Kitchen progress - Chapter 1.

We have owned our house for almost a year. We have lived there for almost 10 months. And I have yet to post any photos of the house as it has evolved. What can I say...we have been busy.

So let's start with the kitchen! The kitchen is one of our most used rooms since I cook far more often than we order takeout. Having a kitchen that is comfortable, efficient and inviting was important to both M and me, because not only do we use it constantly, it is the first room you see when you enter our house. Our goals for the space were to make it feel open and comfortable, to maximize storage space while not overcrowding the walls and (this may have just been me) to ensure that the IKEA DOMSJÖ double sink would fit into the overall design plan. For anyone who has been stuck with a too-small sink for any amount of time, I cannot oversell the value of a gigantic double sink. I actually hugged it after it was installed. But I am getting ahead of myself...

The first step in creating our new kitchen was to demolish the old one. Well, actually, that isn't true. The first, first step was to determine the design of the new space. We wanted to make as few structural changes as possible to keep costs down so we resolved to keep most of the appliances and all the plumbing in the existing configuration. The kitchen has two doorways, one facing the entryway and one facing the dining room, both of which originally had doors. Since we knew we would be in and out of the kitchen all day the doors had to go and I actually removed one of them on closing day. The original doorways were a standard 30" wide which made the kitchen feel very closed off from the rest of the house so in addition to removing the doors, we decided to widen the doorway into the dining room as much as we could. Though the door leading into the entryway would have to remain the same size, the layout we eventually chose necessitated moving the opening about 6 inches to the right to accommodate the cabinets we planned to add to the magenta wall.

Doorway into dining room before renovation.

Cabinets and accordion door removed.

Doorway after widening.

View of widened doorway from dining room.

Next in the design process was determining the feel of the kitchen. The house is a mid-century modern and we wanted to make sure that the new kitchen would fit in with the rest of the house. Between the look we wanted and the budget we had, it didn't take long to narrow our options to one: IKEA. In case I haven't put it out there before, we are HUGE IKEA fans and the majority of our furniture hails from that giant Scandinavian warehouse. Our house is basically an IKEA catalog and we are okay with that. We have two small children which means that we don't want to own things that are precious or fragile or expensive. Bam. IKEA. Anyway, in a happy instance of serendipity, we were planning the kitchen remodel just as IKEA was having its annual kitchen sale. As long as we spent $4500 or more, we would get 20% off of our total kitchen purchase, from appliances to cabinets to drawer dividers. Sold.

M spent the better part of a month wrestling with IKEA's online kitchen design tool. We made at least 5 trips to our local store (45 minutes away), with and without the Numa, to choose cabinets, ogle my sink and pick finishes. After many hours of deliberation, we decided to go with NEXUS birch veneer cabinet fronts with stainless LANSA handles, chosen both for the look and because the flat-front NEXUS style makes the cabinet faces much easier to clean. We debated purchasing IKEA appliances but in the end we only went with the NUTID wall mounted hood; all of our other new appliances are from Bosch. And after many, many hours of cursing at the slow, bug ridden kitchen design tool, M finally arrived at a layout that we were excited about. The new configuration kept the fridge, sink, cooktop and exhaust fan in the same locations as the original kitchen. We added a wall oven and microwave to the wall opposite the window along with lots of new cabinets to increase the storage capacity. We also decided against putting upper cabinets on the wall above the sink to keep the room from feeling crowded, which was the absolute right decision.

Final layout, as seen from the dining room.

Next up: demolition (ignore that you have seen part of that above) and painting.

Be well,

Me

My breastfeeding journey - Part 3.

Months later, I continue to document my saga...

When the Numa was not quite two, we got the happy news that our family would be growing again. We were thrilled to be having another baby, though the thought of being pregnant again didn't fill me with joy. I adore babies and giving birth to the Numa was one of the most meaningful and empowering experiences of my life, but I am not a happy or pleasant pregnant person so I knew that we were all in for a long 9 months.

Although my pregnancy went fairly smoothly, our lives at the time were anything but. Shortly after learning about our new human addition we decided to take on another project: purchasing and renovating our first house. We were so happy to find a lovely home to make our own but somewhat underestimated the toll that the renovations and subsequent move would take on my body and our sanity. Our formerly pleasant and happy-go-lucky toddler turned 2 with a vengeance and I went through a series of physical setbacks, including a stress fracture in my foot and serious hip pain. I was pretty much useless during the move and after, which is why we still have unpacked boxes almost a year later. Fortunately, the baby felt none of this and developed perfectly and right on schedule. Because the Numa had been a week early, I convinced myself that this baby would be early as well so when she stayed stubbornly put right up until her due date, I became extremely unpleasant. I didn't give much more than a passing thought to our lives post-delivery and whenever I thought about breastfeeding, it was always with cautious optimism. I would give it a shot and hope that because she was my second things would be better, but if it didn't work out I was counting on the perspective I gained with the Numa to see me through. We did take the precaution of having formula on hand because I was completely unwilling to let my newborn be hungry for even an instant.

My water broke at home while we were having breakfast with our closest friends (who remain our closest friends because of their amazing sense of humor). I was excited but nervous, since I was planning to attempt another unmedicated birth but this time I was without the benefit of ignorance. It is one thing to know in the abstract that having a baby will hurt, but it is quite another to actually bring a person into this world sans drugs. Despite what everyone told me, I had not forgotten the pain associated with pushing a human being out of my body and I wasn't eager to experience it again. To make a long story very short, the birth of my second child was painful on an entirely new level and I truly thought I was going to die more than once during the process. Her birth was fast and violent and though I am proud that I managed to do it without any type of medication, I am also honest enough to admit that if I had known just how much it was going to hurt that I may have changed my mind. She arrived just 5.5 hours after my water broke and though her birth wasn't as empowering as her brother's, I loved her with every fiber of my being the moment I touched her and I would do it all again for that single moment.

The little one was a champion nurser from the beginning. She had a great latch and was very content to lay on my chest and cuddle while all the post-birth happenings wrapped up. We had planned to leave the hospital that same day (with my OB's blessing) but due to losing more blood than was good for me we were admitted overnight. She (let's call her Her Highness from this point on, HH for short) nursed on and off all night and into the next day, when we were finally discharged. She continued to latch well and nurse frequently over the next two weeks, though we started supplementing almost immediately since I again failed to start producing enough milk. At this point in the process, though, I was fairly content. She nursed and took a bottle throughout the day, switching from one to the other with no issues, and though I was sure I wouldn't be able to exclusively breastfeed, I had no doubt that she would nurse as long as her brother had or even longer. It was less than I wished but still rewarding for us both and I was feeling good about our routine as I headed into my 6 months of maternity leave.

Be well,

Me

Right now.

Right now, I...

Should be in bed.

Am listening to a baby cough every so often and hoping she doesn't fully wake.

Wonder whether or not I should wake M again, as he has fallen asleep with the Numa.

Am still enjoying our Christmas tree, which I will probably leave up until at least Valentine's Day.

Have a dishwasher full of clean dishes that I really should unload. (This seems to be a theme with me.)

Wish I had made more than just 2 cupcakes (excellent recipe by Brett Bara...find it here).

Desperately need to clean the den.

Am watching Burn Notice and listening to Imogen Heap at the same time.

Hope that the munchkin's stubborn tooth emerges soon.

Need to stop worrying about M's upcoming trip and just trust that we will live through it.

Have to go pick up my crying little person, because teething is a bitch.

Be well,

Me

Playlist.

M and I aren't big on most of the music made specifically for kids. I think that years of hearing the Barney theme song while I babysat or, more recently, having to listen to Elmo sing about everything from cats to clothes using the same tune has created an innate aversion to sugary lyrics and melodies. To be fair, there are exceptions. For example, the compilation album Do Fun Stuff, Volume 1, which was curated by Ryan of Pacing the Panic Room, is a great collection of folk music for kids. (It was sold to benefit support and research for persons with Smith-Magenis Syndrome, which you can learn more about on Ryan's blog. He stopped adding new blog entries this summer, but it remains on the web for your perusal.) The whole album is great (you can hear the entire collection here), but my favorites are "Ladybug" by Rabbit!, "Morton the Caterpillar" by Davey Rocker and "Nothing" by Steve Foxbury. "Nothing" makes me cry most of the time when I hear it...the chorus perfectly captures my feelings about the Numa and now about Her Highness (HH for short):

There's nothing

I'd rather do

Than anything

That I do with you.

This album aside, the kid songs I like are few and far between. When the Numa was little, he and I listened to a great variety of music, including "The Trolley Song" from Meet Me in St. Louis, "Happy Working Song" from Enchanted and "California Gurls" by Katie Perry. For a while nothing put him to sleep faster than me strapping him into the Sleepy Wrap and dancing to "Gold Digger" (the Glee Version). I am not destined for a profitable career in music, but I do have a decent singing voice and I used it frequently to calm and amuse a baby Numa. The number of times I have sung the chorus of the title song from Meet Me in St. Louis is too great to count. Fortunately, the Numa has always been happy to listen to our playlists and he has developed some pretty awesome taste in music. M is an electronic music guy (and used to be a DJ) while I tend to prefer 80's hair bands and indie rock. Because of this, some of the Numa's recent favorites have included the following (links go to YouTube or soundcloud):

Enjoy the Silence by Depeche Mode

Hurting (Tensnake remix) by the Friendly Fires

Night Out (Madeon remix) by Martin Solveig

The City by Madeon

Pop Culture (Live Mashup) by Madeon (the Numa loves watching this one on YouTube because of the light-up buttons)

All My Life by Gigamesh

Love Letter to Japan and Diamond Dave by The Bird and the Bee

This is the Life by Two Door Cinema Club

(Clearly he is spending more time in the car with M these days than me.)

I love that he listens to and likes all of this music and I love that he is constantly singing music of all kinds. And, of course, when he comes home proudly singing a new song from school we sing along. But it is lovely that car rides are enjoyable for all of us.

Be well,

Me

Right now.

Right now, I...

Am still working on the last two breastfeeding posts.

Am wearing a snoring baby on my chest.

Have too much to do and too little time to do it.

Wish I had taken a shower earlier in the day.

Can't wait for the Numa to get home and yell "Hi Mommy!" right before he peeks around the corner of the fireplace and says "I see you."

Need to unload the dishwasher.

Want to get just one night of uninterrupted sleep.

Am so glad that it is finally fall.

Just finished re-watching season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer...on to season 5.

Need to figure out what is wrong with my knees so I can start losing the last 5lbs of baby weight. (Oh, and the 30lbs of weight I gained in 2006. And the 15 I gained just after college.)

Wish I had more time to just be with the kids rather than spacing it out between keeping the house functioning.

Feel so lucky to have two healthy kids, a great husband and a wonderful home.

Love my life.

Be well,

Me

My breastfeeding journey - Part 2.

The first lactation consultant we saw was of the same mindset as most of the websites I mentioned in part 1. According to her, low supply was a hurdle, but one that could be surmounted with enough dedication and effort on my part. To fix my supply issues, she recommended that I either breastfeed or pump every 1.5-2 hours around the clock. She also encouraged me to make sure I was getting enough rest, eating enough good food (not take out or cereal, but good, balanced meals that I guess I was also supposed to be preparing), getting plenty of liquids and staying calm, as stress can further decrease a low supply. I also needed to be spending as much time with the Numa skin-to-skin as I possibly could. And she was serious. How in the hell was I supposed to do even one of those things with a newborn, much less all of them? To say that I found her unhelpful is way too kind. I spent the day after meeting with her crying more (sensing a theme here?) and called my doula again. She apologized for what was clearly a bad personality match* and recommended a second LC who we met with the next day. My husband and I were both home and my MIL was in town and the LC listened very patiently as I described what we had been doing, showed her our records of feedings and diapers and cried more. Then she asked me to show her how I had been breastfeeding and as soon as I took off my bra she got a knowing look on her face. As I started to breastfeed, she told me that she was 99% certain that I had hypoplastic breasts. I should explain that my breasts have always been different from those of other women. Both my breasts and my nipples are distinctly different sizes, they are wide set on my chest and they point out, rather than forward. I had always known my breasts were different, but it never really bothered me. I think I was fortunate in that my high school never had the shared locker room showers that you see in the movies (Sixteen Candles, anyone?) so other than occasional jokes about my small-ish chest in high school, no one ever really noticed or pointed out the issue. I certainly never suspected that their appearance was an indication of deeper problems.

I had done some internet research after the pediatrician visit where we learned that Numa wasn't gaining weight that made me a little suspicious about my breasts, but hearing her say it out loud suddenly made it real. I was both relieved and heartbroken. Women with hypoplastic breasts have less of the glandular tissue that produces milk and while some women with this condition are able to exclusively breastfeed, most cannot and some don't produce any milk at all. I was producing some but not enough for the Numa's needs which meant that supplementing was now with us to stay. The lovely LC helped me with Numa's latch and gave us some great tips, but most of all she reassured me that there was nothing wrong with feeding your baby with formula. She was very supportive about supplementing and she will make a reappearance in a later chapter of this story. I was still disappointed but the diagnosis helped me to make some peace with the situation and I was able to move forward with fewer tears and really enjoy breastfeeding. Plus, everyone kept telling me that it is usually better with the second baby so my hopes of supplementing even less the next time were high. Numa breast and bottle fed until he was 4 months old, when he finally determined that the effort it took to breastfeed for so little reward was just not worth it. I had many mixed emotions about weaning him so early (not that I really did anything...one of the few pluses of a low supply is that you can basically just stop breastfeeding and not really deal with engorgement issues at all). I was sad that he was done because I really enjoyed breastfeeding. It created such a cozy closeness for us and I always enjoyed how he looked completely different from my vantage point while he was at the breast. M got some great pictures so that I can always remember what that was like. At the same time, though, being done with breastfeeding meant that feeding Numa got a whole lot easier. For all of his first 4 months, he would breastfeed and then do a bottle, which meant that feeding him took forever. Going to just a bottle gave me more time to just enjoy him and to deal with the dreaded 4-month sleep regression that I now realize was likely part of the cause of his weaning. Also, I was pretty proud of him for wanting to be more efficient - a trait I like to think he got from me.

Ultimately, I was glad that I had been able to breastfeed the Nums, even if not exclusively and even though it was such a short time. I knew that we would eventually try for another baby and had hope that the breastfeeding aspect of being a mom would improve the second time around. I also knew it would be easier to deal with, since perspective is the greatest gift of being a second time parent. I told myself that it wouldn't be nearly as disappointing if it didn't work out and that if I could do just as well as I had with Numa that I would be satisfied. And then I had a second baby.

Be well,

Me.

*It would be unfair if I didn't address the personality match aspect of my issues with the first LC. Having a productive and helpful relationship with a doula or an LC (to a somewhat lesser extent) is, in my opinion, highly dependent on finding someone whose personality is compatible with your own. When M and I were interviewing doulas, we met with 4 before finding the one we ultimately chose and  though we talked about our decision before making it, I knew right away when we had found the right one. Meeting with her was like meeting with an old friend and we saw eye-to-eye on all of the issues we discussed. I immediately felt confident that she would be able to support me in the way I needed during Numa's birth and I was not wrong - she is a huge part of the reason I was able to have a completely unmedicated birth experience with first the Numa and then the little one. She was one of the first people we called after finding out I was pregnant with baby number 2. It is the same for LCs. The first one we met with was clearly not a good match for me personality wise and she didn't seem to understand my overall goals and how to help me achieve them. This is not to say that she is a bad LC in general, but for me, it was a terrible match. If you are looking for a doula or LC to help you, asking questions up front about their methods, beliefs and background can be hugely helpful in the search process and potentially save you from having a bad experience.

My breastfeeding journey - Part 1.

Nothing in life has ever made me feel like more of a failure than breastfeeding. When I was pregnant with the Numa, one of the few things I actually researched was how to begin a good breastfeeding relationship with your new baby. I read tons of forums and talked to my doula and was prepared for it to be difficult at first, but ultimately assumed that I would power through with the help of reading and if necessary, lactation consultants, and that Numa and I would exclusively breastfeed for as long as I was home with him and possibly longer. It was one of my main goals as a new mother and I was really looking forward to having this experience with my baby. I had noticed that, unlike other pregnant women I knew, my breasts hadn't changed much during my pregnancy. They were marginally larger, but nothing like the full cup size or sizes bigger that others were experiencing. I didn't think too much about it at the time and only vaguely noted that I also didn't really become engorged after his birth. For the first few days at home with him, I breastfed on demand and other than some latch issues, assumed that all was well because he was producing the number of wet and dirty diapers we were told to expect and was sleeping fairly well. My world crashed a little when, after more than 10 days, he was still below his birth weight and it became apparent that he was sleeping not because he was sated, but because he was working so hard for so little food that he was exhausted. The guilt and despair at learning that despite my best efforts my baby was hungry were overwhelming. To this day I haven't fully forgiven myself for allowing him to be hungry, even once, as a newborn when he was reliant on me for everything. I am sure this is unfair, but I can't seem to change the way I feel about it and I still have nightmares that he is starving somewhere and I can't help him.

To say that women, and people in general, have opinions about how to feed babies is a ridiculous understatement. Feeding your infant formula is an immediate indication to most that you are lazy, uninformed, selfish or some combination of the three and people are not shy about pointing this out. (I don't have the time or energy to get into it here, but isn't it odd that the same society that castigates mothers for using formula also frowns on breastfeeding in public? Also note that feeding babies is solely the responsibility of mothers...like so many other parenting choices, the fault for not succeeding at breastfeeding falls solely on the shoulders of the mother. But I digress...) There are so many reasons that breastfeeding doesn't work for women in this country - a lack of support, a lack of time, a lack of the money and resources to allow women to be with their infants long enough to develop a good breastfeeding relationship - but the one that almost anyone will tell you is just a cover for some other, unacceptable reason is low supply. Read any breastfeeding support website and the writers will point out at least once, if not multiple times, that very few women actually have a low supply. Instead, anyone who thinks they have a low supply is in reality just mismanaging their breastfeeding relationship with their child and could fix the problem if they were willing to take supplements, pump around the clock as well as breastfeed, never ever use a bottle to supplement the baby for any reason whatsoever, etc. The point is that saying you have a low supply is almost universally seen as an excuse to lazy out of really trying to breastfeed.

Which brings me back to me and the Numa. Once we figured out that he wasn't getting enough food we starting supplementing him with formula based on the advice of our pediatrician and my complete inability to handle the thought of him being hungry for even one more minute. I cried my way through his appointment that day as I thought about my failure to nourish my child. Unlike so many people in this world who struggle to feed their families, I was and am fortunate enough to be able to afford a solution to the most basic part of the problem - feeding my child - by buying formula, but the knowledge that I was failing at what I saw as an integral part of my maternal tasks was devastating. I cried my way through another doctor's visit when I saw my OB later that week and though it didn't help at the time, she said something to me that later gave me some perspective. She very kindly reminded me that formula isn't rat poison and that as long as I was feeding my baby, all would be well. Finally, I contacted my doula to get a recommendation for a lactation consultant, because I was now determined to figure out what was wrong and fix it so that I could become the mother I desperately wanted to be.

I honestly don't know how many parts there will be to this story, but I will continue to write them as I can. I hope that it will help me to ultimately be able to move past the disappointment and if it happens to help someone else who is struggling, then that will be a huge bonus.

Be well,

Me