The end of nursing
January 26th, 2008
So, I signed up for a conference in March which means I’ll be gone for 4 days, sans kiddo this time. He’s down to mostly only nursing at bedtime and at night and we’re currently working on the nursing when he comes home from daycare. It’s not really nutritive anymore, and the nutritionist suggested that the after daycare/pre-dinner nursing might be interfering with his dinner appetite. But he really likes to nurse. It amazing given all the problems and frustrations I had with breastfeeding, that now he is so attached to it. But alas, we’re weaning entirely now. I have mixed feelings about the whole endeavor. I originally hoped to wait until he was ready to self-wean, hoping that ready would be between 12-18 months. He seems to have zero interest in letting go though and now that he has opinions about things but no words to express them. Generally, he makes his wishes to nurse known by crawling all over me and head butting my chest while alternately trying to bite my shirt saying mmMmmamMamAAaa. So he is pretty adamant about not giving it up. I just don’t want to just pull the rug out from under him when I’m gone for a few days (I’m sure he’ll be unhappy enough). So next we’ll work on the nighttime feeding, and those will be a hard ones to get rid of, especially since we co-sleep. While I’m very ready to let go of being sort of leashed to him because of it, It’s very bittersweet for me. Being able to breastfeed took such an investment and its a special and unique kind of bonding that I will miss as he grows into an independent little person.
Genes, IQ, and Breastfeeding
November 6th, 2007
I just couldn’t resist an article on genetics and breastfeeding. It’s a commonly held belief that breastfed babies tend to score higher on intelligence tests , though explanation behind this correlation is lacking. Yesterday, some scientists published a study showing that this correlation was only shown in babies with a certain variant of the FADS2 gene, a gene involved in fat metabolism. Babies without the gene variant showed no correlation between higher intelligence and breastfeeding. Luckily, in their population, the variant that benefited was found in ~90% of the population, so most people would benefit. From the nytimes cover:
“This is not specifically a breast-feeding gene but a gene that influences how we process nutrients,” said Avshalom Caspi of King’s College London and Duke, who led the study. Researchers from Yale and the University of Otago in New Zealand were also involved. The scientists analyzed genetic samples from 3,200 children in New Zealand and England whom they had been tracking since infancy. They focused on a gene involved in the metabolism of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are abundant in breast milk but not in cow’s milk or most formulas. One variation of the gene, found in some 90 percent of people, helps the body metabolize the fatty acids more efficiently than the other variation does — and accounted for all the advantage associated with breast milk. The relationship held regardless of family income or parents’ I.Q. “The big message from this,” Dr. Caspi said, “is that it’s not nature versus nurture that’s most important, but how nature works through nurture.”
I won’t go on about the bias inherent to IQ tests, but it’s an interesting finding about a gene-environment interaction. The nytimes article is here and a link to the original research article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science journal. See, this is why I need to get moving on my own personal and science blogs. Please return to your regularly scheduled all-Avery, all the time, programming. :)
tired
October 2nd, 2007
Lately (ie. past month) Avery has gone back to waking up all night. It’s like he became the 3 month old we were expecting who then slept through the night. A good night is when he wakes up only once. Somehow, he has mommy-going-to-sleep-now ESP, because as soon as I get ready to go to sleep, I start hearing the cries. And you can’t just rock him back to sleep these days either. He wants to nurse. But then he wakes up again 15 minutes after you put him down because he wants to be in our bed and half awake/half asleep = grumpy. And so it goes every night these days. Maybe its the teeth. Maybe its the not-drinking. Maybe its the separation anxiety. Either way, sleep is always elusive.
I got into writing this post because this morning, I went to the kitchen to get Avery started with breakfast. On top of the fridge, next to the cereal was the milk. I’ve also found boxes of cereal in the fridge before too.
Update: Corey wanted me to note that he was the one who put the milk on the top of the refridgerator, in case there was any confusion.
In the end, sneezing is not as hilarious as we once thought..
August 26th, 2007
Avery started at a home daycare 2 weeks ago. Needless to say, Corey, Avery, and I have stepped onto the daycare sickness merry-go-round. Corey and Avery got sick from me about 3 weeks ago. And now Avery and I are sick again this past week. Actually, the first round wasn’t too bad, but I think babies breed some kind of super kid germs or something. I actually was running a fever and feeling sicker than I’ve been in years this time. Avery is chugging along as hyper and uncomfortable as ever. He’s getting over it now and mostly just coughing.
I went to La Leche League meeting a few weeks ago, and the topic was weaning. I was thinking of weaning, mostly because I’m producing even less now, and I have been so busy at the lab, I’ve been neglecting to pump. While I still hate it, I’ve adjusted to the idea of formula and bottles. My original thought was that I wanted to go to at least a year, but given all my difficulties, I’m amazed I made it this long (8+ months!). In a turn of irony, Avery has stopped accepting all bottles and especially formula. He’s taken an ounce or two at daycare occasionally, but most days he goes without drinking anything all day. The only thing he will do is breastfeed. I’ve started being diligent about pumping at work, but the milk-supply damage is already done. I’m considering going back on domperidone to try and get it up again. We can get him to take liquids (other than breastfeeding) by dropping them in his mouth with a straw. This is very distressing, especially since he needs to gain weight. We went to the doctor and they say he’s fine (not dehydrated) and to make his food really soupy and make sure he gets lots of fats. I’ve been mixing formula or this high milkfat greek yogurt into all his foods. We’ve discovered he REALLY likes yogurt. Even when he seems done with his food (usually a fruit or veg, some baby cereal) he’ll down 2-3 oz of yogurt.
He’s not crawling yet, mostly rolling. He loves being on his stomach now. If he sees something he wants to get to, he just rolls over, assesses whether he’s there or not, and then rolls again. He can travel a good 10-15 ft like this, so we have to be careful now. I’m thinking he’s going to stand up before he ever crawls. He doesn’t like bending in the middle to sit, he can sit really well but prefers not to. He either likes being on his back or stomach, or having you hold him standing up. I sense he’s learning to manipulate us now. He’s started to perfect his whiny cry, and even threw a fit when he saw he was going back in his carseat and didn’t really want to. Unfortunately for us, he’s inherited some personality traits from my side of the family. Even the daycare person said “he’s very strong willed”.
The first cold and sleep
August 10th, 2007
Avery got his first cold. I had a minor cold (sinus pressure, runny nose,coughing) a few weeks back. Corey then caught it from me and was much more miserable, and this past week Avery got it too. He’s been pretty snotty and coughing a lot and just generally fussy. I tried to suction his nose with the bulb thingy so he could breathe better instead of snort, but hes quite the squirmer. Corey and I had to both hold him down to get anywhere near his nose, and then he cried like the end of the world was coming when we successfully got some snot out. I figure he’ll be fine as long as he can breathe. It’s clearing up now.
He got very clingy the last few weeks. He gets upset if you even look like you might be leaving for a second. He also will just lay on my chest and look around now. The other night, he wasn’t interested in sleeping (everytime I put him down I’d hear the whine) and he just snuggled and laid there on my chest, eyes wide open. I let it slide and let him sleep with us since he’s been sick and coughing himself awake a lot. He usually just comes to bed with us after the first waking at night. He was sleeping through the night for months, and suddenly is back to waking up since our trip to california. Originally, I was planning on trying some sleep training to get him to stay asleep all night again soon, but lately I decided that in the interests of milk supply and stranger anxiety, that will wait until once the breastfeeding stops. Besides, I couldn’t do the “cry it out” method, I think its detrimental to the trust your baby has in you. I tend to subscribe to most (but not all) of the philosophies behind attachment parenting so I think he’ll be better off for it, despite what some certain people have said about our “holding him or playing with him too much”.
Anyways, it’s 1am and I should go to sleep before my time is up!
The Avery Update
February 13th, 2007
Last Thursday Avery had his 2 month well-baby visit and got his first round of shots. Needless to say, it was not a good day for him. He was supposed to have the visit this week, but they moved it up since he needed to have his Synagis shot sooner rather than later. He was very unhappy when we got to the doctor since he was hungry, so I fed him while we waited for the doctor. He weighed in a 6lbs 5 oz and measured 18.5 inches. He’s still slowly moving up in the percentiles on the premature baby growth scale. Then came the not-so-fun for baby part. He got an oral vaccine first which he didn’t think was so bad. Next he got 2 shots in each leg. The 2 nurses did them at the same time to minimize the amount of times he would have to go through it. He also had to repeat the newborn genetic screen because he was premature which meant he had to have another heel stick. Overall, he was not having fun. We had to stick around for a while to make sure he didn’t have any reactions to the vaccines and Synagis, and I held him and he fell right asleep. I think he was exhausted after all that crying. We gave him a little infant tylenol before the shots and another dose 4 hrs later, but he didn’t run a fever and he didn’t seem too uncomfortable when we got home.
In other news, we confirmed at a previous weight check that his “outtie” belly button is actually an umbilical hernia. They’re not that uncommon, but they’re more common in preemies. Basically, the abdominal wall doesn’t close entirely at the umbilicus, and a little hole remains which allows things to poke through. His is completely reducible which means when you push it, everything goes back through the hole. It might resolve on its own, or when he’s older we can have surgery to repair it. Hopefully, it heals on its own.
Also, I’m still using the nursing supplementer and breastfeeding. Apparently it’s been going well since hes gaining weight consistently every week. I’m still enriching the breastmilk in the supplementer to 22cal/oz. Milk supply has been OK… Today was the first day in 5 days that I had to give him some formula because I didn’t have enough pumped milk for the supplementer, so things have been better than they were. I’ve got a few last-ditch efforts to increase milk supply that I’m trying so we’ll see how that goes. I’m hoping to try and wean him off the supplementer soon, but that really depends on having enough milk. So we will see. Time is running out, because pumping alone is known to decrease milk supply and bottles could be the end of breastfeeding. Cross your fingers!
