Again, I can't believe it's been so long since I've blogged. I'm blaming this on the holiday season. If I'm not hanging the stockings by the chimney with care, I'm probably roasting chestnuts on an open fire, leaving very little time to write.
Ha! Actually, none of that is true. We have neither a chimney nor a fire to roast chestnuts. No, my time has been taken up with posing the little guy for ridiculous Christmas cards (see below) and attempting to tease my hair into a beehive (ala Betty Draper) for Brian's Christmas party. Lots' o 'fun, let me tell you.
Ha! Actually, none of that is true. We have neither a chimney nor a fire to roast chestnuts. No, my time has been taken up with posing the little guy for ridiculous Christmas cards (see below) and attempting to tease my hair into a beehive (ala Betty Draper) for Brian's Christmas party. Lots' o 'fun, let me tell you.
Meltdown Bear
In all seriousness, things here have been business as usual. I made a huge *HUGE* gaffe with breastmilk the other day. In September, this would have sent me over the edge. But now that I'm sleeping better (i.e. Scotty is sleeping better), I'm only reducing to a weeping mess for about 3 minutes. This is a 27-minute improvement.
Anyways, for those of you who have lactated/are lactating or plan to lactate...read this and weep, too.
So on Thursday, I woke up at 5am. Pumped. Managed to eek out 8 ounces (sweet!). Scotty had 4 ounces at 6am and I saved the other four for his next feeding. He was up again at 8am and had another two ounces. I had (another) appointment with George at 10am, so I combined those two ounces with my 9am pump and headed out the door.
Well, Scotty fell asleep in his carseat on the way home from the appointment. I mean, totally gone. Sleepy-bear in Sleepyland. We've installed his 'Bundle-Me' in his carseat, and this child went from hating his car seat to loving it. (A Bundle-Me is this soft, fleecy piece of fabric that covers the baby during winter months, so you don't have to dress them in some crazy snow suit/massive blankets. It's like God's gift to car-seat hating babies.) So he slept from 11am until 1:30pm. I started looking at breast milk from 5am with trepidation since this was going on 8+ hours of being un-refridgerated. I'm fairly lenient about breast milk at room temperature - like everything in Motherhood, there is no exact number of hours that it is good for, but lots and lots of speculation. I'll go as long as 5-6 hours, as long as the milk looks and smells okay. But this was really pushing it.
So I set the milk I pumped at 12:30pm on the counter and dumped the milk from that morning. I was so caught up in the fact that I had just *sniffle* wasted four precious ounces of breastmilk that I didn't realize I had dumped the 12:30pm milk instead...yes, the milk I just made.
Eight wasted ounces. Four ounces that were user error (my fault for not refridgerating them) and another FOUR good OUNCES DOWN THE DRAIN. Literally. It was one of those, 'Oh my god, did I really...I did. I did. I did!" Cue the sobs.
In typical form, I called Brian at work, practically hysterical. He talked me off the ledge and then I paced the house for awhile, beating myself up.
Thankfully, I got over it. (cookies helped). But then I started thinking about our upcoming trip back home (::squeal!::) and how I was going to cart all of this breast milk on the plane. I mean, after the new security regulations back in 2006, I was almost apprehended at the security checkpoint in the Philadelphia airport due to the massive number of lip glosses in my purse. I'm not joking. I was flying home from Jen's (mom to Rowan) wedding and that whole 'mix-it-on-the-plane' terrorist plot had just happened. The woman at security told me to either dump all 24 of my MAC lipgloss (um, why don't you just rip my fingernails off?) or go back to the counter and CHECK my purse. Again, I credit Brian for this, because although we had arrived at the airport separately (he was on the East Coast for work so we had two rental cars), he, inexplicably, arrived at the security gate right as I was about to give the security woman a piece of my mind. (note to self: not a good idea). He talked me down (again) and convinced me to walk back to the counter and check my purse, thus salvaging the $200 worth of gloss I had accumulated AND saving me from possible jail time.
Anyways, I have since reviewed every single TSA website and memorized the 3-1-1 rule (with breast milk, baby formula, and medication being the exception). I'm praying that McCarran security will not make me taste the breast milk (eww) or worse, POUR it out at the gate. As I was telling Brian, "If they make me dump it out, I will seriously go postal." And again, my better half had an appropriate come-back: "Yes, because going postal at an airport security gate is always a good idea." He turned to Scotty and said, "Because we (meaning himself and Scotty) will be visiting Mom in jail on Christmas."
I hate it when he's right.
Anyways, for those of you who have lactated/are lactating or plan to lactate...read this and weep, too.
So on Thursday, I woke up at 5am. Pumped. Managed to eek out 8 ounces (sweet!). Scotty had 4 ounces at 6am and I saved the other four for his next feeding. He was up again at 8am and had another two ounces. I had (another) appointment with George at 10am, so I combined those two ounces with my 9am pump and headed out the door.
Well, Scotty fell asleep in his carseat on the way home from the appointment. I mean, totally gone. Sleepy-bear in Sleepyland. We've installed his 'Bundle-Me' in his carseat, and this child went from hating his car seat to loving it. (A Bundle-Me is this soft, fleecy piece of fabric that covers the baby during winter months, so you don't have to dress them in some crazy snow suit/massive blankets. It's like God's gift to car-seat hating babies.) So he slept from 11am until 1:30pm. I started looking at breast milk from 5am with trepidation since this was going on 8+ hours of being un-refridgerated. I'm fairly lenient about breast milk at room temperature - like everything in Motherhood, there is no exact number of hours that it is good for, but lots and lots of speculation. I'll go as long as 5-6 hours, as long as the milk looks and smells okay. But this was really pushing it.
So I set the milk I pumped at 12:30pm on the counter and dumped the milk from that morning. I was so caught up in the fact that I had just *sniffle* wasted four precious ounces of breastmilk that I didn't realize I had dumped the 12:30pm milk instead...yes, the milk I just made.
Eight wasted ounces. Four ounces that were user error (my fault for not refridgerating them) and another FOUR good OUNCES DOWN THE DRAIN. Literally. It was one of those, 'Oh my god, did I really...I did. I did. I did!" Cue the sobs.
In typical form, I called Brian at work, practically hysterical. He talked me off the ledge and then I paced the house for awhile, beating myself up.
Thankfully, I got over it. (cookies helped). But then I started thinking about our upcoming trip back home (::squeal!::) and how I was going to cart all of this breast milk on the plane. I mean, after the new security regulations back in 2006, I was almost apprehended at the security checkpoint in the Philadelphia airport due to the massive number of lip glosses in my purse. I'm not joking. I was flying home from Jen's (mom to Rowan) wedding and that whole 'mix-it-on-the-plane' terrorist plot had just happened. The woman at security told me to either dump all 24 of my MAC lipgloss (um, why don't you just rip my fingernails off?) or go back to the counter and CHECK my purse. Again, I credit Brian for this, because although we had arrived at the airport separately (he was on the East Coast for work so we had two rental cars), he, inexplicably, arrived at the security gate right as I was about to give the security woman a piece of my mind. (note to self: not a good idea). He talked me down (again) and convinced me to walk back to the counter and check my purse, thus salvaging the $200 worth of gloss I had accumulated AND saving me from possible jail time.
Anyways, I have since reviewed every single TSA website and memorized the 3-1-1 rule (with breast milk, baby formula, and medication being the exception). I'm praying that McCarran security will not make me taste the breast milk (eww) or worse, POUR it out at the gate. As I was telling Brian, "If they make me dump it out, I will seriously go postal." And again, my better half had an appropriate come-back: "Yes, because going postal at an airport security gate is always a good idea." He turned to Scotty and said, "Because we (meaning himself and Scotty) will be visiting Mom in jail on Christmas."
I hate it when he's right.
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