Since he’s never been sick before, I’ve never had to use that bulb syringe thing for his nose. Well, it definitely works, but he did not like it one bit. He would squirm around when I tried to put it in his nose, and when I finally got something out, he would start to cry. I guess those things are something that you just have to get used to using. I took his temperature too, since you’re not supposed to take kids into daycare with a fever, and I’d have to use a sick day if I couldn’t take him to daycare. He didn’t so much like the thermometer either, and it is the least invasive one I possible could have used. When I was registering for baby stuff I had thought an ear thermometer was the way to go, but then when I was in the hospital with him they used a forehead (or arterial) thermometer on me and I thought if it’s good enough for the hospital, it’s good enough for me. They’re pretty handy little items. You just place the tip in the middle of your kid’s forehead, push the button, and then move it up into their hairline. I believe it uses IR to measure temperature, so it’s not going to be quite as acurate as say a rectal thermometer (but really, do we need to be that accurate at home?). Now like I said, this has got to be the least invasive type of thermometer for kiddos, but still I could not get him to hold still. That’s the thing about a 5 month old, you can’t reason with them and say, “Hey, hold still for just a few seconds.” After around 10 attempts, I got enough average readings that I assumed he didn’t have a fever, and we got packed to go to daycare.

Even though he didn’t feel great, he was still all smiles and snuggles. He’s just so sweet, it would be impossible not to love that little boy. So now I’m at work, hoping that he’s feeling better and that I won’t get a call during the day saying I need to come get him. I just wish he didn’t feel bad on his first Valentine’s Day. Just means I’ll have to give me extra snuggles tonight.

• Freeze a Wet Washcloth – Take a washcloth, get it wet, and stick it in the freezer for a while. Once it’s pretty frozen it effectively works as a flexible cold compress. It may sound silly, but wrapping that thing around your itchy belly feels really good when the rash is acting up. I would keep two washcloths in the freezer so that I could swap out between them as needed.
• Hot/Cold Shower – This one depends on what works for you and what you can deal with. I’ve heard some women say that they took cold showers during their pregnancy to calm the rash, but I personally can’t do cold showers. Instead what I would do was turn up the water to pretty hot and point it at the rash. It would numb up the area for a while and allow me to sleep if I did it right before bed. I did this for spots that were not on my belly because I did want to get the baby that hot. Some people will tell you that you can’t take a hot shower period, but the danger is really in raising your core body temperature, not just a spot on your body. So while you shouldn’t get in a hot tub or a really hot bath, a shower is usually okay.
• Lotions/Oils – Everyone recommends cocoa butter for stretch marks, and while I’m not really sure it prevented any stretchmarks, it did help to alleviate some itching. Lush makes a body butter massage bar that a friend bought for me, it’s called Therapy, that I would rub on after a shower before I got into bed (It’s very oily, so be carefuly what you’re wearing). There’s also a thing called Bio-Oil that I highly recommend for stretch marks, c-section scars, rashes and any other skin problems you may have. You can find it at Babies ‘R Us and I believe most grocery or drug stores. It worked wonders for me, and made my skin feel so much better (also very messy for clothes though). If you can’t find either of those, you can always just use regular cocoa butter from the store, really any lotion will help a little.

In addition to being a terrible pregnancy symptom, there is the chance that the rash will hang around a while after you give birth. For most women that it affects, the symptoms disappear as soon as that baby is out. However, some women have said they’ve had symptoms for up to a year after birth. Personally I’m almost 5 months out right now and I’m still experiencing a few problems with rashes, but not nearly the same severity as while I was pregnant. So there is hope! My go to is still Bio-Oil and some lotion.

I think everyone has heard how important it is to have a baby bouncer chair. It’s amazing how quickly a seat that vibrates can calm an upset baby, sometimes it can be the only thing that will calm them (think back to Samantha watching Miranda’s baby on Sex and the City!). There are lots of seats out there that will fit the bill, but this is my suggestion for a seat that you can get much more use out of. It’s Fisher Price’s Infant to Toddler Walker. It runs about $45, and you can get it most places. I think I got mine at Wal-Mart. It’s got your basics: an arch of toys for the baby to play with (one that rattles, one with that crackly material, and one that has a pull and plays music – granted it’s pretty terrible music, buy babies seem to love it), a vibrating base (uses 1 D battery), and a seat that you can strap the baby into (totally necessary once they start rolling over and trying to sit up).

The thing about this seat though is that it’ll last you a while. The weight limit goes up to 40 pounds (thus the toddler part of the name) and it can be used as either a rocker or a bed. When my son is awake he likes to kick and make it rock himself, the little bugs on the toy arm keep him very entertained and he really does seem to love the song that the lady bug plays. But we’ve also been using this chair as my son’s bed for about 3 months now. When we first brought him home from the hospital, I tried the bassinet thing. I’d already heard how much of a waste of money a stand-alone bassinet was, so I got a play yard with a bassinet insert so that we could use it for longer. However, my son still didn’t want to sleep in it. And because those play yard are so big and my bedroom isn’t, we had to put it at the foot of the bed which didn’t make for the easiest night feedings. With this little rocker we can put it right next to either side of the bed, depending on whose turn it is to watch him that night, kick out the footbar so that he’s leaning back, and we have a great little bed for him. If he gets fussy at night he’s right next to us to give him a bottle, so no need to get out of bed. And if that’s not helping, you can turn on the vibrations to help put him to sleep. He’s strapped in there, so there’s no worry that he’s going to fall out, and the front of the seat belt actually makes a great place to clip on a pacifier tether for easy access in the middle of the night (I highly recommend pacifier holders on each seat your baby finds themself in frequently). For us this has been a fantastic solution. And the great thing is, that once he’s not sleeping in it (for now I can only dream of the day that he sleeps in his crib all night), he can use it as a rocking chair. It’s a great way to get extended use out of something that really does make life with baby easier.

First, since Dade was so large, the nurses would come to take his blood sugar levels every few hours for the first couple days. And if you’ve ever seen how they take blood from a baby, you know that it isn’t pleasant for anyone involved. They make a small puncture in the baby’s heel and then squeeze out enough blood for the test. The first time I ever saw this as a kid when my little sister was born, I nearly passed out. I don’t mind blood, but I don’t have much of a stomach for seeing a baby in pain.

Then came the pressure to feed him. Breastfeeding is not easy. No matter how much you’ve read about it or how set you are on doing it, there are very few women that breast feeding comes easy for. So before Dade or I could really get the hang of it, the nurses insisted that we supplement his feedings somehow. Since at this point I was still dead set on breastfeeding, I went the route of donor milk. It may seem strange at first, but if it’s available it’s a great alternative to having to use formula right away. However, it pretty much necessitates the use of a bottle. There is a setup that you can try to use that entails putting a tube next to your nipple so that the baby gets milk from the tube as well while nursing. But quite honestly it’s very difficult to do, and makes the process of getting used to breastfeeding even more difficult than it already is. We didn’t last too long using that. We had one nurse that suggested Dad feed him with the bottle so that Mom wouldn’t get associated with a bottle. It was a good idea, but it didn’t really work for us. Once Dade got a bottle in his mouth, he didn’t really want to have anything to do with my breast. The reason being that milk comes easily out of a bottle, with a real nipple the baby has to work at it. So who can blame him for choosing the bottle?

So to make a long story, well still pretty darn long, is that I started out not wanting to use formula at all. Fast forward 4 months, and formula seems like a lifesaver to me. With all the troubles we had with breastfeeding, I had been exclusively pumping since pretty early on (more about that in a future post). Formula gave me a way to make feeding Dade seem easy and not cause me so much stress and time away from him.

Picking a formula is kind of a difficult decision. For brand name I went completely off of our pediatrician’s recommendation. He said that if he lined them all up, he would pick Enfamil over the others. And rather than start off with any of the specialty formulas, he said to begin with the standard and go from there. Made sense, but we only got through one tub of the standard stuff before I realized that we probably needed to switch to the gassy formula. In Enfamil’s brand that meant the purple tub, or Gentlease. That seems to be making a big difference. On the standard stuff, all of a sudden, Dade started waking up every couple of hours during the night and just screaming. I think the problem was that he was having very bad gas. I’m lactose intollerant, so I figured there’s a good chance he is too. This formula has proteins that are partially broken down, so it’s easier for a baby’s developing digestive system to deal with (I’m hoping eventually that means it will help him sleep through the night, no luck quite yet, but at least the screaming bouts have stopped). I can’t say enough how much easier this is on me than pumping multiple times a day. One scoop to every 2 oz of water….good to go. For me, it’s been a lifesaver. I wish breastfeeding had been a different experience for me, but I’m glad that we’ve gotten into a place that’s easier on all of us now.

I should mention, when I first read through the ingredients of Gentlease I noticed that the first ingredient was Corn Syrup Solids. Sounds terrible doesn’t it? Like you’re giving your baby high fructose corn syrup or something. After doing some research I realized that wasn’t the case. The Corn Syrup Solids are used as carbohydrate sources and replace the lactose in lactose-free formulas. They’re easily digestible, provide energy for the body, and help to make the formula’s composition as close to human milk as possible. I also read some posts from nurtitionists about how sugar is actually worse than corn syrup for your baby (about twice as sweet I believe) and is used in some other formulas. So don’t worry about the Corn Syrup Solids.