Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong

Once again...

Another month has passed. I have had all sorts of intentions of posting but things like sleep and screaming babies get in the way.

Let's talk about screaming babies for a moment. Well, it's mostly about Miss M. She's been out of the screechy scream phase for several months but we've been working on getting the girls to go to sleep on their own. For the most part, they go to sleep on their own, it's the staying asleep that's a challenge. We have them mostly on a routine, thank goodness. They take their morning nap between 8:30A-9A and sleep for about an hour. They take their afternoon nap between 1P-1:30P and sleep for about 90 minutes. And generally, we try to get them to bed around 7-7:30P. They're pretty tired by this point so with their ba-ba, they're pretty good about falling asleep. But somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes later, M (usually) will wake up screaming at the top of her lungs and from past experience, we know she can scream pretty loudly.

Now, conventional wisdom says let them scream it out. What starts off as 90 (very painful) minutes the first night, will go down to 75 the second and 60 the next, etc. So theoretically, after about a week or so, the crying should last 10-15 minutes and then they sleep like angels. When we tried that theory with C, she screamed for 90 minutes for several nights and, she being our pancake baby, we couldn't take it so we'd pick her up and created the little lack of sleeping monster that she is. We weren't going to make the same mistake again, especially times two, so we spoke with a sleep consultant and toughened up and we let them scream it out. There are times when both girls will fall asleep and then 30-45 minutes later, one will wake the other. But usually, M is the screamer and H will sleep through it (Bless her sleeping little heart). But M will continue to scream for 60-90 minutes. She hasn't learned to calm herself down and go to sleep. We let her scream it out for awhile, then go up to comfort her because she really is quite hysterical and do that usually two times. She eventually calms down and we put her back down. She'll usually start to cry for a little bit and then she'll start to talk and giggle to herself and eventually M will fall asleep. From when it starts to when there's actual sleeping quiet is a long time. Tonight, she was put to bed at 7:25P and silence occurred at 9:10P and that's fairly typical. So for those who say that they'll cry themselves to sleep and that they'll learn, I offer into evidence Miss M. This has been going on for a good two months and counting.

And since pretty much no one but myself is reading this at this point, I can express how disappointed I am that I'm at the tail end of breastfeeding. Okay, to be honest the nursing part has been problematic for months. I never produced enough evenly in both breasts which, when you're feeding one, isn't really a problem. But when there's two hungry mouths to feed, it's difficult when one get 5 ounces and the other gets 1. H wasn't all that thrilled with nursing but she did what she had to do. By the time we hit 3 months or so, they were getting a lot of bottles with pumped breastmilk alone or combo with formula just so they could be fed. M has always taken better to the boob and still can and will nurse on occasion but I'm a little nervous since she's gotten teeth. Since she hasn't nursed consistently, I'm not convinced she understands not to bite even though she hasn't done any of that. Anyway, I've been good and consistent about pumping for all these months. I've been freezing for later use in bottles or with cereal in the morning. I never had a huge surplus but did ok with trying to keep a little bit ahead. In the last two months, I haven't produced a ton but certainly enough for 5-6 ounces 2-3 times a day.

Well, about a month ago, I got my period (sorry if this is TMI, it's my blog right?) for the first time. Besides my general annoyance with that, my milk production dropped in half instantly. WTF is that about? I had done nothing different in terms of diet or routine so why did that happen? With C, I nursed for almost 15 months and didn't get my period until after I stopped nursing so I was not expecting this to happen for another little bit of time. Anyway, much to my great disappointment, my body is just not producing very much anymore. I'm only pumping once a day now and from last night to tonight, even, it's gone down yet again. I'm pretty much done and I'm just very sad about that. I know I wasn't able to exclusively breastfeed these two but I thought I was doing pretty well at least giving them breastmilk at least half the time. That's a heck of a lot better than nothing, even if I would've preferred more. And I know going almost 11 months with two, (even with some breastmilk) is ahead of most with one baby to feed. So I guess I should just be ok with it and be happy for what I have done. But I guess it's a sign that I'm getting older, the babies are growing up and I won't be doing this ever again. And that's just very sad to me.

posted by Juls @ 12:27 AM