Return to Work

It's getting to be that time. I start work February 12th!

I'm kind of looking forward to it because I'll only be working 60% and our family is pitching in to watch the kids. Unfortunately, once you have three kids most moms stop working all together because of daycare costs. But with family helping I can work a bit :)

I'm taking Mon, Wed, Thurs off. And Robert is taking Tues and Thurs off. Thursday's will be nice!  We'll both have the day to hang out together! My dad will be taking Fridays off to help out:)

I'm not completely okay with it. I'm happy with the plan but still a little nervous. I feel better about the work part...I thought I had forgotten everything but over the past few days it has all come rushing back to me :) Phewf! I don't really have a job with a lot of room for error.

My supervisor made it so I can work in the same spot I was in before I left on mat leave and he has arranged my schedule so I have a minimum amount of night shifts. I have 1 between Feb and April :) And the 1 that I have is on a Monday night so Robert will be home the next day.

I'm more nervous about coming up with all the tips and tricks I use throughout the day and making sure my dad knows it all. He is fabulous and a natural with babies so deep down I know he'd be completely able without them....but the mom in me needs to leave a huge essay of a note.  I'm sure he'll have a good chuckle, but follow it the best he can:) I have the perfect sitter:)

Everyone always seems interested in my schedule going from 0 to 3 kids. Here it the start of what I have to tell my dad...

7am Kids wake up, get dressed, breakfast, pack lunches and back packs, free time...in that order.

830am School run.

9am Will bottle and nap.

10am Will and Hayden snack.

12pm Lunch.

1pm Will bottle and nap.

2pm Will and Hayden snack.

3pm School run

330pm Back packs and lunch kits emptied, Sage can snack if hungry, go through any homework and paperwork sent home from school

4pm Will bottle

430pm After free time kids can start homework, practice piano, do extra reading, extra math, or chores.
This will keep them busy while you start supper.

5pm Supper time

6pm Will pyjamas and diaper

630pm Will story, song, bottle and sleep.

730pm Sage and Hayden pyjamas, brush teeth, story, and sleep by 8pm!  Done!!

Now to add the little tidbits of info :s  Poor dad :)

Diaper Bag....Check!

I have been pretty good about not requiring a diaper bag.  Really...I had my purse stuffed full of everything Will could possibly need when he was a newborn and didn't use any of it when we were out and about.

What bothered me more was having a purse bursting with unorganization and things that were never used.  So I became quite good at being a light traveller.  Diapers, Wipes, changing pad, nursing cover.  

Then Will got older and a bit more demanding...Diapers, wipes, changing pad, bottles, snacks, toys...And then we added two more kids to the mix.  They are always asking me to carry something ;)

So...now I needed a diaper bag.  Which is kind of exciting!  I thought I would want one that looks like a normal purse but when I got to looking I didn't.  I went to my IT store Cravings and found a Skip Hop one that I had been eyeing up for $90.  Which isn't bad for a diaper bag from Cravings.  I decided I would leave it and if I was still thinking about it a week later I would buy it.

Then we stopped at Winners and found the same bag for $49!!  I still left it behind to think about it.  After Christmas I was back at Winners.  All the diaper bags were gone except for the one I wanted!!  I took it as a sign and grabbed the last one :) 

Here she is...I love it the print!!  Fun, and trendy and makes me feel like showing off that I'm a mom!  Look at my bag!!

Life Changer 2

Sorry....This is a long one.  But a great read that completely applied to me at the time!

Will and I made it to 9 months before I could give myself permission to stop breastfeeding.  I slowly weaned him and we still nurse at night.  I so agree that I have a special bond with Will...but not because of breastfeeding.  It's also upsetting that there are some people that I have not told that I've weaned him because of what they may think.  

This blog helped so much in allowing myself to realize that I can do what is best for Will and myself without needing permission from everyone else :)

Breast is NOT always best

Note: I'd like to refer everyone to a post I wrote a couple of months ago about the fact that there ARE antidepressants you can take while breastfeeding.


In today’s society, there is a HUGE push towards promoting breastfeeding for babies. The phrase/idea that “Breast is always best” gets thrown around a lot. We say things like “Women who don’t breastfeed are selfish” or “If she cared about her baby, she would breastfeed” or “When I have a patient who chooses not to breastfeed, I walk out of the room muttering ‘Selfish bitch’ under my breath and I hope her uterus falls out”. And yes, I have heard/seen ALL of these things said, the latter was actually by a nurse/lactation educator who was “venting” on a Facebook group). All of these phrases are tossed about in the interests of promoting the health of the new mothers and babies, we are passionate about their health, but we don’t really think about the effect that our passion and our well-intentioned phrases/attitudes and militant campaigns can have on the health of those we say we care about. The saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” applies all too well.

Now, before I go any farther, let me say that I am a HUGE supporter of breastfeeding. I breastfed my first until she was three months old and only stopped because I had to go on antidepressants to treat my PostPartum Depression. I had every intention before that of nursing her as long as she wanted to. I breastfed my second until she weaned herself at 13 months old; that was through the first and most of the second trimester of my current (third) pregnancy. She weaned HERSELF. Now granted, I was just about ready to start weaning her because nursing a child with teeth who used my poor breast as her teething ring was decidedly uncomfortable (especially since they were more tender than normal thanks to pregnancy) and because nursing plus pregnancy was taking a toll on me. But, she ended up weaning herself without any action on my part and I don’t regret one second of letting her nurse for that long and/or through that much of my pregnancy. When I was planning on going back to work (before the Army moved us away from my job), I had planned on pumping. I nurse in public, with or without a cover (and yes, I am still discreet and modest if I am nursing without a cover; you’re probably going to see more boob/cleavange/skin in a Victoria’s Secret ad, at the pool or beach, or even just glancing at someone in anything other than a turtleneck than when I nurse). I don’t think women should feel like they have to go to the restaurant bathroom to breastfeed (how about you take your dinner in there to eat first before suggesting I make my baby eat in a public restroom). I fully believe that there are health benefits to both mother and baby that can only be obtained through nursing/pumping, and that those benefits still occur when nursing beyond the first year. I wish that more pediatricians would truly support mothers who breastfeed instead of being so quick to throw formula samples at them and tell them they need to supplement with formula (no, not all doctors do this, but I personally have known doctors who did, and women whose doctors did this, and it sabotaged their nursing efforts).

Now that we have established that I am very much pro-breastfeeding, let’s establish something else: breast is not always best.

Let that sink in for a second. Breast. Is. Not. Always. Best.

The goal of the “Breast is best” movement is supposed to be promoting the health and well-being of both mother and baby, but what too many breastfeeding advocates who espouse this mindset and embrace this saying fail to take into account is that the health and well-being of mom and babe includes more than just physical health, it also includes mental and emotional health, both of which can be influenced by the decisions a new mother makes (or feels pressured to make) regarding or revolving round breastfeeding.

“Breast is always best” can - and often does – cause a new mother to feel that if she feeds her baby formula instead of breast-milk, she is doing wrong by them. It can cause a huge amount of guilt and a great deal of pressure to continue breastfeeding her baby, no matter what. This can cause her to feel that she cannot (and/or should not) seek help for PPD. It can also cause a huge amount of unnecessary guilt if she does get treatment and has to stop nursing her baby. It did in me.

One of the reasons why I put off seeking help for my PPD more actively until the night it got to a crisis point was because I felt that if I got help, I would surely be put on medication that would mean I had to stop nursing, and I couldn’t do that because breast is best. Once I did get help, I ended up having to take Lexapro and, sure enough, I had to stop nursing my daughter because the medication was not something that was safe for her to get through my breast-milk. I can’t even describe how much guilt I felt over this. I already felt a lot of guilt and felt like a failure just over having PPD and being hospitalized in the first place. I felt that it made me less of a woman and that I was not the mother I should have been, that if I were a better woman and better mother I would have been able to “shake it off”. The additional guilt I felt over having to give my baby a food source that was “sub-par” and was clearly less than the best for her made it that much harder to deal with the emotional and mental turmoil I was already fighting.

What I have come to realize since then is that what is truly best for my baby is for me to be in good health and for me to take care of myself, and that most certainly includes doing what I need to do to take care of my mental health. If a new mom has PPD, it’s not in anyone’s best interests for her to ignore it and continue breastfeeding at the detriment of her mental health all in the name of “breast is best”. It can actually have long-term negative effects on her, her baby, and her whole family if she forces herself to continue breastfeeding at the expense of seeking treatment for a legitimate medical issue.

This does not just extend to women who are struggling with a PostPartum Mood Disorder. Some women, for whatever reasons of their own, don’t want to breastfeed or don’t feel comfortable breastfeeding. And you know what? That’s okay. As with everything else surrounding non-life threatening parenting decisions, as long as they are making a well-informed and educated decision, that’s perfectly acceptable. What is NOT acceptable is to try to bully, badger, and guilt them into breastfeeding anyways. Here’s the deal: if a woman breastfeeds despite a strong desire not to, it CAN cause trouble bonding and cause her to feel resentment towards her baby and herself. As with a mother who breastfeeds at the expense of seeking medical treatment for a PPMD, this can cause lasting negative effects for her, her baby, and her entire family.

I understand that those who push so hard for breastfeeding are for the most part (I won’t speak for everyone) just trying to make sure that new moms and their babies are taken care of and educated. I commend that, I really do. But we as a breastfeeding community have got to realize that our militant efforts are doing the exact opposite of what we are trying for, we are hurting fragile women and children. Being militant is getting us nowhere good, it is only giving us a reputation for being stubborn (in a bad way), obnoxious, and putting down those who choose/feel differently than we do. We talk long and loud about how judgmental people are of us when we choose to breastfeed in public, and then we turn around and do the same thing in judging women who choose not to breastfeed at all.

The choice of how to best care for and feed our babies belongs to each of us and it is a deeply personal decision. We need to respect that and respect that there are women who, for whatever reason of their own, are going to choose to give their babies formula. We need to realize how much unnecessary guilt we are piling on these women and STOP IT. The last thing a mother with PostPartum Depression needs on top of all the negative emotions and thoughts she’s having because of her PPD is to also feel guilty about switching her child to formula. It can do irreparable damage to her to feel this way. I don’t know any breastfeeding advocates who intentionally set out to make women like me feel bad but the sad truth is that it does.

So please, the next time you’re about to start off about how “Breast is always best” and “Women who don’t breastfeed are selfish”, don’t. If your goal is education, educate (gently). Talk about the studies and facts showing the health benefits to both a nursing mother and her baby, but leave the platitudes and catch-phrases where they belong: unspoken. And don’t just be careful with your words, make sure your demeanor and attitude are also non-judgmental.

Breast is not always best. What is always best is for a mother to feel empowered, able, and confident in making decisions that she feels will best take care of her, her baby, and her family. What is always best is for a baby to be fed, nurtured, loved, and cared for. And you know what? Sometimes, that’s going to mean choosing formula over breast-milk.

Life Changer 1

I've been meaning to post a couple articles that were quite life changing for Will and I.  When I first started to feel like something was wrong I scoured the internet for information regarding breastfeeding and postpartum depression.  Everything I found suggested that breastfeeding would only ease depression over time.  Even my doctor and midwife swore that breastfeeding would make our relationship better...not worse.  I even got second opinions!

This article helped so much!!

Breast-feeding may be natural but that doesn’t mean it comes easily to every new mom. A new study in the August edition of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology finds that women who struggle to breast-feed in the first two weeks after giving birth are more prone to postpartum depression.

The study was not able to determine whether depressed moms were more likely to have trouble breast-feeding or whether difficulty breast-feeding sparked depression, but the paper’s authors, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), recommend a two-pronged holistic approach: screen women with breast-feeding difficulties for depression and assess how breast-feeding is going for depressed mothers.

“Clearly all women who have pain breast-feeding are not depressed, but the message for clinicians is to look not just at baby’s mouth and the boob but to also look at mom’s brain,” says Dr. Alison Stuebe, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology in the UNC School of Medicine. “The mind has to be part of the evaluation.”

To reach their conclusions, the researchers relied on data from 2,586 women in the government-funded Infant Feeding and Practices Study II, which assessed issues of feeding and depression. Nine percent of the women fell into the category of “major depression.”

MORE: Pediatricians Should Start Screening for Postpartum Depression

Women who reported dissatisfaction with breast-feeding early on were 42% more likely to have postpartum depression two months after delivery compared with women who enjoyed breast-feeding. Mothers who initially experienced severe breast pain initially and at two weeks postpartum were twice as likely to be depressed as pain-free women. Depression, in general, has been linked to increased pain sensitivity, which may explain why depressed women have more pain while breast-feeding.

The association is unlikely to be coincidental. In a pilot study Stuebe is conducting, she’s found that new moms who report feeling anxious have lower levels of oxytocin — the feel-good hormone that courses through the body while nursing — during feeding. “Is there something hormonal in women who are depressed that makes breast-feeding less enjoyable?” she says.

Stuebe first began wondering about a possible correlation when she was a medical resident in Boston. Lactation consultants in the community would tell her that patients who needed help breast-feeding frequently seemed depressed. When she came to UNC, she suggested administering the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, a 10-question screen that is widely used to gauge depression in new mothers, to women who had problems breast-feeding. (The questions include: “I have been able to laugh and see the funny side of things” and “I have been so unhappy that I have been crying.”) She found an “impressive” number of women were both depressed and having difficulty breast-feeding.

MORE: Child’s Play: What’s So Bad About ‘The Breast Milk Baby’?

Though women are urged to breast-feed for the health benefits it conveys to both mom and baby, a single-minded focus on nursing as the only acceptable choice — without the accompanying support necessary for breast-feeding success — may be putting too much pressure on some mothers.

“We have seen a really positive shift in the attitude of public-health experts away from ‘mothers have to breast-feed, or else’ to ‘we need systems to support mothers in their breast-feeding goals,’” says Stuebe. In January, the U.S. Surgeon General issued a Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding that urged communities, relatives, employers and health providers to pitch in to help women attain their breast-feeding goals.

In fact, wrote Stuebe earlier this year in a blog for the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine, it’s time to recognize that breast is not necessarily best for every woman:

We should not change the public health message that breast-feeding is the physiologic norm. Soft-pedaling medical advice because we might hurt someone’s feelings is patronizing at best, and unethical at worst. Further, backing away from evidence-based medical recommendations for 6 months of exclusive breastfeeding gives policy makers permission to cut back support for mothers and families.

In so many cases, a terrible breast-feeding experience is the downstream effect of subpar maternity care, unsupportive family and friends, poor medical advice and unrealistic expectations of motherhood.

But there is a major difference between a public health message on a billboard and a conversation between a struggling mother and her medical provider.

In routine care, we need to ask each mother how she feels about how feeding is going, and then we need to take time to listen to her response. And if, for this mother, and this baby, extracting milk and delivering it to her infant have overshadowed all other aspects of their relationship, it may be that exclusive breast-feeding is not best for them – in fact, it may not even be good for them.

Says Stuebe: “A lot of the pain that women experience with breast-feeding reflects the now-outdated concept that moms have to power through, no matter what. It is helpful to have a more honest, realistic expectation of motherhood as a whole.”

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/08/05/do-depression-and-difficulty-breast-feeding-go-hand-in-hand/#ixzz2J1PeOFah

Ideas?!

Robert's birthday is approaching fast!

Any ideas on gifts??  Anyone??

He says he doesn't need anything, and doesn't have any ideas for what he wants:s

The kids want to buy him earrings...despite his lack of piercings...

The only idea I've had is to take him to see The Hobbit.

He's a tough one...

New Tunes

I went on an iTunes downloading spree while laying in bed the other night. I made some new discoveries and stuck with some old favorites.

1. Mumford and Sons - Babel
2. Florence + The Machine - Ceremonials
3. Of Monsters and Men - My Head is an Animal
4. Whitehorse - The Fate of the World Depends on This Kiss
5. The Lumineers - The Lumineers

I lucked out and am enjoying all my purchases!

Sold!

I've been wondering what to do with my wedding dress for a long time!

I don't like objects sitting in my house with no purpose. Even if I loved it and it's pretty to look at:) I also don't think it's healthy to attach emotions to inanimate objects. Especially when the day was about Robert and I...not my dress.

But still...even knowing these things about myself...I just could not figure out what I wanted to do with it. So it sat in my closet and I would sigh and think about our special day and admire my dress.

I thought about turning it into a quilt. But could you imagine having to clean it?!

I listed it on kijiji a coupe days ago and to my surprise someone wanted to come see it after it had only been posted for an hour!  She came by last night with her maid of honor to try it on. And she looked gorgeous!!! It made me feel so good to see it go to someone who loved it as much as I did. I haven't had any regrets or thought about the emptiness in my closet once (like I feared I would).

I know to some it's just a dress...but I'm happy that I took my time in deciding what to do. It took years! Even last night I was afraid I might tell her that I couldn't let her have it :s Until I met her:)

I'm proud of myself and feel good!