Linus explores a new food

Up until now, Linus has only ever had breastmilk.  Honestly, I had planned on keeping that way until the AAP recommendation of 6 months.  But, he started daycare this month and, as you may have noticed in a previous post, Linus won't take a bottle.  So, at our 4-month pediatrician appointment, we got the go-ahead to introduce solids.  

Because of the issues with rice and arsenic, I opted to go against the usual first food of rice cereal for my li'l man.  Instead, he got sweet potatoes!  And he absolutely loved them.  

Later this week, we're going to try bananas!

To note, I hate sweet potatoes.  And I smelled like them all day after I fed them to him.  So, I regret my decision to feed him sweet potatoes at least a little bit.

Salmon Run

We did some hanging out around town today.

Today was Linus' first salmon run.  The salmon are returning from the Pacific Ocean to their birthplace in order to do their own mating.  There weren't too many salmon ready to hop through Capitol Lake today, but I expect that when we go back in a week or so, there will be a gazillion.

After checking for salmon, we walked MaxDog around the lake.  It was 90 degrees, so we found a patch of shade to hang out eventually, and took some adorable photos.

Here's Linus with the capitol building behind him.

 And here are a couple of others of the family:

Things I wish I would have known: Bottle-feeding

If you're exclusively breastfeeding, introduce a bottle to your kid at 4-6 weeks of age.  No sooner.  No later.

When I was pregnant, my husband and I attended our regular birth classes and also an additional class on breastfeeding that was phenomenal.  In that class, the lactation consultant discussed the benefits of breastfeeding and things like how to achieve a proper latch.  She also mentioned briefly that we should introduce a bottle between 4 and 6 weeks.  Any sooner than that and what is called "nipple confusion" may occur.  That's when a kid realizes that getting milk from a bottle is a whole lot easier than sucking for a while to let down their mom's milk, then finally being able to get milk, but still having to work really hard to get it.

I didn't blatantly ignore the advice on when to introduce a bottle, but I didn't take it.  I waited.  And waited...

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, breast pumps are now covered by insurance, and I got mine when my son was a few weeks old.  I kept saying, "I need to figure out how to use this thing," so I left it on the dining room table so I wouldn't forget about it.  Finally, around 6 weeks after my son was born, I took out the instructions on how to clean the thing.  It seemed like a daunting task, so I did what any good procrastinator does: I put it off.  Then, a few weeks later, I said to myself, "Self: why is this thing taking up the dining room table when you haven't done anything with it?  You should probably move it out of the way somewhere!"  So I put it in a closet.

I should also mention that I got 4 months of (unpaid) maternity leave from my work.  This is awesome because it allowed me to really take time to watch my son grow and learn.  But, it meant that things like pumping and finding a daycare were on the back-burner because I had plenty of time!

So, finally, when my son was almost 3 months old, I found the ol' breast pump, followed the instructions for cleaning, and gave it a shot.  My friends had warned me not to expect too much from the pump the first few times I used it, but I combined each day's worth of pumping at first, and put it in my nice glass bottles (our LC told us to use glass because even those BPA-free plastic bottles still do have a lot of crazy chemicals in them).  Then I tried to feed those bottles to my son.  "HA!" he said, "I don't think so, Mom.  I know where the real stuff comes from!"

Okay, so me feeding a bottle to my son wasn't going to work, because I'm the one with the boobs.  So, fine, maybe it'll work for my husband.  Nope.  We tried so many things.  I'd leave the house about a half hour before my son would be hungry and Jon would try to give it to him, only for my son to refuse and prefer spending large chunks of time crying at the top of his lungs.  I had my mom try a bunch.  I had my mother-in-law try.  Nothing.  We tried sugar water, and super watered down juice to try to entice him.  I tried bottles that are "breast-shaped" and other fancy nipples.  No.  All we could do was get him to play with the darn bottle.

So, after a good solid 4-6 weeks of trying to get Linus to take a bottle every single day, we sent him to his first day of daycare.  The daycare woman called me and said, "You need to come in and breastfeed your son because he's not taking a bottle."  That woman, bless her soul, has so much patience.  It's only been his first few days of daycare now, but he's not going to take a bottle.  I know that.  My son certainly knows that.

So, take it from me, and introduce that bottle during the 4-6 week window or you'll end up having a kid who just never really wants it because he knows how to tap into the source.  It's kind of like.... I don't really like dark beers.  But, I went to Ireland and drank a whole lot of Guinness because it was just so much better there.  It's the real stuff.  And so are my boobs.