cindy's world

RE DODO:
Dodo has a vet appointment this Saturday to get an update on his kidney disease condition. He started vomiting bile more often over the weekend, and I relayed that to the vet, who’d called to check up on him over the week. She explained a process from the kidneys’ failure to do their job efficiently which ends up with excess acid production in the stomach. The end result is that I have to add another medication, this time an antacid, to his morning and evening medication routine. Luckily, I was able to get it in liquid suspension form, also tuna-flavored. It should be delivered directly from the pharmacy this week. I think the stages of this disease are progressing faster than I’d initially expected.

RE ALLIE AT HOME:
Allie has been doing well this week. Jayne has been following my written instructions/diagram, so Allie’s had all 6 naps on time Monday and Tuesday. Monday was picture-perfect and she had substantial naps. Jayne had to wake her at the 2-hour mark from her Monday noon nap so she doesn’t oversleep, and she had to again be awoken from her late afternoon nap yesterday. She did take a short morning nap yesterday (about half an hour), but she was left in her crib until the full hour had passed before she was picked up and fed. The feedings are in normal stretches after the naps, too. So as long as I can avoid looking at the cameras in the day, I don’t feel too much anxiety.

RE PUMPING:
Milk production dropped dramatically in the past week, but yesterday appeared to pick up a little again. I’ve given up trying to pump at night before I go to bed as the amount I’d get out makes the exercise a waste of time, but I’ve pumped in the mornings prior to Allie getting up, which has been working out. I’m usually so engorged at that time that I don’t need a let-down to get out at least 4 ounces, and I’m finding that I’m more engorged earlier in the mornings, so overnight milk production has increased. This morning I got out 7 oz an hour before Allie was to be up, still leaving enough for her to nurse with in the morning. I’ve also gotten out a half ounce more in each work-pumping yesterday than I had the day before, so I’m hoping it’s an upward trend. I think it helps that I’m less freaked out about what’s going on at home.

RE WORK:
It’s been a pretty light week as far as court hearings go for us, so I’ve been taking advantage of it by washing out and drying the pump parts after each pump session (when it gets busy I’d only have time to wipe the parts out), and by hammering the 30+ divorce cases sitting in the bin waiting for me when I got back. The relief clerk who was at my desk most of the time, Andy, did his best in keeping up with those and did process a gi-normous quantity of the cases, but I heard the clerk’s office was so behind in getting the defaulted divorce files farmed out to the courtrooms for processing that they put 5 people on the default desk to clear the backlog, and each courtroom was hit with 7-8 cases a day in addition to the courtroom’s regular work. Everyone’s grumbling and everyone’s behind. Well, after a week and a half of pounding on these cases, I cleared my cart yesterday and got caught up. I still see it as what may stand between me and my baby at the end of the day, and I don’t ever want to give a supervisor a reason to tell me I can’t leave for the day because I’m leaving work behind.

YESTERDAY EVENING’S STATUS MESSAGES:
“Cindy daringly took a shower 15 mins after Allie went to bed, aiming for the deep sleep part of Allie’s sleep cycle…& Allie reportedly didn’t move from the shower sounds! This could mean a shower daily is now possible! *moved to tears of joy*”
That’s huge! Allie’s finally outgrowing the overly noise-sensitive sleep phase of her babyhood!

“Cindy would love to take a field trip back in time to see the day when ice cream was invented. Was it an accident? Was it a stroke of genius? What was everyone’s reactions when they tasted it for the first time? What flavor was the first ice cream? Who came up with adding vanilla? In fact — oh, look at that, it’s 8:50. Time for bed.”
I think I’m gaining a little weight back. I’d like to gain it back by hitting the gym, but having to be back from lunch to pump at 1pm, gymming is out of the question for now. Altho…hmm…I should be able to do some stuff at home (floor exercises), and at least do some walking or SOMEthing at lunchtime.

Nap re-training went really well over the weekend. After the stunt Allie pulled on her first nap on Saturday when I had to let her cry for 23 minutes before she went back to sleep for 2 hours (I had to wake her so that she didn’t oversleep), she didn’t try it again. She hit all her naps on time and woke up from them at the right times, usually about one hour and 45 minutes. No fits in between REM cycles, no rolling around in her crib. I did notice latency has increased (taking longer to go to sleep during soothing); it used to be about 10 minutes, now it’s up to half an hour on some naps, with sometimes a few minutes of protest crying before she zonks out. I wrote detailed notes of her naps and her behavior before and during them. I also did a 12-hour daytime timeline with color-coded brackets and instructions for naptimes and feeding times. Jayne got here late again this morning so I didn’t have a lot of time to go over all the specifics, just went over things generally. I hope she reads the chart and notes. Stepdaughter conversationally said yesterday that she was hanging out with Jayne and chatting and they saw Allie wake up and cry on the monitor, and that they waited 5 minutes before Jayne went up and got her. Stepdaughter almost said it in a defense, like, “We did wait, though — we waited 5 minutes.” 5 minutes is not effective, obviously, because Allie then learns she can easily outlast Jayne and get picked up early from the nap. The point is to have Allie in her crib for an hour whether or not she sleeps the full hour, so she doesn’t expect to play during naptimes. Given the chance (i.e. she isn’t getting picked up after her first REM cycle), Allie sleeps for at least 90 minutes in a nap, and soon doesn’t even bother moving much during that initial REM wake-up, but goes right back to sleep. Altho Allie was crabby and would cry for no reason on Friday, we got our happy smiling well-rested baby back on Sunday. We also got black-out curtains for her this weekend and Mr. W installed them right away. They block about 70% of daytime light. I don’t want it black in her room cuz I still want her to know the difference between daytime naps and nighttime sleep.

Pumping didn’t go so well. I get consistent advice from other pumping mothers to keep at it, pump before going to bed. The timing is fine because it would be about 3 hours after Allie last ate for the night when I go to bed, but I can’t get letdowns anymore. Squeezing the hell out of each side as I’m pumping on the hand-pump with the free hand yields about 5 mL per side in 10 minutes. Basically it’s a total waste of time because it takes me longer to clean the parts afterwards. The time could’ve been better served by sleeping. I finally pumped at 5:30a this morning before Allie’s first feeding of the day and got almost 4 oz total by squeezing until my skin burned. I know there’s milk in there, my body just won’t release it. The only reason I got out what I did this morning was because I was engorged from no release overnight. I wonder if my doing that would get me less at my first work pumping later.

Dodo yowled every 15 minutes starting at about 10:30p last night, lasting for 45 minutes to an hour. Then he started yowling every 10 minutes starting at about 4:30am this morning for over an hour. He yowled more over the weekend, too. Not sure what changed. His yowling is even louder. I’m still medicating him as instructed.

This weekend, I discovered that staying at home and just doing babycare is, surprisingly, easier than going to work. I’d expected to feel better knowing I’m getting a break from 24/7 baby issues, but it’s harder psychologically at work because not only am I not free from baby issues as I worry about Allie’s routine going nuts at home, but I have to worry about pumping (whether I can get away, where, how long I can afford to pump/store/clean, whether it’s productive). The baby stress is compounded, and I have work stress and obstacles on top of that. There’s a giant backlog of divorce cases the clerk’s office is distributing like crazy so I’ve been working like mad to try to get rid of the ones they’re assigning to me. I’ve made a sizeable dent, but not good enough. I don’t want anyone to have a reason to say I can’t leave work on time because of workload unfinished. It’s really hard to concentrate on each file’s details, however, when my anxiety level is so high about what’s going on at home. I think that may be affecting my (lack of) letdowns, too.

I’m re-nap-training Allie right now. After a week, she has learned that if she wakes up after a natural REM cycle during her nap and cries, a really fun nice nanny will come get her, and they’ll play. Toward the second half of the week, she’s learned that not only will she get picked up if she forces herself awake and cries instead of going back to sleep, but she’ll get a big bottle, too. The result is that for the past few weekdays, she’s had 30 minute naps, a big bottle, a tiny bit of play before she’s tired because the last nap was insufficient, so she’ll get another unscheduled nap which will last for 30 minutes (because now it doesn’t match her biorhythmic tired time anymore), she’ll get up and cry, she’ll get picked up and another big bottle, and this repeats for 4 little naps and 4 big bottles in the day until we get home. She’s flying through the stored milk, pooping a lot, and becoming more cranky from nap deprivation without a nice long consolidated restorative nap.

So today, I played with her until 8:30a, when I started soothing her for her morning nap which is supposed to occur around 9a. She fell asleep in her crib at 8:45a, and sure enough, in half an hour, she was up and crying. She had a FIT in there, but I didn’t go in to get her. This has happened before and the crying would last about 10-15 mins before she’d just go back to sleep and sleep solidly for an hour or more, but this time, because she expected to be picked up, she kept it up for 23 minutes. I watched anxiously on the monitor, and when Mr. W came out of the bedroom to see what was going on after HIS nap, I immediately hissed, “Don’t go in there!” He didn’t. I can see her sucking her thumb to self-soothe here and there, but she’d pull off and yell and cry again. Clearly she was still tired and needed to sleep, but wanted to play. Finally, she got the hint (altho 23 mins felt like an hour) and went back to sleep at 9:44 am. She’s still sleeping now. She’s woken up in between REM cycles since then, but would immediately put herself back to sleep instead of fighting it and waking up.

Now I have the opposite problem — if I let her sleep too much longer she’s going to be off schedule in the other direction. She’s already missed her 10a feeding, and I don’t want her to miss her 1p nap due to this nap going long. I’ve gone in there and opened the doors, but she simply soothed herself right back to sleep again and I didn’t have the heart to wake her because she clearly is exhausted after a week of irregular naps.

All week at work, I’d been seeing my milk supply gradually diminish. I’d kind of expected this, because the baby is able to get out more milk than the pump, so pumping 3 meals out of 5 tells my body that less milk is needed. The opposite is true, however. I was dismayed to go home yesterday and learn that Jayne had again bottlefed Allie 4 times in the day, despite each bottle’s quantity being a lot more than before. Overall, Allie took 23 ounces by bottle alone yesterday, whereas I only brought home 12 ounces from the 3 pump sessions at work. Even as the day goes, the milk supply drops by about an ounce each time. Feeling the pressure, I pumped last night at 10:30pm, after I’d napped for about 45 minutes. I figured that since it’d been 4 hours since Allie had her bedtime feeding, that I’d be able to get out a good amount. My body was not cooperative; after half an hour of working with the hand pump, alternating from side to side, hitting each side twice, I only got out one ounce total. I was frustrated and upset. That’s a long time spent pumping, storing, washing and drying pump parts, and losing sleep for very little gain.

I’m hoping that the 4 bottles a day at 6-7 ounces each the past 2 days are just Allie doing catch-up for the 3-day calorie deficiency she went through the first half of the week, and that she’ll go back to a more manageable pace soon. I have a stockpile of milk in the freezer, but she’s going through them really quickly. At this pace, I will fall behind in about a month even if I breastfeed exclusively on weekends. It could be that she’s going to be ready for solids earlier than I’d anticipated, if it seems that a liquid-only diet is failing to keep her full anymore. And that’s the next huge learning curve for me and Allie.

Oh, and I feel the bond with Allie stretching thinner. Yesterday, despite my holding her, she kept turning to look left and right, pulling away from me, refusing to look at me. She doesn’t do her big welcoming smile of recognition at me anymore. 🙁

Thanks to her nutritional needs now being met, Allie had two poopie diapers today. This is a camera screenshot of her second nap today. (Her morning nap was 1.5 hours, yay! This nap you see below was only 40-some minutes, boo.) I’m scared to look to see if she’s napping her 3rd nap right now.

Okay, I just looked. She’s NAPPING AGAIN! YAAAAAAYYYYYY!!! Now I’m off to pump again.

This work week has been trying on everyone. Jayne has to get up earlier than she’s had to in many years of being a stay-at-home mom; Mr. W has given up his 4am gym runs; I’ve had to leave my baby and sit on my hands at work trying to calm myself between pumpings and processing backlogged divorce cases and settlement conferences. For Allie, as much as people say babies are more resilient than adults, it’s been “off” as well.

Monday, she had one shorter nap but over all it was a good day. Ate on time, slept on time, played well. I’d even made it home to nurse her for what would’ve been her third and last bottlefeeding, because she’d slept extra long that afternoon. Tuesday, all her naps got short, but they were still on time as with her 3 bottles. Yesterday was pretty bad. Looking at her sleep/eat chart that Jayne kept up with on the app (so that Mr. W could see it on his sync’ed app on his iPad at work), she took FOUR catnaps instead of 3 long naps, which was rather distressing to me because that would mean she’s not getting restorative sleep when they’re under an hour each, AND it means she’s cat-napping at a time when she ought to be awake, so that throws off her routine and sleep/wake rhythm. I was afraid it’d mess up her night sleep organization, too. If she developed day/night confusion, I would be frantic. Things got weirder when Mr. W observed that in addition to her 4 little naps, she also got a 4th bottlefeeding when she should’ve had 3. She was eating every 2 hours instead of every 3. What was Jayne doing? Was she aware she’s completely gone off Allie’s “norm?”

I was also concerned that Allie wasn’t napping long enough because she kept waking up and being unable to fall back to sleep when she’d roll to her side and then roll to her back. I called a few friends whose babies I know have started rolling over to ask how they handle those naps. The only person I got a hold of was Flip Flop Girl, who called me back and I spoke to her on the drive home. She wasn’t at all concerned about Allie’s extra feeding and “off” naps today, saying babies do go through these adjustment phases and it’s fine (so that made me feel better); she was more concerned about my communicating effectively with Jayne to see why she chose to do the things she did that day. “Just ask her, and find out what was going through her head. If she did something you’d rather her not do, just let her know that you would’ve preferred her to handle it another way, and in the future, to do it the other way. Hear her out. Who knows, you might go, ‘Oh, I see now. Thank you for doing that for Allie.’ ” As for the rolling in the naps, Flip Flop Girl said Allie is just going to learn to go back to sleep after her extra mobility, just as Allie has learned to go back to sleep after waking up to noise (which she’s better at now).

After we got back home, Jayne immediately told us it was a very peculiar day and informed us of the super-short naps, and the extra feeding. She was actually more frazzled about the baby falling off-routine than I was (which made me feel better). Jayne was stressed not knowing what was wrong because Allie was so tired and was rubbing her eyes and fussing and impatient, and Jayne tried everything to distract her, play with her, and nothing worked. I asked what was behind the extra bottle. Jayne said because Allie was actually screaming, on top of giving cues of hunger. Even as Jayne made the extra bottle, she was telling Allie, “You can’t be hungry, you’re completely off the routine today, and now you’re off on the feedings, too.” She was so concerned that we’d worked this hard at establishing a good rhythm and then suddenly it all went out the window. Jayne made a perfect imitation of Allie’s desperate hunger sounds and mouth motions, explaining that even as Jayne tried to be discreet in making the bottle, Allie kept lunging for it and sucked it down as if she were starving. So there was nothing I could tell Jayne that she didn’t already know (which again made me feel better). And she was clearly feeling very bad and concerned about both us and Allie, and she knew Allie well enough already to say this is not Allie’s normal personality. I reassured Jayne as best I could and she went home. I put Allie to bed early and she zonked out easily (all night).

At Flip Flop Girl’s earlier request, I called her back and gave her an update. I had mentioned that given that Allie’s a little over 15 lbs, her daily ounces of milk intake is 1.5 times her weight for 22.5 ounces daily, divided by 5 feedings, so that’d make it 4.5 ounces per feeding. I was concerned she was being overfed yesterday and wouldn’t be hungry for her bedtime feeding. Flip Flop said, “Are you sure it’s not 2.5 ounces per pound of her weight, and not 1.5 ounces?” I was pretty sure and didn’t consider anything beyond that.

Later, Flip Flop Girl texted me. She’d looked it up. The proper formula for what an exclusively liquid-fed (breastmilk or formula) baby is indeed the baby’s weight times *2.5* oz per pound of their weight, divided by the number of feedings a day. Allie was very underfed. So she wasn’t sleeping long because she was hungry and would wake up to ask to eat, and was screaming and cranky because she wanted more food (like a newborn). This wasn’t an issue before because she drank whatever she needed from me directly and I didn’t have a way of measuring what she’s taking out by nursing, so if a bottlefeeding wasn’t enough, in giving her one bottle a day, she’d just make up for the rest of the caloric deficit by getting more out of me in her nursing feedings. However, when I returned to work, she didn’t have 4 other nursings to make up for the insufficient bottle; she had 3 bottles in the middle of the day consecutively. So the caloric deficit had been building until day 3 when she reacted how she did. This explains so much — the fact that she didn’t have enough nutrients to poop since last Friday; the middle-of-the-night feeding she started toward the second half of transition week (when she was bottlefed more); the earlier wake-up times in the mornings. And of course, all of yesterday’s daytime crankiness and sleeplessness. With an extra feeding under her belt, she slept very soundly last night and this morning.

I’d called Jayne last night after Allie went down to check up on her and reassure her that she didn’t do anything wrong; Allie was just going through her own thing. This morning, I was happy to tell her we think we figured out the issue. It may not make everything perfect today because Allie is still going through teething, new caretaker, mommy being gone all day, new developmental milestones in the rolling over, BUT it should resolve one big issue and things will smooth over on their own after that over time. I certainly feel a lot better, and my confidence in Jayne (who read Allie’s signals all correctly yesterday) is much higher.

I must’ve known it was weight x 2.5 oz / number of feedings at one point, but it didn’t stick with me. I looked it up myself after Flip Flop Girl’s text. Typical ounces of intake a day is between weight x 2 on the low end, weigh x 2.5 for the high end, so for Allie, daily intake should be 30-37.5 oz, and all feedings being equal (which I know it’s not given that she still gets her first and last meals in a nursing), that’s 6 – 7.5 oz per feeding. We’d been giving her 4.5 – 5 oz in her bottles. *facepalm*

This is why I was an English Lit major. =P

Allie didn’t nap that well yesterday. Jayne greeted us after work with, “Her charts look horrible, we get an ‘F’ for today.” It wasn’t THAT bad; she had 3 naps, they were just short. They were also earlier than I’d napped Allie (not sure if the off-timing had something to do with their short durations) but that was out of necessity because she’d be up too long once she wakes up too early from her naps if the next nap isn’t advanced. I’m not sure that Jayne is letting Allie cry as long as maybe I would when Allie wakes up naturally around the 30-minute mark after one sleep cycle. I’ve found that if I can grit my teeth and deal with my anxiety attack through up to 15 minutes of crying, she goes back down solid for up to 2 hours. Jayne said she did let Allie cry to see if she’ll go back to sleep, but that Allie would appear to her to be unlikely to go back down, so Jayne goes and picks her up. There’s likely some developmental stuff going on, too, since Allie is now moving around a lot more in her crib. I’m hoping she’ll just take longer naps on her own very soon without waking up to cry after just the first sleep cycle. I still have a very hard time thinking about it or seeing it at work, so I look on the cameras as little as possible.

So yesterday morning, I was dumbfounded to receive this long text from Laura on my phone:
“I hope you don’t take this the wrong way. Its meant for good. FYI – for the benefit of Ali, I would and can work for $10 an hr, 11 hrs a day, no over time $ change and cash only. That would work out to be $550 a week so Ali could be home. Don’t worry about insurance either. If you are interested, let’s talk soon. I would need [Mr. W] to be on board with this decision too.”
I was so shocked I didn’t know what to do. Was she not there in our last phone conversation when she made any trusting relationship with her impossible? Was she not there when she sent me the text the day after to guilt me about the other position she wanted having been filled? How could she think anything would be salvageable after the things she’d said to me, not to mention that for this job, I’d have to leave the most important things in my life completely vulnerable to her (my baby, my cat, my home)? Did she think I was too dumb to pick up that I was being taken advantage of and bullied and berated?
And the way she said that she would “need” my husband to be on board with this too, as if she were advising me, “I know you want to jump at this, but hold on, you should talk to him, too.” My judge is hoping she isn’t trying to set me up for some loss of earnings lawsuit (she can sue, but she has no claim).
So I went in circles trying to think how I should respond. I got a lot of suggestions from friends, from advising me not to respond, to suggested responses such as “After in depth discussions with my husband, we have determined that your services will not be required.” I considered sending “Thank you, but we do not believe any agreement between us is possible. Good luck with everything,” “We are not inclined to change our current arrangements, but thank you,” but I didn’t want to allude to any “current arrangements” because I don’t want her to inquire or give her any openings for any further conversation. She appears to assume Allie is in daycare (which was the plan and still may be, depending on how Jayne works out), and I don’t want her sniffing around the house and making assumptions and accusations. I need to protect Jayne, as well as Allie. I was afraid she was a step away from boiling our bunny. So finally, I took Rebecca’s advice, and texted back the shortest more definitive thing suggested: “No, thank you.”
Haven’t heard from her since.

I was feeling comfortable enough with Jayne that I didn’t cry at all my first day back at work yesterday. I did find it hard to look at the babycam monitors and didn’t do it much, especially around the time she was supposed to go down for a nap, because I felt too emotionally fragile if I should see crying or struggling. I know that things will be fine and to expect a little adjustment period, but to see it or live it minute-by-minute would be too hard.

Work was good; I met the new supervisor (who is very nice and effective), a bunch of coworkers/friends came by to say hello and to welcome me back with warm hugs, and many judges complimented me that I don’t look like I’ve been off for maternity reasons. It’s rather amazing to me that so many coworkers observed that I appear smaller now than before I was pregnant. I am, but I didn’t think it was that noticeable. I wouldn’t have expected people to remember what my size was before I was pregnant, it was so long ago. Mr. W rearranged his schedule and got a coworker to cover for him so that he could take me out to lunch on my first day back. It was a nice day. I pumped the first time in judge’s chambers (because the jury room was being used for a mandatory settlement conference) and the second time in the jury room after lunch. We managed to make it back home in time for me to feed Allie her 4th feeding for the day, because her afternoon nap ran long. Jayne was fine and said it was a great day.

Allie’s first nap apparently went down like a dream; not a peep, not a protest. Allie’s second nap was reportedly “odd.” She had turned herself from her tummy to her side and struggled a little to turn back to her tummy but couldn’t. But she was tired, so she just napped on her left side, sucking her left thumb. Jayne said it was kind of a restless nap, but she did nap. The third nap was of course fine and ran long probably to make up for her less restorative second nap. Allie got a bath last night and didn’t cry and we started her bedtime routine a little earlier since she has been looking very tired and drowsy at 6:30p. She was fed and in bed by 7:15p, slept through the night again.

This morning, like yesterday morning, Allie woke on her own at 6:20a, saving me from having to rouse her myself at 6:15a. I’ve woken her once at 6:15a last Friday and I hated doing it. After I nursed her and brought her downstairs where Mr. W and Jayne were chatting, I asked how Jayne felt, whether she could see herself doing this long term. She gave a big smile and said, “Oh yeah, 10 years should be good.”

Today, I probably shouldn’t have looked at the monitor at 9:15a but I expected her to be already in her crib for her morning nap, which should’ve started around 8:30a all things being “normal.” Instead, I saw that she’d scooted herself all the way to the top of the crib, her head against the corner of the bumpers (thank goodness we put in her crib bumpers last week), propping herself up, looking around, running into the bumper corner, not sleeping. I was kinda messed up after that. Not to the point of tears, but the anxiety hit. I stopped watching immediately. By the time I looked again later, Jayne had picked her up and was bottlefeeding her, which was a good thing if she wasn’t napping. I’m hoping she didn’t miss her nap, she just had a shorter one. She was eating on time at 9:40a or so because her morning feeding was now 6:30a instead of 7a-ish. I looked next a little after 10:30a and saw Allie already napping in her crib. I assume she was giving sleepy signs early from her morning nap being short. And Jayne did the right thing; advance her next nap because she had a shorter first nap. Allie had against scooted herself up to the front end of the crib and her head was against or near the front bumper. I guess she’s just about to start crawling.

Meanwhile, work is at a nice pace. I’ve had a few little hearings and events in the mornings, but nothing overwhelming and I’m grateful I didn’t come to work after being off for 5 months and walk right into the midst of a death penalty jury trial or something like that. Today, I did my first pumping in the judge’s chambers again. It seems to take a long time (20-25 mins) to set up, pump, store, and clean up (and I’m not even washing). I gotta figure out how to streamline it more, or if I’m gonna take the same amount of time wiping out the pump parts and pouring the milk together, I may as well do the pouring into storage bags and thorough washing of the parts so I can save myself that work when I get home.

I’m sure anyone reading this blog has fond childhood memories of frolicking to and fro inside a parent’s moving car, goofing off with a sibling or friend our age from the backseat or station wagon “trunk” to the front seat to the floor of the car and over the backs of the seats again. My judge even has memories of his teenage self taking off fast and slamming the brakes of his old Woody and laughing with his older brother as their youngest brother tumbled from where he stood behind their front seats to the rear of the car. (The kid brother is fine and is not traumatized by their horseplay.) In California, it has gone from that, to a law in my teens requiring seat belts to be fastened on all occupants of the vehicle, to another law saying all kids under age 6 and under 60 lbs had to ride in the backseat on a child booster seat, to this new change, effective January 1, 2012:

Any child under age *8* must ride in a child booster seat in the backseat. If the child is 8 years old or at least 4’9″, however, he/she can use a regular seat belt instead of a child safety seat or booster seat.
Violations mean stiff fines and penalties, and possible child endangerment criminal charges.

This is based on stats that show putting kids in a booster seat (instead of a seat belt on the vehicle’s seat alone) reduces risk of car accident injuries to that kid by 59%. Seat belts are designed for an average-sized adult, so it doesn’t lay right on a kid under 4’9″. Supposedly, the previous law endangers kids between ages 6 and 8 because they’re too big for child safety seats, but still too small for a seat belt to work effectively, so the new law bridges the gap by requiring the booster seat use until age 8. (Wanna read the actual law? See www.chp.ca.gov/community/safeseat.html)

Age 8 is 3rd grade. That’s old enough to be embarrassed. So what does this mean for a kid like Allie? …It means that she’ll be sitting in a regular seat using a regular seat belt by age 6.

99th percentile for height! She’s practically 3 feet tall NOW at 4.5 months.

They DO grow up so fast.

I haven’t written about my body stuff in a long time. It just wasn’t that consequential to me, as long as I’m alive and producing breastmilk, other details about my body didn’t matter.

However, on April 1, I noticed that my tailbone seemed to be protruding more than I’d ever noticed. I could actually feel the BOTTOM of my tailbone if I press in a little with my fingers. I was totally freaked out and grossed out.
My parents came over yesterday and my mom commented on how skinny I looked. She was concerned, and my dad noted the same thing. Mom said when she hugged me that I felt like all bones. I know my pre-pregnancy clothes fit more loosely than before I’d ever been pregnant, but beyond that, didn’t spend much thought on it. Mom asked what I weigh, and I told her I didn’t know. So last night, since she’d asked, I pulled out the scale and stepped on it after dinner. I was 111 with food in my stomach. I couldn’t believe it. I haven’t seen 111 since 6th or 7th grade when I was busy passing it on my way up. Maybe I was feeling my tailbone because stuff that used to cover it is disappearing, not because my TAILBONE had moved.
Thinking back, here are the few weight markers I have:
125-127 shortly before pregnancy
120 in the 1st trimester
156 the day before I delivered
128 six weeks after I delivered
125 two months after I delivered
121 three months after I delivered
now 111 four and a half months after I delivered

I could win some of those weekly Biggest Loser weigh-ins for percentage lost (29%) since pregnancy 4.5 months ago, which would be a good thing, except that I have NOT been dieting or exercising. I’ve done some weight-lifting with holding my 15-pound baby and I’ve done a stroller walk here and there, but I’ve done no gym stuff. So this is due to breastfeeding and depression. NOT good. I’m gonna need to hit the gym as soon as I’m back to work and have lunchtimes to do that. Of course, lunch will also have to be shared with eating, milk pumping, and transportation to/from the gym. How is THAT gonna work?

Some photos from last weekend: