Nature Indoors: Birds

With my husband's first full week back as a drill instructor at the law enforcement academy, Huck and I were left to fend for ourselves against the forces of nature. This experience with him at the academy is so far much different than when he was there right after Huck was born--we have a much happier and more active baby and it's not the dead of winter!  Huck is changing daily and loving life's experiences, especially being outside. This week outside came to us...literally. 

Monday started off like a normal day, but I was in for some excitement.  As I was walking out the door, hands full with a baby carrier, diaper bag and things for work, I saw a bird swoop down in front of me and thought "whoa that was really close."  And at the same time remembered I had forgotten Huck's milk in the fridge. So I turned around and as I walked into the front entry, I realized why I thought the bird seemed so close...it had flown into the house and was now fluttering around our living room!  This freaked me out quite a bit, and I hesitated to even go across the kitchen to get the milk, but knew it had to be done.  So I ran across the kitchen, grabbed what I needed, ran back, got everything in the car and headed to our landlord's house.  Matt was out of town for the week and I had a bird in the house.  You would think this is maybe the first time this has happened to me, but alas, it is not...oh no, a couple years ago, relatively same scenario, but without the baby.  Yes, I do think it is weird that we've had 2 birds fly into our house and both times my husband has been out of town for work when he typically works a job that doesn't have much overnight travel.  Back to my story...

My landlord just chuckled at me and told me to open both doors, get my broom and put some glasses on to cover my eyes. He told me to go on and take Huck to daycare, then he'd come down when I got home for moral support. Did I tell you that a bird in my house terrifies me and that the last time this happened, my landlord offered the same support, chuckling the entire time? So, when I got home, I opened the doors, but couldn't get to my broom because that would require walking through the house to the laundry room, which is at the back of the house and through the path of the bird, which at this time was in the kitchen.  I did, however, have access to a whiffle ball bat, so I grabbed that, thinking at least it would be something to swing at the bird.  My landlord thought this was the funniest thing he had ever seen and continued to tell me how I needed a broom.  By this time, the bird had flown into my office and was perched on a picture frame.  Side note:  When the bird came into our house a couple years ago I was just convinced that it was because we have so much nature inside our house and that it just felt at home in there.  Well, when I saw the bird in the office I thought the same thing because this room also happens to be where the deer heads are hanging on the wall and a stuffed duck is "in flight" hanging from the ceiling.  Since the bird was in this room, I could close the doors to some other rooms to guarantee it wouldn't be able to get into those rooms.  And luckily by this time my landlord's son, who knows just how to get birds out of the house, arrived and saved the day. Within a few minutes he had gotten the bird to fly through the house and out the back door.

Here's the history behind the birds:  We've had these barn swallows swooping around the house for a few weeks now and I've been telling my husband how we need to get rid of them somehow because they are such pests and I'm so scared of them always dive-bombing around the front door and garage. Now we definitely had a reason to get rid of them.

So with the bird situation taken care of, I was greeted the next day by a big old groundhog walking across the yard, right up to the house.  Again, not the first time we've had a groundhog problem--same year as the bird in the bird in the house, actually.  I haven't seen this groundhog digging anywhere yet and I don't want to.  My husband's weekend "to-do list" now included knocking down a barn swallow nest and setting a live trap for Mr. Groundhog. The results? No barn swallow nest to be found, so the next best thing I guess, is eliminating the birds.  You know how boys are...  And he just set the live traps today and has charged me with the task of getting rid of the rodent if we get one...I'm guessing I'll be calling on someone to help with that if it happens.

As much as both Huck and I love being outside, we/(I) don't necessarily like it when the outside comes in. I know my husband enjoys his leadership role at the academy, but is also sad that he is going to be missing so much of our son's new discoveries and experiences this first year.  Huck didn't get to be in on all of the excitement of the bird in the house and neither did my husband, but it is still an experience we aren't soon going to forget. I'm not sure my husband is too disappointed he missed this adventure. Thanks for being a great husband and daddy and taking care of things this past weekend!

The only nature we need indoors right now.

Working Mom

I have so far survived the past 3 weeks of a very intense workload.  I knew I would; I just knew it was going to be very difficult and stressful.  I didn't realize how difficult though until 2 Tuesdays ago when I chose to skip a personal meeting in the evening because I knew I had work commitments the next 4 nights, and 2 of the days were going to be definite 14-18-hour days of work at community events.  That meant that I was only going to be able to feed my baby 1 time/day for the next 4 days, and would only see him for a brief time in the morning before taking him to daycare.  This absolutely broke my heart and brought me to tears.  My husband didn't quite understand where I was coming from, but any mom, especially a mom who is breastfeeding, I'm sure can relate.  He did his best, though, to make me feel better.  I know that my job isn't supposed to necessarily require these kind of hours from me year-round, but when supporting 11 counties and each of their community fundraising events, the past year has certainly become more demanding on a professional level. I am fortunate enough to have a flexible work schedule though, so that, ideally, when I have these night meetings I should be able to adjust and go to work later since I will be working later.  That hasn't really been the case since coming back from maternity leave, unfortunately.  I still begin working first thing in the morning and often don't return home until 9 PM or after, thus making for many 10-12 hour days, which is hard with an infant and now, a husband who is away for work during the week, and only home on the weekends.  I used to do a good job at setting a work schedule for myself so that I wouldn't work all the time when I am home, but with my current workload, that hasn't really be possible, since the hours I have been putting in have been out of necessity to ensure event success.

We've always struggled to get our son to nap well at daycare, but it was getting particularly bad right about this same time that I was realizing how little I was going to be seeing him over the next 4 days.  At home he can sleep for 1-2 hours in the morning, but at daycare, his naps are close to nonexistent, which makes for one very sleepy boy by the time one of us picks him up, usually between 4 and 4:30 PM.  We already have an early bedtime for him since we use his biological sleep cues to know when to put him to bed, which is usually around 6/6:30, so when he doesn't get a nap and is ready for bed even earlier than that, we are limited even more on the time we get to see him.

When thinking about both of these problems that had been escalating up to this point, I had an epiphany.  I decided that I would try keeping my son home in the morning for his first nap of the day then just bringing him to daycare when he woke up from that.  He is usually only awake for an hour or hour and a half anyway before he is ready for this nap, and getting him fed, clothed, to daycare and soothed for sleep again in that short time can be tricky.  So, he usually ends up overtired, making it harder for him to fall asleep at daycare.  When keeping him home in the morning, I would use his napping time to work since I am a remote worker for the company I work for.  Now I know I wouldn't really be spending time with him during this time, but I would be able to feed him more times during the day, and I would ensure he would be able to get at least 1 good nap, hopefully.  So, I gave it a shot and it seemed to work wonderfully.  The girls at daycare said he had his best week yet, and was full of smiles and giggles those few days that I first tried this.  Last week produced similar results!

I don't know if my little monkey's personality improvement is related to his morning nap and getting to nurse more in the morning rather than having a bottle; or if it is related to my body starting to normalize from taking thyroid medication, thus his body starting to normalize; or to the fact that he is getting a little older now and just growing out of his cranky stage, but whatever it is, I am thankful for that flexibility in my job.  This solution may not have taken care of the fact that I am still working an insane number of hours each week and spending a lot of time traveling in the evenings and on weekends, and not being fully present with my family when I am home, but it at least is helping me cope with often missing my evening snuggles and time with my baby.  I'll give it a little longer, then try again to have him at day care in the morning for that first nap.  And hopefully I'll start to see a slow down at work for a  few weeks after my next event on Saturday wraps up.

 

An update from my last blog post.  Huck's upper GI showed that he definitely does reflux very easily, which we had already gathered our own experience and from visits with the docs, but that there are no structural abnormalities.  We also had a very good chat with his gastro doctor and are encouraged that he is making progress little by little with weight gain; again, perhaps partially due to my thyroid levels changing.  We also introduced rice cereal a couple weeks ago to hopefully help with getting him more calories.  We will celebrate 6 months on Saturday and will see how his routine check-up goes the following week, but things are looking up already!  We haven't quite made it to 15lbs yet.  And sitting on his own is becoming easier and easier each day!  We experienced camping for the first time last night too...life is good.

 

 

Health

Well life has certainly been a whirlwind lately.  As this is the busiest time of year for me at my full time job finalizing preparations for my upcoming fundraising events—4 in the next 3 weeks—I haven’t taken the opportunity to write.  We’ve also had a lot of things going on with both my health and Huck’s that have kept us busy running to various appointments; nothing serious, but cause for a lot of Dr. appointments and weight checks, nonetheless.

We found out about 2 months ago that my thyroid levels were way out of whack because I had been watching my thyroid get bigger and more visible in my neck for a few weeks and finally asked my mom if she thought I should call my doctor.  Her immediate response as she looked at me from across the room and could see it move when I swallowed was a resounding “YES!”  For those of you who don’t know, you shouldn’t be able to see your thyroid at all.  Now, my Doc is not the easiest person to get in to see, but I made the call first thing the following morning, which happened to be a Friday and was lucky enough to be able to get an appointment for the upcoming Tuesday.  After seeing the Dr. and being assured that I did the right thing in calling, my labs were scheduled for later that week and an ultrasound for the following week.  Based on all of these test results, my Dr. concluded that it was most likely Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis which will eventually lead to Hypothyroidism and referred me on to an Endocrinologist for a second opinion.  Two weeks later I was able to see the specialist and was put on medication to hopefully regulate my hormones.  Over the course of this process I was a rollercoaster of emotions—fear and worry initially that it could be something really bad like cancer; sadness that I was most likely going to have to be on medication for the rest of my life when I had worked so hard over the past year and a half to get off and stay off of any regular medications through my regular yoga practice; relief that it was an easily treatable disease and actually very common, especially after pregnancy. 

Now you may be asking the same thing all of the doctors asked me numerous times—didn’t I have any symptoms??  Well, folks, the symptoms of hypothyroidism and thyroiditis are very similar to what your body naturally goes through after pregnancy, extreme tiredness, dry skin, feeling chilled and hair loss, so naturally, not having gone through postpartum changes before, I thought these things were normal.  Especially since I had a newborn at home who had not been the greatest sleeper, and I had sort of adapted to feeling tired all of the time.  Had I known or had one of the doctors asked me about my milk supply, perhaps I might have had a different response to their questions about what symptoms I had been having.  It wasn’t until the day after my endocrinologist appointment that I discovered/realized that my milk supply was probably being affected by my crazy thyroid levels.

All while this had been going on with my health, we also found out that Huck had not really been gaining much weight from his 2 month to his 4 month check-up.  This fact combined with his chronic spitting up that we had been trying to get to the bottom of with the doctor, prompted our physician to call for an Upper GI and refer him on to a pediatric gastroenterologist.  I think it also maybe helped that when we were at his 4 month appointment and the nurse was taking his measurements and vitals he spit up on me and she was able to see the consistency of it and the fact that it was projectile, causing her to say “Is that what it always looks like?  That’s not normal”.  This is exactly what I had been trying to tell them for the past 4 months!  It felt good to finally have someone validate what we had been going through for such a long time.  The Upper GI at the local hospital concluded that he did not have pyloric stenosis or reflux.  I found it hard to believe that they thought he didn’t have reflux though based on his history.

It was at the gastroenterologist appointment the day after my endocrinologist appointment that the doctor, after many probing questions about both Huck’s and my health, and me mentioning that I had just started taking a thyroid medication the day before, that a light bulb went off in the Dr.’s head.  He immediately asked about my milk supply, and I let him know that I did feel like maybe I wasn’t making enough because I would pump every 2 hours and still barely have enough milk to send with Huck to daycare the following day, let alone have enough to build much of a supply in my freezer.  I guess I just thought this was normal…after all, it was normal for me; or at least it had been for a few months, I realize in hindsight.  The Dr. was ecstatic that he found this information out from me and was eager to see how the next few weeks would go for us, certain that we would start to see some changes in Huck because of this change in not only my milk supply hopefully, but also perhaps the consistency and nutrients in my milk.  He did not seem to think much else was going on with Huck’s health, but still wanted to do another Upper GI at the children’s hospital because there were some things he couldn’t quite tell from the one done at our local hospital.  He did think that he probably had some reflux based on my explanation of Huck’s behavior and how often he spit up and the definition of reflux, but didn’t think that the medication Huck had been taking for it would do much to help with it.  So in 3 weeks we would go through the UGI process again and have a follow-up appointment with the specialist.  I should also say that, as many of you know, our little munchkin has been a very fussy/colic baby, and by this point he was finally starting to grow out of that, so the Dr. also thought that maybe in 3 weeks we would see even more of a personality change in him because he would be that much older.

So now a 5 ½ months, we have definitely seen a personality change in our little man, and I’m pleased to say that the consistency of his spit up has changed which also makes me a bit more encouraged.  It makes me believe that much of the problems we may have been having with our precious baby were due to the hormones in my body trying to regulate themselves, yet being unsuccessful.  After the first week of thyroid medication, I felt as though my milk supply had greatly improved, but by the 2^nd week and continuing to now, I am questioning it a bit, even after adding Fenugreek to my diet.  So although it is a little better, I’m not convinced my hormones are where they should be yet, and I don’t go back for another month to have them checked again.  We also started rice cereal this past week; I wanted to wait until closer to 6 months to do this, but am hoping that the extra calories at night will help him gain a little since from 4 to 5 months he still struggled a bit to gain weight.  We go tomorrow for the 2^nd UGI and follow-up with gastroenterologist.  So as the past 2 months have been quite interesting for us, we are grateful each day for the health we do have and that even with little weight gain for our baby, he is still thriving, alert and growing developmentally.  I’ll keep you posted on how things go.  Thanks for reading!