But I’m not the only one gaining weight.  Maybe the chocolate is making my milk richer, because this little angel is now 8 lbs. even, up from 7.5 a week ago.  And this was an early morning weigh in, after her traditional all-night fast.  Since she’s gaining at the rate of an ounce per day, she might have weighed even more by this evening.

Credit where credit is due: my in-laws knew about See’s spectacular, wonderful delicious chocolate because my hubby offered it up as a suggestion when they wanted to know what they could get me.  And my hubby knew about See’s scrumptious, delectable, unmatched-by-any-other chocolates because my grandparents have sent us a box every year for Christmas since I was little.

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ovarian guilt [noun] : the state of feeling guilt and/or a sense of personal responsibility over circumstances outside of one’s control; ovarian guilt is universally experienced by mothers, often when their immediate or extended family undergo hardship or emotional distress.

I mentioned in my post about the Talent Show that I am suffering from ovarian guilt.  Maybe that’s the wrong term, because I really do feel responsible for what happened, and I hope my poor child isn’t scarred for life.  I think the fear of lifelong scarring is where it crosses the line to ovarian guilt, but I’ll let you decide.

One of our children (who would probably prefer to remain nameless in the hope that she will someday forget this moment of humiliation) got onstage, gave the title and author of her poem, and then froze.  She forgot the entire thing. Couldn’t get past the third line.

It gets worse - at least, my part does.  This was the child that I was afraid might need help.  We waited a bit too long to get serious about rehearsal; she picked a very long poem; and she is naturally more shy and less of a public performer than her sisters.

Oh, but there’s more: I forgot to print a copy of the poem for her to hold, even though I knew that she felt far more confident with the paper in her hand.  And I was the only one who knew her poem, making me the only one who could help her if she ran into trouble.

Where was I when she went onstage?  That’s the worst part.  That’s where ovarian guilt becomes real guilt.  I was in the bathroom changing a diaper.  I knew her turn was coming up, and I met her in the bathroom.  I shooed her out so she wouldn’t be late, but I took too long to get out there myself.  I arrived just in time to see her near tears, frozen in silent humiliation in front of a sea of sympathetic faces.  Another sister had rushed to her side, but that sister didn’t know her poem so could only encourage her to keep trying to remember.

I went to her, encouraged her, and when I saw that she didn’t have it in her at the moment, we left the stage together.  We spent much of the next hour or two rehearsing some more, I wrote her poem down for her (it was even longer than I had realized; what was I thinking?), and she gathered enough courage to go back up near the end of the show.  This time I went with her.  She was still too nervous to remember her poem - or maybe too fearful to trust her memory - but we started the first line together, then she read from the handwritten copy I had made.

So, what do you think?  Bad Mom of the Year award?  I tried to make it better, but the damage was done.  At least my poor child had the courage to get back on the horse.

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My babies sleep in their own bed next to mine, but if they wake during the night or in the wee hours of the morning they usually end up next to me for the next few hours.  This can be a problem because I don’t sleep well if I’m constantly worrying about the baby rolling off the bed or under me.

Here’s my easy solution: Fold a towel or baby blanket in half and place under the baby.  If it’s rectangular, place it so that the longer sides extend to the sides of the baby.  Now roll the sides under, toward the baby.  This should make a mat with raised sides.  It’s important to roll the sides under rather than over so that the baby can’t unroll them with little flailing arms and legs.

You can also buy a mat like this for changing tables, but why pay for something you can do so easily yourself?  Making it myself works for me.

A couple of caveats:

• This only works with very young babies who can’t roll or scoot on purpose.  The idea is to keep them from doing it on accident.
• This doesn’t make it safe to leave a baby unattended on an unsafe surface.  I do use this idea on the counter when I’m getting the baby ready for a bath in the sink, but I still don’t leave her alone.

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• She did have a heart-shaped tongue tip at birth, but much less so now.
• She rarely sticks her tongue out far, but I have seen it extend well past her lips a few times.  This makes me think that if she is tongue tied, it’s very mild.  She certainly has the range of motion she needs for proper nursing, but maybe it’s a stretch for her.
• She still doesn’t latch on right, but a day of shields gave me time to heal and nursing is nearly pain free now.  Just a bit of discomfort when she first latches on.  I didn’t continue to use the shields because a reader warned that they can reduce the milk supply, and we really don’t need them now.
• She gained very little for her first 2 weeks, but did gain 4 oz in the last 3 days, so she is definitely improving. It’s not just my imagination.  And to those Doubting Thomases (you know who you are) who scoffed when I suggested that a mother could feel a difference of a few ounces, I just have this to say: Told ya so!
• She still sleeps straight through the night, but is awake and very alert for much of the day. She has plenty of wet/dirty diapers, and like all of our other babies everyone comments on how strong, alert and responsive she is for a newborn.
• She had a mild case of jaundice which is almost entirely gone, though I think there may still be just a hint of yellow in the whites of her eyes.

So, bottom line: thanks for the prayers.  Keep ‘em coming.

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During much of the conference I found myself in the back of the room nursing a fussy baby and watching the kids make crazy hats, jewelry, flowers and other stuff with pipe cleaners.

When Bethany wasn’t fussing, she was being passed around like a basketball, from one eager set of hands to the next with hardly a pause in the rhythm.  I never knew where to find her until she cried; then she seemed to find me.

The 3rd annual Talent Show was a challenge and a success.  There were 26 acts in all and it lasted for 3 hours.  We’re a talented bunch.  It was highly entertaining, of course - how could it fail to be? - but many acts ran into bumps and roadblocks, including one of ours.  I’ll tell you about my ovarian guilt from that incident in another post.  For now, I’ll just tell you what our family did.  Poetry seems to be our specialty, so you’ll see that we are heavy in that area:

Would you like to know Who was on first?  That’s right; He was.  Who was? Yes.  Who? Exactly!  Can you guess what act hubby and his friend did?  In spite of the fact that I had heard it a hundred times in the weeks before the show, I still laugh at all the same lines, every time.  I just can’t help it.  I’ll break your arm you say Who’s on first! And I couldn’t help but laugh at audience’s delighted reaction to all the punch lines.  Do I have to tell you that hubby and his friend did a great job on a great skit?  Go watch the original now.

Deanna recited Carry On by Robert Service.  This was a late change, as we decided that the extremely long poem she had memorized was less fitting to the occasion.  She memorized this entire poem nearly effortlessly in about a day and a half, including a small improvisation which fitted seamlessly into the original.  I always tell her that if she had a super power, it would be Memorization.  Not quite as dramatic as the powers of Superman or the Xmen, perhaps, but quite impressive nonetheless.

Kaitlyn and Lydia performed Twins by Henry S. Leigh.  They alternated, each saying half a line without missing a beat.  Very funny and very fitting since they are our only two light-haired green-eyed daughters, and used to be mistaken for twins almost every time we left the house.

Megan learned It Couldn’t Be Done by Edgar Guest.  This was also a late addition to the plan, and like Deanna, Megan learned her poem very quickly.  What can I say?  My kids are talented. 

Natalie worked very hard to learn Adventures of Isabel by Ogden Nash.  She had a little trouble remembering the poet’s name when she was first learning it, so I had all the children repeat his name as a group about 10 times.  As a result, Perry Boy ran around the house for several days chanting, Ogen Nash!  Ogden Nash!  Ogden Nash! Needless to say, Natalie had no more trouble recalling the poet’s name.

Becca learned My Shadow by Robert Louis Stevenson almost entirely by herself, and recited it flawlessly.  She came away glowing.

Our family had been working on learning Proverbs chapter 3 (not for the talent show), and a couple of weeks before the show we realized that 3yo Rachael had learned the first 8 verses.  This seemed very talented of her, so she recited that for the talent show.

The girls were very nervous about this one, but they did a lovely rendition of Wayfaring Stranger, which they learned from the Von Trapp family CD.  The three on the left sang melody while the 3 on the right sang harmony a half line later, with a sort of echo effect.  I’m sure there’s a technical name for it but I have no idea what it is; at any rate, it was hauntingly beautiful and I’m glad they were brave enough to do it.

And then we all ate BBQ until we could eat no more.  It was a good day in Texas.

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We’re spending a few days with a dear friend in town to make it easier for us to attend.  We should have a plethora of fun photos to share when it’s done, but we can’t upload pictures until we get home.

Until then, forgive us for being so scarce.  We’re spending time with real-life friends this weekend, but we still love y’all too. 

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The day of her birth also happened to be my father-in-law’s 40th birthday.  Hubby still chuckles over that 2 AM phone call in which he first greeted his dad with “Hi, Grandpa.”  His dad instantly went from groggy to wide awake!

Deanna has taken an interest in photography lately - she was nearly as excited about our new cameras from Sony as I was.  She was especially captivated by the Alpha, which is also my favorite.  She takes many of the photos that you see on our blog, but in honor of her birthday I want to show off some of the first that she took with the Alpha while she and I were in Oregon together.

I love the promise of spring color in this shot.  It snowed while we were at Grandpa and Grandma’s house, but there were buds and blooms everywhere!

Bleeding heart, right?  Deanna worked hard to get the “blur” effect, where only the subject is in focus.  You can see it in several shots, but I think it’s most pronounced here.

Is it weird that the dandelions are my favorite?  I know they’re just weeds, but I love the color, contrast and composition in this shot!

Horsemint, maybe?  I think we have this one around our part of the country too.

And I love all the layers of color echoing in the bluebells above.  Ummm…are they bluebells?

Again, I’m just guessing.  I’ve heard some people call this trilium, but in our book it looks more like rain lily.  Whatever it is, I love the way it just pops up in the middle of nowhere.

I just love the way these photos of hers turned out!  They are uncropped, shown just as she shot them.  I’m just guessing on the names of the flowers, so please correct me if you know something I don’t.

Happy birthday to a talented photographer, my first and oldest daughter.  May you take a million more pictures!

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Really.

Ready?

OK, then.  Last Sunday we left the house in a big hurry and I forgot to put nursing pads in my bra.  That also happened to be the day that the baby slept 9 hours straight, reluctantly awoke for a quick little snack on one side, and went straight back to sleep for the entire church service.  She’s crazy that way.

Can you see where this is going?  I was wearing layers, but halfway through the service, I had soaked through all 3 layers on one side and 2 out of 3 layers on the other.  I tried and tried, but that sweet little lump would not wake up. I was on my own.

So I excused myself to the restroom, rooted through my purse and pulled out a small pair of scissors and (all the guys are gone, right?) a pantiliner.  Is it just me or does every woman keep those in her purse?  Now that I know it can serve multiple purposes I’m even more motivated to keep them on hand.

I cut it in half, stuck one half in each side of my bra, and I was covered for the rest of the day.  After all, those things are made to absorb, and the adhesive keeps them right in place - wherever you choose to put them.  It worked for me.

BTW, if you do the CVS thing you can get these for free in the month of July:

Buy 1 CVS Pantiliners at $0.99, Get $0.99 ECBs (Limit 2)
Free after ECBs!

Find more deals like this every day at Crystal’s Money Saving Mom.

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Bethany’s wasn’t quite so good.  She started out by getting her heel poked for the PKU.  She didn’t appreciate it.

Then she was weighed.  Let’s just say my midwife wasn’t as happy as I was about Bethany sleeping 7 hours at a stretch.  She has only gained one ounce in the past week.  Ann recommended that I wake Bethany at least once during the night.

However, Ann was willing to grant that her slow weight gain might be due to nursing difficulties, and recommended that I try nipple shields for my own comfort and healing and to help Bethany learn to latch on better.  She didn’t have to tell me twice!  I was at Babies R Us an hour later.

I do have several other excuses to offer on Bethany’s behalf: a couple of our babies have been very slow gainers and stayed petite; my mother-in-law is very petite, as are several of my sisters.  It could be partly genetic.  We just don’t do butterball babies in our family.  Also, Bethany had only lost 3 oz. at her 3 day checkup.  She may  have lost a little more after that before she started gaining (newborns typically lose up to 10% of their body weight in the first several days).  And finally, on her 3 day checkup Ann weighed her in the afternoon just after her hungriest time of day; today she weighed her in the morning after a long night’s sleep.  It may have been an unfair comparison.

In spite of all this, Ann felt we needed to keep an eye on her weight, so here’s the agreement we came to: I’m using shields, and feeling great relief and optimism after just one feeding.  I’ll feed Bethany as much as I can during her awake times using our new-and-improved-pain-free delivery method, and weigh her several times over the next week.  If she gains at least 1/2 oz per day, we’re all happy.  If not, I’ll start waking her during the night for a feeding - at least for a week or two.  I’m hoping we can avoid that route because she sleeps like her dad.  It might take a cold bath at 3 AM to get that little girl going!

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Lest you think poorly of him for not doing diaper duty, let me confess that I have probably changed less than 10 of Bethany’s diapers so far.  There are just so many willing hands that it would be selfish of us to do more.  I can’t share feeding duty (though I gladly would; ouch!) so I’ll share what I can. 

While I’m confessing things, I’ll also tell you that like several other of our children, Bethany had a mild case of jaundice.  It’s mostly cleared up now and that’s not the confession part anyway.  The confession part is that I think jaundice is pretty.  It makes the baby’s skin color look so rich and smooth - I was disappointed the first time a midwife told us that it wasn’t our baby’s natural color and I couldn’t attribute it to our American Indian heritage.  Go ahead and laugh at me, or shake your head in horror at my naivete.  I was a new mom once, too.

And while we’re still on true confessions, go ahead and hate me: she has slept 7-8 hours straight through every night for 6 nights in a row.  All of my babies have been good sleepers, but this one takes the cake and I can’t take an iota of credit.  Isn’t that the best sort of blessing?

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