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Archive for January, 2008

Failure to Thrive

Posted in failure to thrive on January 29, 2008| 32 Comments »

Ellie is officially “failing to thrive”. She weighed 7 pounds 7 ounces on January 4th. She weighed 7 pounds 8.4 ounces on January 22nd. We spent a full week adding extra calories to any expressed breast milk (EBM) bottles she received (3-4 per day while I’m at work, none on the weekend), and pushing feedings every 3 hours during the day.

Today she weighed… 7 pounds 8.4 ounces.

So we’re going to do a trial of Zantac, knowing that it probably won’t help because she’s not showing ANY of the classic signs of reflux except for failure to gain weight, but also knowing it won’t hurt either. And I’m making an appointment with a pediatric gastroenterologist who will hopefully have some more answers for us (though I’m not counting on it).

My poor, tiny Ellie.

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Moo!

Posted in breastfeeding on January 29, 2008| 11 Comments »

I have pumped 7432.5 ounces of milk since September 19th, 2007. That is 58 gallons of milk. That is not counting any of milk they’ve gotten from direct breast feeding. My next project is to add up the number of hours I’ve spent breast feeding. When this is all over, I’m totaling up all the gallons I pumped, the hours spent breast feeding, and the number of diapers changed (I have a log of all of this stuff) and I’m sending them a bill before they go off to college.

But seriously folks, I do it with love. Really. Still, 58 gallons??? Can you believe it? I can’t!

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Moo!

Posted in breastfeeding on January 29, 2008| 5 Comments »

I have pumped 7432.5 ounces of milk since September 19th, 2007. That is 58 gallons of milk. That is not counting any of milk they've gotten from direct breast feeding. My next project is to add up the number of hours I've spent breast feeding. When this is all over, I'm totaling up all the gallons I pumped, the hours spent breast feeding, and the number of diapers changed (I have a log of all of this stuff) and I'm sending them a bill before they go off to college.

But seriously folks, I do it with love. Really. Still, 58 gallons??? Can you believe it? I can't!

Read Full Post »

Failure to Thrive

Posted in failure to thrive on January 29, 2008| 34 Comments »

Ellie is officially "failing to thrive". She weighed 7 pounds 7 ounces on January 4th. She weighed 7 pounds 8.4 ounces on January 22nd. We spent a full week adding extra calories to any expressed breast milk (EBM) bottles she received (3-4 per day while I'm at work, none on the weekend), and pushing feedings every 3 hours during the day.

Today she weighed… 7 pounds 8.4 ounces.

So we're going to do a trial of Zantac, knowing that it probably won't help because she's not showing ANY of the classic signs of reflux except for failure to gain weight, but also knowing it won't hurt either. And I'm making an appointment with a pediatric gastroenterologist who will hopefully have some more answers for us (though I'm not counting on it).

My poor, tiny Ellie.

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Nanny Bliss (Updated)

Posted in nanny love, triplet mania on January 28, 2008| 26 Comments »

I do so hate leaving my babies behind each morning, but my nanny makes it so much easier. Because seriously, do you know what my wondermous nanny said to me this morning when I asked her how her weekend was?? She said, “I missed the babies!”

I love her!

(this is my 250th post. I’m a total slacker. With 3 months on bed rest you’d think I’d have written a helluva lot more than that. Bad Blogger. Bad Blogger!)

Edited to Add: Just to clarify, I do not have guilt about working and leaving my children with a nanny. I am sad to leave my babies. I miss my children during the day. I wish I could spend the day with them every day. But I don’t feel guilty about it. Guilt is born from knowing you’re doing something wrong and I know I’m not doing anything wrong. I am doing what I have to do to provide for my family in the best way possible.

I receive a lot of caring, supportive anonymous comments, so I won’t turn off anonymous commenting or move to a password-protected blog as some others have suggested. Nor will I delete offensive anonymous comments, because all the comments I get are a part of my blogging history and deserve to be preserved. But I would like to encourage my readers who don’t have a blog account to leave comments using blogger’s “nickname” feature. You don’t have to use your real name or initials, just a consistent one. That way, I know you’re a person who cares and not some meaningless troll like this insensitive pig who found his or her way into my blog today.

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Nanny Bliss (Updated)

Posted in nanny love, triplet mania on January 28, 2008| 18 Comments »

I do so hate leaving my babies behind each morning, but my nanny makes it so much easier. Because seriously, do you know what my wondermous nanny said to me this morning when I asked her how her weekend was?? She said, "I missed the babies!"

I love her!

(this is my 250th post. I'm a total slacker. With 3 months on bed rest you'd think I'd have written a helluva lot more than that. Bad Blogger. Bad Blogger!)

Edited to Add: Just to clarify, I do not have guilt about working and leaving my children with a nanny. I am sad to leave my babies. I miss my children during the day. I wish I could spend the day with them every day. But I don't feel guilty about it. Guilt is born from knowing you're doing something wrong and I know I'm not doing anything wrong. I am doing what I have to do to provide for my family in the best way possible.

I receive a lot of caring, supportive anonymous comments, so I won't turn off anonymous commenting or move to a password-protected blog as some others have suggested. Nor will I delete offensive anonymous comments, because all the comments I get are a part of my blogging history and deserve to be preserved. But I would like to encourage my readers who don't have a blog account to leave comments using blogger's "nickname" feature. You don't have to use your real name or initials, just a consistent one. That way, I know you're a person who cares and not some meaningless troll like this insensitive pig who found his or her way into my blog today.

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Oh Ellie-Bellie, Why Won’t Your Belly Grow?

Posted in triplet mania, triplets pictures on January 23, 2008| 22 Comments »

The Triplets had their four-month appointment today. Can you believe it? Four months have passed since they were born and I still haven’t gotten my shit together to write about the day of their arrival into the world. I suck. Needless to say, it’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that I’ve been wrapped up in their lives and in caring for them. Yeah, that’s it. Uh huh. Anyway, they will be 18 weeks old tomorrow. It’s amazing how quickly time flies when you’re having this much fun. And seriously, how come no one told me it was going to get to be this much fun? All of a sudden they’ve started noticing people and they’re all smiley and interactive and loveable! I adored them before, but now, ohmygosh, it’s a whole new level of love that I didn’t even know existed! Seriously, I knew before how much I wanted to be a mommy, but if I’d known it would only get BETTER after they were born, well, gosh I’m not sure I would have been able to wait five years for these little monsters to arrive!

Anywhozit, they went in for their four month check up this morning and Sam and Abby are definitely growing, but Ellie… oh poor, sweet Ellie. She isn’t! I don’t know what to do with my poor Ellie-Bellie! Here are their current stats:

Sam: (my little piggie!) 10 lb, 6 oz 21.5 inches long
Abby: (my smiliest) 9 lb, 7 oz 21.5 inches long
Ellie: (my teeney beanie) 7lb, 8oz 21 inches long

Ellie last got weighed on January 4th and she was 7lb, 7oz. Seriously! I actually made the nurse re-weigh her today to make sure we’d read the scale correctly, because I just couldn’t believe she’d only gained an ounce. My poor, tiny baby. So we don’t know why she’s not gaining weight. We know that she doesn’t like to eat as often as the other two, that’s for sure. But we also know that when she does eat, she’s eating a sufficient amount (she gets about 3-4 ounces when she breast feeds…we’ve weighed her before and after feeding and she consistently gets that amount). In the past her weight gain has been borderline worrisome, but never really, really awful. Now, obviously, she’s definitely giving us something to worry about. In a way, it’s almost better because now at least we KNOW that it’s time to be more aggressive and we know that we’re not poking and prodding her for no good reason this time.

So here’s the plan: We drew blood from her today to run a CBC and a full metabolic panel on her (she’d previously had a thyroid panel drawn which came back normal). We’ll also have her stool checked for blood. We’ll add 22 calorie fortifier to her EBM feedings to try and get some extra calories into her. We will bring her back next week to be re-weighed and bring a copy of her feeding log so that we can calculate how many calories per day she’s eating. We will aggressively wake her to eat every three hours (we’ve tried this before with little success, but we’ll do our best).

I love our pediatrician and I’m very glad that he’s very level headed, but being very aggressive about working with us to find answers on this. We are relieved that her head circumference growth is exactly perfect on the growth charts, that her neurological development seems spot on, and that her muscle tone and motor development does not seem impaired. These are all good signs, so perhaps the weight gain (or lack thereof) needn’t be so alarming, but we still definitely need to explore it.

After the appointment, I went off to my first day of work. It was a very, very short day since I just really needed to fill out some paperwork and do a little reading, but that was okay with me. I think I’m going to enjoy this job. I hope so, anyway. I came home to smiling babies and promptly pumped 15 ounces, a new record for me.

Finally, I leave you with some pictures of my gorgeous trio…

The Trio:

Sam Playing:

Abby, Cute as a Button:

Ellie Sleeping:

Read Full Post »

Oh Ellie-Bellie, Why Won’t Your Belly Grow?

Posted in triplet mania, triplets pictures on January 23, 2008| 24 Comments »

The Triplets had their four-month appointment today. Can you believe it? Four months have passed since they were born and I still haven't gotten my shit together to write about the day of their arrival into the world. I suck. Needless to say, it's not that I don't care, it's just that I've been wrapped up in their lives and in caring for them. Yeah, that's it. Uh huh. Anyway, they will be 18 weeks old tomorrow. It's amazing how quickly time flies when you're having this much fun. And seriously, how come no one told me it was going to get to be this much fun? All of a sudden they've started noticing people and they're all smiley and interactive and loveable! I adored them before, but now, ohmygosh, it's a whole new level of love that I didn't even know existed! Seriously, I knew before how much I wanted to be a mommy, but if I'd known it would only get BETTER after they were born, well, gosh I'm not sure I would have been able to wait five years for these little monsters to arrive!

Anywhozit, they went in for their four month check up this morning and Sam and Abby are definitely growing, but Ellie… oh poor, sweet Ellie. She isn't! I don't know what to do with my poor Ellie-Bellie! Here are their current stats:

Sam: (my little piggie!) 10 lb, 6 oz 21.5 inches long
Abby: (my smiliest) 9 lb, 7 oz 21.5 inches long
Ellie: (my teeney beanie) 7lb, 8oz 21 inches long

Ellie last got weighed on January 4th and she was 7lb, 7oz. Seriously! I actually made the nurse re-weigh her today to make sure we'd read the scale correctly, because I just couldn't believe she'd only gained an ounce. My poor, tiny baby. So we don't know why she's not gaining weight. We know that she doesn't like to eat as often as the other two, that's for sure. But we also know that when she does eat, she's eating a sufficient amount (she gets about 3-4 ounces when she breast feeds…we've weighed her before and after feeding and she consistently gets that amount). In the past her weight gain has been borderline worrisome, but never really, really awful. Now, obviously, she's definitely giving us something to worry about. In a way, it's almost better because now at least we KNOW that it's time to be more aggressive and we know that we're not poking and prodding her for no good reason this time.

So here's the plan: We drew blood from her today to run a CBC and a full metabolic panel on her (she'd previously had a thyroid panel drawn which came back normal). We'll also have her stool checked for blood. We'll add 22 calorie fortifier to her EBM feedings to try and get some extra calories into her. We will bring her back next week to be re-weighed and bring a copy of her feeding log so that we can calculate how many calories per day she's eating. We will aggressively wake her to eat every three hours (we've tried this before with little success, but we'll do our best).

I love our pediatrician and I'm very glad that he's very level headed, but being very aggressive about working with us to find answers on this. We are relieved that her head circumference growth is exactly perfect on the growth charts, that her neurological development seems spot on, and that her muscle tone and motor development does not seem impaired. These are all good signs, so perhaps the weight gain (or lack thereof) needn't be so alarming, but we still definitely need to explore it.

After the appointment, I went off to my first day of work. It was a very, very short day since I just really needed to fill out some paperwork and do a little reading, but that was okay with me. I think I'm going to enjoy this job. I hope so, anyway. I came home to smiling babies and promptly pumped 15 ounces, a new record for me.

Finally, I leave you with some pictures of my gorgeous trio…

The Trio:

Sam Playing:

Abby, Cute as a Button:

Ellie Sleeping:

Read Full Post »

To Anonymous

Posted in trolling on January 22, 2008| 35 Comments »

Two posts in one night! Imagine that!

In my last post, Anonymous asked, “Why are you leaving the babies to go back to work??? Who is keeping them and is it really cost effective?” A couple people got defensive, rightfully so, on my behalf and anonymous responded again with, “UMMMM….I don’t know why everyone is so defensive…I was asking a serious question and wanting a valid response…”

Now, part of me doesn’t want to dignify this with a response because the tone of both of these comments is quite condescending and rude. And this is clearly someone who doesn’t read my posts very often or very thoroughly because the post RIGHT BEFORE THAT ONE CLEARLY EXPLAINED THE WHOLE WORK THING. So I suggest, Anonymous, that you simply go and read this post:

http://perkyovary.blogspot.com/2008/01/doctors-galore-and-your-questions.html

Scroll down to the part that says “Your Questions Answered” and then I even suggest reading the comments and seeing some of the other folks’ in the blogosphere’s perspective on this issue.

The tone of your initial question, “why are you leaving the babies?” is rather accusatory. You make it seem like I’m doing something selfish without thinking of them. But I AM thinking of them. I was thinking that I would prefer that they live in a house rather than a tent and I happen to know that we cannot afford to pay our mortgage with just one salary. I have been out of work for seven months (three months on bed rest and four months since they were born) and we are out of reserves. We are out of money. If I were to stay home another month, we couldn’t continue to buy food, and I’m NOT exaggerating. Was it really necessary for you to add THREE question marks after your question? I understood you were asking a question without the extra punctuation. All you did was express your incredulity with those extra question marks which added to the accusatory nature of your question, which is why people jumped down your throat and defended me.

As for whether it’s cost effective, that is really none of your fucking business and I’m so damn tired of that question. But here is the final word on that question: Yes. It is cost effective. My nanny is well-paid, but not as well paid as I am. I have a longer explanation of the long-term cost effectiveness in the above-referenced post.

But do you know what REALLY pisses me the hell off? Your statement that you want a “valid” response. Fuck you. Seriously. I don’t curse a lot in my blog, really, but you deserve it. I don’t owe you any explanation at all, valid or otherwise. Going back to work is MY decision. If I go back to work just because I ENJOY work that’s a valid enough explanation for anyone, dammit. As it happens, I have NO desire to return to work, but I NEED to return to work and I don’t owe you (or anyone else) any explanation.

And I don’t give a damn whether that’s valid according to your definition.

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To Anonymous

Posted in trolling on January 22, 2008| 30 Comments »

Two posts in one night! Imagine that!

In my last post, Anonymous asked, "Why are you leaving the babies to go back to work??? Who is keeping them and is it really cost effective?" A couple people got defensive, rightfully so, on my behalf and anonymous responded again with, "UMMMM….I don't know why everyone is so defensive…I was asking a serious question and wanting a valid response…"

Now, part of me doesn't want to dignify this with a response because the tone of both of these comments is quite condescending and rude. And this is clearly someone who doesn't read my posts very often or very thoroughly because the post RIGHT BEFORE THAT ONE CLEARLY EXPLAINED THE WHOLE WORK THING. So I suggest, Anonymous, that you simply go and read this post:

http://perkyovary.blogspot.com/2008/01/doctors-galore-and-your-questions.html

Scroll down to the part that says "Your Questions Answered" and then I even suggest reading the comments and seeing some of the other folks' in the blogosphere's perspective on this issue.

The tone of your initial question, "why are you leaving the babies?" is rather accusatory. You make it seem like I'm doing something selfish without thinking of them. But I AM thinking of them. I was thinking that I would prefer that they live in a house rather than a tent and I happen to know that we cannot afford to pay our mortgage with just one salary. I have been out of work for seven months (three months on bed rest and four months since they were born) and we are out of reserves. We are out of money. If I were to stay home another month, we couldn't continue to buy food, and I'm NOT exaggerating. Was it really necessary for you to add THREE question marks after your question? I understood you were asking a question without the extra punctuation. All you did was express your incredulity with those extra question marks which added to the accusatory nature of your question, which is why people jumped down your throat and defended me.

As for whether it's cost effective, that is really none of your fucking business and I'm so damn tired of that question. But here is the final word on that question: Yes. It is cost effective. My nanny is well-paid, but not as well paid as I am. I have a longer explanation of the long-term cost effectiveness in the above-referenced post.

But do you know what REALLY pisses me the hell off? Your statement that you want a "valid" response. Fuck you. Seriously. I don't curse a lot in my blog, really, but you deserve it. I don't owe you any explanation at all, valid or otherwise. Going back to work is MY decision. If I go back to work just because I ENJOY work that's a valid enough explanation for anyone, dammit. As it happens, I have NO desire to return to work, but I NEED to return to work and I don't owe you (or anyone else) any explanation.

And I don't give a damn whether that's valid according to your definition.

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