Boob juice: the flu edition

Last week I got the flu. At least, I think I did: I started Thursday off by turning down DH's offer to fry up a couple of eggs, and instead had ginger ale for breakfast because I was feeling queasy. I still went to work, though. After a few hours spent shivering and groaning in my office, and feeling progressively worse, I made the decision to come home.

Of course, my number one concern was that I didn't want to give this to PB with his underdeveloped little immune system - that's probably why I trudged off to work in the first place. Once I had determined I really was sick and it wasn't just something I ate, I started making myself incredibly anxious that my baby was going to get ill. I tried to think through how I could spend time at home and not touch PB.

Fortunately, DH was thinking along the same lines, and his brain wasn't feverish, so he asked Dr. Google for the scoop. It turns out that snuggling up with baby is exactly what a nursing mom should do if she's ill. Not only does it make a miserable mom feel a little better (ed. note: it does. I needed some snuggles) but breastmilk is full of up-to-the-moment antibodies so the nursing baby never needs to fight through the infection. In several places, we read that often when a whole family gets sick, the nursing baby is the one person who's healthy the whole time.

Man, this stuff really is kind of like magic.

I now feel mostly fine: I'm taking it bland and easy on my diet for a little while longer, but the freezing fever, aches, etc are all long gone. 5 days after I showed symptoms, PB still seems just fine. Fortunately, so does DH, contributing to our theory that this was the flu for which we got shots in the fall... I was only really sick for just over a day, while quite a few people I know were fighting it in earnest for about a week.

When DH told me that I was keeping PB from getting the flu, I understood for just a moment why some women have difficulty stopping the nursing relationship. Being able to just give another person that kind of immunity really is like having a superpower.

A list

1) I did a little math and realized I am producing a quart of milk, give or take, every day. A QUART.

2) You'd think that would mean our freezer is full of backup milk, but nope! I'm barely keeping up with the kid's daily needs.

3) We weighed him like a turkey (or a camping backpack) the other day, and our home scale says he's pushing 17 pounds. Not surprising, since he's drinking A QUART OF MILK EVERY DAY.

4) I'm hungry all the time, and I'm drinking - no lie - about 100 oz of liquid per day. See #1.

5) I threw out my shoulder/neck a few days ago. See #3. Also: cribs are not ergonomic, especially not for short women... which is, like, half of all parents. OK, I guess there are tall women out there. But I'm not one of them.

6) The little guy is learning how to laugh. I'm grateful for this intermediate stage, where his laughs are kind of tentative, because they make my heart aaaallmost explode. He's giving me a chance so I'll survive his first belly laugh. Hopefully.

7) We are doing some gentle sleep training. It is working, for the most part: he's been going to sleep at 7pm and sleeping until roughly 7am (the range is from 6am to 7:45 so far), with one to two wake ups during the night for a snack and a diaper change. It's a very livable routine for the whole family, especially now that DH and I have worked out the nighttime feedings so we both get a solid chunk of sleep. I think the good sleep is 30% our doing and 70% just that the universe blessed us with a relatively chill baby. We're doing sort-of cry-it-out stuff. He generally cries for 10 minutes or less, and it's totally an "I'm sooo sleeepy..." kind of cry. And then he sleeps for hours and wakes up super happy.

8) He could also be sleeping well because of #1 and #3.

9) I keep hearing that all the sleep routines go to hell at 4 months, so... one day at a time.

10) Almost every time I pump at work, someone knocks on my office door. Inconvenient, because I need to pump relatively frequently (see #1), and seriously? You don't want me to answer the door. We'd all be traumatized.

11) Because of #10, I am now having anxiety dreams about pumping at work, similar to those dreams you have as a kid about showing up to school naked. In the dreams, I'm pumping, with the office door open, without pants on, and there are like twelve people standing in my doorway. What I want to know is, where did my pants go?

12) I've decided to refer to the kiddo as PB on this blog, because I'm tired of calling him "the kiddo/kid/baby/dude/little guy", and I was so focused on protein when I was pregnant that he is probably 30% composed of peanut butter.

13) Last night PB only woke up once, around 2:30am. I nursed him on one side, then changed his diaper, and then was about to start nursing him on the other side when he spit up on my neck, purposely missing the burp rag. When I pulled him back to wipe off his face (and my neck - ew), he gave me a huge, gummy smile in the dim light. Which just made me hug him. Who else gets a hug for horking part of their meal on to my neck?

14) A year ago today I found out I was pregnant. That's nuts.