I let Felix lick a banana yesterday, while I was making gluten-free banana bread. He seemed perturbed by the flavor.
Monthly Archives: March 2010
*cricket*
I’ve decided that one month is far too long to go between “newsletters.” Maybe I’ll just give up on this scheduled newsletter business and write whenever.
Our little Nugget is chock full of personality (well, that’s not news, he always was) and turning into such a little person.
We’ve been using goat milk, in place of formula, quite successfully. He seems to actually like it (as opposed to being ambivalent about it), has less gas and spits up less since we started giving it to him. And his POOP! (Sorry, it has to be said.) His poop is a joy to deal with, compared to that god awful formula crap. Uh… no pun intended. It’s very easy to clean up, doesn’t stink as bad as formula poop, and quite frankly, looks like the result of a much healthier eating habit. Since giving him goat milk, I’ve started to come across & talk to many more people who’ve done the same.
He’s still as inconsistent as ever, with sleeping. He stayed up until 10, one night, and we thought, “GREAT! Surely, he’ll sleep till 7 or 8?” Nope. Woke up at 6. Then a couple nights later, he fell asleep around 7:30p and I thought, “Sigh. He’ll be up at the crack of dawn,” but he slept till close to 8.
He is grabby, grabby, grabby and has even figure out how to not only hold things, but to put them in his mouth, with intent. He pulls his pacifier out and is able to get it back to his mouth. Not always correctly, but pretty close. He’s also taken to putting his arm around my neck when I hold him and gosh, I love that…
I also love our morning routine. No matter the hour, there’s no being grumpy or unhappy when he’s the first thing you see. Every morning, weekend or weekday, we spend time playing with him in bed before getting up. If you strip him naked, he’ll lay down in bed for a long time, flailing his limbs about and laughing like mad. (Naked is the only way he’ll stay laying down for an extended period of time. Otherwise, he’s quite insistent on sitting UP UP UP, so that he can see everything.) But boy, does he love being naked. And he’s CHATTY.  I imagine he’ll be a chatty, naked boy, running around the house all day.
When he tires of laying down, or if he’s not naked, we prop him up in bed, to sit, or play airplane. He loves being held up high and/or bounced around. (Bouncing him after he eats is not such a good idea, however.) He squeals and smiles and giggles nonstop.
Speaking of laughing… both Chris and my mom have said they think he’ll be a boy with a goofy laugh. He sounds like a baby pterodactyl or an inverse squeaky toy. It’s adorable.
Last week, I laid him on his new rug, for belly time… and he flipped over! I put him back on his belly and he did it again! And then he stopped. Again. Ah, well. He’s stubborn, that one.
He’s also finally started to look to his right. He used to have this insistence, while being held, of only looking to the left. If you tried to put him to the right, he’d struggle and bang into your head until he arranged himself to the left. Suddenly, the other day, I realized that he was just as likely to shove your face out of the way to go right as he was left. Look out, world.
He is a happy, happy boy, for the most part.
There’s a whole ton of pictures here, that I haven’t sent out yet because I was waiting until the end of month 4. But I suppose that’s too long, also, so … to hell with schedules. There’s too much growing going on…
uh, hello… CUTEST BABY EVER.
something to remember
A few days ago, I was holding Nugget up over my head -something he seems to love – and making kissy faces at him.
Mind you, he’d only eaten about 20 minutes before.
Well. He spit up. He spit up and it landed right in my mouth. Not on it, but IN it.
Luckily, as gross as it was, even I could see the humor in the situation and promptly told everyone (raucous laughter abounded) and agreed with my mom that it was one for the books.
Ah, motherhood!
4 months
I’ve decided it’s about time to start doing monthly newsletters instead of weekly. Not that I won’t be taking & writing notes in between. So, 4 months. A whole third of a year, huh?
And how handsome is he? Seriously? Go ahead, you can say so. It’s the one thing I can’t be modest about – when people squeal over how cute he is, all I can say is, “I know.” Really. Look at that face. He’s going to be a LADY KILLER, just like his daddy.
When he’s miserable, he’s a holy terror. But when he smiles, which is most of the time, he smiles BIG. All you have to do is look at him and say hi, and he’ll give you the biggest, cheekiest grin you’ve ever seen, and oh, how he LAUGHS.
It just hit me the other day, that he’s a little person. Not a baby or an infant, but a person. And it seems he grew A LOT within a couple of days. We woke up one day and thought he suddenly looked much, much bigger. He’s well over 15 pounds, a little over 15 and a half, we think. I’ve been tossing more clothes into the “too small” pile – a shame, really, because those overalls were so damn cute.
So far he’s just been doing a lot more of the same. Drooling. Grabbing. Smiling. He’s still (annoyingly) inconsistent with the sleep thing – some days he’ll sleep till 8am, 7:30 am, others until 5:57 am and I have tried and tried to figure out what it is that gets him to sleep until 8 and I can’t find it. It’s random. He’ll go to sleep at 8pm and wake up at 8 am one day, or go to sleep at 815pm and wake up at 5:57 another. Or 6. Or 6:30. Or 6:52. Thankfully, it’s never before 5:57. *knock on wood*
Last night, for example, he didn’t go to sleep until 10pm, so you’d think – you’d THINK – that that would mean he’d sleep later in the morning, right? Nope.
In the morning, I always know when he’s going to wake up, also. He gives about a 45 -30 minute warning. He grunts. He lays there and he tosses himself around and grunts, nonstop, for awhile. Chris is somehow able to sleep through it, but I lay there listening to this and thinking, “Just give me 10 more minutes… 10 more minutes….” which is stupid, because I can’t ever sleep for that extra 10 more minutes while he’s making all that noise.
AND! The other day he started attempting to sit up. Only from a reclining position (such as sitting on my lap, leaning against me), but still. It’s a start! He lifts his legs and throws his head forward and strains to sit up, but even when he manages to get upright, of course, he can’t hold himself there and immediately starts to fall off to the side. It’s pretty funny to watch, actually.
billy goat gruff
Today was Nugget’s 4 month check up. Amazing to think that for his next checkup, he’ll be 6 months old. SIX MONTHS.
He now weighs in at 15.5 pounds and 26 inches. That’s the 60th and 90th percentile. I’m happy that he’s just slightly over average in weight, since he’d been born small. I’m weirdly proud of the fact that he’s TALL. “Weirdly” because I have nothing to do with it. I guess that makes me a bonafide parent, proud of every little thing.
He also got his second vaccination today and he DOES NOT LIKE VACCINATIONS. Screams like a banshee, that one. During our first visit with this pediatrician, I had a lengthy discussion with her about vaccinations. I’m strongly against giving them all at once, for starters. And pretty much against some of them, period. There’s only a small handful that he’ll be getting, and only one per visit. He will NOT be getting the MMR vaccination. This isn’t up for discussion. Like I said, I’ve learned a thing or two. I used to think the alternative schedule/anti-vaccination people were crazy. I also used to think people who did home births were crazy. Then I learned a thing or two.
So, speaking of “those people,” we’ll be starting yet another thing to make people scratch their heads. This weekend, we’ll begin giving Felix goat milk, for his primary food source.
This isn’t something I was going to say publicly, because I already got damn near lynched on an online mom group. Then I decided it was stupid to stay quiet because this is something I believe in, wholeheartedly, and it’s an option that people should know about.
Originally, I had planned to pump exclusively (Felix was never able to latch) for a year. Then, a couple weeks ago, my supply suddenly dropped and for as much bravado as I had, I was exhausted from the past few months and didn’t have the mental energy to work at getting my supply back up. I’d hit a wall, as I often did, but this time I just couldn’t get my motivation back. And then I started to feel resentful and frustrated and decided to stop pumping. Or at least, stop pumping so often – in theory, I’d like to keep up two session per day and give him one bottle a day, but we’ll see.
However. The reason I’d kept pumping is because I do not like formula. While I would never judge anyone else for using it, because I feel that it is absolutely a personal choice and everyone has to do what they feel works for them, it does not work for me. I, myself, do not eat processed foods or chemicals, so I couldn’t justify giving them to my kid. Let’s face it – no matter how you feel about formula, it IS a processed food and it’s nearly pure chemicals.
I’d been giving him formula, mostly, for the past couple weeks now and every time I’d think, “This isn’t so horrible. Lots of kids are raised on formula and grow up fine,” then I’d get a whiff of it and feel grossed out and guilty all over again. I find it disgusting and it doesn’t fit in with my beliefs and lifestyle.
Mind you, I am also a person who refuses to drink pasteurized milk, as I believe raw milk is far superior and yes, even safer than that pasteurized crap. Don’t believe me? Or want more information? Instead of taking up yet more space on that topic, click here to read my rant about raw milk. I drank it all through pregnancy, still drink it, and Chris drinks it, also. Might I just also add that neither of us has been sick in… oh, a couple years?
So. Today I had another lengthy discussion with our pediatrician about formula and goat milk – which she’d brought up before. I chose this pediatrician specifically for their natural viewpoints and their stance on vaccinations. She’s recommended goat milk, in place of formula, to many patients and never had a single problem with it. I discussed the fact that, unlike before, he wouldn’t just be getting one bottle a day of goat milk, but that it would be about 90% of his diet.
The pros? Well, to me, the pros are glaringly obvious. Goat milk is an all natural, safe & healthy substitution. It is NOT as good as breastmilk, of course, but it’s far better than some smelly, scary, non organic chemical concoction that’s sold in cans whose linings have traces of BPA (yes, it’s true – even organic) in them. Not to mention that whole hexane process. Don’t even get me started. My pediatrician knows what she’s talking about, as do the many other pediatricians out there who recommend the same thing. It’s SAFE. It’s just not mainstream and boy oh boy, my favorite institution, The American Academy of Pediatrics, has scared everyone off of everything that’s natural and not mainstream. (That’s sarcasm, in case you didn’t catch it. I loathe the AAP.)
And take into consideration that many cultures have given goat milk to their babies since the beginning of time, whenever breastfeeding wasn’t possible.
The cons? Goat milk has a higher sodium content and can cause renal overload. CAN. She said she’s almost never seen this to be a problem – BUT, if we feel better, we can dilute the goat milk with 10% water.  And, quite frankly, I feel better about that than I do about the corn syrup in formula.
Also, goat milk does not have enough Vitamin D or folic acid. The answer to that is to give him one drop per day of a liquid supplement. Bear in mind, in this day and age, most ADULTS don’t get enough Vitamin D and many breastfeeding mothers are being told to give their babies vitamin D supplements ANYWAY, for this reason. Personally, I drink raw milk & take icelandic fermented cod liver oil supplements every day. That’s just about all the vitamin D we need right there. (RAW MILK, people. The vitamin D content is FAR higher than in pasteurized milk. Pasteurization destroys most of it and it, along with Vitamin A, have to be injected back into the milk afterwards.)
So that’s that. This weekend I plan on going to scope out a farm that sells raw goat milk. Know your source. Honestly, at this point, if you drink pasteurized anything, I don’t see the point in drinking it at all.
I realize that this is not a popular opinion, simply because it isn’t mainstream. I’m sick of people taking the stance that everything the American Academy of Pediatrics says is gospel. Or that anything your doctor says is gospel. There are many viable, safe & healthy alternatives out there that are, in my opinion, far safer and healthier than what AAP recommends.
Chris and I haven’t been sick in a LONG time. My kid isn’t just healthy, he’s thriving. So I must be doing something right. Once he begins eating solids, he’ll be eating foods that I puree myself, bought from farmer’s markets & Pike’s Place and Whole Foods. That’s what I believe in.
The decision to give him goat milk is not one that I made lightly. I’ve given it a lot of thought, researched it, talked to other people who’ve done the same, and asked a lot of questions of my pediatrician. I’m not the kind of mom who just blindly follows what everyone is told, or who takes the easy way out of anything. I’m also not the kind to be swayed or shaken by people who argue with me and tell me I’m crazy or don’t know what I’m talking about.
However. My point. If there’s anyone else out there who finds themselves in the position of having to supplement with formula and isn’t happy about it, there are options. Drop me a line and I’ll seriously help you find a pediatrician who will guide you and support you in such things – or at least give you enough information to feel confident in making an informed decision.
It’s really ok to challenge the status quo.