hands free pumping

so i think i've mentioned that i am working full time now, as an attorney in a private law firm where i'm required to bill my time. since time = money in this business, i've been trying to make my three-times-a-day breast pumping sessions as quick and efficient as possible.

one of my good friends is an attorney with a five month-old boy and she is also doing the full-time working mother thing. she showed me this AWESOME trick for acheiving hands free pumping without expensive contraptions or special nursing bras. Check it out:

http://www.kellymom.com/bf/pumping/hands-free-pumping.html

i tell you, it's the best! i can draft motions, read cases and pretty much do anything when i use these useful doodads. although i've learned that making phone calls is not always a good idea when pumping. (um...what's that odd sound i keep hearing? it sounds like strangely like mooing....)

workin'

sigh. yes, i'm at the office, trying to get a few things done and a few hours billed.

kind of depressing, huh?

actually, i was able to sleep in this morning, which was great considering cabot (our beloved labrador retreiver) was literally pacing in our bedroom from about 11:30 to 2:30 last night. not sure why, but it was a very windy evening and a few of the shutters on the house were rattling, so maybe he was freaked out. thankfully, boopers slept peacefully until about 5:30. i fed her and she dropped back off to sleep until seven.

we had a nice weekend, though, and were able to get a few things unpacked. plus i got some cooking done, wheeee! tonite we are having polenta lasagna and salad. and of course, cookies for santa. our neighbor dropped off a dozen eggs from her chickens, so we will have quiche for brunch on christmas morning. and i bought a leg of lamb, so i am going to marinate that overnight and roast it tomorrow with baby potatoes. and sautee some green beans with shallots. YUM! considering that we've pretty much subsided on fozen pizza, pasta with red sauce, and leftover chicken soup for the past few months (moving + baby + working long hours = no time to cook) having some time to make yummy foods is a real treat!

alright, back to my motion for summary judgment. i'll post again after christmas...

boopers meets santa

pete took boopers to his lab's christmas party last week, where they were graced by the presence of a not-so-jolly-looking saint nick. i think boopers is a santa skeptic. she kept trying to pull off his beard.

new year's resolution

i'm behind on billing, and i've been wracking my poor little brain for solutions.

solution found! i just had a conversation with my friend and fellow associate, who is also behind on his hours and also has a baby under six months old. we've just made a new year's resolution: we are going to pick one saturday every month and come into the office together to try to bill an extra day's work.

i think we can stick to it. it's kind of like sticking to a running regiment: if you have a running partner that's counting on you to join them on a run, then you pull your lazy butt off the couch and join them 'cause you don't want to let them down.

i hate the idea of working on a saturday, but i can't think of a way to increase my weekly work day without missing out on the already meager amount of time i get to spend with boopers at night.

alright, back to billing.

"sleep training" and teething

poor boopers. being six months old is tough! first, there's the teething thing. now, i have yet to see a little tooth poke through her gums, but they are definitely getting ready to protrude. most days she copes with teething aches and pains just fine, but for the past few days she's been little miss cranky pants. it doesn't help that she also has a cold, which has been dragging on for over a week.

of course, this is all coinciding with our efforts to "sleep train" aubrey. for the past few months she's been a very good nighttime sleeper. infact, before the move, she would sleep - on average - from 7:00 to 4:30, without waking up for a feed. (this is nothing short of miraculous, considering aubrey hardly ever takes a meaningful nap during the day!)

so, our main issue is not so much getting aubrey to stay asleep all night, but to get her to put herself to sleep without a ton of commotion. and we are attempting to eliminate the early morning waking, especially now that she is in her own room. most nights we are able to put her down with very little fussing. but every few nights, aubrey puts up a fight. after ensuring that she is: (a) not hungry; (b) does not need to burp; (c) dry and warm; (d) not contorted into a bizaare position in her crib in need of rescue, our most recent tactic is...to let her cry it out. so far we've been fortunate in that she usually puts herself to sleep after about 10-15 minutes of crying. but it is TOUGH! man can she wail! and we've found that if we go into her room to comfort her without picking her up, she gets even more pissed off. arg!

last night we had a relatively smooth putting to bed session, but aubrey started screaming very suddenly and very unexpectedly at ten o'clock...almost as if waking up from a very bad dream. (she occasionally does this, and i am convinced that young babies are capable of dreaming.) we went in to check on her (her cry sounded unusual) and i ended up letting her nurse to calm her down. she fell back to sleep quickly without much of a fuss.

but she was up again around 4:30, babbling at first, and then out and out wailing. i went up to check on her: baby parts were in tact and she was dry. she just wanted attention. so i resisted the urge to pick her up and instead, snuggled her blanky around her, patted her in an attempt to soother her (really this just gets her more revved up) shushed a bit and then left her. crying. in her crib. i went down the stairs and crawled back into bed, feeling somewhat guilty, but determined to let aubrey figure this sleep thing out on her own. after about five or ten more minutes of torture (it seemed a lot longer than that...maybe it wasn't even that long...) she stopped crying. almost abruptly. amazing.

what's even more amazing is that pete snored through almost the entire episode.

aubrey stayed asleep until around six, when she started crying again. by this time we were up and getting ready for work, so i got her out of her crib and carried her down to our room. (she was definitely hungry at this point, since she tried to nurse my cheek on the way down the stairs.) i nursed her in our bed and she promptly dropped off to sleep again. i had to wake her up at seven to get her ready to go to daycare.

so...i'm not really sure that my attempts at "sleep training" are going to acheive my desired goal of uninterrupted sleep at night. i am aware of a multitude of "sleep training" theories and techniques. on the one hand you have those that ascribe to the feber method. on the other, you have those that sing the praises of attachment parenting. i have always been the type of person to take the "middle road," and can see advantages and disadvantages with both positions. and there are theorists who adopt a "hybrid" approach to sleep traing. BUT, the problem with these middle-of-the-road theorists is that the "methods" they describe are about as clear as mud. the best that i can gather from them is that you just try different stuff that seems right for you and your family see what the result is. ack! how frustrating when all you really want is someone to say: this is what you should do, follow steps 1 through 4.

if only parenting were that easy, right?

my love hate relationship with breastfeeding

my milk supply is starting to dwindle.

perhaps this is due to the fact that my husband and i spent the last week moving all of our belongings and 4 cords of firewood into our new home and barn, and i haven't been pumping/nursing boopers as frequently as i usually do.

perhaps this is due to the fact that we are six months PBB (Post Birth of Boopers) and she is starting to eat some solid foods.

perhaps this is due to the fact that i am SUPER busy with work/the holidays/family visiting/unpacking and have had no time to RELAX. and i have a cold.

okay, so i'm a little stressed right now.

i know that stress can affect your milk supply. i know that nursing and pumping frequently can increase your supply. however, i am finding it very difficult to pump more than three times a day at work. (damn the billable hour!)

i've started taking fennugreek supplements and drinking more water, to see if that has any effect. we've made it six months with no formula and i desparately want to avoid giving any to aubrey. but i'm starting to worry that this slow decrease in milk over the past few months is an irreversible trend. maybe i'm wrong...maybe it's normal?

sigh. i've had fluctuations in my supply from the very beginning, so i suppose i'll get through this. don't get me wrong...i am so very very glad that i made the decision to breast feed, and, even though it has had its challenges (ex: sore boobs, blisters on nipples, plugged ducts, a bout of mastitis, not to mention my ravenous barracuda of a baby) i wouldn't do it any other way.

but lately, i have been finding myself longing for freedom from the boob. six months down, six more to go. can i make it?

all new adventures in blogging

So this is my first blog. It is my attempt to chronicle my crazy life as a new mother, and my daughter's growth and changes during her first year. Some quick stats:

1. I grew up in Vermont. I've lived in and around Vermont for most of my life, with a few detours to other New England states.

2. I returned to VT shortly after college. Did some teaching, had some fun, outdoorsy jobs and met my husband Pete.

3. I have a bachelor's degree in anthropology and studio art. In my early twenties I found myself in that post-college liberal arts funk, unsure what I should do with myself. The solution to my existential crisis? Law school, of course!

4. Somehow I managed to survive law school, and actually kind of liked it. After graduation, I spent a few years as a law clerk in New Hampshire. Clerking was great: I learned a lot, met some great people, and the hours were fantastic.

5. In the middle of my clerkship I found out I was pregnant. I gave birth to a healthy baby girl (Aubrey, a/k/a "Boopers") this spring. More about that later.

6. This fall I started working full time for a small law firm in southern VT...my first real lawyer job. I am one of eight attorneys, all of whom are MEN, except moi. So far, they've been very cool about the breast pump permanently planted on my desk. More on that later, too.

7. Pete and I just bought our first house in a teeny little town, not too far from where I grew up. It's an old place that needs some fixing up. Okay, a lot of fixing up. I'm hoping that we haven't bit off more than we can chew.

That's the quick and dirty. In a nutshell, the past six months or so have brought about a whirlwind of amazing changes in my life. I have learned so much, but have had little time to reflect. I'm hoping that this blog will help me memorialize some of my experiences and share them with others.

Here we go...