Don't Forget to Spring Forward

So this weekend begins daylight savings time. While I love daylight savings as it's much more desireable to have light in the evening, I'm thinking of writing my local congressman to tell him how much I appreciate losing an hour of sleep this weekend as the mother of a six week old! Each hour of sleep is critical to this tired mom, and I don't much appreciate having to lose one tonight. I don't really understand the need to change our clocks back and forth each year anyway - why not just remain on daylight savings time year round?

Other than the upcoming loss of an hour of sleep, things are starting to get a bit better around here I think. After a really bad bout with my stomach this past Monday night, I went to a gastroenterologist to see if she could figure out what was wrong with me. Since my ultrasound for gallstones came back negative (whew - no surgery for that!), she thinks I have an ulcer from all the ibuprofen that I was given after delivery. I always thought an ulcer would be a burning pain, but apparently it can cause all sorts of different pain. The only good thing about an ulcer is that it can be taken care of with medication over a 6-8 week period. They normally do an edoscope to confirm an ulcer, but this requires sedation and I would have to discard my milk for a while after the procedure. We haven't started Sara on bottles yet, and I haven't started pumping either. Because of this, the doctor decided to put me on an ulcer medication and see if my symptoms improve over a week. I have been on the medication since Wednesday and I think it might be starting to work. I've still had some stomach problems, but I've also had a couple days with no pain at all. I really hope this works so that I don't have to do any further testing!

On top of the ulcer, the gastroenterologist also called yesterday to tell me that I have a urinary tract infection and put me on antibiotics for that. I sure am having a tough time getting healthy, but I hope I am on the right track now. I hate taking all this medicine while nursing Sara even though the doctors say it should be ok. I made it all the way through pregnancy without even taking a Tylenol and now I am on multiple prescription medications! It's very frustrating for me because it's so important to me that Sara be breastfed but I also don't want her to get anything in the milk that might hurt her.

On a happier note, with Andy done with his big plant nightmare, I am going to start pumping tonight after Sara's last feed before her long stretch. I want to start building up a supply of extra milk in the freezer, and we'll have Andy try to give her a bottle soon. The bottle is something I'm both looking forward to and dreading. I really love nursing Sara and it is a wonderful feeling to be able to give her the food that she needs, but it will also be nice to be able to get a break and not have to be home or with her for every feeding. She obviously needs to learn to take a bottle before I go back to work too, so we'll see how it goes one day soon.

Sara has been a bit cranky today and hasn't wanted to go down for a nap. She only napped about half an hour at a time until around 1pm when she finally went down for a long stretch. She slept well then, but is back to being cranky at this hour. She gets herself so tired and then doesn't know how to get to sleep despite all our rocking, cuddling, etc. Eventually she just gets so tired from crying that she goes to sleep, but she hasn't been staying asleep very long. Maybe she'll sleep well tonight after being awake so much during the day - we'll see!

Sara is also growing like a weed! Andy and I think she weighs about twelve pounds now and appears to be about 23 inches long by our measurement. Her head is getting a lot bigger and she has lots of baby chub on her with a big baby belly and lots of little baby rolls developing on her arms and legs. I keep telling her it's the one time in a woman's life that those rolls are going to be considered cute so enjoy :) She's so big that she's started to outgrow most of her newborn clothes and is fitting quite well into the 0-3 month size. We're actually going to have to start packing up those little newborn sizes now and need to go shopping for some 3-6 month sizes that she'll be in soon enough. I can't believe how much she's grown in such a short amount of time. It's exciting to see her change and yet I still feel a little sad that she's not the same tiny newborn. It's funny how you want your children to grow up and stay the same all at once!

Well, we hope everyone is having a nice weekend so far. It's been like heaven having Andy home for a change and we've both been able to relax a bit in between the crankiness.

Happy Daylight Savings,
Andy, Valarie, and Sara