Happy Times

Just a little update. We are doing good! Although it is still hard to have Paul gone a lot we are doing better. Even though I would love to have him around more I am grateful he is in pharmacy school and I'm grateful that on top of that he has an intern job that might turn into a pharmacist job when we graduate, and I'm grateful he has opportunities to serve in our church. I'm also so grateful that I get to be a mom and stay home with our two kids and babysit a little! We have some happy times together! A few weeks ago we had a lot of rain. I let Susie run outside and play in it. She had a blast. It was so fun to watch her!

Braden has the cutest little smile. He loves being talked to. His first smile was about 6 weeks old. I gave him a kiss on his cheek and he smiled up at me. It was a great moment for me! Call me an emotional sentimentalist but it felt like with that little smile he might just be saying, "Thanks for all you do for me Mom, I love you, too."  :) 

I wanted to record a few things about nursing and sleeping so I have it for future reference. (aka this might be boring- don't bother reading further!)

Nursing is still not going great. I've tried lots of things to increase my supply: nursing more often, nursing a lot longer each time, restricting binky use, I'm taking 2400 mg of fenugreek (which I heard was a miracle worker), etc. I am still not making enough and always worry that he is going hungry. Right now I am nursing him on both sides and then giving him a 2 oz bottle. I'm not sure if I'll be able to start making more milk eventually and cut back on the supplement. That's what I'd like to happen. He isn't nursing very well. He gets frustrated so I'm worried that will make the milk supply worse. I might have to start pumping and just give him what I pump plus whatever else he needs in formula. We'll see. I'm doing my best.

Right now I am trying to have Braden nap every three hours. We start the day at 7, eat, wake time, and then nap around 8:30 or 9. Then at 10 we start again with the cycle. Some days he does great, some days he doesn't sleep longer than 30 minutes for his nap. When this happens I try to see if he'll go back down or feed him again. At night he usually goes down around 10 or 10:30, wakes up to eat around 3, back down at 4 and then we start the day at 7. All in all pretty good! We are working towards full naps and sleeping through the night.