Okay, I’m willing to make it official: this is becoming a Mommy blog.
It’s not that I don’t have anything else to talk about… I guess it’s just because everything else is the same day to day doldrum as anything else. My entire life right now is being a mom and going to work. And since work is work, and I don’t foresee it changing anytime soon (much to my dismay and despite my best efforts) that just leaves the Mommy talk. And while I sometimes wish I could go back to my life before, to a simpler time when all I needed to worry about was working and spending time with my husband, I really wouldn’t change it back.
Being a mom is stressful. As much as I try to keep things simple and not worry all the time, I worry. ALL THE TIME. I worry about how his life now will affect his life in the future. I worry about all the things I could be doing with him and how I don’t know what else I can do to help him grow into a perfect human being. I stress about texting and checking out Facebook on my phone while he sits and “plays” on the floor. I’m worried that, while I’m trying to teach him Baby Signing, he hasn’t shown any signs of knowing it or using it yet. I worry about the amount of sleep he’s getting. I worry every night when I put him to bed about how he’s going to sleep - and sometimes even worse, whether or not he’ll wake up (oh yes, those fears are still there). Every time I feel these worries popping up I try to tell myself to calm down, and that everything will be fine, that I’m doing the best I can and Jamie’s going to grow up to be a perfectly normal young man. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.
My biggest worry, above everything else, revolves around food. From the beginning, when we dealt with his tongue and lip tie issues, I worried about Jamie not getting enough to eat. Tongue and lip ties typically make babies nurse less than they should - luckily I was home with him for those first three months and was able to nurse him whenever he needed. Once his ties were fixed, my worries slingshotted in the other direction. Suddenly my little boy was overeating. It was almost as though he didn’t know when to stop himself. He’d nurse, and because he was now super efficient at nursing, I’d sit him up to burp and he’d spit up a bunch of milk. The overeating exacerbated the reflux issues, causing him to need reflux medication to minimize his suffering. By the time I went back to work I had, miraculously, gotten Jamie onto a loose “Eat, Wake, Sleep” cycle and he was a happy boy.
Then I went back to work and Jamie went to daycare. My daycare lady, bless her heart, uses food as her “go-to.” Whenever Jamie would start fussing she’d give him milk. At its worst Jamie was being fed 25 ounces of milk in a 10-hour period - when breastfed babies at that age only need about an ounce per hour - so he was essentially getting an entire day’s worth of milk while he was at daycare. I finally put a stop to this, limiting the amount of milk I’d send every day, and lo and behold Jamie’s reflux got WORLDS better. He was happier at home, nursing like a rockstar, and there was peace in the world again.
At our six-month check-up we were told that it was time to start experimenting with solid food, a moment I dreaded due to my overactive worry about Jamie’s overall food intake issues. But we plugged along, and he seemed to do just fine. In fact, he LOVED food. He would eat, and eat, and eat… and then he started eating too much. He’d end up vomiting it all up. It was, like before, as if he didn’t know when he was full. Again, he was being overfed at daycare and he’d do it at home too. So in my panicked state I started limiting the solid intake to just an ounce or two a couple times a day. He never seemed upset about it - at home, he rarely shows hunger signs because he’s on a loose feeding schedule at home. But when Jamie turned 9 months old and was just barely growing into his 6-9 mo clothing I started to worry again.
Jamie was little from the moment he was born. He started at just under 6 pounds - 5 lbs, 15.8 oz, to be exact. At each of his check-ups he’d slowly grow, little by little, but he never got up past the 5th percentile for weight. His length was much better - into the 35th percentile - so he has always been pretty long and skinny. At his 9 month check-up he was only 16 pounds, falling completely off the growth chart. I wasn’t worried about this at first. After all, I’m just barely over 5 feet tall on a good day. I was always a tiny kid. When I started the first grade I weighed 39 pounds and was 39 inches tall. I knew there was a chance Jamie would take after me in this regard, though I hoped it wasn’t the case, as I know it’s really difficult for boys to be so little.
But as Jamie got older and longer but no bigger the comments started to come in. Everyone commented on our “little guy,” and some would make the connection that I am little as well, saying he must take after his mama. But there were other, not-so-great comments about how skinny he was. One day our daycare lady mentioned that she “couldn’t wait” for him to fill out and get fatter. After all, apparently only fat babies are healthy babies. But Jamie always seemed fine, when he was cranky it was cranky for a reason, and it typically wasn’t hunger. I knew that limiting his milk and food intake had helped his reflux issues, but was I going too far and contributing to him falling off the growth curve? I started to panic and worry about my little guy.
Luckily our pediatrician wasn’t excessively worried. After I explained the reflux and vomiting issues he suggested we add more calories to Jamie’s food instead of more volume, such as adding a bit of coconut oil to his purees and start introducing him to higher fat dairy like yogurt and cheese. He also said it was time to start introducing meats and proteins, which is nerve-wracking, but Jamie seems to like the pureed chicken I bought for him. I have also started sending slightly larger bottles to daycare, since we are starting to wean this week (holy cow, I can’t believe it!). I’m still scared to add yogurt (though we have some in the fridge for him) because he still gets extra reflux-y when I have cheese or yogurt, so I’m worried that giving it to him directly will be a disaster. I guess we won’t know till we try, though.
I think my biggest fear comes into the “what kind and when” conversation. I took Jamie to a Baby Led Weaning class a couple weeks ago, and he grabbed a hunk of bread, chowing down on it with ease. So I try to do some more finger foods with him at home, giving him some pear slices and some hard-scrambled egg yolk. This weekend, with the egg yolk, he gagged pretty badly the whole time he was eating it. We’re still spoon feeding him purees too, which he does fine with, but I know I need to start adding in the finger foods (especially now that he has two little teeth and more on the way!). When do we add the sippy cup? When should I let him handle his own spoon? When can I start giving him the food we’re eating? I feel terribly under-prepared for solid food, and I worry about it every single day. I keep trying to read books and websites about it, and everything says I should be further along than we are, but I don’t feel comfortable or ready for it.
Then my brain kicks in and says, “Hey, CALM THE EFF DOWN.” Deep breath. We’ll figure it out.
So, on the one hand, I hope that Jamie starts to gain a bit of weight and gets back onto the growth curve sometime in the next few months. But on the other hand, he’s little, like me. And in some strange way it’s nice to have him take after me in some fashion, even if it’s something like this. I just need to start transitioning him to actual food. No big deal, right?
… Right??
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