Rockin' one of daddy's baby outfits

This cute little thing was Jerad's when he was a baby. I love how the older clothes actually have room for fluffy cloth diaper butts!





While I was trying to take pictures I found a new way to keep Marshall happy; let him lay on the nursery floor and stare at the black dresser:



He was so excited about it that he promptly wore himself to sleep. I'll take baby naps anyway I can get them:)

San Diego

We left Paso at 8pm after some last minute packing.


Marshall was wide eyed and excited for his first road trip! Oh wait...


I was nervous driving so far with the baby. I was worried he was going to cry the whole way... or want to eat every hour. Usually he's really good in the car, but the farthest we've gone is to San Luis which is only about 30 minutes.

Luckily he slept the whole time. He woke up once, nursed, then slept the rest of the way. It was pretty late when we arrived.

Clearly the 5.5 hour trip didn't phase Marshall:

I fed the baby and we all fell asleep about 3am. Then woke back up at 6:15, got ready, and I drove Jerad to the house where his brother and boss were staying. We decided to get our own hotel so everyone else didn't have to wake up every time the baby did:)

Marshall and I got back to our room around 7:30, fell asleep around 8, and slept until 10.

I had thought about using cloth diapers for the trip. We've used them exclusively since about the second day after Marsh was born. I wasn't worried that it would be inconvenient, but it meant that we'd have to go 4 days without washing them and I was worried they'd be hard to get clean. So, I bought a package of disposable dipes and some baby wipes (we use cloth wipes at home).

BIG MISTAKE.

In the 7 weeks we've been using the cloth, we've had a few tiny diaper leaks. As in, some poo gets on the clothes (usually on the legs and only because we didn't do a good job putting the cover on) and makes a spot maybe the size of a quarter. In the 2 days we've now been using disposable, we've had 3 major blowouts. Besides not containing poo as well, they smell funny, and are so not as cute as the cloth. Plus not as soft! Would you want to wear paper underwear? Clearly, I'm not a fan. Next trip will be cloth all the way...

Anyways, because of the blowouts, we started our morning with a sink bath:


Then we got dressed and headed out to go shopping at the huge Outlets they have here. I was more excited about it than Marshall was:

He fell asleep in the car, and stayed asleep while I loaded him in the stroller. I ate lunch at a Mexican place then got to work. The Outlets were amazing!

I checked out a bunch of stores, got Marshall a cute outfit, and me some new bras. Then he started to loose his shit. Literally. First he had another diaper blowout, then he was so hungry he thought he was going to die and started that cry-so-hard-he-can't-breathe thing. Now, I'm all for breastfeeding in public. Restaurants, the park, the theater, no problem. But how do you feed your baby somewhere that is basically like Disneyland? There wasn't even anywhere to sit if I'd wanted to. I ended up going to Motherhood Maternity and nursing in a fitting room so at least it was somewhat peaceful. By that time Marshall was over it so we headed back to the hotel room.

After a little baby wipe bath and some more milk he was in a much better mood:


Then he passed out for a few hours. And when I say "passed out," I mean PASSED OUT:


When he woke up he had some nakey time which always cheers him up:



I thought about taking him down to the pool so I could read and get a little sun (I brought an umbrella for him), but he just wanted to eat, sleep, eat, sleep and I figured he'd had such a busy last few days we should take it easy so he wouldn't be over-tired for dinner tonight and then all day tomorrow.

So while he did that, I watched some stupid movie, and read a trashy book. Jerad ended up working really late (its 9:30pm as I'm writing this and he's still not back... after having 3 hrs of sleep), so I ordered pizza. Hopefully Marshall sleeps well tonight even though he's slept most of the day!

Marshall ended up waking right as Daddy got home and boy was he happy to see him!





I'm happy to report that everyone slept well that night.

Monday we all slept in then went down stairs for the breakfast buffet. Make your own waffles, mmmm!


If I could eat one food for the rest of my life, it would probably be waffles.

After breakfast we headed to the pool. It was beautiful and no one else was there.



Jerad and I got some sun:

and Marshall got some shade.



Then it was time to relax in our room and let the baby boy nap. Somehow he got an arm out of his swaddle blanket and slept with it flopping out. It was pretty adorable:)



For dinner we went to Marcus's house (Jerad's boss), and ate with him, his daughter, and Jerad's brother Joey. The food was delicious and Jerad surprised me with flowers.

Marshall was awake for about an hour before we left for dinner, so I thought he'd sleep through the whole thing. He's usually only awake for about 45 min to an hour and a half at a time. Boy was I wrong! He stayed awake almost the entire time, probably about 4 hours.

That night he slept 6 hours straight, a new record. It seems like that would be a good thing, but not so much. Normally he nurses every 3 hours. I woke up after about 5 hours and 45 minutes so engorged that you could feel the individual milk ducts. It was super painful. I pumped while he slept and got over 11 ounces, a record for me too! It worked out well because we had bottles to use while we were out and about.

Tuesday morning we didn't get moving until after 10am so we missed the waffles:( We went back to the pool until noon for some more sunshine.


Then we checked out. Only... we couldn't leave because Jerad had lost the keys. We looked through the bags and stroller, nothing. He got them to let him back in our room and searched EVERYWHERE, and nothing. Marshall and I hung out by the car while he re-traced all of his steps.

Finally we took out literally every item out of every suitcase and found them. He'd packed them. 45 minutes after checking out, we were able to load the baby in the car and leave. We went back to the outlets and had lunch at Ruby's, the 50's diner place. We both got new sunglasses, Jerad bought a few new pairs of shoes and I got a surprisingly stylish pair of Crocs as well:

After we had shopped till we dropped, it was time to head home. Marshall slept the entire way. I pumped in the car and would feed him a bottle every few hours basically in his sleep. We woke him up once to change his diaper. I think it took us about 5.5 hours to get home even though we hit some traffic.

When we got home it was bath time, followed by cuddle time.



Then back to life as normal.

It looks like Jerad will be getting more jobs down there, so hopefully we'll be back soon!

Off to San Diego!!!

Sorry for the lack of updates. Lets see... I've been to the ER to have surgery for my lady lumps and have been recovering from that, had lots of family get togethers, lunch with friends and babies, Marshall's 6 week check up, baby's first boat ride... and we bought a boat! I don't have time to talk about all that though because we're on our way out the door to San Diego.

Jerad has a solar job down there this weekend and me and the babe are going to tag along. While he's working we can go shopping and to the beach, and when he's finished we'll stay a few days and have a little family trip.

I go back to work after next week so it will be nice to get out and enjoy life a little first. In the meantime I'll leave you with some recent cuteness:

Lady Lump Update

And the saga continues. When we last left off, I was supposed to be on bedrest and had another appointment scheduled.

It was hard to be on "bed rest" because Jerad was working and Marshall doesn't understand the concept of "hey, the mama needs to rest." But I did try to take it easy. Jerad volunteered to sleep with the baby and give him pumped milk and let me sleep in another room to at least have a more restful night. Normally Marshall nurses 2-3 times during the night. Sleeping with Jerad, he only woke up ONCE. Its a lot different when there isn't a never-ending food supply sleeping next to him I guess.

Monday I went to another appointment with Andrea (the lactation consultant). Quick side note: Marshall had gained 8 oz since Friday. So even though I'm dealing with all this crap, the little guy is thriving. Which is my main motivation for sticking with the breastfeeding. I don't know what I'd do if he was having trouble gaining weight on top of all this! Andrea didn't think things were looking better, and called Tiffany (the midwife/naturopath) to see if she would look at me for a second opinion. Tiffany said I could come right over. She thought that it would be safe to wait another 2 days before doing an ultrasound or anything else so that the antibiotics would have had a whole week to work. She explained all about abscesses and Mastitis and told me I could also try alternating hot and cold compresses. Andrea asked me to come back on Wednesday to the weekly breastfeeding meeting she has in her office so she could take another look at me.

I went to the Wednesday meeting which was so fun. SO FUN. There were about 18 moms and babies. We all sat around and nursed and talked. Andrea answered all sorts of questions. I am definitely going to go whenever I can! Anyways, she took another look at me and decided I needed to see an OB since I had been on antibiotics for 6 days by that point and it was starting to look worse. So she thought that Dr. K at Creating Harmony could take a look and have it ultrasounded and probably switch me to another antibiotic or refer me to a surgeon.

She called Creating Harmony to get the OB to see me right away and the receptionist would NOT go for it. Andrea was like "please just tell Dr. Kromhout that she has an abscess that has been going on for 16 days and it is affecting her breastfeeding and see what he thinks." Still the lady would NOT go talk to him. She said the soonest I could get in would be Friday and that was them doing me a huge favor. Finally since Andrea wouldn't let it go she said she'd check to see if a nurse midwife could see me (which makes no sense because Andrea has a Master's in nursing which none of the CNM's do, plus is a breast specialist... but whatever) then the receptionist said that all the midwives were double booked for that day so they couldn't see me either. Andrea basically pestered until I got a 3:20 apt and the office girl receptionist was all snarky and said if I was more than 10 min late they'd give my apt away (um, I've NEVER been late there).

*I know I bitch a lot about Creating Harmony, but I think its mainly just that I have bad luck there. I know so many people that LOVE them, so don't let my bad experiences dissuade you.

So, we got there at like 3:15 and waited 20 minutes. Then the med assistant took me to take my blood pressure and even though Andrea had explained everything to the receptionist, how long it had been going on, what kind of things I'd been doing to treat it, what kind of antibiotics, all that she had written down was "breast issues." I had to re go over everything. Then I waited in the room another 10 minutes. The nurse midwife came in and kept asking me if I had discovered the lump before breastfeeding and I was getting confused. I was like "it appeared 16 days ago." And she would be like "so before breastfeeding?" I guess she thought Marshall was less than 16 days old maybe. I dunno. He was sitting right there and is clearly more than 16 days old. Finally she took a look at it and said "oh my gosh." Which isn't what you like to hear! She didn't touch it, or anything just looked real quick.

She went and talked to Dr K who said it needed to be drained (without ever seeing me) but he didn't do that so I needed to go to a surgeon. The nurse midwife came back and told me what he said and I told her Andrea really thought I should get an ultrasound. She was like "just go to the surgeon and he can have that done if he thinks. You should try to get in today to get this taken care of asap." Which fine, whatever. I asked her how they drained it and she said she didn't know, in her 30 years of midwifery she has only had one person with that problem. Then she was like 'thanks for coming in' and I asked her if she could at least write down the surgeon's name and number for me which she did and that was that. They didn't call him to tell him I needed to get in now or anything. She saw me for MAYBE 4 minutes.

If you're a patient its hard to convince a Dr that you actually need to be dealt with right away. The surgeon they wanted me to see couldn't get me in for a month, and one of his partners wouldn't do anything before 2 weeks. The receptionist at the third partner's office was nice enough to move things around and get me in the next day. I called Andrea to give her an update and she was livid that the midwife didn't call and get me in that same day.

That whole apt made me again SO GLAD that I switched to Tiffany. When I went to see her about it last week she really examined me, asked me a ton of questions, then explained all about how breasts work and how these problems happen and what to look out for. She asked me if I was worried about it or had any questions. Keep in mind that it was the same situation, the lactation consultant called her and said "hey I think you should take a look at this" and she got me in within 30 minutes. AND didn't charge me even though it was like a 30 min apt.

It makes such a difference seeing a doctor that isn't overbooked. They have the TIME to talk to you and establish a relationship. Both Andrea and Tiffany have given me their cell phone numbers and told me to call any time I need to. When I go in, they know me, Jerad, and Marshall's names and remember our patient histories. The appointments are never less than 30 minutes, are usually closer to an hour, and I always leave feeling like they care and I understand what is going on.

Today I had the appointment with the surgeon. He gave me some local anesthetic then stuck a HUGE needle in the lump and sucked a bunch of puss out (if you think that's gross... just be glad it wasn't you!). He was pretty clueless about breastfeeding. First he told me that he didn't know if it was safe for me to continue (luckily Andrea had already told me it was), then even though I had told him I was breastfeeding, he covered my entire boob in gauze and tape and told me to leave it on for a day. Yeah like that's gonna happen.

I thought that he was going to either aspirate or surgically drain it that day, but I have to go back next Monday. I guess he is going to have what he took out cultured, then go from there. I tried to ask questions, but honestly he was super old and deaf and we weren't communicating very well. I pointed out that I also had another smaller lump on the same breast that wasn't going away with antibiotics and he felt it then said "that doesn't impress me" and didn't take a sample from it. I have no idea what that means. Is he going to deal with it on Monday? Is he not going to do anything? Who knows. As of right now I still have a huge lump (and a smaller one), but now it has a hole in it from the needle, hurts way worse, and according to him "may burst open and drain."

I guess I can sum up by saying "fml."

And Marshall makes three...

... well, technically he makes 8 if you count our furbabies too, but that's beside the point.

Anyways, I love these because otherwise we have NO pictures of me and the baby or the three of us.