I have no time to edit or make a tidy conclusion

Invaluable Baby Junk, Wynne and Erin edition. Here's all our favorite stuff.

1. Medela Pump In Style Advanced. We have a love-hate relationship, but without this pump, I couldn't give her any breast milk. I haven't used any others to know that this one is far superior, but I'm still fairly certain there's no better pump out there. It's as convenient as pumping can be. I'm able to have my hands free (thanks to Mike's patent-pending Sports Bra With 2 Holes Cut In It, so if you ever get one, forget spending money on the brand name "corset" or whatever, cause sports bras work perfectly). Plus Medela makes a million accessories that make breast milk storage very easy. And I hear good things about their customer service in the event that something is wrong with your pump, which is nice because you can't really wait a while for replacement parts like you can for, say, a toaster.

2. My Brest Friend pillow. I didn't get one of these until about two weeks in, from some terrific friends of mine who were so supportive during our nightmare breastfeeding stage. I had a Boppy to start with, and it was no fun trying to position her on it to nurse. It wouldn't stay up high enough so I ended up hunched over, and it sags in the middle and it just wasn't comfortable for us. I actually use it now as a sort of body pillow, and we get some use out of it to prop her up for tummy time, and despite the tag's admonishings, we've set her in it to nap, so I'm glad we have it too, but as far as nursing I found it pretty worthless. The My Brest Friend was such an improvement. It straps around your middle and clips in place so you don't have to hold it up, and it really supports the baby so you can have at least one hand free rather than needing both just to hold the baby in place. I don't nurse anymore, but if we were nursing exclusively, I would be using this pillow every day.

3. Miracle Blankets. We have 4 (from Uncle Johnny) and they are in constant rotation. People who aren't familiar with them are usually pretty wary of them, thinking we keep our baby in a straight jacket when "she just wants her arms free! i can't stand to see them pinned down! she's wiggling, it must be that her blanket is too tight and restricting! let her out!!" These people are nuts; swaddling is magical to babies. I am extremely reluctant to believe anyone who says their baby did not like swaddling. Wynne startles like a madman when her arms are free and can't stay asleep more than 5 minutes at a time. She'll bang herself in the face, scratch her eyes with her unwieldy fingers and scraggly nails (so bad at baby nail-cutting). And when she's fussy, swaddling is always the first thing we do to calm her down. It's not a pacifier in itself, but it helps her to stop flailing, keeps a fit from escalating, and gets her attention so we can do the other things that calm her down. I don't think I'll ever waste my time with any other sort of swaddling blanket. This one is specifically designed so that baby arms can't pop out (though she does manage to bend hers at the elbows sometimes, she still can't flail them all around), and I feel certain that none of us would be sleeping if we didn't have these blankets. Our moms, both of whom disliked the tight swaddle at first, have come around because they know how well it works.

4. White noise machine and hair dryer. We have a little white noise machine that runs on batteries (handy for travel but we have to change the batteries often) and a sound machine that plugs in that we keep in the corner of her crib that we turn on whenever she sleeps. She, and I wager this is true of all babies, does NOT like quiet. It's much easier to fall asleep, and more importantly stay asleep, with background noise. And when she's really fussy, all we have to do is turn on the hair dryer (on high. low isn't loud enough.) and she'll stop crying almost immediately. Again, some people think we keep it too loud, but it turns out babies are used to a decibel similar to that of a vacuum cleaner in the womb, so the noise has to be fairly loud to work.

5. Happiest Baby On The Block, a book (by pediatrician Harvey Karp) about calming fussy babies. I don't think there's any new secret information in it, but it presents things nicely so that I can understand them. Basically, the point is that until 3 or 4 months, babies are really still fetusy and not well-equipped for life outside the womb, so we should recreate the experiences they're used to in the womb. Sensible and helpful.

6. Playtex Vent-Aire bottles. We tried several (nuk, breastflow) and these are the ones that work best for us, despite their many many parts. No fun to wash, but really what is fun to wash? We use the wide bottles with slow flow nipples, because we wanted something that would be similar enough to breastfeeding that she wouldn't refuse to nurse, which is no longer an issue, but I still really like these.

7. Soothie pacifiers. We have The First Years brand ones and love them. We have several other kinds too and she'll take them just fine, but I like the soothie kind. As we JUST discovered, the Munchkin pacifier clips sold at Target will attach to these kind (with a little force) so they don't go flying whenever the baby lets go (which she does. a lot.), and in our house with concrete floors, and with crumbs and fuzz and my hair all over the floors, it's nice not having to chase after the thing and rinse it off every five minutes.

8. Footed sleepers that zip or snap. So much better than having to pull a onesie over a tiny baby's head. And who invented shirts for babies? There's nothing to keep them down around their bellies where they belong. They all ride up and bunch up under their armpits and you're constantly yanking the shirt down. For the same reason, gowns are hit-or-miss for us. I like having her in them at night so diaper changes don't wake her up too much, but they bunch too. Wynne pretty much lives in footed sleepers. The last few weeks, however, she gets really hot and sweaty in her carseat or when she's being held to nap, so we also use lots of short sleeved onesies to keep her cooler.

9. Pampers swaddlers diapers and Huggies wipes. For this baby, Pampers is it. We still get leaks (dirty diapers only; I guess this is bound to happen no matter what), but other diapers leaked with far less mess than Pampers. And I love Huggies wipes because they are very easily torn in two. I like working with a smaller square and feel like I can use the whole wipe more efficiently this way. I usually only need 1, torn in half, for wet diapers and 2 or 3 for dirty diapers. I want to switch to cloth diapers here shortly, so when we do I'll try to do a post about what we like and how it's going, but for now we're using disposables so we love Pampers.

10. Other brand stuff we use: Enfamil Lipil formula (it's sorta frothy, which for some reason makes me think it's gentle on her stomach), Earth's Best Organic whole grain rice cereal (flaky like instant mashed potatoes! i tried food processing brown rice myself but i'm gonna need a much sturdier blade to really pulverize that stuff), Trumpette baby socks (the only ones we've found that don't fall off), Rockin Baby sling (I love it, Wynne tolerates it in short doses; had to watch youtube videos to figure out how to get a baby in and out of it), Moby wrap (again, youtube videos are important. we used this a whole lot early on, now it's hit or miss), Chicco (evidently pronounced key-co) baby gear. We have a Chicco carseat, stroller, and play yard, and they are awesome. I really like the quality of Chicco products and that they have a variety of gender-neutral colors; Baby Luve bath covers, which cover her up in the bathtub so it's not all chilly and drafty on the parts of her that aren't submerged. I don't know what bath time would be like without them, and I don't want to know. We could probably use a large washcloth or a small hand towel to the same effect, but these are designed for a baby's shape and aren't as thick and heavy as regular towel terrycloth. We luve them.

So there you go. Lately, Wynne has been throwing the worst fits I've ever witnessed. She fights sleep every single time we try to get her down (except the middle of the night feeding), and it's gotten way worse this week. Hysterical red-faced screaming. I don't know if it's teething, some phantom pain I can't recognize, or just that she's chronically overtired, but y'all. It is sapping me of all my strength and patience, neither of which I had in abundance to start with. If I can distract her, usually with the hair dryer or standing in front of the bathroom mirror (she likes looking at our reflections) with the vent turned on for noise, sometimes the wailing will subside so that I can get her swaddled. Then I usually have to take her to a pitch black room (for us the bathrooms are the only rooms without windows) with some white noise, and rock her and pat her bottom (kinda hard) and smush her tight against me until she falls asleep. It's a production, and if it wasn't so stressful and terrible it'd probably be pretty funny. But I'm just throwing it out there in case it helps anybody else. Loud noise to distract her from the fit (hair dryer, bathroom vent, white noise machine, motorboat sounds, loud rattle- pill bottles work in a pinch), swaddle her (quickly! she hates being put down and having her arms pinned down- initially), pitch black dark room (no cracks of light, shadows, NOTHIN), pacifier, hold her tight so her legs don't feel free and she can't arch her back, rock/swing and pat her bottom and wait it out. Also lots of prayer thrown in there.

Doing nothing all day takes up all of my time.

Wynne is 6 weeks old today, which both seems impossible and like it took forever. Currently she's hanging out with her Gigi while I pump. Most things I've read say you should pump for 15-20 minutes, but I find that milk is still coming (in tiny dribs; I rarely make more than 1.5 ounces per pumping session), so I usually pump for 30 minutes. It's no fun. It's mighty uncomfortable, and I'm tied down to one spot the whole time, unable to cook or clean or shower or even change positions, and I have to do it sitting up, otherwise the milk leaks everywhere and all is lost, and we're making do with a fairly old futon as our primary seating. It really doesn't offer a lot of support. And worst of all, I can't really hold the baby while I'm pumping, so I have to hand her off (often for a feeding, so someone else has to feed and burp her) and then she'll get comfortable and fall asleep, so I can't hang out with her again for a long time after I'm done cause I don't want to risk waking her up. I do not miss the agonies of nursing, but oh what I would give not to have to spend 4 hours per day pumping (to say nothing of the storage and clean-up afterwords). And we're still having to supplement with formula cause I don't make enough. I know it sounds awful to complain that I'm able to give my baby ANY breastmilk, cause I'm sure if I couldn't I would be furious with anyone who griped about it, but this is my situation and I am just saying, it wears me down. I can't help thinking every time I hook up the stupid pump that it would be so nice if all I had to do was pull up my shirt or mix up formula bottles when it was time for Wynne to eat. I'll keep pumping as long as I can, but I am not gonna be sorry when it's over. It's so good that babies are adorable, because some of the stuff I have to do for one is NOT cute at all. Wet and dirty diapers don't bother me, and I don't care when she spits up all down my arm when I'm trying to burp her (this is a feat, by the way. who knew? it sounds so simple in theory, but babies fling their little bodies all over creation and two hands is simply too few), but the lack of sleep is really catching up to me. I get pretty upset over what I know are actually very small things, and I have to really concentrate on enjoying middle of the night feedings instead of feeling sorry for myself for being awake and only having gotten two hours of sleep. Again, it's a well thought-out system, cause the middle of the night feeding is when she does the most smiling. This week her smiles are seeming more deliberate and intentional, rather than just those little sleep smiles we were getting before. I can't WAIT for my mama to see them when we go back for Thanksgiving. She will just melt.

Here's a picture of her in a precious pea pod outfit that Gigi made her. Tell me I don't have the cutest baby in the land.

At some point I'd like to write about all the baby gear we've found really helpful. Perhaps I'll get around to it before SHE has a baby. But no promises.

And she smells yummy too

Hey don't be mad about how long it's been! Look at the squishy baby! This is our baby girl, Wynne Larue. She was born on the 4th and weighed 9 pounds 3.6 ounces (yeeouch!) and she is a precious ideal dream baby, except when she latches to nurse I nearly die of agony. I believe breastfeeding is important and special and I want to do whatever is best for my baby, but believe me when I say that I gave it everything I had, and for us, right now, it just is not going to work. So I'm pumping like a bandit and Wynne is getting breastmilk from bottles as well as formula from bottles and I no longer dread feedings or cry tears of fear and pain and despair onto her little punkin head. We are very, very happy, except it is misery being away from Mike and knowing all that he's missing and except for the times when I'm petrified that my supply is going to dwindle and dry up any minute now. But she really is the perfect baby. She sleeps like a dream and is so freakin cute that I don't even care that she likes to save up all her dirty diapers for the hours between midnight and 6am. Baby sneezes and baby hiccups are just about enough to do me in. And her little half-asleep baby smiles. Oh mah Lord.

Anyway this is about all I've got time for. Between feeding and pumping and washing and burping and holding and sleeping, my days are mighty packed. Full of love! It is weird and awesome having a baby girl.

CORNflakes!

Friends, I got nothin. I am so boring that even the Lord is like "meh," and he cares about everything. Here's what I know.

- Only 3 weeks til my due date. At my check-up yesterday I asked the midwife if she could estimate the baby's size, and after feeling around a bit she said maybe 7 or 7.5 pounds. If this seems normal to you, awesome, but to me it is hella scary. I was thinking she might would be 7 pounds when she came out and was none too jazzed about that, so now that I know we have probably passed that mark, I am extra freaky outy. I know millions of women do this, but I'm telling you guys, in terms of stretching and accomodating and expelling, it just doesn't seem possible. Also when asked if I was experiencing braxton hicks contractions, I said I don't think so, because there's been nothing especially unpleasant going on, but then she tried to explain how they feel by saying "it's like her rear end is pushing your belly and it gets hard for a minute," and I've been feeling THAT for about a month now. Soooo... I dunno what's going on.

- My right foot, and by about 5pm my left one too, is ready to cry uncle. Y'all, it is so puffy and fat that I can hardly wear a shoe. Any shoe. And I have the narrowest feet in the world, so in most shoes I've got a good bit of wiggle room. I know there are people who can't stand the sight of other people's feet, so I will spare you photographic evidence, but it is ridiculous.

- Fall. It is delicious, and it is coming. We've already made chili and cornbread, chocolate chip cookies, pumpkin scones, and cranberry apple crisp. Much to the dismay of grocers everywhere, it would appear, because apart from Ocean Spray NOBODY sells cranberries in September. I looked high and low for them yesterday, at two different stores, and they are not to be found. What gives? Why not have frozen cranberries year round the same as strawberries and raspberries and blueberries? With all this shopping and cooking I've been doing, it's no wonder my feet swell up like blimps, but you can't not cook delicious things this time of year. The SC State Fair is coming up, and pumpkins and apples and scarecrows and Halloween and Thanksgiving and orange and brown and yellow, and I'm just so excited I could pop. Everybody wear corduroys and drink out of mason jars and have desserts with apples and butter and oats and cinnamon and ice cream! (Once at a mexican restaurant my sister went to, the 'fried ice cream' was a blob of grocery store strawberry ice cream rolled in cornflakes. Cornflakes! Probably do not allow this travesty to be a part of your fall food library.)

- My Mama had a birthday last week, on the 11th. She does not read my blog, because she doesn't know of it, but she is just too great not to talk about. She does every single thing more patiently and thoroughly than I could ever have thought possible and she doesn't complain, and she always knows what's most important and always makes time for her babies, and she gets up every morning to walk on the treadmill, and she does my laundry, and she loves the Sound of Music and petits fours and James Taylor, and she makes room for dessert, and she can take care of everything, and everyone would be lost without her. Most especially me.

Here we are decorating my Christmas tree last year. If you can just ignore the fact that I'm wearing rubber gloves (the tree was stabby!). Also my weird shape (cookies are delicious!). Mama loves Christmas (it was her mama's favorite time of all), and I love her!

but not breyers ice cream. bleck.

I'm getting to the point where most of my dresses are a little too snug for comfort. So except for a few dresses that have a lot of elastic, I generally prefer shorts and shirts. It's tricky, because I can still get my pre-pregnancy shorts on (thank you Lord for this blessing; I assume it's compensation for the ankle swelling and stabby rib pains), but the button side and the button hole side are always about 3 inches away from each other, with no hope of meeting, so I have to use my belly band (which Erin gave me, and it is the single most useful pregnancy item I could imagine) to hold them up, and stuff all the extra material as flat as I can get it under the band. It's a little bulky, and every time I have to go to the bathroom I dread having to get dressed all over again, but my shirts mostly cover the unsightly part, and it's nice to be able to wear shorts, cause I'm not fond of the way my legs stick together in skirts and dresses.

My belly picture photographer left me in the lurch last weekend when he moved to Arkansas, so I'll need my parents to fill in for the remainder of the pregnancy, which is 42 more days. Forty. Two. DAYS. You know how sometimes your computer freezes for a few seconds and then does several commands rapid-fire to catch back up? That's how I feel when I think about how little time is left. Wha--- OMG42daysbutIdon'tknowhowtohaveababyletaloneholdoneandchangeherdiaperandgethertoeatandsleepwhatdoidowhenshecries.
On the whole, I'm not too stressed about the baby. There's tons of stuff I don't know, but I think that's probably always the case, and I'll just do my best and figure it out as we go. What I'm anxious about is that Mike won't be here with me for the first few weeks. He has to be in Arkansas to teach, and I'm having the baby here so that we can keep my insurance and the midwives I've been seeing all along, and so I can have help from our moms and families. They're experts, so it's not that I'm scared about doing it all ALONE, I just want Mike to be here too and not to miss out on stuff. I know there are tons of families who'd gladly trade for circumstances like ours, and all we can do is make the best of it until the baby and I can move out to Arkansas. I just wish things always went precisely like I wanted. Is that so wrong?

This weekend Mike's mom's friends threw me a baby shower, and it was fabulous. The food was great and we got TONS of stuff, and these ladies did the most awesome thing. While I was opening presents, one of them wrote down what the gift was and who it was from, and stuck it in a thank you note that they had ALREADY ADDRESSED FOR ME, so all I have to do is pull out the card, read the post-it to remember what that person gave me, and write the thank you note. I am the worst about thank you notes. Over half of my wedding ones are sitting at my house, thanking my friends and family from inside a cardboard box for the beautiful trifle dish. I always tell people NOT to write me a thank you note, because I know the trouble I have with them, and I have no interest in inflicting that on anybody. I am a very polite and thankful person, and I make a point to convey my extreme gratitude to people in person when receiving a gift, but thank you notes are just not my bag. I will do them for this child, though, so people don't think her rude. But she is gonna owe me. And with all the awesome stuff people are getting us, writing a note and buying stamps is the very least I can do. My aunt Julie even found us a Star Wars baby book. You can guess which parent will choose that one every night. And Mike's mom (GiGi to the baby) has already made the baby two quilts and she's not even HERE yet, so by the time she's mobile we should have her whole room padded a couple layers deep. My dad (Chief to the baby; he's a fireman) was not too far off when he said this child isn't going to need to buy anything for herself until she's forty. That's a lot of years to perfect her thank you notes.

She's been kicking and shifting and hiccuping like a banshee lately, and I fear that she's looking for more room to grow in there, when really, isn't 4 pounds more than enough for anyone to have to expel from their body? My belly button is stretching a little more every day (for some reason it really skeeves me out), so it can't be long now until it pops out. At my last appointment, the midwife told me that the baby is head down (woohoo!), so I suspect that the part of her that periodically presses against the middle of my stomach and makes a funny little protrusion is her rump. I also think she tends to stay to one side (my left), but still somehow she's taking up all my stomach's room, so I have to cut waaaay back on my portions at mealtimes, excpet usually I don't, and boy am I sorry twenty minutes later. And usually by the end of the day, I can't see my ankles anymore, and I have to get up 3 times every night to pee. Also I could fall asleep at any given moment throughout the day, and often do nod off at my desk. But that's it for pregnancy issues. So far she's been a very easy baby. And I can already tell she accepts ice cream in lieu of thank you notes.

What do you mean, my mothering skills have more to do with how she turns out than my baby registry?

The last few weeks, all I've really been doing is registering for baby things. It's a little silly how much stuff there is for babies, and I'm doing my best to research what we really need, which brands get the best ratings, which things lots of moms seem to love, and where to find things the cheapest, but even with all that work, it's still just a big guessing game, because there is no guarantee that any of it will work for THIS baby. Maybe she'll hate being in a sling and love taking baths, or maybe the clown toy that ALL BABIES LOVE! will scare her senseless. (It is a little creepy-looking, I'll admit.) Having a baby is a lot like saying "you know my life's all right, but I could really go for some more mysteries and surprises."


Yesterday was my work baby shower, and we really raked in the goods. I've got some very generous coworkers, several of whom have had babies since I started here, and they know what they're doing as parents, so that's been great for me. One of the moms apologized for getting me something that isn't on my registry (stacking cups for the bath, one of which she says is really useful for rinsing out shampoo). I made no bones about informing her that I don't know WHAT I need, and she should feel free to make whatever suggestions she pleases. I'll take all the help I can get, here, people. Her daughter has made it safely to 18 months, and if those bath toys will put us on the same path, then bring them on!


In real estate news, our house is finally ready to go on the market! So say a prayer that we can sell quickly and for close to what we owe, because SC house mortgage + AR house rent + new baby - Erin's income is not a desirable equation. It's a great house, and I'm really going to miss it. I already do, in fact, though I know it's far from an ideal setup for a baby. The master bedroom is the only downstairs bedroom, so we'd have had to convert the closet (which is way big enough) into the baby's nursery for a while. And while that would have worked great and been totally fine with me and Mike, I don't think my Granny would ever sleep again if she thought I was keeping my baby in a closet. Speaking of the nursery, here is the one item we have purchased for it. Try not to die of cuteness.


Mike is getting ready to head to Arkansas to start teaching, and since I won't be joining him until October at the earliest, I feel like I need to make him a bunch of food to last him until we get there. Not that he's used to home cooked meals every day, but if I can't be there, I can at least send him with enough food that he can eat every time he misses me. I quite like cooking, but can I tell you how much better it would be if I could sit down the whole time? And not because I'm pregnant, either, although my ankles have started swelling at night if I'm on my feet a lot during the day (and my shins feel really tight- is this normal?). I just hate standing up for that long. For my money, standing is just something you have to do in order to get from one seat to the next. But it's tough to get things done in the kitchen without being on your feet, which explains how the inventor of Crocs is laughing all the way to the bank. Anyway so I'm trying to find recipes that freeze well, both to send with him and so I can fix a few things before the baby (for whom we still have not settled on a name) arrives. Got any suggestions?

Here you go! Don't say I never do anything for you.

Hey look! Pictures!!

So the first one (below) is 17 weeks. I know there's a bra hanging on the door, and I'm sorry, but I can't crop things.
Then this one is 20 weeks. We didn't know it was a girl yet, and I have no explanation for the weird gaps that appear in my hair, or the lack of make-up. Or the horrendous pile of laundry. I wear that red dress on a weekly basis because it's really soft and comfortable and is one of the few dresses I own that hasn't become too tight for me to take a deep breath. Elastic is my closest friend. This one was 23 weeks, so now we know she's a girl. I do not know two people who are less inclined to take pictures than Mike and me. We are awful at it, which is why there's such a gap between weeks. Also the change of scenery is because by this point we had moved in with my parents to try and clean our house and get it sold. It's still not on the market. If you are fairly lazy before pregnancy, I can tell you now that you don't have a prayer of accomplishing anything when pregnant.

Here is 27 weeks. Raggedy Andy looks on, probably fearing for the well-being of the child who has this pale, frizzy goober for a mother.

And finally, here is 29 weeks. I'm really sticking out now and strangers ask me when I'm due and how I'm holding up in the heat. I do not ever advocate talking to a woman as if she were pregnant unless you are sure beyond the shadow of a doubt that there's a baby in there, but since I am in fact pregnant, I don't mind it too much. The pan on the stove in the background is mine, and it's glorious for cooking pot roast, but a few months back I scalded the fool out of it by turning on the wrong burner, upon which the empty pan was resting, and leaving the burner on for upwards of half an hour before figuring out a) why the pan of beans I was TRYING to heat was still cold, and b) why it smelled like hot metal and I kept hearing strange popping noises. I'd like to be able to blame this on "pregnancy brain," but I've been turning on the wrong burner on that stove for far too long on my own for that to be the case.

So there you have it. If we've learned anything from these pictures, it's that pregnancy has caused me to stop putting any effort whatsoever into fixing my hair. This does not bode well for my appearance once the baby actually arrives, so this may well be the last set of photos you ever see of me.