TOOTPU on Sunday

If you live anywhere within a reasonable distance of the DC Metro area, please come and join The Order of the Plastic Uterus (formerly knows as the DC Metro Stirrup Queens) on Sunday! You've heard the stories of our great gatherings, and they are all true.

We are meeting at The Cheesecake Factory in White Flint Mall at 12 noon this Sunday (6/29). Let me or Shelby know if you are coming so that we can get a count. Hope to see you there!

Had a snake as a pet

I've got nothing of interest to talk about right now except babies and boobs, and don't feel like prattling on about either of them. So, I'll do this meme -- I saw this on a bunch of other blogs and think it's neato. The ones that I've done are orange.

Bought everyone in the bar a drink
Swam with wild dolphins
Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
Been inside the Great Pyramid
Held a tarantula
Taken a candle lit bath
Said I love you and meant it
Hugged a tree
Bungee jumped
Visited Paris
Watched a lightning storm at sea
Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
Seen the Northern Lights
Gone to a huge sports game
Walked the stairs to the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa
Grown and eaten your own vegetables
Touched an iceberg
Slept under the stars
Changed a baby’s diaper
Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
Watched a meteor shower
Gotten drunk on champagne
Given more than you can afford to charity
Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
Had a food fight
Bet on a winning horse
Asked out a stranger
Had a snowball fight
Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
Held a lamb
Seen a total eclipse
Ridden a rollercoaster
Hit a home run
Danced like a fool, not caring who watched
Adopted an accent for an entire day
Actually felt happy about your life, even for a moment
Had two hard drives for your computer
Visited all 50 states
Taken care of someone who was too drunk
Had amazing friends
Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
Watched wild whales
Stolen a sign
Hitchhiked in Europe
Taken a road-trip
Gone rock climbing
Midnight walk on the beach
Gone sky diving
Visited Ireland
Been heartbroken longer than you were in love
In a restaurant sat at a stranger’s table and ate with them
Visited Japan
Milked a cow
Alphabetized your CDs
Pretended to be a superhero
Sung karaoke
Lounged around in bed all day
Posed nude in front of strangers
Gone scuba diving
Kissed in the rain
Played in the mud
Played in the rain
Gone to a drive-in theater
Visited the Great Wall of China
Started a business
Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
Toured ancient sites
Taken a martial arts class
Played a computer game for more than 6 hours straight
Gotten married
Been in a movie
Crashed a party
Gotten divorced
Gone without food for 5 days
Made cookies from scratch
Won first prize in a costume contest
Ridden a gondola in Venice
Gotten a tattoo
Rafted the Snake River
Been on television news program as an “expert”
Got flowers for no reason
Performed on a stage
Been to Las Vegas
Recorded music
Eaten shark
Had a one-night stand
Gone to Thailand
Bought a house
Been in a combat zone
Buried one/both of your parents
Been on a cruise ship
Spoken more than one language fluently
Performed in Rocky Horror
Raised children
Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
Picked up and moved to another city
Walked on the Golden Gate Bridge
Sang loudly in the car and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
Had plastic surgery
Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have
Wrote articles for a large publication
Lost over 100 lbs
Held someone while they were having a flashback
Piloted an airplane
Petted a stingray
Broken someone’s heart
Helped an animal give birth
Won money on a TV game show
Broken a bone
Gone on an African safari
Had a body part below the neck pierced
Fired a rifle, shotgun or pistol
Eaten mushrooms gathered in the wild
Ridden a horse
Had major surgery
Had a snake as a pet
Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
Slept for more than 30 hours over 48 consecutive hours
Visited more foreign countries than US states
Visited all 7 continents
Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
Eaten kangaroo meat
Eaten sushi
Had your picture in the paper
Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
Gone back to school
Parasailed
Petted a cockroach
Eaten fried green tomatoes
Read the Illiad
Selected one important author who you missed school to read
Killed and prepared an animal for eating
Skipped all of your school reunions
Communicated with someone without sharing a common language
Been elected to public office
Written your own computer language
Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
Had to put someone you love in hospice care
Build your own PC from parts
Sold your own artwork to someone that didn’t know it was yours
Had a booth in a street fair
Dyed your hair
Been a DJ
Shaved your head
Caused a car accident

Now you try it...

A Woman of Six Words

I am many things, both good and bad. One of them is NOT verbally brief. My nickname in Junior High (that's the equivalent of Middle School for you young whippersnappers who don't know what Junior High is) was "Loquacious Leah." Okay, so my friends were big geeks who used words like loquacious.

By the way, have I ever mentioned that in High School I was co-captain of the cheerleading squad, VP of the student council, and the biggest drug dealer in the school? Yeah, I'm a woman of many talents. I also played on the basketball team (um, I'm barely 5'4") and got kicked out of school halfway through 11th grade for smoking an illegal substance right in the hallway between classes. Can you say "stoopid?" I did manage to go back and take a year and a half worth of classes in my Senior year to graduate on time. Shockingly, they didn't ask me to be the Valedictorian despite the fact I had a perfect 4.0 GPA. That's me, I'm a real walkin' talkin' paradox. I'm so straight-laced and law-abiding and downright yuppyish now you would never ever believe this stuff, but it's true. But I digress...

Anyway, Bean tagged me to do this 6 word memoir meme. I've also been tagged to do at least 1 other meme, so I'll try to post about that one tomorrow.

Here's the deal with this meme:

1. Write your own six word memoir.
2. Post it to your blog including a visual illustration if you would like.
3. Link to the person who tagged you in your post and to this original post http://herebaby.blogspot.com/2008/06/six-word-memior.html if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogsphere
4. Tag 5 more blogs with links
5. Don't forget to leave a comment in the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

So, to sum myself up in 6 words...

"Ferociously loves family, friends and food"

Sort of lame, but all so true. Now I tag JJ, E, Bee Cee, Portia, Sunny, and Kristen.

Happy Blogaversary

Geez, long time no post, eh? You'd think I had a new baby around the house or something.


First off, let me say a belated Happy Blogaversary to me! It was on May 30th and I would have completely missed it if Susan hadn't mentioned it in a comment on my last post. How she knew is way beyond me, I've even convinced myself at this point that she must have thought she was commenting on someone else's blog. :-)

Also, CONGRATULATIONS to Farah on the arrival of Austin (aka Mini Vann). We're so excited he's here, safe and sound!

Things are good here. Liam is still not so interested in nursing, only latching on with the nipple shield. And I only try that sporadically. Mostly because when he isn't in the mood, he starts screaming like I'm snapping his little chicken legs off and beating him with them. That makes both of us agitated, hot and sweaty. That sucks since it's been about 6 bazillion degrees in Maryland lately (I'm not exaggerating), and a not-so-balmy 80 degrees or so inside my house despite the air conditioning trying so hard it's about to kill itself. So I haven't even tried much lately, but I will in earnest when the heat wave breaks. Plus, I love, love, love the freedom of having him drink from a bottle. Anyone can feed him -- and I mean anyone, hell, the UPS man could probably feed him and Liam wouldn't care. I did so love breastfeeding Megan, but felt trapped and tethered sometimes.

What I don't love? Pumping. A million times a day. I've been pumping every 3 - 4 hours during the day and going a 6 hour stretch at night. I've managed to provide everything he needs to eat (he takes 3 - 4 oz every 3 hours or so), and I tallied up my frozen stash last night. In addition to feeding him, I've managed to freeze almost 150 ounces. Not to shabby for just over 2 weeks of pumping. But I can't keep up this pace. I'm going to drop to pumping 4x a day, every 6 hours. We'll see what that does to my supply. Who the hell knows.

Liam is doing great, he's a good baby. He's developed his fussy period at night, about an hour and a half around 8 or 9pm. It's not too bad (Megan was a million times worse), but it's inconvenient because that's when we are putting Megan to bed. I just hope it doesn't get worse because right now -- despite the fact he's shrieking for no good reason during that time -- it's manageable. I'm looking forward to him sleeping longer than 3 hours at night, but that will come. At his 2 week appt he was exactly 8 lbs (a full pound above his birthweight!), so he's certainly not having any issues with eating or weight gain. That's a relief.

Megan's adjustment issues are getting better. We're far from out of the woods, but we can at least recognize progress.

That's it for now. I'm heading to bed in the hopes that this splitting headache disappears soon. Before I go, I'd like to ask you to head over and show some love to two of my favorite blog buddies who are having a rough time right now. LJ and Bean -- I love you two ladies, I wish I could sprinkle some pixie dust on you both and make everything magically better.

What a difference a day makes

As bad as Thursday night/Friday morning was, that's how good it's been since. Remember how I said I was only going to give Liam a couple of days of these non-breastfeeding shenanigans before I moved to pumping and bottle feeding? Well apparently I meant a couple of hours. By 1pm yesterday, I had pumped and he'd eaten from a bottle. What changed my mind? While on the phone with the LC from the hospital (as I explained that even the nipple shield didn't work), she said something that made my blood run cold: SNS. I knew that if that was my next option, we were doomed. So off to pump and bottles for us.

It's been straight uphill since then. He's had several more bottles, and by this morning even has the hang of eating from it without the obligatory 5 minutes of confused crying at the beginning. He's sleeping like an angel and was great at the doctor this morning. Things are really looking up.

I will definitely try breastfeeding again after this weekend. We want to get the rest of the bilirubin out of him and get him back to his birthweight, then I'll try it again. Also, in an incredibly sexy twist on things, my nipples have scabbed over. Nice, huh? He abused them so badly in the hospital that they are literally scabbed over. So no doubt breastfeeding wouldn't be much fun for him either.

He was born at 7lbs, weighed 6lbs 12oz the next day, and 6 lbs 11oz when we were discharged on Thursday. Today, just 2 days later, he weighed 6lbs 13.5oz. I'm not sure how he managed to gain 2.5oz while also missing essentially 3 meals yesterday, but I'll take it!

Megan? Doing about the same. Still unreasonable. Still refuses to nap (3rd day in a row). Still refuses to go to bed early (just lays up there and sings for an hour instead of falling asleep). Still pure evil. She's a bit less obnoxious with Liam, but has now turned on her beloved Grandparents. Which is sad, but we all understand what is going on. To ease things, we tried giving her a little 1-on-1 time today. After the doctor (where she was VERY helpful), we came home. I pumped, we packed up some food, and headed out the door. Grandma and Grandpa stayed home to take care of Liam while Kevin, Megan and I had a picnic at the park. It was really nice. Although both Kevin and I already felt that there was someone missing. Amazing! Now she's upstairs crying, refusing to nap, being generally evil.

I am going to pump and then nap myself. Hopefully when I get up the little boy will be awake so we can snuggle for a bit. All in all, things are good today. Thanks for your words of support and encouragement, I really appreciate it.

A couple of pics of Spidey

Sorry to make this brief, but it's approaching dinner time around here and that's when it all goes crazy... :-) Here are a couple pics of Liam. Goodness knows we'll have lots more as the days go on, but I thought I'd put just a couple up here for now.

We're home (subtitle: Crash and Burn)

Thank you to everyone for the well wishes! I am very happy to report that the c-section was uneventful with no surprises. My recovery seems to be going well, so that's good news too.

In the hospital, little Liam was an angel. He proved to be a champion breastfeeder, although his suck is almost as powerful as a jet engine. Ouch! But that's okay, Megan was so horrible at it that I would take the opposite problem any day of the week. The first night, he was as good as gold and we actually got lots of sleep. The 2nd and 3rd nights, he cluster fed overnight which wasn't much fun, but it helped my milk come in quickly. He barely lost any weight, much to everyone's amazement. I didn't have one single freak out hormonal meltdown. In fact, I don't think I cried at all. Megan came to the hospital for a visit every day and was an angel for her Grandparents. All in all, things were going great.

Then we came home. We've been home about 24 hours now. I'm not sure who has cried the most in this first day -- Liam, Megan or me. Megan was out of control, spinning between being wildly overhelpful and lying on the floor screaming, kicking and crying. She didn't nap yesterday (too excited) and didn't get to bed early (despite the fact it could have happened, but that's another topic for another day). She's pissed that we won't let her carry Liam around by herself, that we won't let her change his diaper by herself, and that she can't hold him on her lap non-stop. I knew this would happen, so I was prepared, but I didn't realize how badly she was going to freak out. That's what started my crying jag and it's continued now for the better part of 18 hours. Good times.

Liam decided he didn't like breastfeeding that much after all. He latches on, sucks a while, and pulls off screaming. I have been pumping with the hand pump a bit before he latches on (new since coming home and his boycott) to make sure there's milk there and something nice and long for him to latch on to. But he's lazy. His suck is much, much weaker. One theory is that I've got so much freakin' milk in there that my boobs are too hard and he can't get as good a latch. So today I will pump and do something the LC recommended called reverse softening (or something like that). He was up from 3:00 - 6:30am last night screaming, eating, burping, screaming, burping, screaming, eating, etc. It was exhausting, mostly in an emotional sense. He'll only get a few days of these shenanigans and then I'll go to pumping and bottle feeding. I went through hell and back to get Megan to breastfeed and I don't have it in me to do it again.

At this very moment, Megan is at school and Liam is sleeping on his Grandma's shoulder. I've showered, dressed, had breakfast and time to update my blog. So I really shouldn't be complaining. I think it's just that it seemed like things were going to be so much easier this time around and we took such a sharp nosedive. But this too shall pass.

Thank you again to everyone who commented. It made me feel so good to see how many people were checking in! I'll catch up on my reading over the next few days, so forgive me for not commenting. Also, I'll post some pictures of the little dude later today.