Food source

It only takes about a month and a half for you to see your boobs as breakfast, lunch, and dinner for your baby. Consequently, you become much more open about nursing in company.

I bet that transition time is longer for my father-in-law.

Do not go in the kiddie pool

Is it a secret only mum's know? A friend told us that swimmimg diapers are NOT leak proof and in fact that was the point. A diaper doesn't need to soak up all that pool water, so the pee just passes through. She learned this the hard way but getting her daughter ready for the pool at home.

A day later my husband says, "If newborn poo is mostly liquid, what happens to that in the pool?" Two things, why did it take us a day to think of that and will I ever take my daughter to the kiddie pool?

June milestones

June 14th - First hike in the mountains
June 16 - 20th - First trip to the beach
June 21st - First trip to UNC and Bandidos!!
June 27th - Back to work

Wendy's junior cheeseburger deluxe

While scraping an excessive amount of mustard off a Wendy's junior cheeseburger deluxe, my husband commented "It's really disturbing how similar mustard is to poo". He then handed me the burger....Bon Appetite

Picture perfect

Trying to take a photograph of your newborn smiling is similar to...
- successfully taking a photograph of lightning
- capturing the lone snow leopard in a safari park in Trenton NJ
- taking a photograph of the countryside from a bullet train in Japan

...all require $1000's of dollars of equipment or at least 5 people

True happiness

An old wives tale says that newborns only smile because they have gas. As they get older, they start to smile at you and there's truly nothing sweeter, nothing better to melt away the tiredness, frustration, and aching back.

(just forget that they still smile when they have gas)

Nursing etiquette?

If you're staying with your best friend who's also a mum, can you whip out your boob in front of the man of the house?
We decided, "No".

Time passes by...

As a nursing mother, you no longer operate on a standard 24 hour day or a traditional calendar. I don't know the day, date, or time, but I do know exactly how many minutes it is to the next feed in the 3 hour cycle. Chores and errands are now organized into 2 hour blocks which must include travel time.

The time it takes for some chores can also be described by the number of times I can press the restart button on the music in the bouncy chair before my daughter is screaming. Making breakfast, eating, unloading and loading the dishwasher must take less than the 2 renditions of "Old McDonald had a farm"

Add multitasking and project management to the list of "Essential New Mum Skills"

Road trip #2

Longer trip this time, June 6th - June 23rd, and I'm expecting many more lessons to be learned.

Lesson #1. Another weight loss technique. Eating crap while nursing is bad for both you and your baby. You will not lose that last 10 pounds of pregnancy weight and your baby gets gas which, as previously mentioned, makes them extremely mad. No more NC BBQ.

Lesson #2. When asking for advice on raising little girls, a friend said always wipe front to back. My husband replied "How can that possibly matter when poo is equally distributed in the entire diaper?"

Lesson #3. Your birthday no longer has anything to do with you.

Lesson #4. Your baby will find K&W cafeteria fascinating.

Lesson #5. More advice from a friend. "Traveling with a newborn is easy - get out while you can. It won't get harder until they hit 12 weeks or so." What can that possibly mean???

A word to the wise...

Eat whatever you want during pregnancy.

When nursing, the foods you eat can pass into your breastmilk to give your baby indigestion and gas (which makes them VERY mad). Amazingly enough my 2 baby books don't really mention this predicament, so time to talk to the trusted "nurse on call" at the pediatrician's office.

Foods to avoid (one might suggest foods you can eat)
All ethnic foods and anything spicy - Mexican, Indian, Asian
Dairy products
Tomatoes and tomato based sauces (in fact sauces in general which rules out most pasta)
Pizza
Oranges and all citrus
Green leafy vegetables (spinach, cabbage, turnip greens, etc)
Onions, peppers, squash
Melon, watermelon, and berries
Caffeine

Just try to have breakfast without dairy, citrus, berries, and caffeine

And so it begins....

June 10th - The baby grabs a plastic bag that holds cotton balls and drags it to her face in one swift fluid motion.

This isn't too surprising as her favorite toy makes exactly the same noise as a plastic bag.

Road trip #1

Took our first road trip May 30-June 2nd - 4.5 hours travel time and we packed everything. Kids seem to love the car as our newborn slept almost the whole way, but we did learn some valuable lessons.

Lesson #1
A 1' x 2' travel changing pad is in no way sufficient. You will need an extra large towel under the changing mat to catch all projectile fluids.

Lesson #2
A diaper explosion that escapes onto your light khaki shorts requires the following steps to not be noticeable. Follow steps 5, 6 for complete removal.
1-immediate soaking
2-warm wash in Tide
3-overnight soak in OxyClean
4-repeat step 2
5-repeat step 2
6-repeat step 2 again