Well, Babby, or the artist soon to be known as Owl, survived his first week away from me. Four full time days away from me, and then another with his Daddy.
He doesn’t seem to mind in the least. He watches me go in the mornings, but he doesn’t cry. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop; for him to say, “Wait a minute, you leave me here EVERY DAY!!” but so far it hasn’t happened.
Daycare Lady doesn’t think it will happen, because he’s “such a happy, confident little guy” but NotMaryP, who has 19 years of experience on my own Daycare Lady, warns me that pretty much every baby goes through some separation tears in the first month of settling in.
In the meantime, I’m wavering between deep relief every time he lets me escape with a minimum of guilt, and slight concern that my baby doesn’t care whether or not I’m around.
Pumping at work is a problem.
A vet clinic is not your normal work atmosphere. There are hypothetical lunch breaks (we certainly go 30 minutes unpaid each shift for said lunch hour) but whether or not one gets to take an entire one, or even one at all, is left very much up to fate.
You have to understand that this is not a problem with THIS clinic. This is a problem in ALL clinics. When the vet needs you to restrain a thrashing patient, or when a surgery needs to be done, or the phone is ringing off the hook, it is simply Not Done to say “I’ll be with you in 20 minutes.”
So some days I get time to scarf down a lunch, and other days I do not. Pumping has to wait until a lull, and it gets precedent over eating. Sometimes that lull doesn’t happen until one in the afternoon, when my breasts are full to the brim. Even so, it’s ten minutes of agonized hiding in the bathroom and pumping away, only to produce 3 ounces total for my time.
And ten minutes feels like a LONG TIME when you can hear phones ringing, the vet calling out for help, and the “ding” of more people coming in the door.
In the morning, when Babby wakes up at 5 in the morning, I rush downstairs and pump a couple more ounces while PH tries to soothe a screaming baby who hasn’t eaten since 8:30 pm (on a good night) or at least one or two (on a bad night).
So he goes to daycare with 5 ounces or so of milk in his sippy cup, and Daycare Lady spoke to me on Friday and said that it’s simply not enough. He needs more. She talked to me about considering formula or cow’s milk to supplement.
I hate to go that route.
I had been hoping that solid food would fill that gap in his nutrition, but I guess it isn’t. And I can’t criticize Daycare Lady for simply not feeding him more. She gives me a run down each day of what he has eaten. The kid eats more than I do.
Here is Friday’s list:
- one egg scrambled with flaxseed pita
- One small bowl of cheerios
- one cup of blueberry yoghurt
- a few goldfish crackers
- one bowl of cut up pear
- one plate of rice with beef/lamb kebab and tomatoes,
- one bowl of plain Greek yoghurt
- one tablespoon of vanilla ice cream
- one bowl of cut up red grapes
- a few animal crackers
- a whole banana
And this is the day that she told me that he needs more milk.
She very well may be right, because for the last two days, basically since I got home Saturday evening until, well, NOW, Babby has been latched onto my boob.
His nights, which had settled down into a sleep through the night on a good night or one or two wakeups on a bad night, has relapsed into regular, every two or three hour wake ups. And he WON’T go to sleep without a good feed each time.
I feel like our sleep training has taken a serious step back, because he isn’t being sung to sleep the last couple of nights – he is nursing until he is finally sated.
HELP, SHE'S STARVING MEEEEEEEEEEE!
To be fair, when I put him down, he rolls over and goes to sleep on his own. But if we put him down before he is done nursing, he just screams and signs for “MILK” in an emphatic way which is impossible to ignore. We’re afraid to ignore it, anyway, after the “he needs more milk” talk.
Do 11 month olds go through cluster feedings?
What do I do? Get a better pump? Put him onto cow’s milk? FORMULA?
