Coming up for air at 8 weeks...

Out and about in our stretchy wrap

The past 8 weeks have passed in a blur of feeding, burping, settling and weighing wee Pickle.  

I feel like I haven't had a minute to collect my thoughts much less write and publish them, so I'm in awe of some of the ALI bloggers I follow who have become new mamas and managed to keep up with their posting.  

My hat is off to you.

I also would like to send my congratulations and understanding to those who have decided to close their blogs now their little ones are here.  I'll miss your voices and wish you all the best.

I expect to continue to blog intermittently about things I create (probably things for Pickle), and in time perhaps, our efforts to give Pickle a sibling.  We'd prefer Pickle not to be an only child, however I am very aware my chances decrease with every day I age and just because I beat the odds once doesn't mean I can do it again.  Of course it doesn't mean I can't either but I'm not sure I could go through another loss or so in the process.  The point is moot for now as I'm unlikely to become pregnant anyway while I breastfeed Pickle.

My high nutrition diet has gone a bit awry since Pickle's birth too so that is not going to help my fertility.  While we ate all the food I had stashed in my freezer the first few weeks, I dropped the baby weight almost immediately and am now struggling to keep up the calorie intake required for breastfeeding a hungry baby without resorting to quick solutions like pasta bakes and various things on toast. 

I had planned on spending the first four weeks at home working on getting to know each other and figuring out a rhythm.  It feels like I spent the first six weeks running around to appointments: scheduled maternal and child health nurse appointments, weighings every three days, lactation consultants, hearing test, hip ultrasound (due to breech).  I am relieved to say we've finally settled into a bit of a rhythm in the last week or so.

I finally managed to complete and submit my somewhat garbled essay by the deadline by having Mr Duncan have her (bringing her to me for feedings) for a weekend.  As my friends kept reminding me, it needed to be submitted on time, it didn't need to be good.  Hopefully its good enough and I get the continuing education credits.

A quick summary of posts I've meant to write about in the last 8 weeks:

1.  Pickle's birth

I won't write a birth story, suffice to say I'm not a fan of spinal anaesthetic or c-sections, but the team were great and the result was a healthy baby. 

I remain irritated at the midwives at my first new hospital appointment for telling me to cut back on calories and the obstetrician at the IUGR ultrasound for saying Pickle was in the 60th percentile for size so we were expecting a larger baby.  

She was 2.6kg (5 pounds, 11 oz).  

Small but perfect.

2.  Breastfeeding

I was concerned about not having early skin to skin and baby led breastfeeding with a c-section and found breastfeeding very difficult.  

The three days I spent in hospital Pickle wouldn't latch, despite various midwives grabbing my breasts and shoving them at her tiny mouth which I found extremely unhelpful.  

I managed to express good amounts of colostrum and feed it to her in a syringe.  Once my milk came in Pickle would sort of latch and then immediately fall asleep.

By the time of our two week visit she'd lost the weight she'd gained since birth and the maternal health nurse strongly suggested supplementing with formula. I convinced her to agree to my supplementing with expressed breast milk and she recommended we hire an electric pump at considerable expense and feed Pickle for only five minutes a side before expressing and giving her the expressed milk from a bottle.  

Bad idea.  

Poor Pickle wouldn't take my milk from a bottle and ended up starving with horrible tummy pains from too much foremilk.  After two days of pumping and lots of internet research I took the executive decision to ignore the health nurse advice and return to our sleepy feeds and I'm pleased to say that at 8 weeks she is now a 3.9kg (8 pounds, 9oz).  

We still don't have a great latch and she gulps down way too much air, which causes its own set of problems, but breastfeeding is no longer painful and Pickle is clearly getting enough to eat now.  So that will have to do.

3.  I had been reading about elimination communication/natural infant hygiene  while I was pregnant.  It made sense to me that babies instinctively don't want to sit in their own mess.  And it is a common practise in other cultures - I remember seeing Mothers hold out their babies when we were driving through Africa.  I was considering trying it when Pickle was 3 or 4 months old, however at five weeks she began peeing on the changing mat each time her nappy was taken off so we started holding her over a tiny potty at each change.  

I can now tell when she wants to go about 80% of the time and very seldom need to change a dirty nappy (she makes an unmistakeable set of noises to indicate she needs to go prior), although there are still wet ones.  

Pickle hilariously loves sitting perched upon her tiny throne and the posture really helps her pass gas and ease her tummy pains.  

We'll see how it goes as she gets older and more active...

L.

x

Essay 60%, baby 100% complete.

After scheduling a c-section for breech presentation for next Tuesday morning, my waters gushed at 9pm last night at 38 weeks, 5 days.  

Baby was delivered just after midnight on the 21st May by emergency C - just in time for my 43rd birthday tomorrow!

She's a wee 2.6kg (about 6 lbs) but perfectly formed and extremely placid (so far).

Her tiny rosebud mouth is causing some problems with latching on to the breast so 

I've been expressing colostrum which she takes through a syringe..

Early days...

L. x

Fewer posts, no comments?

I follow many blogs in my reader and have noticed over the past few weeks several posts suggesting people are not posting or commenting as much as before.  This may be because the community is changing as we reach different milestones in our journeys or it may be that blog commenting is dying out.

I will admit to being guilty as charged with regard to posting and commenting.

The main reason for this is that I have an essay due.

I attended a continuing education course last July and need to submit a final essay within a year in order to be awarded the credits.  Since attending the course we have moved to another country and I have been lucky enough to become pregnant again.  

At first I wasn't doing the essay because I was organising our move from the UK to Australia.  

Then I wasn't doing the essay because all the books I needed to read and reference in the essay were being shipped.  

Then our stuff turned up and I wasn't doing it because I was lazy tired all the time.

Now I really need to do it before the baby comes as I cannot imagine I'll have the time or headspace to get the reading done and the essay written with a newborn around.  

I've banned myself from blogging, reading for fun or getting carried away with cooking until my essay is submitted.  

So I've stopped getting books out of the library on pregnancy, birth and parenthood and have been spending my time reading reference books and taking notes.  

Sigh.

In my less disciplined moments I am continuing to share your ups and downs by at least skimming through most of the blogs I follow via my reader (don't tell Lisa), but without engaging with your blogs via comments you wouldn't know that.    

I hope to allow myself to get back to normal posting and commenting once the essay is done, but by then said newborn may be here and I have no idea what sort of hurricane that will be, so I'm not promising anything.

Wishing the very best to each and every one of you and hope to engage with you on your blogs again in the not-so-far future.

L.

x

Rollercoasting

I had my checkup today and the doctor was concerned because the fundus measurement was only 32 cm and I hadn't gained any weight for four weeks.

Well, it didn't seem like I'd gained any weight since my weight measurement was the same as my first visit to the new hospital when the midwives were concerned about my 10kg weight gain over the course of my pregnancy to that point.  I did notice my belly seemed to have moved down a bit a few days ago, but at nearly 35 weeks was hoping Pickle was starting to think about dropping into position for birth.

Anyway, I was referred for an ultrasound for suspected IUGR.

IUGR stands for Inter Uterine Growth Restriction (or Retardation depending on who you ask).  It means the baby is not growing as expected for dates.  This could be due to issues with 

• the baby (eg genetic)
• the mother (eg poor nutrition, drugs) or
• the gestation (eg failing placenta, blood restriction).

After re-confirming my age and the fact that I had not had the usual 12 week genetic screening, the doctor referred me to a private clinic because the hospital ultrasound department was overbooked.  

The ultrasound was precautionary to see if the baby was indeed not growing and check for gestational issues.  If there were issues I would likely be asked to immediately return to the hospital for an induction.

What?

Not what I want at all.

I was lucky the private clinic could fit me in this afternoon so only had a few hours to stress about it.  It turns out that everything is fine with Pickle, in fact measurements taken during the ultrasound show Pickle is actually a tiny bit larger than average (60th percentile).  Whew.

(Now I REALLY think that the scales the midwives used to weigh me at that first visit were incorrectly calibrated.)

However the reason the fundus measured small is that Pickle has turned from the vertex (head down) position noted at my last appointment two weeks ago to a transverse (sideways) position, with the head to my left not far above my belly button and the legs up by the face, so the top of the uterus has dropped and I have bits of baby sticking out my sides.  

Comfy.

Not.

I was just coming down from the adrenaline rush of worry about Pickle's size when the obstetrician manning the ultrasound casually mentioned in closing that transverse babies seldom move into position and I'll require a caesarian section at 39 weeks.

What?!  Not what I want at all.  

Re-trigger adrenaline.

My next point of call is a site I came across when I was looking for birthing ball exercises called Spinning Babies.

And breathe...

Adventures in homemade yoghurt

Over the last several weeks I've been experimenting with making yoghurt in a desire to satisfy my dairy cravings in a healthy-ish manner.

I was inspired by the extremely straightforward recipe for doing so in the Nourishing Traditions recipe book which basically tells you to

• Heat a litre of milk to 180f
• Let it cool to 110f
• Gently stir in about half a cup of existing yoghurt to use as a starter
• Cover and let it sit somewhere warm overnight
• Refrigerate and enjoy

After a quick trip to the housewares shop to buy a thermometer, I gave it a go using pasteurised but non-homogenised whole milk, and greek yoghurt that we had in the fridge.  

I was a bit unsure about where to leave it that would be warm enough.  I remember my mother keeping yoghurt in the hot water cupboard, but we don't have one.  

After heating the milk in a saucepan and stirring in the culture, I ended up transferring it into a lidded casserole dish which I left in the oven to get warm while I pre-heated the oven to about 100C.  I then turned the oven off but left the casserole dish in overnight for the yoghurt to stay warm.

It worked okay and I thought the result was pretty good for my first try, although I seemed to make a lot of dishes. 

Homemade yoghurt is somewhat runnier than commercial yoghurt and Mr Duncan likes his yoghurt thick and creamy so I drained it in a cheesecloth-lined sieve, reserving the whey for use in other things.

Straining the yoghurt to get the whey

So far so good.

So then I tried making a second batch of yoghurt using some of my first batch as the starter.

This time I heated (and cooled) the milk in the casserole dish and put the lot in the preheated oven but the resulting "yoghurt" was too thin and drained right through the sieve/cheesecloth!

Disaster.

I ended up churning it in the ice-cream maker with the mushed up fruit and juice of half a tin of peaches and a bit of cream, which was worthwhile.

Peach yoghurt ice-cream

I had no idea if the failure to thicken was to do with the relative thinness of the starter or if the yoghurt simply wasn't warm for long enough for the cultures to grow so I turned to Google for help.

My new way of making yoghurt follows this tutorial.

I like that the yoghurt is made in the jars it will be stored in and that there are fewer dishes.

Heating the milk

I leave the yoghurt to culture in a homemade haybox overnight.  The longer it sits, the more tangy it tastes and the more lactose is consumed by the bacteria, but if you leave it too long run the risk of the bacteria running out of lactose and dying off.  

Which still makes for tangy tasting yoghurt, but without the benefit of live cultures.

My 'haybox'

My first batch made using the new method turned out nice and thick, so thick I didn't think it would drain well through the sieve and I upturned the jar over my bamboo steamer.

A straining mistake

A good plan in theory but in practice all of the whey floated to the top of the yoghurt I was trying to drain.  Then, when I tried angling the jar a little to allow some air for the whey to drain through, the weight of the lid overbalanced the whole shebang and I had yoghurt everywhere!

I've now bought a much finer strainer as recommended at Salad In a Jar which I'll use to strain tonight's batch.

To be honest, the quality and price of yoghurt where we live in Australia doesn't really merit the effort to make my own.  It costs about $6.00 for 1 kg of good quality probiotic yoghurt (we like the Jalna and Bornhoffen brands) and nearly $6.00 for the two litres of milk I need to make that much greek-style yoghurt.  It doesn't taste any better although I do like knowing that its made with fresh, local, whole milk.

So why continue to make my own?

I have developed a taste for Fruit Kvass which I will write about in my next post...