Ghosts of Friendships Past

Today, as I was eating my lunch, some old memories popped into my head. Memories of friends that I no longer speak with. I felt really nostalgic and a little sad. And then I thought of why I no longer speak with these people who I shared such a great time in my life with.

I am not friends with these people anymore because of two individuals in particular. These two people have done me very wrong in the past. Forever tainted my friendships with the remainder of the group. And yet I miss them. What is wrong with me? These two people have treated me worse than anyone in my life and I'm sure that they don't think twice about it. But me, I think about them quite often. Oddly enough, I don't think of them with a shred of anger in my bones. Part of me wants to reach out to them and see how they are doing, see if we can make amends. Again, I say, what is wrong with me?

While chewing on my fried chicken house salad from Zaxby's, I realized that I had the urge to reconnect with these people and forgive and forget all that happened because they meant so much to me. For me at least, the people who hurt me the most are the people who I care for the most. If someone is mean to me that I don't care about, it'll bother me for a day or two and then I'll move on. But these people, I would say that I cared for them like you would siblings. I loved them. I think that's why I'm having difficulty moving on when this occurred years ago.

Don't get me wrong, I am happy with my life the way it is. I love my family and the friends that I do have are amazing! It just sucks that some very important friendships to me were lost and likely will never be recovered. Sad days.

But here I am now, snuggling my sweet baby boy while my wonderful husband is at work and it is all good.

BTW - little bug has started standing up when we hold him. His little legs are getting so strong!

My big standing boy!

Breastfeeding

Breastfeeding is extremely difficult. When I was pregnant, I decided that I would do my best and breastfeed for as long as I could. We took a class on it at the hospital before Lucas was born to try to mentally prepare myself as best as I could. Nothing can really truly prepare you for it. Just like nothing can really prepare you for the feelings of seeing and holding your baby for the first time or the level of difficultly that comes with being a new parent. But I went into it knowing that it was going to be hard, telling myself that I will do my very best.

Here I am 7 weeks later and still going strong. I think that I had so much success because I had a good foundation to build off of. Lucas came out ready to eat! He had no troubles latching on at all! the nurse at the hospital gave me a nipple shield to help draw it up into his mouth easier. He went to town! That was one of my biggest fears. In the class that we took, other moms that had tried it before said that they failed because their LO (little one) didn't latch on properly and they were too exhausted from giving birth to try too terribly hard to get it right. Thank goodness I didn't have that problem, or else I think that I would've ended up like that as well. So thanks Lucas!

The other really big thing that has helped me is support. This is so frustrating and terrible sometimes that you NEED a good support person (or people) to go to in those tough times. I had multiple outlets for support: my best friend's sister, Sarah (she gave her baby girl breast milk through the first year), the breast feeding support group on babycenter.com, the May 2013 board (group of women who had babies in May 2013) on babycenter.com, and the Pumping Moms board on babycenter.com. A very useful website about breastfeeding that helped answer a lot of my questions was kellymom.com. It is FILLED with info on breastfeeding: how many ounces do babies eat, how long do they feed for, what foods/drinks to avoid while breastfeeding, etc. This is where I learned the rule of thumb of drinking while breastfeeding: if you're sober enough to drive, then you're sober enough to nurse. I like that! One drink and I'm good! And if I do have a little too much, I pump and dump! Not to sound like an alcoholic, but if I couldn't drink, then I don't know if I would still be doing this. Not because I drink a lot, but because I've had 10 months of not being able to do many, many things. I don't want to commit myself to another 12 months of limiting things and not doing certain things. I need some freedom, as much freedom as breastfeeding will allow!

Which leads me to the first few weeks of breastfeeding. You have no freedom at all. You cannot go anywhere unless you're comfortable bfing in public, which I'm not. You're life revolves around your boobies and it is maddening. Your husband cannot feed the baby, your family or visitors cannot feed the baby, it's all on your shoulders (or should I say "chest"). Anytime that you have people over, you can bet that you will need to nurse at least once before they leave. For me, I felt awkward nursing in front of people. This lead to me feeling badly leaving the room to nurse Lucas when I know that people came to visit to see him. I got over it a little bit and didn't feel so weird around my mom, sister, MIL, and a few close friends. But it took me a while and even then, I tried to be as covered up as possible. I've always been weird about my body, I don't know why. Even in high school, I didn't like changing in front of my friends (still don't).

Anywho, there were countless late night feedings where I decided that it would be the last time that I nursed him. Multiple nights when I told Nicholas to give Lucas a formula bottle because I just needed a minute of peace and time to myself. I cried, texted Sarah (friend's sister) asking her when does this get easier???? Posted the same question to get the opinion of other mommies who have been through this on the Breast Feeding Support board. Everyone said that it gets better after the 6th week. They were right.

My mom fronted us the money for a breast pump so that I wasn't the only person who can feed our son. Nicholas and I came up with a good system that give me more freedom but also allows my to not have to nurse in public: when we know that we're going to go somewhere and be gone fora while, we bring a formula bottle with us to give to him when he gets hungry. A little bit of supplementation with formula is perfectly fine. It gave him a little constipation after a while, but I got approval from the pediatrician to give him 1oz of white grape juice and VUA-LA! Three hours later he had a massive blowout. Pediatrician also told me that it's perfectly normal for a breastfed baby to go up to one week without pooping and that as long as he is still having just as many wet diapers, there is no cause for concern. Interesting!

But I just feel like the pump saved my sanity. I love the pump. I only nurse him for his middle of the night feeding now and that's really only because I don't feel like pumping at 4am and also because I don't have a big enough stash built up to give him a bag of pumped milk at night without replacing it with a new pumped bag.

So for now, that's how this is going. It has not been easy and sometimes I even resent pumping (it's not exactly fun). But it's not nearly as bad as it was. So if you're thinking of doing it, don't let me scare you off, but be realistic and call/text/fb message me if you need some help or support!

Just a few maternity photos that my MIL took for us. Random, I know, but I love them and wanted to share.

The first week

My first week home from the hospital with little bug was absolutely terrible. I was bleeding, sore, hormonal, and had no idea what I was doing with this tiny little person.

I had Lucas on Tuesday, May 21st. We came home the next evening, around 5:00pm. We stopped by our office on the way home to show him off. A girl was holding him and he was crying like crazy. She tried to calm him down and nothing she did worked. I could see the panic in her eyes that people have when it's someone else baby and you cannot make it stop crying (I've had that panic multiple times before with my sister's babies). So I picked him up and he instantly stopped crying. I felt like I had mommy super powers. I thought to myself, "damn straight, I'm the momma!" That was a pretty cool moment for me.

The next few days are a big blur of visitors, diapers, crying (lots of crying, for both him and me), and questioning everything that I was doing. I was worried about taking care of his little pete correctly after the circumcision, making sure that the umbilical cord stump wasn't being suffocated by the diaper and not getting wet with his baths, and just trying to figure him out in general. The books say that you will start to recognize what your baby needs by his different cries. They lied. At least to me. All of his cries sound the same. I am only just now, 7 (almost 8) weeks later, getting to know what he needs when he is crying. Not because his cries sound different, but because I know his little schedule now. And even still, it's mostly a trial and error process to get him to stop. For example: He was crying when we got home from lunch just now and I knew that it wasn't because he was hungry because he just ate before we left. So I noticed that he was a little wet. Not really enough to make him cry, but I changed him anyways. He still was not happy. It's about time for me to pump, so I couldn't very well hold him, so I put him in his bouncy seat next to me, strapped him in, and popped the pacifier in his mouth. That seems to have worked for a little while. He was kicking his legs around like a happy baby for a while which leads me to believe that he was just bored and wanted to do something (like kick his legs). He just got a little fussy, so I bent over and popped the pacifier that had fallen out back into his mouth. He seems to be happy. So really, I still have no idea why he cries. I just try a bunch of things until something works.

Anyhoo, the most distinct memory of my first week home with him was the Sunday after he was born. Nicholas and baby were taking a nap snuggling together and I was laying next to them trying to do the same. I just could not seem to shut off my brain long enough to sleep.  It was terrible because I was exhausted and really wanted to sleep, but I just couldn't. I grabbed the telephone and walked out to the back deck with the dogs and called my sister. I just started bawling out of no where. I don't remember what I was so upset about. All I remember is that it was over something that, logically, I knew I shouldn't be upset about. Unfortunately, crazy hormones do not listen to logic and cause you to be a huge crying mess regardless of whether or not you know better. This is a prime reason why I called Renee rather than discussing with Nicholas. Men do not understand raging hormones. They understand logic. Therefore, the one time that  I did try to discuss my feelings with him, he got frustrated with me when his logic-talk did not calm me down at all. In the end, one event that was both extremely frustrating and so incredibly helpful happened to help me get out of my hormonal funk: my dog rolled around in a giant mud puddle.

Parker Brown absolutely hates his flea and ticked medication, which Nicholas had administered only hours before I let them outside with me for my crazy lady call to my sister. Apparently, while I was distracted with my breakdown, P Brown decided to try to rub off all of his flea meds in some mud. I flipped out when  I saw him. He is a big dog, 110lbs. So it's a big deal for him to be completely covered in mud. I got off of the phone with Renee and went inside to see if Nicholas was awake. He was not. Still sleeping soundly with little love. I decide no to wake him and do my best to take care of the issue myself. Now the decision: hose or bath tub? I had never used our water hose before and it's connected in the front yard and not the back, so I wasn't about to deal with finding a place to hook it up in the back and lugging it back there. I decided to grab a towel for his paws and lead him through the house to the bathroom.

Chloe (lab-pit mix) and Parker (shepherd-hound mix)

Bathing this giant brown mess was so therapeutic of me. I needed this disaster to happen for multiple reasons. (1) It was a distraction from all things baby. This was something that I was doing that had nothing to do with Lucas at all whatsoever. And that was nice. Keep in mind that this happened on the Sunday after he was born. I had 5 days of obsessing over every little thing that had to do with Lucas and was so exhausted by it all that it took everything in me to take a shower and change my pants on a daily basis. So this break, while it took work to bathe that big brown monster, was very much so welcome. (2) I yelled and cried some more. I think that I did end up waking up Nicholas from the yelling. I was scolding P Brown for his mischievous behavior and also letting off some steam from being so tightly wound for the past few days. Poor P Brown.  I apologized for all of the yelling later after I had calmed down a bit.

So thanks Parker Brown Town for keeping me sane!

Night 1 - The Results

Well, that was terrible.

We got him in his jammies, read him a book, and put him in the crib all by 9:00pm. I have no idea how many times we went in there to comfort/calm him. We would get him back to sleep in our arms but the moment we put him down back in the crib, he'd wake up. He never went even 5 minutes of being ok and sleeping between us going in there. It was exhausting.

At 11:40pm he was screaming at the top of his lungs and nothing would make him happy. So, Nicholas made him a bottle and I fed him. Once he was fed and changed, I decided to try swaddling him with his arms free (he likes to move his arms) so that maybe he would enjoy the closeness of the swaddle like the closeness of being held.

I'm not sure if it was the combo of the bottle and the swaddle, but he slept for one hour in the crib!!!

It was literally the exact moment that Nicholas and I went to lay down in our bed to go to sleep that he woke up and starting screaming again. 1:00am and I'm done with this mess for tonight. I haven't slept all day or all night and neither has Lucas. I told Nicholas to go get him and bring him in bed with us.

I do not consider this a failure. Lucas is very little and he didn't sleep for more than an hour during the day for a nap plus that hour stretch in the crib when he is supposed to be getting 15-16 hours of sleep on a daily basis. He needed sleep.

Our victories of the night: He experienced that the world will not end if he sleeps in his crib. He spent some time in the crib to get familiar with being in there alone.

Oh well, we shall try again tonight.
Wish us luck!

Sleep Training - Night 1

Tonight is night one of sleep training my little Lucas. I am no longer comfortable co-sleeping. Not because I'm worries that something might happen to him or even on a physical comfort level. I just feel like I am doing him a dis-service. He needs to learn to sleep on his own and self soothe. I also need to learn to let go a little. He is my little baby, but I need to learn some separation myself.

Enter sleep training.

I do not know if that is the clinical term for this business, but it works for me! I was doing some research on no-cry methods of getting babies to sleep on their own. My reasons: (1) Lucas is too young to cry it out (2) Even if he was old enough to cry it out, it would break my heart to hear him do that. Therefore, I googled no-cry methods.

This is where I found what we're going to try tonight. http://www.babycenter.com/0_baby-sleep-training-no-tears-methods_1497581.bc?page=1

We are going to be trying method #3 by Tracy Hogg author of Secrets of the Baby Whisperer. I haven't read the book, just the breif description and what someone else wrote about it:
"...sleep associations should be positive but disagreed with his techniques. She cautioned against letting your baby depend on "props" such as nursing, patting, and rocking to get to sleep. Instead, Hogg’s approach calls for going to your baby when he cries, picking him up, and putting him back down as many times as necessary.

Her technique's a middle ground between attachment parenting (such as Sears) and CIO techniques (such as the progressive waiting approach popularized by sleep specialist Richard Ferber)."

"I tried Tracy Hogg's approach: Don't leave the baby to cry! Instead, when he starts up, go in there, pick him up, and love him until he stops. Once he's calm, lay him back down. If he starts crying again, repeat. Eventually he'll know it's time to sleep. Hogg said she had to do it 126 times with one child, but it dropped to 30 the next night, four the next, and soon she didn't have to do it at all. I tried this with my 3-month-old and it worked like a charm!"

One Hundred and twenty six times. Holy crap. This is going to suck.


Husband and I have prepared ourselves with a drive to the liquor store (yes, you can breastfeed and drink, just in moderation). We gave each other a little pep talk this afternoon about how neither of us are allowed to get grumpy if this first night ends up taking all night. That is only going to make this lovely little adventure all the more terrible for us. So strap on your happy pants, it's going to be a long night in the Sarabia household!


This is going to be especially difficult for me because I have been up since 6am with no naps today. NO NAPS. Not to mention the 2 times he woke up last night to eat. Gotta love those growth spurts. he decided to really get his 6 week spurt at 7 weeks. Fun.


Since our office closes at noon on Fridays, I decided to let Nicholas have a nice morning/afternoon with a quiet house (see previous post regarding the importance of breaks) and took little bug to work with me. After work, bug and I went and had lunch with my work besties and then some hardcore shopping. 2.5 hours worth thank you very much.

 Christie and "little bug"

Immediately after our shop-a-thon,  I came home, pumped my boobs, and headed out for dinner with my sister and her kiddos. This was interesting: Me, Nicholas, our 7 week old, my sister, her three year old, and her one year old. Wow. I'm pretty sure people were looking at us like we were crazy to even attempt such a thing as having dinner in public with three small children. Yea, it wasn't easy.

After dinner, time to get baby in his jammies and begin this awful journey. In the 20 minutes that it took to write this post, we've had to go into the nursery and calm him down 3 times. I'm scared for what the rest of the night has in store.

Pray for me.

A much needed break

I am a a firm believer that as parents, sometimes you need a break from parenting. Parenting is exhausting and takes everything you've got until by the end of the day (8:30-9:00pm), you're a zombie. The night time is usually when I make all of my rash decisions such as "I'm quitting breastfeeding." Well, really that's the only one. But when Nicholas tells me OK, it's OK if I quit, that's when I come back with "No, I'll keep doing it." I think that for me, I just have to know that the option is there for me to quit, that I'm not trapped in it. I need to know that my husband will support my decision if I did decide to stop. Yea, I'm cray-cray.

But this is why I think that we all need a little break, for our sanity.

Nicholas and I give each other little daily breaks. For me, he lets me take naps during the day and takes care of little bug without waking me. If Lucas gets hungry, Nicholas gives him a pumped bottle or maybe even a formula bottle. Giving him a formula bottle is a much safer decision than waking me. For him, I don't wake him up at night for feedings and diaper changes anymore. I let him sleep. These breaks are small, but very much so needed.

Nicholas and I were fortunate to have a big break yesterday. His mom and her husband watched Lucas while he and I went out to lunch and picked up a few things from Wal Mart. Since he is so little, it wasn't all that different. Usually when we go out and we take him with us, he just sleeps in the car seat and only wakes for a diaper change. But still, it was nice to not have to stop my meal for a diaper change. So thanks MIL (mother in law)!!

Friday night, I gave Nicholas another big break. Our friends Sarah, Eric, and Taylor came over. The ladies stayed here with me and Lucas while the guys went out for dinner and drinks, a man date if you will. We ladies watched episodes from season 6 of FRIENDS, our favorite tv show ever, got subs and frozen yogurt moose tracks ice cream from Publix, and drank wine. It was nice. Lucas was a good baby and Nicholas came back slightly inebriated. He really needed that, I think.

Sarah, Taylor, and I orchestrated this night because Nicholas does things like that for a me a lot. In the 6, almost 7, weeks that Lucas has been with us, I've got out with my girlfriends at least 2-3 times for dinner and drinks while Nicholas watched the babe. He deserved the same treatment. It's nice to get out of the house and cut loose for a few hours!

Hubs was not too terribly delighted to see me catching candid photos of him playing his violin. But I just love it so much when he does!

Humans can be so nice

Nicholas and I took baby to IHop in Monroe this morning for a delightful brunch! We were planning on going for breakfast, but packing up baby and diaper bags and changing last minute poops cause it to be more like brunch by the time we got there.

A lot of fellow patrons were asking questions about Lucas such as how old he is, how much he weighed when we was born, etc. They also said that he was cute, but everyone says that when they see babies. It made me smile anyways.

The kindness of the human race really shined when our plates were cleared and the lady that was sitting behind us got up, came over, and told us that she paid for our bill. How nice is that?!

Sometimes I try to be that nice person to give back some good into the world. However, this is usually at a drive thru like Chick Fil A or McDonalds where the bill is unlikely to be more than $10.00.

But I am just inspired by the random generosity of a stranger. I love people today.

So Happy 4th of July Americans! Go out and be good people, the world needs it!

"Mommy Guilt," Co-sleeping, and Shorts Shopping

I apologize in advance for large gaps in between posts. I cannot begin to stress the level of exhaustion that comes with working full time and taking care of an infant. That's right folks, my baby boy is no longer considered a newborn! He's getting so old! .... you know I'm joking, right?

At a whopping 6 weeks pp, I now have my IUD, Mirena, and the green light to do normal things again! WOOT WOOT! I'm not too terribly sure how much longer I want to breast feed. 6 weeks was my first goal that I wanted to hit and now that I'm here, my next goal of 3 months seems like a world away. And this leads me into what we fellow mamma's call "mommy guilt."

Mommy guilt is something that my sister told me about a few days ago. She was discussing this phenomenon with another mom at the gym. They diagnosed that feeling of guilt that comes with almost every decision that you make with your kids. "Is it too soon to move him to the crib?" "How much longer should I let him co-sleep with us?" "Am I a bad mom for hating breastfeeding?" "Am I a bad mom for being this exhausted?" Yup, all of those questions that run through the mommy mind on a daily basis come along with a healthy dosage of guilt. My most recent guilt producing thought: I wish that my IUD would make my milk dry up on it's own so that it's not my decision to stop breastfeeding and I don't seem so weak.

Now, don't take that last statement as me saying that I think that people who stop breastfeeding are weak. This is my own personal thoughts for my breastfeeding experience. Because this crap is so physically demanding (shocking considering it's just a baby eating from you, right? wrong. It is much harder than I ever imagined) I had to make this a challenge for myself. To keep doing it, I had to keep telling myself on a daily basis that if I've made it this far, surely I can go one more day, week, month, 12 MONTHS! ...We'll see about that.


The runner-up in the mommy guilt department is co-sleeping. I never in a million years thought that I would be one of those people who slept with their babies. My pre Lucas brain thought that this was a dangerous practice done by those parents that we consider "attachment parents" or as I call them, "tree hugging parents" (they are the parent equivalent to tree huggers). Again, in my pre Lucas mind, I thought that that this was bad for baby and his development of becoming an independent person and that the people who did this were just lazy.

Hahahaha, yea, Lucas sleeps with us. Commence the judging. It's ok, I did it too.

He sleeps either on my chest or in the crook of my arm by my side. It's crazy how wrong I was. Now that I'm in the situation myself and going through all of this, I understand the benefits to co-sleeping. Sure, I am still worries about hindering his sleep independence (mommy guilt) but the benefits that I feel far outweigh the mommy guilt. My reasons are three fold: 1. He is simply too young to let him cry it out. He did not take the transition to the crib well AT ALL. That was a 2hr battle that I was just not down for. We will continue to try every now and then as he gets older, but for now, no thanks. 2. It is so much easier to nurse him if he is in the bed with me. I shake Nicholas awake to go and change his diaper and then when he brings him back, just pop out the old milk supplier whilst still laying comfortably on my side and BAM! My son is eating and I didn't have to move or become fully conscious. WIN! And finally, 3. He sleeps sooo much better! For the past 2 weeks, little bug has been waking up only once in the night! This usually occurs between 3:30am and 4:30am. That still sucks, but it sure beats the pants off of waking every 2-3 hours.

So go ahead and judge me and think me a tree hugging parent, but my baby is sleeping better and therefore I am sleeping better. I just ask you to do one thing: when you're up feeding your baby at midnight, 2:00am and 4:00am, just take a moment and reflect on the fact that I am sleeping and you are not. <- That's a little mean sounding and I almost went back and deleted it. Almost.

And now for the positive spin to my post: short shopping.

You might be asking yourself, how is shopping for shorts after having a baby a positive thing? You are just as surprised as I was! On a Friday I went shopping for a bathing suit and that next day, I went shopping for some shorts that actually fit me so that I could officially retire my maternity shorts until the next one comes. The experience was actually not bad, it was downright enjoyable! I was expecting the usual bout of depression that usually comes with shopping since I am no longer a 110lb 18 year old. You know those girls that were super skinny in high school and then gained about 20-30 lbs by the time they were 21? That's me! Surely if clothes shopping was depressing before, it would be worse after popping out a person, right?

Wrong. I bought a bathing suit that covered all of my wobbly bits (phrase stolen from "Bridget Jones Diary," gotta give credit where credit is due) but still looks respectably sexy. It's black, of course, and the bottoms are more like a skirt to help hide the thunder thighs that I've got going on. I've always been a busty gal, but now that I'm a momma, I'm not so comfortable with them being on display. These things are my child's food source (it is unknown for how much longer) and I'm a married woman! So guess what, I'm covered, comfortable, and feeling pretty good! Stretch marks be damned!

My shorts, now a size 10. My hips and thighs are pretty large and in charge these days and I'm oddly ok with that. I am a freaking woman! I had a freaking baby! I feel like my wide hips are my trophy of that accomplishment. So hang a "wide load" sign on my butt and sound the alarm! 'Cause me and my size 10 shorts are coming through!

Moral of the story: be comfortable with yourself. The mommy guilt and the extra cushioning around your bottom just don't matter. What does matter is that you are doing your best as a parent and your husband and baby love you just the way you are! There is no need to put so much pressure on yourself. You doing your best is all that anyone can ask for. Chin up butter cup, you're doing great!

Time to wrap this puppy up, it's past 11:00pm and my dinner is now ready! That's right, dinner. I am becoming nocturnal apparently. Since me and hubs have tomorrow off of work, I decided to take a nap from 7:30 - 10:00 since I was so exhausted from working from home and taking care of Lucas all day and I wanted to spend some time with my hubs! So, until next time my friends!

And here's my hubs open-mouthed sleeping with my little chunk. Love it! 

(Nicholas will kill me for posting this) :)