It’s 4am…

…and I’m standing in the shower in the dark expressing milk down the drain so my boobs don’t explode while my sweet child sleeps.

Motherhood is so bizarre.

All Dummied Up

Hmmm… I posted a pic from my phone the other day but can’t see it with my wordpress app now. So lets try again.

Nudie Naptime

We’re going with the dummy. After much soul searching and shop searching we found the Avent ‘Classic’ which seems to hit the spot. Kira only tends to take it when she’s frustrated or sooky, which is great. She’s not very skilled at keeping it in her mouth yet but I’m assuming that will come with time.

To Dummy it is.

Just had to get the right shape. She happily sucked the evening away with this bad boy. Welcome to the dark side? (Avent ‘Classic’ is the winner.)

To Dummy or Not to Dummy

That is the question!

In my pre-baby world dummies were an unnecessary evil to be avoided. They were dirty habits best not started getting.  My baby was going to take the boob and nothing but the boob.

Then I got desperate to keep Kira distracted from her nightly digestive pains and dug out the dummy that came in a bag of free samples. She wouldn’t have it. She had no idea what it was and wasn’t interested. I was disappointed but also relieved. We tried it out of curiosity a few more times and occasionally out of desperation but never with much success. Once or twice she would suck for a minute but it never lasted and never appeased her. The last few days though we’ve had a bit more success with it. Just now it kept her happpy for five minutes before it popped out of her mouth. I’m conflicted as to whether we should persist with it or walk away before it becomes a habit for all of us.

When she was still new and shiny we had feeding issues which required supplementing her breastfeeding with expressed milk. As we weren’t keen on her having a bottle the midwife at our hospital set us up for finger-feeding. This consisted of taping a thin tube to a finger and feeding milk through it via a syringe. Kira would suck on a finger and get milk, which we were reassured was the most similar to the boob that we could get. Because of this Kira is a champion finger-feeding sucker. But, it’s not always convenient to shove a finger down her gob (driving, cooking, sleeping, blogging…) in order to make her happy.

So, what to do? Do we persist with the dummy – maybe try different types/brands to see if we find something she likes? I can’t help feeling like giving in to using dummies is a big fail and likely to make life difficult once we depend on them. But then, it would be oh-so wonderful to have something other than our thumbs to calm her down when food, sleep, cuddles and a clean bum aren’t good enough.

Help!

Dummy?

Thumb?

11 Weeks

Nappies

When I’m not holding, feeding, cleaning or changing our little angel,I’m trying to turn this:

Nappy Shells

and this:

Nappy Inserts

into this:

Nappies Galore!

 

Never in my life did I imagine I’d spend quite so much time doing laundry.  That said, I’m still pleased with our decision to go cloth.  It’s green, it’s fluffy, and it’s cheap.  Now excuse me while I go hang the next batch of nappies on the line…

Sh*t Moms Say

I know there’s a spate of these memes going around right now but this one made me giggle.

Truly a Rainbow Baby

Family Portraits

Today we took advantage of a voucher for a free sitting with a local photographer. This is the first time the husband and I have had professional pics done and Kira’s first time as well. We were pleasantly surprised with how well Kira behaved and I’m confident there were some good ones in there.

It wasn’t all fun and games for me though as I couldn’t help thinking that all family photos we do will be incomplete.

I wore my necklace with Mallory’s ashes for the photos. I hate that that is the closest I’ll ever get to having a photo with her. I find myself missing her even more as we enjoy all these wonderful firsts with Kira. One baby in my arms but always two in my heart.