She’ll be hanging out at home with N while I go to an all day marching band rehearsal.

N wasn’t jazzed about spending the day hanging around the school taking care of E (so I could breastfeed her on demand) while I am working. I don’t blame him, if I were him would rather spend my Saturday at home relaxing.

Besides It’s better that she’s not out in the heat and blazing sun for that long anyway… So the two of them will be relaxing at home without me all day.

This is why we’ve been trying so hard to get her to take a bottle lately. There are gonna be days when she’s home with him and I am out working. We also would love to have a date night once in a while. If she refuses a bottle it kind of makes it impossible for me to leave her side for very long.

N and E had another successful morning while I was left to catch up on some sleep. I guess N took her down to the nursery where she took her morning nap in her crib. Crib sleeping is not something that happens often as she’s still pretty attached to swing sleeping.

N said after her nap in the crib she took a bottle with hardly any fuss, she even smiled at him while he was giving her it. This is a great change from the frantic screaming she was doing during bottle time days before.

It appears N and Everly are geared up for tomorrow and this makes me pretty happy. I love her to death but it will be nice to go to work and have 2 hands to teach with as opposed to only the one (since I’ve been holding her the entire time I am teaching).

Now I need to get back to my BPA obsessing, I’ll post more about that in a few days though, stay tuned.

The post This mom is flying solo tomorrow. appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Nobody can ever really make you understand just how much your life changes once you have a baby! I am not gonna lie, we are so looking forward to when our free time increases a bit once she’s older. Right now the constant need to be held is rough on us.

Finding the time to feed and care for ourselves is verging on impossible with little 7 week old Everly. That comes with the territory though, that’s what we’ve been told at least…

We had a good 6 week checkup with our midwife at The Farm this past weekend. We stayed in the cabin that Everly was born in, it was so cozy and quiet. We relaxed a bit but things weren’t quite as leisurely as we had expected.

Turns out little E doesn’t like being away from home right now. She was extremely overstimulated and had a pretty hard time going down for naps and sleeping at night. We even brought her beloved swing that she falls asleep in at night but the different surroundings left her acting uneasy and unable to relax, even in the swing.

Pamela examined us and said we were both very healthy and doing great. E got weighed and she was too big for the baby scale (almost 11lbs). She’s also gained 2 inches in length since birth so her growth is great which means breastfeeding is going great too.

My 4th degree tear repair was done very well according to Pamela. She was very impressed with how nicely the stitches healed up and she says my pelvic floor is very firm and all back together. By 3 weeks postpartum my bleeding had stopped and the tenderness of the stitches was gone, that is apparently remarkable healing for such a bad tear.

All in all things are on track following labor and delivery, we are glad to hear this. I still can’t believe we are parents though. Staying in the cabin and looking at the spot there on the floor where I delivered E is surreal.

Our midwife was telling me that she’s been sharing my birth experience with all her students too. She thinks it was pretty great how I was “in a trance” and so relaxed during labor and transition. She tells everyone how calm Everly’s birth was and keeps complementing me on it.

I still can’t grasp it all, I know I had a baby but it still hasn’t sunk in how truly huge and amazing that fact is.

Anyway, now we are home and getting back in to the swing of things. E seems much more relaxed and comfortable now that we are back too. She slept great last night and we had band rehearsal today which went well. Tomorrow E and I will have a day off to relax and get caught up on some stuff before another busy day on Thursday. Fun, fun!

The post Been new parents for 7 weeks now… appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

We read that tired babies are fussy and can often seem gassy or colicky when all they actually need is to sleep more. We’ve learned this the hard way.

We bought Gripe Water, Mylicon gas drops, we made catnip & lemon balm tea for her, gave her digestive enzymes and basically tried everything to cure what seemed like tummy pain that caused her to fuss and cry inconsolably.

Turns out she was awake way more than she probably should be and she was getting so overstimulated and overtired that getting her to relax for sleep was practically impossible by the end of the night.

When we headed home with her everyone was all “babies will tell you what they need when they need it”. I nursed on demand, let her sleep when she wanted to, changed her when she screamed. All that resulted in was a fussy, rashy, unhappy baby that would sleep right through the night and fuss all day.

Once we figured out that babies typically shouldn’t be awake for more than about 2 hours at a time it was easy to see what the problem was…

She was getting overly tired and overtired babies only have more issues going to sleep which is probably why E would only doze off in my arms but would not fully sleep or let us lay her down for a nap. The whole time we were thinking she was fussing and crying in pain, it was just exhaustion though.

We committed a baby signals interpretation fail! Poor E.

Now we have made a few changes to help Everly with falling asleep and staying asleep per our reading.

Things like keeping our bedroom dark, changing her and feeding her in the dark when sleep should follow and building a bed time routine have helped. Also, we are having to swaddle her and also place her in the swing to get her to initially fall asleep at night.

The good news is she is actually napping during the day these days which in turn makes her easier to get back to sleep thought the day and night. A well rested baby fights sleep much less and isn’t as fussy. It is amazing and kind of “duh” all at the same time. This revelation is all thanks to reading, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child

Some parenting books have been very helpful reading material, I’ll admit there is quite a bit of conflicting info out there though. We were lucky enough to find some helpful stuff this time. If you’ve got a parenting book you love please let us know @laurensnellings from twitter recommended the above mentioned book to me and boy are we glad she did.

The post Missing the signs of my overtired baby… appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Homebirth is not for every woman and every pregnancy which is why there needs to be adequate laws and regulations in place to protect women and midwives (like there are in Tennessee). Homebirth should be an acceptable and viable option for most but thanks to one sided stories, scare tactics and profit driven laws it is not. This is sad and maddening to me.

Another thing that is wearing on my nerves is breastfeeding ignorance. Everly is just over a month old and we are exclusively breastfeeding. We haven’t introduced the bottle or a pacifier because we don’t want to cause “nipple confusion” and disrupt the working breastfeeding relationship (you are supposed to wait until 6-8 weeks). For some reason people who hardly know me can’t wrap their minds around this and it is annoying me. (If you are reading this, it’s not about you I promise!)

Sure bottles and pacifiers would be more convenient but they aren’t best for E at this time (in my mind) and I’ve chosen to commit to breastfeeding, why can’t people understand and respect this? Plus she wont have anything to do with them anyway.

Speaking of respect, my ex-doctors office (remember the bad OBGYN?) sold my info to formula companies without my consent. I’ve been receiving formula vouchers like crazy and I’ve got free formula coming out my ears now!

Sure, free stuff is nice but not when you wont use it and the only reason they are giving it is to get you to mess up with breastfeeding and to get you hooked on their products. It is like they are tempting you to give up on breastfeeding. And don’t even get me started on how little support exists for breastfeeding moms…

Can you tell I am running on major lack of sleep? I am all irritable and full of complaints today.

The post People just don't get it sometimes… appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Anyway, once something starts to annoy me it is practically impossible for me to forget about the annoyance and move on. The annoyance eats away at my soul until I do something about it.

So I am breastfeeding baby E in bed with my pillows propping me up against the headboard. Well, with several pillows behind me my hair pile still manages to hit the headboard and is causing me to have to crane my neck downward. Add that to the fact that I had a killer hair headache right under the scrunchie wrapped pile of hair on top of my head.

I was feeling particularly annoyed with my hair and just wanted it gone. I’d been planning to donate it again so I was waiting till the part I planned to cut off was 10 inches or longer… Yesterday I was so eager to hack it all off so once N was able to watch over baby E I went to town.

They tell you to braid it and then cut it. It needs to be in a braid when you donate it… So I divided my hair in half, made two giant pigtail braids and chopped them both off! I just made the 10 inch minimum and my hair is much shorter and manageable now.

Last time I donated my hair I was living in Arizona and the weather was much drier. Having the hair this short here means it’s very full of body and personality. It feels much better pulled up now though!

For those of you who saw my tweets last night and also my photos here is the new hair photo you wanted:

After the hair massacre N bathed E and I was his “assistant” since I bathed her previously and they hadn’t been able to have bath time bonding yet. Once again she loved bath time and wasn’t so upset when we took her out after we took care to keep her towel warm and ready for her exit.

After the bath we took some funny photos of E with my two massive pigtail braids. N thought it would be fun and it turned out kind of cute. She was getting ready to scream bloody murder as I took this that is why she’s making a funny face. LOL!

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