Hot Tub

Tonight I got in a hot tub for the first time in.. hmm.. I don’t even remember.  Maybe 2005 in Dominica?  It was at the gym Chris and I joined recently.  We haven’t belonged to a gym in a while; Chris uses the Yahoo! gym and I used to go to one near Nuance.  But we decided to join one closer to home.  This one has childcare options ($8/hr) and my sister’s family belongs, so we decided to give it a try.

Chris called me tonight to say he’d made it on the early train (depending on when the shuttle gets to the station, he gets on one of two trains) so I rushed out of the house with Jack and met him at the station.  Then we swapped cars and he took Jack home, while I went on to the gym and ran a bit on the treadmill.  Then I got to go in the HOT TUB!  WOOO!!!

I got home just in time to feed Jack before he went to sleep, and put dinner in the oven.

Hopefully I’ll get to do this again.  Now I need to buy a new swimsuit so I can swim laps.

First Night Away

On Friday I had a milestone:  my first night away from Jack.  My sleep deprivation has been getting harder to cope with, and I finally decided I needed to do something.  So I asked some friends if I could spend the night at their house, and they said sure!

I fed Jack before his bedtime as I normally do, then headed over to their house.  It took me a while to fall asleep, but I probably fell asleep between 10:30 and 11, and slept until 7!  Of course, I woke up several times, but I went right back to sleep.

At 7 I got up and pumped…that was the longest I’d ever gone without feeding Jack (11 hours).  After that I tried to go back to sleep, but it was difficult.  I was pretty awake, for a change, and wondering how the night went for Chris and Jack.  I think I got another half hour or so, and got up at 9.

When I got home, Chris told me everything had gone just fine.  He fed Jack around midnight, and then Jack slept until 7!  I was very happy to hear Chris hadn’t had a rough night. And I don’t think Jack even noticed I was gone.

I felt great having gotten such good sleep, but I was still quite tired by the evening.  I guess one night of decent sleep isn’t going to cure 8 months of poor sleep.

I think I may do it again sometime.

Big Poopin’

When a baby is first born, you talk a lot about poop.  For the first week, you write down what color it is, how many dirty diapers there are, etc.  “Did he poop?”  “How much did he poop?” are regular topics of conversation.  After a while, it stops being such a major thing, and you stop talking about it so much.

After that initial period, I still kept track of how many dirty diapers Jack had, but it was more in the back of my mind.  Then we started solid food, and now it’s beginning again.  Solids really change the contents of the diaper, and not necessarily in a good way.  And after a few weeks of eating solid food, Jack became constipated, so then we REALLY stepped up the poop talk.  “Did he poop yet?  Is he pooping now?  Poop poop poop!”

We’ve been stuffing him full of prunes for the last few days, and I think it’s helping a bit.  Prunes are the first food we fed him that I didn’t make.  Since the last post, he’s also tried apple (steamed it, removed the peel, mashed it) and yesterday we tried Cheerios for the first time.  That didn’t go so well; he is not yet coordinated enough to bring a Cheerio to his mouth.  We’ll keep trying.

I have only been feeding him solids once a day, and haven’t dropped any breastfeedings, but I think I’ll add another solids meal in the morning, and possibly drop one daytime feeding.  (I’m still breastfeeding every 3 hours during the day, typically, and 3-6 hours at night.)

In non-food news:  Jack turned 7 months on Monday.  I can hardly believe it.  I thought by now he’d have mastered crawling, since he started working on it quite a  while ago, but he still seems happy with rolling everywhere and doing his commando crawl.

He still loves books.  His favorite right now is Trains.  He’s happy to have it read to him again and again.  He tries to “read” it by himself but can’t turn the page when it’s closed (he’ll turn the page if you hold it up a bit), so he just holds it up and makes frustrated noises.

Sleeping at night still sucks.  I am so tired.  Sometimes I handle it ok, and sometimes I don’t.  Still not too sure what to do about it.  I hoped, of course, he’d start sleeping longer on his own, but it ain’t happening.  There really hasn’t been any improvement over the last 3 months.

Anyway, besides the sleeping issues, things are going well.  I loved dressing him up in his Halloween costume (orange NASA jumpsuit).  He likes to use his feet to explore things and push things around.  He’s a lot of fun.

Food, Glorious Food

The solid food’s been going pretty well.  Jack has eaten:  rice cereal, banana, avocado, sweet potato, carrots, and peas.  He has been ok with all of them but I think his favorites are banana and avocado.

I’ve been “making” the food myself.  Before I had Jack I never would have thought I’d do that.  It just seemed like way too much effort, especially for someone who doesn’t like to cook very much.  But after talking to various friends, it seems like a lot of it is pretty easy.  The bananas and avocados I simply mash up.  The sweet potato I cut into pieces, microwaved, and mashed.  The carrots I steamed and pureed, and the peas (frozen) were boiled and mashed.  So far it has been pretty straightforward.

I’d like to start with more “finger foods” soon, to let Jack take control of some of the feeding.  We’ll try Cheerios, and maybe even tofu.  I have to remember to feed him stuff I myself don’t like!  (Tofu for one.)

I haven’t really decided about meat.  I do not object to Jack eating meat; he can decide for himself when he’s older if he wants to be a vegetarian or not.  But I don’t have any immediate plans to feed it to him.  After he’s 8 months or so, if Chris wants to feed him meat, that’s fine with me.  But I am still undecided if I will feed it to him.

I’m having trouble telling when Jack is finished eating.  He seems to have quite an appetite.  Chris fed him a whole banana the other day and he could have eaten more.  My pediatrician told me to stop feeding him when he gave a signal he was done, like turning his head, but he never seems to do that.  I’ll think he’s finished, but then he’ll open his mouth for the next spoonful.  So usually I wait until he seems to have lost some interest, even though I know he’d take more.

Jack has yet another cold!  His third in less than two months. Sigh.  I read on one website that it’s normal for babies to get six colds before their first birthday!  Luckily they’ve all been mild.

I wrote in my last post I had an ephiphany about sleep, that his late naps were causing a problem, but I’ve nixed that theory.  In the meantime I’m keeping a super detailed sleep log of all his naps, etc. to see if I can find a pattern, but no luck so far.