Babies are such blessings. My life changed dramatically when I found out I was pregnant with my first son, Brayden. I couldn't fathom a world where he is not in my life, even though I had him when I was 19. You can imagine how I felt at the beginning of this year when I found out that I was pregnant again.
Naturally, I went through several different stages of acceptance. Finally, when I calmed down, I was excited. I was going to attempt to have the "best pregnancy." I did everything "right," took prenatal vitamins every day, at healthier, and overall, took better care of myself. I was bummed when I started getting sick. My blood pressure was super low, causing me to have black outs. I was working about 55 hours/week PLUS taking care of my other little man. It got so bad, I had to quit my full time job, and my man picked up a second job so that I could take care of myself and Brayden.
At the 20 week appointment, when we found out that we were having another baby boy, the doctors also found a cyst on the umbilical cord. They told me that it was nothing to worry about, but they would monitor it anyway. A few weeks later, I had another ultrasound to check the cyst and upon closer review, the doctors found out that I had a 2 vessel cord, instead of the standard 3 vessels. Again, they said I had nothing to worry about and that they would monitor baby's growth even closer now. Typically, with a 2 vessel cord, the baby is small, usually 5-6 pounds at birth. I went through all the testing and monitoring and baby was growing just fine.
Finally on September 29, I was induced. After 3.5 hours of active labor, and no epidural, we welcomed baby number 2, Bradley Joseph at 2:01 pm. He weighed a whopping 9 lbs, 6.5 oz. The doctors were impressed with his size! We stayed in the hospital for the required 24 hours, and were at home with everyone together by dinner time on the 30. I was so excited to be a stay home mommy! It is a ton of work, don't let anyone tell you otherwise, but it is EXTREMELY rewarding too.
We decided to breast feed Bradley for at least a year, and to prepare for my going back to work part time, I started pumping. I had noticed that I wasn't producing as much milk as I wanted to, so I found a recipe for "Lactation Cookies" and being the baker I am, I made them. I was skeptical at first but then I started reaping the benefits of my new found addiction. Here is the recipe:
Lactation Cookies:
Ingredients:
1 cup Butter 1 1/2 cups brown sugar 4 tbs water 2 tbs flaxseed meal
2 tsp vanilla 2 large eggs 1 tsp baking soda 2-4 tbs Brewer's yeast
2 cups flour 1 tsp salt 3 cups old fashioned oats 1+ cups chocolate chips
Directions:
1) Mix flaxseed meal and water together, set aside for 3-5 minutes.
2) Cream butter and sugar.
3) Add vanilla and eggs, one at a time, then flaxseed mixture. Beat until blended.
4) Sift together the dry ingredients except oats and chocolate chips.
5) Add dry ingredients to butter mixture. Stir in oats and chocolate chips.
6) Let dough rest for an hour or longer in the refrigerator. Then drop or scoop onto parchment-lined baking trays. Bake 8-12 minutes in a preheated 350 degree oven.
(**Note: Brewer's yeast is the "magic" ingredient. You can find it at Natural Grocers or Whole Foods. Flaxseed meal can be found at any grocery store. Additionally, you may substitute any kind of flour and use any kind of chips or nuts in the recipe.)
I hope this recipe is as helpful to you as it was to me!
Hang in there!
~Cat
Monday, November 17, 2014
Saturday, November 15, 2014
Potty Training Stinks
Potty Training: It really does stink, literally and figuratively. For those of you without children, consider your selves lucky. I don't like it at all. I know it is a natural thing that has to be done at some point, but I was really holding out for Brayden to be as easy as my parents tell me I was.
See, I have a brother that is 3 years older than me, and they had the hardest time trying to potty train him. If I remember correctly, the story has it that my brother finally was potty trained when he was 5 years old. My parents told me they had to send my brother to daycare to motivate him to use the potty and that apparently worked well for him. With me, I am told that I sat my little self down on the potty when I was 18 months old, told them "I go potty like a big person" and that was that. My parents told me that they were shocked, for they had been dreading the moment that they needed to start to potty train me because they were not successful the first time around.
So, on Labor Day weekend, Brian and I started the next daunting task of parenting. Day one was pretty awesome! I knew that once Brayden had gone potty in his little man toilet once, he would understand the task at hand and want to be a "big boy" and I was right... for the most part. See, we went to Walmart, bought a new little man potty, a bunch of stickers and posters (for motivation), a bunch of big boy underwear and we went home. Once we got there, we put Bray in his new underwear and explained that there were going to be no more baby diapers because we were a big boy now and blah blah blah. He seemed to understand and wanted to help with his sticker poster and everything. He sat on his potty and nothing happened. So he got some juice and we would try again.
We started playing with our letters of the alphabet, spelling different words and what not, when our first accident happened. He had started to pee on my carpet. It was actually kind of funny because he looked down and said "UhOh Mommy" and got up and ran to his potty and sat down. Granted it was after he had emptied his tank, but he had the right idea, so I was happy. He did good the rest of the day, sitting on the potty every 15-20 minutes, and then he peed in his potty. He was SO proud of himself, and of course we were so excited for him!
Naturally I call my parents to tell them and they told me that they are not the ones I need to go to if I need help with this because of their track record. But Brian and I were so excited and Brayden seemed to be too. They second day was a lot harder, he was pretty grumpy all day long and did not want to cooperate with anything. So we had a lot of accidents that day. We had also tried to have him sit down on the big man potty because Brian's mom didn't have her own little man potty and we forgot to bring ours with, and that was disastrous. He HATED it. I was afraid he wouldn't use his little man potty after that, but he did. The next day, we proved to my parents that he will potty in his little toilet if you sit him on it.
Getting him to do his secondary business on the potty was more difficult than I wanted it to be. I didn't want to bribe him with candy or food, but it came to a point, where there weren't a whole lot of options. He gets a piece of candy or a cookie when he successfully goes in a toilet. Running around with no clothes on seems to help a lot too. He has more accidents when he has his underpants on, which is saddening but understandable.
So that is where we are, several months later he exclusively pees in the potty. We're hit an miss with his other business, but more hits than misses! Luckily, every one is helping me out in this endeavor!
Hang in there!
-Cat
See, I have a brother that is 3 years older than me, and they had the hardest time trying to potty train him. If I remember correctly, the story has it that my brother finally was potty trained when he was 5 years old. My parents told me they had to send my brother to daycare to motivate him to use the potty and that apparently worked well for him. With me, I am told that I sat my little self down on the potty when I was 18 months old, told them "I go potty like a big person" and that was that. My parents told me that they were shocked, for they had been dreading the moment that they needed to start to potty train me because they were not successful the first time around.
So, on Labor Day weekend, Brian and I started the next daunting task of parenting. Day one was pretty awesome! I knew that once Brayden had gone potty in his little man toilet once, he would understand the task at hand and want to be a "big boy" and I was right... for the most part. See, we went to Walmart, bought a new little man potty, a bunch of stickers and posters (for motivation), a bunch of big boy underwear and we went home. Once we got there, we put Bray in his new underwear and explained that there were going to be no more baby diapers because we were a big boy now and blah blah blah. He seemed to understand and wanted to help with his sticker poster and everything. He sat on his potty and nothing happened. So he got some juice and we would try again.
We started playing with our letters of the alphabet, spelling different words and what not, when our first accident happened. He had started to pee on my carpet. It was actually kind of funny because he looked down and said "UhOh Mommy" and got up and ran to his potty and sat down. Granted it was after he had emptied his tank, but he had the right idea, so I was happy. He did good the rest of the day, sitting on the potty every 15-20 minutes, and then he peed in his potty. He was SO proud of himself, and of course we were so excited for him!
Naturally I call my parents to tell them and they told me that they are not the ones I need to go to if I need help with this because of their track record. But Brian and I were so excited and Brayden seemed to be too. They second day was a lot harder, he was pretty grumpy all day long and did not want to cooperate with anything. So we had a lot of accidents that day. We had also tried to have him sit down on the big man potty because Brian's mom didn't have her own little man potty and we forgot to bring ours with, and that was disastrous. He HATED it. I was afraid he wouldn't use his little man potty after that, but he did. The next day, we proved to my parents that he will potty in his little toilet if you sit him on it.
Getting him to do his secondary business on the potty was more difficult than I wanted it to be. I didn't want to bribe him with candy or food, but it came to a point, where there weren't a whole lot of options. He gets a piece of candy or a cookie when he successfully goes in a toilet. Running around with no clothes on seems to help a lot too. He has more accidents when he has his underpants on, which is saddening but understandable.
So that is where we are, several months later he exclusively pees in the potty. We're hit an miss with his other business, but more hits than misses! Luckily, every one is helping me out in this endeavor!
Hang in there!
-Cat
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