Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Distracted

I'm feeling really frustrated with the world lately.
It is making my job very difficult by being so darn interesting, colorful, noisy and fun.
Translation? My babies don't want to spend their time doing mundane things like sleeping and eating when they could be doing something (anything) else.

My babies cry because they are hungry, so I sit down to nurse them. They latch on for all of ... three minutes? Maybe? Then they start rolling, punching, laughing, talking, kicking, straining their necks forward to sit up.
Yesterday after Micah ate for about four minutes then he rolled away from me to try to look at his daddy, but I was still (literally) squirting out milk.
I aimed a stream of milk at his face, trying to get his attention and call him back to the task at hand. Instead, he opened his mouth, stuck out his tongue, and had me squirt his dinner into his mouth.
Stinker.
I would normally be like "Fine. Don't eat. You'll eat when you're hungry. That will teach you."
Except that they have decided that the best time to take in all the calories they're missing in the day is during the night. So they get up to eat at 1am. 4am. 6am.
And when it's perfectly dark, quiet, and I'm about exploding with excess milk they can eat without too much distraction.
The other problem is that they take a bottle SO much better than the breast lately, because they can turn their heads to and fro and look around and play a bit while they're eating a bottle, which they can't do at the breast.
So more and more times a day I find myself fixing them bottles, because I don't want them to starve!
The problem with a bottle, though?
They've decided that they want to hold their bottles themselves, thank you very much, and Grey is currently obsessed with rolling from his back to his stomach.
So he holds his bottle, and then flips on to his stomach and then lies there staring at his bottle. (You can just see the little cogs turning, "I want to eat you. But I also want to be on my stomach. How do I get you into my belly?"
He tries. He really, really tries.
But you just can't eat a bottle if you're lying face down on the floor.
But God forbid I flip him over, or try to hold his bottle for him.
*Huff*

I don't know what to do.
My friend Brittany suggested giving them watered down bottles at night, so they think they're eating and they fall back to sleep, but when they wake in the morning they're FAMISHED and eat a ton and get all their calories during the day.
But whenever I get up and go about actually making bottles during the night they fall asleep before they've drunk very much, and then I'm annoyed because I've wasted formula (and dang! that stuff is PRICEY).
Plus then I have to pump, because my milk schedule is all wonky... and it ends up being so much easier to just nurse them...

Bah, world. Why so awesome? You are distracting my children from important appointments with their dinner.

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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I remember that age very well for that reason. The distraction will pass and they'll get back to the task at hand! Voted for you today and thanks for making your text bigger! ;)

You inspired me with your post yesterday, Becky...hope you'll take a look!

Nurse Loves Farmer

Tammy said...

Scarlett is doing the exact same thing. I am losing my milk and I am sad about it. I hate pumping and have hardly done it with her which I guess is really mean but I HATE it. So she is naturally weening herself and I give her what I can which is at night. I hope I will make it 10 months but who knows. It is frustrating and I'm sorry. I should try a dark room and see if she will focus and nurse but I have a 2 year old I have to watch at the same time. Do what you have to do. I have learned if you don't fight what is happening sometimes it works out better.

Sasha Malaeb Sugg said...

Oh my God did you steal the words right out of my mouth for my child?
We have clones for children.

Lillian refuses to eat during the day, apparenty the couch is so intresting when I'm feeding her... she too started holding her bottle but will roll or my favorite (she likes to punch things) so she punches her bottle out of her hands or mine. I waste formula and have been waking throughout the night to rock and feed my stubborn child.
GOOD LUCK, and if you find a solution, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. OMG.

Allyssa said...

I remember reading Brittany posting about that too. Someone on her blog (or maybe she wrote it) mentioned cutting down by a few minutes on their time at the breast if that's how you're doing it. That might work unless of course they just eat until they're full and not a specific time.

Also, if you hate pumping but hate wasting formula more, you could probably semi water down breast milk too.

Betsy Hite Reddoch said...

Your boys are totally darling. I have 7 month old twin boys and they've started sleeping through the night pretty well in the last month or so. But my kids are bottle/formula fed, so that makes a difference I think. And yes, that stuff is PRICEY.

Glad I found your blog (from another twin mom blog). It is fun to relive my recent past with your posts. We're LDS too, and I especially loved reading your post about faith while you were pregnant. Powerful/great stuff.

Polly said...

Your dad has the same problem with the world being to distracting and it keeps him from important things also. So there may be no hope for the future.