Infants

Once I found out I was having a little boy, I was elated.  I heard it from everywhere, "Oh, boys just love their mommas!" I couldn't wait for the kisses, snuggles, and crying for me and only me.  Call me a bit self-absorbed, but after 10 months of carrying the boy and 21 months of nursing, I was ready to sit back and soak up all the admiration. Buuut that never happened. My son is the biggest daddy's boy that ever existed! And I'll be honest, I've let a 2-year-old hurt my feelings from time to time as he scraped his knee and ran past me to reach for daddy and demand his boo-boo kisses.  Or when he wakes up in...

Fun story: my son caught his first cold the other day. He got it from my husband and I, and he woke up with a runny nose and a cough. I kept an eye on him that morning and he seemed to get worse as the day went on. By noon his eyes were glassy and he seemed pretty miserable. I called the pediatrician and the nurse said he had an opening right then if we could come into the office right away. So I quickly loaded my son into the car and sped off to the doctor, only to wait an hour and a half. And what’s worse than waiting forever at the doctor with a sick baby? Waiting...

Pumping at work. It’s a pain. A gift. A lot of parts to wash. Monotonous at the least. Sometimes I feel like I’m a slave to my pumping bag and schedule. And, heaven forbid I forget to put my day’s harvest into the fridge after work (like I did the other day).  Right now, I pump three times a day, roughly every three hours, and I usually get enough for three 4 oz bottles, give or take a couple of ounces. Here are some things I’ve learned about pumping at work: 1. Try to see pumping as a nice break from work rather than a daily chore.  I've come to enjoy my 15-20 minutes of pumping, three times a day, because...

I was going out of my mind. My son, William – my sweet, loving, adorable son – would not nap in his crib! At 6.5 months old, I was spending hours out of my day holding him while he slept. He would fall asleep nursing and then wake up almost every time I put him down. Occasionally, I was able to gently lay him on our bed or on the couch and he would stay asleep. But that still meant that I needed to hover over him constantly to make sure he didn’t roll off. So I was spending all day playing with him, feeding him, or watching him sleep. While there is nothing I love more than spending time...

I’ve never been a competitive person. It’s actually a running joke in my family that I never really cared if I won a board game, or a softball game. This isn’t to say I didn’t want to do well in school, or in other endeavors, but I was never someone who really compared herself to others. Until I had a baby. When I was pregnant, reading about “What to Expect” and listening to people’s advice, I heard a lot of, “every baby goes at their own pace” and “don’t get caught up in numbers.” But when you are focusing on your baby’s development, there are a lot of numbers: height and weight percentiles, sitting up by this age, crawling by that...