Another Long Night With A Screaming Baby

I stand corrected. Michael is not going to Disney World for his conference in August. He’s going to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado instead. Not quite as fun a destination, but he still gets to go sans kids and spouse for a week. Quite frankly, I’d kill just to go to the bookstore for a few hours sans kids and spouse. As a matter of fact, after a week dealing with the kids on my own, I just might kill as soon as Michael walks in the door.

We had another long night last night. Sam continues to have problems with lactose overload. I overproduce breast milk and as a result Sam gets too much foremilk and not enough hind milk. The foremilk is loaded with lactose, and when she gets too much in her digestive tract, she has a lot of tummy troubles - gas, fussiness, and messy green poop. It’s painful for her and she screams all night whenever this happens. I’m still experimenting, trying to figure out how to get her more hind milk, which has all the fats in it that will help fill her up more quickly and keep her from overeating. I’ve been pumping off about an ounce of milk before nursing her. I think the problem yesterday was that I gave her a bottle of pumped milk while we were out. There was probably too much foremilk in it and not enough hind. This is going to cause problems if that’s the case, because now I’ll have to pump extra milk whenever I want to have a bottle for her, getting rid of the first ounce or two. I can do it, but it may make me produce even more milk, which causes my breast to swell up like big fat water balloons and only furthers the problem of overproduction.

Sigh. I can’t win.

Anyway, Sam wouldn’t settle down after her 9 PM feeding so it looked like we were in for a long night of back patting and walking around the house. I tried giving her a bath, but that didn’t help much. I let her nurse, hoping she’d soothe herself to sleep while she ate, but that didn’t work either, and probably only made things worse. I tried pulling her into bed with me and patting her back until she calmed down, but she wasn’t having any of that last night. Finally, around 11 PM, I put her in the front pack and headed downstairs to walk around the house with her for a while.

The worst thing about nights like these is that they make me feel totally useless. There is almost nothing I can do to soothe Sam, and what I can do wears me out pretty quickly. I also know that I’ll be up all night, making me even more useless the next day. Not a fun situation to be in, especially on Wednesday, which is Cassie’s play date day. While I was downstairs with Sam, I decided to set up the coffee maker to make my morning a little more bearable. As I was washing out the filter, Sam started to calm down a bit. That’s when I suddenly had an idea. What if, instead of waiting until tomorrow morning to do my chores, I did them then and there while Sam was strapped to me? I couldn’t do everything, but I could do most of my morning routine, and that way I wouldn’t have to worry about cleaning the house the next morning while I was dead on my feet.

I decided to try it. After setting up the coffee pot, I went through my list of chores and did most everything I would normally do at 6 AM. I folded laundry, washed the cat food bowls, swept the floors, straightened up and put toys away, etc., etc. By midnight, the downstairs was clean. Even better, Sam was sound asleep, her little face buried between my overproducing breasts.

I was able to get Sam upstairs and into bed without waking her. She slept for almost four hours before waking to nurse. When she woke, she didn’t seem as fussy. I let myself sleep late this morning, but because I got my chores done, I’m still on track to get out the door in time for Cassie’s play date, AND I’m not dead on my feet. I’ll have to remember this for next time. It’s going to make my life a lot easier today.