has talked me down off the ledge on more than one occasion and just generally helped me to feel like I might have this moving in the right direction.  The husband also gets props for tolerating my moodiness (this is a general life thing but in the scope of being responsible for a tiny human it probably becomes even more crazy).  It doesn't mean I don't doubt every decision I make and re-think many of them. The biggest one right now is s...

A friend posted a while back "they have place to take your dog for a nail trim, why not my baby?"  I can now see the value in that. I have tried numerous occasions to trim her nails, I have bought 3 different types of nail files and finally after 4.5 weeks I had the courage to trim her nails. I needed a drink after that. She was great, per usual it's timing. I did it after she ate and was nice and milk drunk.  We have been working through what we think is a bit of gas. So like good hippies we found the natural solution of catnip and fennel...yep.  It tastes like black licorice. The first time giving it to her was a little rough on both of us. She had only tasted breast milk up to that point so I can assume black licorice was not the ideal taste.  It seems to help so we shall see. Up there with hippy things of using reusable diapers, I decided to encapsulate my placenta.  Yep I have capsules by my bed (which are almost gone) of my placenta.  I took ...