Josh and Korey

I recently wrote about the foods that you should and should not bring a breastfeeding mother, and I may have been wrong! Certainly we’ve all heard that babies will get gassy and fussy based on mom’s diet, but according to excellent resource kellymom.com, that isn’t the case! I trust kellymom to inform me correctly on breastfeeding information based on scientific fact, and this is what that site has to say:

“Breastmilk is made from what passes into mom’s blood, not what is in her stomach or digestive track.”

This blows my mind! Basically the article says that it does not matter what you eat – – with a few exceptions. Of course some babies will have intolerances (allergies) to certain foods, most often cow’s milk. Also, flavors from your food can affect your milk, flavoring it in a way that the baby could find unpalatable and cause him not to eat it…but that is not the issue at hand. After handling a fussy baby for about 24 hours, I started to look up how long whatever offending food I’d eaten would affect this little guy…and found out that it wasn’t to be blamed on my milk or my diet at all! The article goes on to explain (and Josh brought this up as well) that if spicy or gassy foods affected babies negatively, countries like Mexico or India would be full of fussy babies! 

Full article here.

Another case of the human body being amazing.

Your body can make healthy milk almost without your trying to eat well. Read this interesting article. Basically, whatever the baby needs (and your body will sense this–amazing, I know) will be leached from your body, whether you are eating it or not. This is why prenatal vitamins are recommended for nursing moms, and of course having a good diet is beneficial, but not necessary for breastfeeding.

Our little guy is a month old. Can you believe it?! I can’t. In some ways it seems like he was born yesterday, and of course it is also hard to remember life without him. Josh and I joke that sometimes we forget he’s here…and Josh has said he will walk into the living room and see the baby and think “omigosh there’s a baby in my house!” It’s much more difficult for me to forget of course, because no part of my life has stayed remotely the same…so it’s hard to not think of him every minute. He is so cute and funny I could look at him all day. He makes the funniest faces and noises, and I wish I could capture them to share with you all, because it’s just not the same to see a picture. I do have a treat for you today: videos! I’m going to try and take more, but for now I have a few cute glimpses for you of what life is like with the little man.

At this point, he is smiling and making sweet squeaks. Josh saw him blowing bubbles from his mouth yesterday, which is a really great sign of progress – it means he is starting the process of breathing out of his mouth. (Babies are born only able to breathe through their noses.) I talk to him constantly so that e can start to hear the flow and pattern of language. He has started to react to my talking to him by making faces and widening his eyes. He likes to watch the lights on the ceiling or the light filtering in the window. He can get his hands into his mouth, and can intertwine his fingers. He likes to hold his hands together. I clings onto my necklace whenever he can, or my hair, and grabs my shirt when he’s eating, or lightly moves his hand across my side in what I think is an affectionate way.

He seems to know my smell, and a calm baby can become a starving, hungry baby when he smells me near him. His hunger cues include grunting, bobbing or shaking his head, and smacking his lips. The hungrier he gets the more intense the head bobbing, which makes me laugh. He seldom cries, and when he does, it’s pretty quiet and short-lived. He really only cries to communicate with us; once we figure out what he wants, he stops right away. He is starting to enjoy bath time, which is a joy for me. If you hold him upright on your lap he will press both legs against you like he is standing up. He likes to sleep with one hand out of his blanket, and stretches one little arm over his head and falls asleep with it there.  I mostly have him swaddled at night – it helps him sleep longer and better. When he wakes me in the night to say he’s hungry, it’s in little, squeaky cries or just the sound of him fussing and moving. He’s a very happy baby!

We call him the little man – and he is in so many ways. He burps shockingly loudly, and farts often and loudly as well! It’s very funny. He is gaining weight like a champ. Born at 7 lb. 14 oz., he had lost 14 oz on the fourth day of his life, the day he entered the NICU. By the day after his discharge, he was back up to 7 lb. 10 oz., which was a great weight gain for 3.5 days. One week later he weighed 8 lb. 8 oz.! The pediatrician had me take him off the scale while she re-set it to make sure, because she was amazed. 4 days after that I went to a lactation workshop and he weighed 8 lb. 14 oz. before I fed him, and 9.1 afterward!! He is definitely a great eater. He sleeps in 2-3 hour stretches for the most part, except in the morning which is his cluster feeding time. He will get hungry after about 45 minutes for a few hours. I have to make sure he eats at least every 3 hours, which means sometimes I’m waking him up to eat. Otherwise he eats every 1.5 to 3 hours all day. Needless to say, that’s pretty much what I do all day!

I’ll leave you with a picture of Jacob with mommy and one with daddy, and the videos. Enjoy!

Video one: baby hiccups!

Video two: he’s asleep and doesn’t want to wake up

Video three: awake on the changing table

Video four: big yawn