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Kate’s famous!

Or perhaps “notorious” would be a more apt description.

Back in June, I wrote a post about Kate’s obsession with her belly button, complete with pictures. Somewhat in jest, I wrote this:
“Today I was actually contemplating calling the pediatrician to see if it’s possible for her to do permanent damage to her body, but I just couldn’t bring myself to pick up the phone and say “Um hi, I was just wondering if it’s possible for my daughter to untie her belly button… what? No, this is not a prank call! Why do I care if your refrigerator is running? Hello????” So I guess I will just wait and see and call 911 if she draws blood.”

Well, it turns out that I do need to call the pediatrician!

Our good friend and faithful commenter Karen suggested I email my question to her husband, Dr. Mike of Pediacast.org, and see what he thought. In this morning’s edition of his podcast, he answered my question (although he made it clear that he can’t diagnose Kate based on a blog post!).

Dr. Mike said that she might either currently have or had at some point had an umbilical hernia, which is usually not a problem but can sometimes become one. And since I have this
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“A Hypochondriac’s Key to Worst-Case Scenarios” hanging up in my cubicle at work, needless to say I am a tad bit freaked out!

So I guess we will need to get this checked out – here I thought it was just a manifestation of one of the many neuroses she no doubt inherited from me and her father, but it could really be a medical condition! Actually now that I think about it, I’m not sure if that’s bad news after all!

A big thanks to Dr. Mike for taking time out of his busy schedule (busy as in moving-across-the-country-in-a-few-days busy) to read my crazy ramblings and alert me to this situation. And in a wondeful coincidence, the segment on the podcast immediately preceeding Kate’s belly button was his take on the Ferber method. It brought tears of relief to my eyes, and I am not even kidding. I can’t tell you how much I needed to hear it.

And now I am off to call the pediatrician to tell her that Kate is unbuttoning her belly button.

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My coughy, sneezy, smiley baby

Sam has his first cold. It’s so sad! He is so pitiful… he’s coughing and sneezing constantly and just generally doesn’t feel good. He hasn’t had a fever or anything and he’s not horribly sick, just a little under the weather.

This, of course, also means that his sleeping has gone from bad to worse. The last three nights he has pretty much woken up each time we’ve had the audacity to lay him down. The poor baby just wants to be held, which I can understand. Actually last night and the night before, we’ve just brought him into our bed so that we all could get some sleep, and that has worked pretty well. I resorted to that last night after waking up in the rocking chair and figuring out that I had been asleep sitting up (and holding the baby) for over an hour. Desperate times, people.

I’ve been giving him Advil about once a day, but I’m not sure if there’s anything else to do for him, besides giving him lots of snuggles.

What do you do to help your kids feel better when they’re sick? Any suggestions? I just want to fix it!

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WFMW: Breastfeeding tips

I nursed Kate for 15 months, so when Sam was born I felt like I at least knew a little bit about what I was doing… but of course, since he was a different baby, he presented different challenges. I thought I would share a couple of things that worked for me this time around.

When Sam was really tiny, we had trouble with a shallow latch. He just wasn’t getting on there enough, and that lead to all kinds of fun problems like plugged ducts and mastitis, and contributed to his frequent nursing (more on that later). Anyway, of course I Googled it, and found something called a “deep latch technique.” This method helped a lot and I would highly recommend it.

And back to the frequent nursing thing…. Sam nursed all.the.time. Like non-stop. So once again I googled it, and found out about block feeding. Block feeding is basically nursing from one side for 2-4 hours at a time, so the baby gets the more fatty, more filling hind milk. This really helped us and Sam would sleep for longer periods of time after he filled up.

Nothing ground breaking, I know, but these two tips really helped our nursing relationship, and anything that makes breastfeeding easier works for me!

What breastfeeding tips do you have to share??

For more WFMW tips, head over to Rocks in my Dryer!

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