It Can't It Won't and It Don't Stop

The thrush, that is. Poor Baby has had a mild case of thrush on her tongue for about a month. According to her doc, the mild cases are the hardest to get rid of, which only sort of makes sense. Anyway, I'm getting tired of swabbing her tongue four times a day.
It is, however, completely adorable how she tries to suck on the q-tip.

In other news, this week she has started making 'conversational' sounds, not just sounds born of raw need. Saturday she actually said "goo-goo" like people say babies do. It's so cute.

Regarding that last post

Y'all have to go watch Working Mommy.

Funny Ordie

I have another confession: when I read about the website in Entertainment Weekly, I thought the site was called Funny Ordie, like a guy's weird name.
It's got some funny stuff, including a few Will Ferrell videos that have him being terrorized by a toddler.
But what I really enjoy are the video shorts of female sitcom stars being incongruently badass.

Breastmilk Captures My Imagination, part 2

I know you were wondering about the part 2, right?

I just read the book City of Light, about Buffalo, NY at the turn of the century. It mentions wet nurses, and that got me thinking. Wet nurses must have gone out of style due to the burgeoning formula industry and the rise of the middle class (which meant less households employed servants). But now that breastmilk is back in style, so to speak, and pumping has become relatively commonplace, it seems like wet nurses could make a resurgence.

Now, since I'm talking about the purchase of bodily fluids for feeding infants, I don't think it would ever be quite an FDA-approved industry. However, after sitting in at my first-ever brestfeeding drop-in class yesterday, I could see how there could arise small, local black-market enterprises. Some women need more milk, and some produce too much. I imagine the covert exchange of Lansinoh bags, bartered for babysitting time, in the aisles of Babies R Us and at local coffeeshops.

I was kidding about the bartering. It's more likely women would give it away for free. Kind of like blood donation - if someone demands payment for it, you probably don't want what they're selling. Of course, then maybe lazy, selfish women would try to get in on the deal, figuring "Why be the cow when you can get the milk for free?"

Breastmilk Captures My Imagination, part 1

Ever since I started breastfeeding, I've been really curious about breastmilk, and its potential non-baby applications. For those of you who don't know, breastmilk tastes like sweetened skim milk. That sweetness makes me think it could be the perfect coffee additive, because it puts the milk and the sugar all in one place. One could even posit that it's the perfect ratio of milk to sugar by definition - it's what our body wanted when we were infants.

I started wondering whether it would be good for making a Vietnamese coffee, which involves sweetened condensed milk. I'd have to find a way to condense breastmilk for that, though. Then I started thinking it would be cool to try to steam it for a cappuccino, but I'm not sure that would work either, because the milk (my milk, anyway) seems too thin; not fatty enough to really foam up well. It would be an excellent ingredient for iced coffee, though - you'd need quite a bit of it, but it would be perfect, I suspect.

I'm not saying I've tried any of these methods, though. And it's not like I expressed an ounce this morning due to engorgement, then used it in my morning decaf. Although if I had done that, I'm sure I would pronounce it quite a tasty endeavor.

Like taking toiletries from a baby

I've been meaning to admit something here for a while: I've stolen toiletries from my daughter for my own use.

Let me explain.
Once we returned from the hospital, I went through the toiletries we had amassed from the baby shower, to figure out what to use for her baths, etc. I discovered that the Aveeno products contain the same colloidal oatmeal stuff as my oatmeal paths, so I decided to try the body wash on myself, to help with my lingerning post-partum PUPPPs. Also, the lavender-camomile moisturizer sounded nice, so I thought I'd try that, too. I think they were helpful.

The PUPPPs are well and truly gone by now, but I'm still using that body wash. It's nice. If we run out of other stuff for her, I'll return it, I swear!

Athlete's Foot in the Mouth

At Baby's 2-week check-up, I was dismayed to learn that she has a mild case of thrush on her tongue. All I'm supposed to do is dip a q-tip in the medicine, swab it on her tongue after feedings 4x a day, and I'm done. I was worried we were in for a long haul of fighting over whether Baby would allow me to do so, mostly because Kathy's ordeal sounded like a total pain.

When Baby seemed to have no problem with the medicine, and would start to actually suck at the q-tip, I was amazed, and decided that she was truly a perfect match for fellow-gourmand Spliggle. But her affection for the medication was more practically explained when my mother read the packaging and discovered that Nystatin is 50% sugar.

The thrush seems to be clearing up, albeit slowly, and it doesn't seem to be bothering Baby at all. She enjoys getting dessert after four of her feedings a day, too.