My Poor Girls

My poor little babydoll face is teething. Look at that face. I can't even deal. I want to just give her ice pops or something. She's not crying all day or anything, but she is fussier than normal in the afternoon. And she is chewing on anything and everything, more than normal.

I mean, everything.

My poor baby.

My poor breasts.

I know. Say a prayer for me. All my girls are suffering. Owie.


Love & Mama's Have the Highest Pain Tolerance in the Universe,

Dirt Road Mama

Breast Feeding Tips

Or should I call them, tipples. Ha! I crack myself up with these puns. It's in my blood. My dad, Poppy, is King of Puns. So is my Uncle Bill. It's been passed down through the generations.

Anywho, I've been thinking a lot lately about breast feeding, and certain things that helped me or worked really well in those early weeks and months. I've been talking lately with lots of new or almost mamas, and our conversations have jogged my memory regarding the precious early months of breastfeeding. And I thought I'd share some things that have been brought back to the forefront of my mind. Partially, because I don't want to forget them for my next babydoll! And partially, because I want people to know that it doesn't come easy. I talk about it alot because I love it so much, and it's been a huge part of my everyday life this year.

But for new mamas...don't think it was perfect, and that maybe you are doing something wrong. It takes work, practice, and consistency. If it's hard in the beginning, stick with it, ask questions, because it's hard for many - you are not alone. Sucking is an instinct for babes, but breastfeeding must be taught to them. Reilly, in the beginning, didn't latch on one of breasts. It took weeks before she stayed on and could latch on correctly. And some of my friends have had a much harder time, but they stuck with it. I tell you this because I would never want someone to read about my joyful breast feeding experience, and think, well it came so easy for her, maybe I'm doing something wrong. Maybe my baby just can't do it. Maybe I just can't do it.

Well, I think you can do it. And here are some tipples that helped me in the beginning. Little things that may not be in the books.

1. Send Hubby or BFF or the mailman to the store. Ask him to get your favorite candy. Put it in a Ziplock bag next to your bed, or rocking chair, or where ever you feed baby. Eat this candy when you breastfeed. I didn't eat mine during the day, I made it my midnight treat. It gave me a little jolt of sugar to keep me awake, and gave me a little positive-reinforcement-esque reward at every feeding. Every 2 hours. All night. Oh, and it's guilt-free candy eating, because baby is taking SO many calories from you! Woo!

2. Get a giant waterbottle that you love, stick a straw in it, and keep it full. I have this one from Life is Good. I carry it everywhere, even in restaurants, which may or may not be acceptable. But I don't care, I'm breastfeeding, it's for my baby. So there. Anyway, hydration is so important. They say you should drink a good amount while your feeding, too. So fill it up with your fav beverage, non alcoholic preferably, and drink up!

3. When baby is new new new, they will fall asleep all the time while feeding. I mean all. the. time. The old addage of "Do not wake a sleeping baby!" does not apply to breastfed babies. You must wake them every 2 hours, because they will only give you 1 good stretch of sleep a day (5 hours or so) and you want to train them to do that stretch at night. So wake them every 2 hours during the day, and let em go as long as they will at night.

So the nurse taught me to keep my finger right under Reilly's jaw while I fed, and to look at the little spot next to her ear while she sucked. If the little part of her jaw next to her ear was moving, she was eating. If not, I tapped under her jaw very lightly, and poof! She started sucking again. Awesome tip for me.

4. Do not feel badly when you hear that your friends babies are sleeping 12 hours at 4 weeks. Formula fed babies sleep longer right off the bat, because it is so heavy in their stomach. The vast majority of breastfed babies will not sleep for very long stretches for a while, because it moves through them so fast. But bonus - their poop will never smell! :)

5. Once the baby is about 5 weeks old, start pumping! Pumping in the morning (before noon sometime) will give you a better pump (more milk) because your hormones are much higher. Pump and store the milk in the freezer, and save for Dad to give a bottle at night. This will give you a nice stretch of sleep that you havn't had since pre-pregnancy.

6. Get a breastfeeding shawl or coverup, and bring it everywhere you go. You'll be so happy you did. And then you'll breastfeed everywhere and anywhere before you know what hit ya. And trust me, half the people around you won't even notice. Until babe is 8 months like Rei and pull the shawl off her mid-feed to play peek-a-boo. Awesome.

7. Regarding that glass of wine that you want to have. But don't know when to have, because baby gets everything you drink or eat via the milk. I read this, and it's the best tip I got - if you're okay to drive, your okay to breastfeed. So you can have wine, or anything else for that matter, as long as it doesn't affect you too much. And if you had too much, grab that frozen milk you pumped!

That's what I got right now, girls. I share this with you because the number one thing you need in order to breastfeed, besides breasts, is support. Support from professionals with information, support from other mamas who have tips, and support from Hubbies and family.

So here I am, a mama full of information and opinions, saying "You can do it, mama!" Go for it. Breast feed that baby. You'll be happy you did it.

Love & Tipples,

Dirt Roadd Mama

Whine Country!

Here is a little synopsis if our weekend of fun! Fun and...eventful. As always. :)

Let me start here. We went to Long Island to visit the family, which is always a fun little road trip. Hubby and I love road tripping. We call anything over 2 hours a road trip, in case you were wondering. So Thursday and Friday was lots of planning and packing for me. Packing clothes/shoes/socks/blankets/burp clothes/42 bibs/onesies/PJs/hats/jackets for Reilly. And bottles and 5 containers and frozen food. And a cooler full of breastmilk. And her monitor, toys, stuffed animals, binkies, spoons, and my breast pump. And her vitamins and just-in-case medicines. And her bouncy seat. Oh, and I had to pack myself. Plan, plan, plan.

Fast forward to the weekend! Hubby and I wanted to take a day trip for ourselves out east to the wineries. It's such beautiful farmland on eastern Long Island, and I'm a huge fan of vacationing in your own backyard. So off we went. The world was our oyster. Well, the island was at least. I packed my breast pump, and off we went!

[FYI: As an exclusively breast feeding mama, it is essential that I take my breast pump everywhere I go without the baby. I will continue to produce milk at the exact rate that the baby usually drinks it. Therefore, when someone else is giving her a bottle, I should be pumping in order to keep up the milk production. Also, for my own comfort, as it becomes painful and can possibly cause an infection if I go to long without either feeding or pumping.]

So our first stop was at a pretty amazing farm and market that we saw. It was pretty much my heaven.

This is inside. Every kind of apple you can imagine, as well as every other fresh fruit you can imagine.


Brussel sprouts still on the stalk! Have you ever seen anything like it?


Every single veggie you can imagine. And every single thing was fresh from a farm. GIANT cauliflower, GIANT eggplant, GIANT cabbage. Literally everything.

And a pink tractor. I love pink.


Of course, a manly tractor for the manly man.


Find the inappropriate squash that hubby made me take a picture of.

Then we continues on to Love Lane, which is where we had breakfast. Love Lane is actually the name of the street, as well as the restaurant, and has a plethora of adorable little shops. My parents had found this little street a while back and told us we would love it. They were right.

After breakfast, we went to this cheese shop to get some goodies to have at our winery visits.

You can't see from this picture, but right next door is the Love Lane Sweet Shop, which was also amazing. I asked Hubby, "Why are my favorite places always right next door to each other?! This is amazing!"

It's true. It started at Providence Place Mall where we went to college, where Godiva was right next to TCBY. I told Hubby (then boyfriend), that I wanted to live there. Then we went to San Antonio, and Ben and Jerry's was right next to the Life is Good store. And so on.

This is one of the cheese we got. Cave aged for a year. Delicious.

Pretty clock. I think I'll make one.

Then it was on to our first winery! Yay.

Handsome man. I love you!

Pretty old barn we were in.

The grapes (or what used to be grapes before the chilly weather) literally went as far as you could see! Pretty amazing.

So after our first lovely wine tasting, we bought a bottle of this wine, because Hubby is a mathematician. We planned on going to a few more wineries, and passed a few adorable shops we wanted to stop in. We also saw a historical and museum district that we wanted to check out, I love learning about Long Island history! We were planning to eat our cheese and olives at our next winery, which had a beautiful outdoor space.

And then came our little glitch. Which was actually a big glitch. I went out to pump in the car. I put on my shawl, and got my pump all hooked up to the battery pack. Then I went to take out the bottles to pump into.

The bottles.

Bottles?

*&%$.

The bottles are sitting next to the sink drying from when I pumped and washed them this morning.

I couldn't pump. I couldn't pump. It was 1 pm. I hadn't fed baby since the morning. Theoretically, I should have already pumped once, but the morning was so fun and carefree that I put it off a bit. I was FULL of milk. To the point that it was painful. And we were 1 1/2 hours from home. Breast feeders are cringing right now.

We had to go home. I had no choice. There was nowhere to buy the pump attachments where we were. And I needed to get the milk out. So, without getting specific, let just say I had to squeeze the milk out the whole way home so I did not get an infection. Let me tell you, it's not easy. A mammogram will be a cinch for me when the time comes. I manually pumped 2 1/2 ounces of milk, until my arms were burning I was pumping so hard. Ah, motherhood!

(FYI: This is when I whined. And cursed. And then I said, "Well..we had a really fun, romantic morning!" Sigh.)

So we got home, I pumped, and fed baby. And then we cut up our cheese, the my mama did this.

She had just bought some new delicious wines. Like 4 or 5 different reds and blends. And she set up a wine tasting. She felt so bad about what happened to our day.

She was very good at it! She gave us tons more information about each wine than the wine tasting people even did. She red the description of each bottle, told us her personal experience of how she found out about and/or tasted them, and then we tasted and discussed.

This is her face that she makes when she tells a story. I think Reilly inherited her eyes.

And, our tastings were MUCH more generous as well!
Thank you, Mama! We love you.

Delicious.

Over all, it was a fun fun weekend.

And it goes to show you, no matter how much you pack and plan and pack and plan, you can never plan everything. God decides what you do each day, but we can decide what we do with it. Go with His flow. Know that he made it happen for some reason for another. Sure we had a beautiful day planned, but the one we had was just as beautiful. And you can whine about it. I certainly did on the ride home.

But it's much funner to wine about it. :)

Love,

Dirt Road Mama