Time for a Sippy Cup?

Wiggle Bean is just over 7 months old but she does not hold her own bottles.  I think this is more out of laziness (because she knows I will do it for her, smart on her part!) than the lack of ability to hold it on her own. That being said, I think it might be time to get her a sippy cup or transition her to a regular big girl cup.  

*** Disclaimer!!! No alcohol was consumed by Wiggle Bean, I do not condone giving alcohol to minors***


Every time I have a cup, soda can or anything else that one would consume liquid out of, she makes a dive for it.  I have given her a cup with a few drops of water in it and she has no trouble tipping it up and trying to drink out of it.  I am not sure if she has ever actually drank out of a cup or if she just ends up wearing it but she sure gives it her all.


One day last week, I forgot the lids to the Medela bottles that I use for pumping.  I ran to the store and purchased the Nuby No-Spill Sippy Gripper Cup to store my milk in for the day.  I figured it would be good since she will eventually need a sippy cup anyway.   I really like the cup, especially the no spill feature but I do not think that she is quite ready for that type of spout yet.  I think that the Pressure sensitive Vari-Flo spout might be to different that her bottle for a starter cup.  Also, I would actually say it is spill resistant rather than "no-spill" because I can tell you from experience, if the cup is dropped (thrown) on the floor, it does force the valve open and some liwuid is spilled. 

Guess I am now on the hunt for a different cup design to see what will work for her so that we can do away with bottles.  Don't get me wrong, I love our Dr. Brown's bottles but man I would love to not have to wash all those parts all the time. 

All the shopping  is one of the best parts of being a new mom!  There is nothing hubby can say about it either, after all it is for the baby! 

How can you deny this face anything?

How Do You Balance Being a Mom, a Wife and an Individual?

There never seems to be enough hours in the day to be everyone that I need to be.  How does one person find the time to be a great mom, attentive wife, capable employee and still have time to be herself?

My day starts at 5:00 A.M. (when Wiggle Bean does not get us up early).  I get up and shower for work.  Then I start the wife duties, I make fruit smoothies for breakfast for my husband and myself and pack our lunches.  Back to mom tasks of washing the baby bottles used the day before and packing her milk for daycare.  By this time my husband is up and in the shower, I might get a few minutes to pick out my clothes before Wiggle Bean is awake.  Usually, I bring her in our room while I am getting dressed, doing my hair and putting on my makeup.  Then I feed her, get her dressed and feed the dogs.  We run out of the house around 6:45 (if we are on time!) and get her to daycare.

My husband and I car pool to work.  I drop him off about 7:10 and continue on another 20 minutes to my office.  I work from 7:30 to 4:00with 30 minutes for lunch.  I spend my break periods and lunch period pumping milk for the next day's daycare supply.  After work, I drive to my husband's office and we travel together to pick up Wiggle Bean from daycare.

Once home, I feed the dogs and sort through the mail.  After that, I nurse her.  About 5:45, I start preparing dinner.  After we eat, if I can get her to wait that long,  it is her dinner time.  It usually takes about 30 minutes to get her to eat a decent amount of solid foods.

After her dinner time, we have either play time or bath time.  About 7:45 I get her bed time bottle ready for her.  We go to her room where I read her a story, feed her the bottle and tuck her into bed about 8:30.

She has never really liked to be on her own, so from the time I get home to the time she goes to bed, I am either holding her or playing with her.  When cooking, I move her activity center to the entrance to the kitchen so that she can still see me.

After getting her to bed, I clean up dinner and have about 45 minutes where I try to get on my computer to check email and try to catch up posts from the blogs I follow.  About 9:30, I pump one last time for the night and head to bed around 10:00.  I am usually so tired that I drag myself to bed.  This past Friday, I fell asleep on the couch at 8:30!  Look out, I am a party animal!

Weekends are not much better, there are always chores to be done but I can not go outside and help with them because someone has to be inside to keep an eye on Wiggle (unless she is napping).  It is go go go until the end of the day when I just crash.

My husband and I have not had "date night" since Wiggle Bean was born.  I take that back, we did get to go out to dinner, just the two of us for our 10 year anniversary but we were only gone an hour.

As experienced moms, how do you find time or balance between being mommy, wife, employee and yourself?

Wordless Wednesday #3

 

Not quite ready for summer to end, Rocking our Baby Banz Sunglasses.

For more Wordless Wednesday visit 5 Minutes for Mom. 

BUTT POST!!!

WARNING: This post might contain a topic you consider TMI!! I will try to keep the graphic details to a minimum.

Saturday we had a birthday party to attend for my nephew, who was turning 16. He got a car! I never got a car but that is another story. I like Wiggle to be the cutest on there so we tried on about 12 outfits before making our final selection which was super cute. She was the life of the party (like always!) and everyone loved her outfit and tiny Nike tennis shoes (thanks mom!). OK, back to the topic at hand (or butt!).

All day she was her happy self. She got a little plastic slinky that she decided was a chew toy and spit sling (everyone was covered in spit but since it was Wiggle spit, they though it was cute). I kept an eye on her to make sure she did not get it all the way in her mouth. She drank bottles like normal and when we got home had her usual Organic Sweet Potatoes and Apples.

I noticed that all day Saturday her output (both #1 and #2) was very low. She is usually pretty regular but did not have a BM (bowel movement) all day. She had one Saturday evening and it was more formed than usual and just one "lump". Sunday she had a couple more lump type BMs. I thought it was odd, especially since she is breastfed and everything I read said that breastfed babies rarely get constipated. Sunday she ate organic carrots and a Sweet potato apple mix for lunch and had her normal bottles of breast milk. By Sunday evening she was getting very upset with the hard BM.

About 7:00 I was changing her and while wiping her a drop or two of bloody liquid came out. This totally freaked me out (I admit I am a first time mom and still freak out about everything). I immediately put a call into the on call advise nurse. I told her all that was going on and she said to just watch her and if there was more blood call back and to go to the Dr. if it got worse or she seemed to be in pain.

She appeared fine except for when she was having a movement. She would tense up and get fussy and they were a little smellier than usual. I put some diaper cream on her since she was getting a little red, we like the Boudreaux's Butt Paste since it seems to bother her the least. We tried another brand once before and she literally screamed until I wiped it off.

She does not usually have BM overnight but during our middle of the night feeding, she was a little gassy. I normally do not change her during the night but decided to since she was already more awake that usual and I wanted to keep on top of the problem. There was no BM, but there was a strange jelly/mucus type substance in the diaper and it was mixed with a little blood. There was also a really bad odor. Now, I do not claim to have a baby whose poop smells like roses but this was beyond anything I have smelled from her before. So at 3:00 AM, I decided that I was taking her to the Dr. in the morning even if it was nothing. That is my right as a parent!

She got up for the day at 6:30. I was changing her diaper every 15 minutes because she would have a BM and she did not like them in there. The poor thing cried every time she had to push and cried even more when I would clean her up. These were not small lumps, I would say they were about an inch across and long . Being that small, it must have hurt pushing that out. I did not put any Butt Paste on so that the Dr. could see how it looked.

I called the same day service and they said I could bring her in at 8:00 when they opened. I was right there waiting for them at 8:00 because I wanted my happy baby back. It breaks my heart to see her cry (I know, I have a lot of heartbreak coming over the next 20+ years). We could not see our regular pediatrician but the same day service Dr. was very nice. Albeit a little aggressive in treatment but I was OK with that. He was pretty sure it was just constipation but the blood bothered him a little and he wanted to rule out a intussusception so off we went for X-rays.

For anyone that has not had X-Rays done on their baby, it look painful and did not make Wiggle Bean happy. First they kicked my husband out of the room stating that only one of us could be in there at a time. They they strapped her in this contraption called a Pigg-O-Stat Pediatric Immobilizer and Positioner.
This thing looked so painful and the seat was like a tiny hard plastic bicycle seat. It squeezed her shoulders and pinned her arms over her head (which they made me hold so that it stretch her chest up). Then they wanted me to make her cry harder so that she would take a deep breath in for a better X-Ray picture. What are they trying to do, make me cry!

Now I know that these devices must be necessary, so you have to take fewer X-Rays and limit the radiation exposure but can someone invent something that is less like a torture device and more baby friendly.

Mean while my husband is in the hallway waiting. The X-Rays come up on a screen for the tech to see and he tells my husband that he is not allowed to look at the images (that were clearly visible to him in the hall) until the Dr. can look at them and present them to us. After being kicked out of the room, this made my husband furious but he remained calm.

Then came laying down X-Rays. This made Wiggle Bean less mad but the tech had my husband come back in so that he could assist in holding her still. Not sure why it was OK for both of us to be in the room now but what ever! The X-Rays were clear and we were scheduled for an abdominal ultrasound later in the day.

We took Wiggle Bean home and my husband had to get to work. She was so exhausted that she went to sleep mid feeding. She napped from 10:30 to 1:00 when I had to get her up to go for the ultrasound. This was a much better experience than the X-Rays and she was happy and playful with the tech. Ultrasound was clear so we were sent home with instructions for Glycerin Suppositories (FUN!!!).

I wanted to try an alternative before going the suppository route so I talked to my mom and sister who suggested Karo syrup in water. We tried a little bottle of this and she crank it up. By the evening things were more of a thick past rather than lumps. So it must be working. My only concern now is how do I help her little butt heal. Around the hole is so red and raw that she won't let me near it to wipe her. It was suggested to use a warm water spritzer to rinse then pat dry with a soft cloth. This is working pretty well but I am still unsure what to put on for healing. One person says powder and no diaper cream and the next says absolutely no powder but use cream.

What is a new mom to do?

So here I am asking for advise from more experienced moms that might have a trick or two up their sleeves.

Please help! My Wiggle's Butt is raw and I do not know what to do.

All Tuckered Out

After a couple really rough nights things are slowly getting back to normal.

I talked to daycare and we are working on setting a regular nap schedule. Well as regular as you can get with a 7 month old. She was never really the best at napping and would often go with out any naps during the day.

Now that we are regulating naps at daycare, she seems to be going to bed a little earlier than usual. She has been wanting her bedtime bottle early and falling asleep between 7:30 and 8:00. Sometimes (like in the photo above) she does not even make it to the bottle and passes out while we are waiting for it to finish warming up.

She is waking up more during the night lately, around 3 times now when she was only getting up once, but she is going right back to sleep most of the time.

She is so peaceful when she is sleeping (see below) that it totally makes up for all the nights of interrupted sleep and the 2:30 AM feedings.














(she is not in her own bed, unlike the bed in the photo, her crib is free of excess blankets). She does take her baby bear with her to bed, no matter where she sleeps)

I wanted to thank everyone that made suggestions and gave tips on my post I need Sleep!!!

I really appreciate you each taking the time to stop by and give me advice and encouragement. I even appreciated the comments about how long your babies slept poorly. Those comments made me feel less alone and helped ease my anxiety that it might be caused by something I was doing wrong.

I Need Sleep!!!!

I LOVE my Wiggle Bean but man I need some sleep! Wiggle Bean will be 7 months old this weekend and has only slept through the night a total of 4 times, and none of them were consecutive nights.

A standard evening schedule is feeding around 5:30 when we get home, solid food dinner around 6:30, and an 8oz bedtime bottle around 8:00. She is typically in bed asleep by 8:30. She used to wake up about 3:00 for a snack and then would go right back to sleep, waking up around 6:00 for the day.

On weekends when she would wake up, I would go in and we would sleep together on the spare bed in her room until about 7:30.

These past couple nights have been rough! She has been wanting to go to bed a little earlier, around 8:00, and is really cranky if you try to keep her awake. Last night, I woke up about 2:15 (darn that internal timer!) wondering why she had not gotten up yet for her snack. Just as I was dozing off (about 2:30) she woke up. So I got up and went in to her room for our usual snack but apparently it was not snack time, it was play time.

So at 2:30 AM, I am trying everything I can think of to get her to lay back down to sleep. We tried tummy time sleeping, co-sleeping, I put her in her crib and tried to let her "cry it out", I put her in her pack-n-play in my room thinking her room might be to warm, we tried laying on the couch. Nothing worked, she cried and I got more and more frustrated (and tired!). Finally about 4:30 AM I gave up and we played blocks in the living room, she couldn't have been happier.

At 5:00 I usually get up to shower and prep everything for the day and get ready for work. So I brought her into the bathroom with me. She sits in her bouncer and plays while I shower. The steam has been really good for the cold that I posted about Sunday. After my shower, I took her back to the living room with me and she played with her blocks while I made breakfast and lunch for hubby (who was happily snoring away during all this!) and I. About 5:40 Wiggle Bean started crying and throwing a tantrum. She was obviously tired. I fed her and she passed out so I put her in her bed and finished my morning routine in peace and quite (except for the angry grumbling about how I would have loved to be sleeping that was going on in my head).

About 6:30 (15 minuted before I needed to leave) I went in her room and flicked the light on. Did she wake up? NO! I had to drag her snoring body out of bed. I picked her up and put her on my bed (which was empty because hubby finally got out of bed so he could get ready for work), changed her diaper and got her dressed all while she was still sleeping (MUST BE NICE!!!).

All total, I got just over 4 hours of sleep last night. I have had worse but I could use a few days of catch up sleep.

I have been trying to figure out what is causing the change in sleep pattern and here is what I have come up with:

• Teething: She currently has her 2 front bottom teeth and her upper gums are not swollen
• Growing: I thought they slept more during these periods.
• To hot: It has been 90+ these past couple days and her room was 84 last night.
• Daycare: I asked at day care and she apparently slept most of the day on both Monday and Tuesday.
  

I am leaning towards daycare being the cause of my lack of sleep but if she is tired during the day, how do you force her to stay awake?

Any Suggestions?

Wordless Wednesday

Wiggle Bean's Baptismal Dress

Visit 5 Minutes for mom for more Wordless Wednesday Photos

Wiggle Bean's First Cold

With all the great first we have had since Wiggle Bean came in to our lives, First smile, first laugh, first time sitting, first tooth, first solid food experience, I was least looking forward to her first illness.

Clearly I was caught unprepared for the experience of having my little Wiggle Bean sick. The feeling of helplessness is almost unbearable. Unable to determine what hurt or how to help her made me feel like a terrible parent.

Last Thursday, when we picked Wiggle up, the providers youngest daughter was not feeling well and her mom had her "confined" to her room so as to not make the rest of the kids ill. We did not think anything of it since she had them separated.

Friday when I picked Wiggle Bean up from daycare, the care provider informed me that Wednesday one of the parents brought their child to daycare sick. She told the parents he could not stay but he was there for about 3 hours before they picked him up. This is what caused her daughter to be sick on Thursday and she wanted me to watch Wiggle for signs of illness as she was starting to get a little stuffy nose.

By the time we got her home, she was fully congested and by 6:00 she was running a fever. I knew that I did not need to panic about a fever unless it was over 101 but that was the extent of my knowledge on how to care for a sick baby.

All I could do was hold her and try to soothe her . I admit it, I am a helicopter parent. The tiniest sign if her unhappiness and I am right there. I pick her up when she fusses and rush to her room in the night at the smallest peep. I know, I should not but what can I say I am a first time mom!

To say I felt helpless is an understatement. I was lost. I felt useless.

The only thing I could do was hold her. We put cool washcloths on her neck and forehead and stripped her down to a diaper. She was so congested by bed time that I could not lay her in her bed. I tried but she could not sleep, she kept waking up. We have a small twin bed in her room so I propped up on a pillow and put her little body on my chest, hoping to absorb her sickness while we slept. I know that sounds ridiculous but there was nothing else I could do for her, they no longer suggest cold medicine for infants.

By morning her fever broke but her congestion was as bad as ever. We snuggled all day Saturday and by Sunday morning, I was experiencing a sore throat, sniffles and minor body aches. If she felt this bad, I am so sorry Wiggle Bean. I wish there was more I could have done for you.

Fast forward a week and she (and I) still has major congestion. I am not sure what I can do for her at this point so I put a call in to her doctor. They tell me that I should put a cool mist humidifier in her room (check), elevate the head of her bed (check), and use saline drops for her nose. I think her congestion is breaking up because she is draining like there is no tomorrow but she hates the sucky bulb (Nasal Aspirator) and wants it no where near her.

No cold medicine and no baby Tylenol since she no longer had a fever. Oh, and she told me that she is seeing the congestion lasting about 2 weeks in infants. Great, another week of feeling helpless to look forward to.

Any advise for the first time mom?

Spotlight on PR

Feels Like Home and Adrienne’s House are hosting a Spotlight on PR event. I would love to take this opportunity to introduce myself to the PR professionals out there! I am still new to blogging. I have been following various blogs since January while I was on maternity leave and started my own blog in July 2009, not to do reviews or giveaways, but to share my trials and successes of being an "older" first time mom all while trying to balance family and work life.

I am interested in building a relationship with companies and or PR firms that would be interested in working with me on reviews and/or giveaways for products, services and entertainment geared toward families.

A little about me

I have been married my husband for 10 years. We wanted time to be a couple before starting a family. After 9 years of couple fun, we decided we were finally ready to give up the couple life and start our next journey. In January 2009 we welcomed our first child, a beautiful baby girl. Wiggle Bean (her blog name, not her real name!) is the joy of our lives and we can not imaging life before or with out her. My sister will be assisting me with the blog and will be posting on her family woes as a Mom of two (soon to be three) boys. Her boys are 7 and 3, with her third due in January. We have two great dogs that love Wiggle Bean and have claimed them as her own. Max our 10 year old Malamute is a bit on the husky (not breed, but chunky!) side, tipping the scale at 135lbs and Takara our female is a beautiful blue eyed Siberian Husky who never lost her puppy hyperness. Our family enjoys spending time with our extended family & friends. My hobbies (when I am not spending time with my daughter) include surfing the internet, reading, gardening, various crafts and shopping (especially for clothes, shoes and purses!) My husband enjoys riding his motorcycle, playing video games and paintball. If you ask me, he also LOVES working on the car, mowing the yard and chopping firewood. I used to help with these chores fun activities but now (thank you Wiggle Bean) I have to watch the baby. Someone has to do it and that is the sacrifice I make as a loving mom! As a family we love going for walks, fishing, camping and most any outdoor activity.


We believe that doing reviews is a great way to learn about products and get the word out to others who might benefit from reading about actual hands on experience with the product. I love sharing my opinions and thoughts with others. If you choose to work with me, I will commit my full attention to your product. I will post an informative and honest review. Hosting giveaways is another part of review blogging that would like to be involved with. It is very exciting to see how happy it makes people to enter a giveaway or learn about a new product that might simplify or brighten their life. We are open to listening to pitches for most any product. We are especially interested in baby/child friendly products, any thing that make mommy or daddy's lives easier and pet products.

Thank you so much for taking the time to stop by and visit! If you think my blog would be a good fit for your company, please contact me at over30mommy{at} gmail {dot} com. I look forward to working with you!

Wordless Wednesday

Where's Baby?

For more Wordless Wednesday visit 5 Minutes for Mom.

Six Month Growth Spurt?

Wiggle Bean (ok, not her real name but that is what I will call her on this blog) has been eating like a champ these past couple nights. Yeah!!!

For some reason she only eats about 8 ounces of milk a day at daycare, sometimes only 4 ounces. This is for an entire day, 6:45 AM to 4:45 PM. I usually nurse her before taking her to daycare but I still think that only 4-8 ounces a day seems a little low. I assume she would let our daycare provider know if she was hungry. She does get distracted really easily so that might be the problem.

It is the same way with naps, she goes all day with out napping at daycare but on weekends she naps great for mommy and daddy (more mommy than daddy!). She probably thinks if she naps at daycare she will miss something fun.

When she comes home it seems like she eats non stop. We usually nurse when we get home around 5:00. Around 6:00, I attempt to give her cereal or another one of the foods I have made for her. I say attempt because usually we (yes, both of us and sometimes the walls and floor!) usually end up wearing more than she eats. We have play time after dinner and she might nurse again around 7:00. About 8:00 or 8:15 we start our bedtime routine and she takes an 8 ounce bottle before going to bed. Then she usually woke up around 2:00 for a night feeding and would sleep till 6:00.

I am thinking that she must be going through a growth spurt because these past two nights she has ramped up her eating. Wednesday we received our organic produce delivery and there were fresh green beans in the box. So far we have tried sweet potatoes, carrots and apples (all with limited success). We try adding one new food a week so that we can monitor for allergies. It was time to add a new one so I whipped up a small batch of green beans just to try it out. Holy cow, that girl loves green beans. She was like a little bird chirping for bite after bite. She ate two servings of beans, then two servings of cereal and followed it up with chugging a bottle of milk.

I thought it might be a fluke so we tried again Thursday night. She went through a serving of green beans, apples, cereal and a bottle again. All with out fussing or spitting food at me. She must have been super tired last night (no nap at daycare) because she fell asleep during her 7:00 nursing session. I put her in bed assuming that she would just take a little nap and be up again before her regular bed time. She slept until about 9:00 when she wanted a little snack and then back to sleep she went. The problem is now she is getting up twice in the night for food. Once around 12:30 and again around 3:30. Unfortunately, supply levels are dropping so at the 3:30 feeding I do not have enough to satisfy her and have to make a bottle before she will go back to sleep.

I think that it is time for daycare to start solids. Hopefully, it will help balance out her appetite and she will spread her food intake out over the entire day rather than the 3 hours we are home before bed time.

It would be great if she would also start sleeping through the night! Shouldn't that start soon?

Mommy's Day off!

After my Mommy Confession post, I received a suggestion of giving hubby a bottle and telling him it was his turn. I took this advise and ran with it.

This past Saturday, my sister and I decided we were having a mommy day off. We took off around 9:00 for a baby show and then out for a day of shopping.

I had been saving some gift cards and a little bit of cash that I stashed away. I told myself that when I lost all the baby weight, I was going to get a "reward". Well that was almost 3 months ago I have just not had time to go out shopping for myself. This past weekend was the last days of the Semi Annual sale at Nordstrom and I decided that it was high time I finally got my "reward".

We started at Target to get the Baby Registry gift bag for my sister. She is currently 18 weeks pregnant with her third child. We got the bag and headed over to the toy department because I heard from the Nicole's Nickels blog that they were having an amazing sale. I found a Tigger with a giant head for only $4.24 (regularly $16.99).

Then we headed off to Kohl's to check out their clearance racks (awesome prices if you can find anything). maternity section and the baby section. I know it was my mommy day off but I can never pass up the kids clothing section, not that she needs more clothes. After searching, we left empty handed and a little disappointed.

Off to the mall!!

Entered through Sears but we save that for last. We stopped in to the Coach store to see about sending in my Diaper bag for repair. The edging on the handles is peeling off and I wanted to see if they could replace the handles. We perused the store to see how many (not if there were any) bags I could not live without. Check out the Poppy collection, it is super fun and they have great colors (even though I prefer the black). I almost walked out with a new purple bag but my sister suggested I think about it first and come back. I did not end up getting the bag but after talking to my husband, I will e going back to pick up a new black signature bag.

We then headed over to Nordstrom to check out the sale. I could not justify spending $50 on a shirt even though it was on sale so we went to the shoe section. I needed new work shoes that do not have a 3" heel (my physical therapist keeps scolding me on my shoe selection). I found the cutest pair of black Coach tennis shoes that I decided I had to have. Ok, so I was looking for dress shoes and I did not need them but I really wanted them and I had a gift card so I got them!

By now we were starving so off to Chili's we went. They have a 2 for $20 deal going on right now where you get a starter, two meals and a dessert for $20. YUM!!! We ate till we were stuffed then decided to continue to shop off the dessert we just ate.

We went to Motherhood maternity but did not see anything she wanted. After wondering the rest of the mall with out finding anything great we headed for our final stop, Sears. I found a ton of great stuff for both me and baby. They were having a great sale where all the clearance items were an additional 40-50 percent off the lowest tag. I got baby 5 new outfits for around $4 each and found about 8 shirts for myself. All total, I spent $74 for about $332 in clothes. LOVE IT!!!

I love being a mom but it felt great to get time to be non-mommy and spend time with my sister, just the 2 of us.