Tag Archives: sleep

Is Caffeine in Breast Milk Bad?

06/11/2014 R.C. Liley 4 Comments

It’s a question any coffee/tea loving nursing mother has probably asked, and for good reason; no one wants to hurt their baby because of what they consumed. Same goes for fathers for the same reason.

I never finished detailing my birthday weekend from yesterday’s post as I only covered Saturday, the day before my actual birthday. As I mentioned then, we stopped at the restaurant Brewed after the 5k race for coffee and brunch. I didn’t eat, but enjoyed their locally roasted coffee with many, many refills.

Going Mom also partook in the coffee consumption, and rightfully so, she was up early and boldly drove us around some of the “unpleasant” areas of Forth Worth to get us to the race. Kelley has only had one full cup of coffee a handful of times since having Avery, but that day, she had 4 cups. Yep, and we don’t add cream, sugar, and all of that crap, so the cups were purely coffee.

Avery had been up for a long time with minimal napage (it’s a word), and we fully expected to have her hit the crib hard and sleep through the night. WRONG! Kelley nursed her to sleep after bath time as usual, but just a few hours later Avery was wide awake crying.

We knew something was wrong when the crying didn’t subside after 5 minutes like usually would happen at this time. Kelley marched back in the nursery, loaded with fresh breast milk, and proceeded to calm and nurse Avery back to sleep. An hour later, she was back asleep in her crib, and we tried to go back to sleep as well.

Silly parents, Avery didn’t feel like sleeping that long; she was sitting up crying maybe an hour and a half later. Kelley did her thing once more, and finally made it back to bed again only to have Avery again! My poor, tired wife didn’t want me to have to go in there for my birthday, but I insisted on giving it a shot.

Keyword, “shot”, because I did nothing to help! She wouldn’t take a bottle and all she did was make it very awkward to hold her. At one point, she let out a blood curdling cry which had Kelley in the nursery faster than you can say “crazy baby”. At this point, this sun was rising and we decided to give up and stay awake.

I asked her if she wanted coffee and then we both laughed. We actually have a non-caffeine herbal coffee alternative that I make her, so I prepared a cup for both of us as we sat on the back porch with our ~~spawn from hell~~ sweet baby.

That’s Avery’s head and you can see my legs in the background. As long as she was being held, Avery was happy, and it was actually a pleasant way to start my 30th.

After sitting outside for a while, we went back inside where Kelley had my gifts sitting out on the island. Sneaking lady, that wife of mine!

Schneider Weisse Aventinus is my favorite beer, and I got three; one for each decade. I’m not a big drinker, and usually keep it to one glass on most days (unless I’m at a brewery!), but I expect high quality from my beverages and Aventinus is just that!

Kelley made the card herself as she knows I think buying cards is unnecessary most of the time and handmade is more thoughtful. She did a lot better than my handmade cards to her and I loved it! Inside the card I found this…

A Microbrew Beer of the Month Club for US Beers! Most of you probably think I’m lying, but I promise, I don’t drink a lot, just want good beer when I do. I’ll be getting 12 beers from different US microbreweries for the next four months to enjoy. Perfect timing since Avery is showing signs of teething!

With 12 beers each month, I bet we’ll have a nice stash by the end since we haven’t finished the 6 pack I bought over a month ago. I expect to share these with Kelley so we can enjoy together, because drinking alone is just sad.

The brown bag had fresh cremini and portobello mushrooms; one of my favorites! I could eat a huge bowl of mushrooms (the non-trippy kind) and go back for seconds; yum! For my 28th b-day, my co-workers knew how I avoid sugary, processed food, and that I love mushrooms, so they even gave me a Portobello mushroom cake!

They didn’t have the right candles, so a “0” had to do, and I loved it.

I’ve been enjoying several birthday mushrooms on top of my salad every night since and am glad Kelley bought them for me. Thanks, Kelley….and Avery too!

Despite our earlier than expected start to the day, we ended up have a great time together and even brought Avery for another trip to the pool. Thankfully, the caffeine must’ve finally wore off as she slept a little better that night. I need to extend my b-day weekend stories to another post as it’s late and my bed is beckoning.

Oh yeah, to answer the question; a little caffeine shouldn’t be of concern and is generally safe to have while breastfeeding. From what I read, only around 1 percent actually ends up in breast milk, and up to 300mg/day should be okay. Of course, everyone is different, so drink at your own risk!

Do or did you drink coffee or another caffeine source while breastfeeding?

Fathers, same question but for your wife/girlfriend/partner.

Have you ever had a non-traditional cake?

Life, Parenting

One Way James Bond Never Used a Laser

06/01/2014 R.C. Liley 1 Comment

Earlier this month, we were playing with Avery in the living room as it was nearing her bedtime, and, like most babies, she was getting fussy. But, instead of getting her ready for bed, we chose a different route….play time with a laser!

Don't move, you might scare it off! — Don’t move, you might scare it off!

Since that day, we have been able to buy ourselves a little extra time before Avery turns into a sleep deprived night demon with the special power of shrill screaming. As a bonus, our slightly overweight cat gets a nice workout chasing the blasted red dot across the floor. This, in turn, amuses Avery more than the laser alone and even makes her laugh the craziest and cutest sounding laugh we’ve heard yet.

Being the textbook first time parents we are, there’s always a video camera nearby, so we quickly captured Avery’s amusement as she watched Lou (our cat) chase the red dot. And of course I posted it on YouTube since to us, it’s worth showing the world!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OO6hA4nhfB0&w=420&h=315]

I know using a laser pointer as cheap entertainment is far from a new trend, but imagine seeing something like this for the first time when you’re a baby. There’s already so many crazy things you’ve never seen, fat black cat included, that I’m convinced her high-pitched laugh is partly a result of not knowing what else to do.

Now that she’s seen it a few times, she doesn’t laugh as much as in the video, but it still keeps her engaged and most importantly, not crying. And that, my friends, is definitely one way James Bond has never used a laser!

Do you use laser pointers as entertainment for your kids? Pets?

Any other cheap entertainment tips/stories to share?

Life, Parenting

What Was It Like Before Baby Monitors?

05/28/2014 R.C. Liley 4 Comments

Sunday night, the night before my Memorial Day 10k, we ran into a little problem, the baby monitor broke! Well, kinda, the video worked but there was no sound.

The thought never crossed my mind on what we’d do sans baby monitor, but here we were with mounting anxiety over not being able to hear our baby. Actually, that’s not true, we spend a lot of the night in our living room and can hear Avery’s wails just fine without a device, but it still got to us. Plus, I was planning on going to bed a little earlier to get a good rest before waking up to run.

That night, we slept slightly longer on the couch than usual, and finally migrated to bed where I am sure we were both wondering if Avery was crying or not. Thankfully G-Ma was staying the night and her room is right next to Avery’s, so that helped comfort us a little.

Avery never woke up crying that night (or maybe we did and we didn’t hear), but we felt it urgently necessary to find a replacement. A lot of times, when something breaks, we try to figure out some way of being able to return the faulty product in exchange for a new one. Since we bought our monitor online and didn’t know of any stores that carried it, that option was out the window.

The next day, when we arrived home from the race, I thought I’d tinker around with the device to see if I could “fix” it. My tinkering entailed lightly hitting it and blowing into the speaker holes as if they were an Original NES Nintendo cartridge. Going Mom joked that you know you’re an 80’s baby when you do this, and it’s true!

source: http://blog.logitech.com/2013/10/08/six-gaming-myths-every-gamer-should-know/

Did you know that blowing into the cartridge was actually part of the problem? Apparently every time we did blew, some of our saliva would coat the game which made it hard for the system to read. There, learned something new today…unless you already “knew” that.

Back to the monitor, blowing into it and hitting didn’t work, obviously, so I did the next best thing; try pressing all of the buttons. Lo and behold, this actually fixed the freakin’ thing!

Backtrack to Sunday morning, when the monitor still worked, Kelley and I were laying in bed listening to Avery blow raspberries in her crib. C’mon, I know other parents do this, right? Kelley was about to get up to feed her, but we thought we’d have a little fun and talk to her through the monitor. Cheap entertainment at it’s best!

That stare is kind of creepy, in a cute sort of way. Well, we had our fun and went about our day, but I guess that button stuck for whatever reason. I’m actually surprised we didn’t wake her while talking that night when we thought it was just broken.

So, after pressing the button to speak to your baby again, it reset and all was well in the world again! Phew, I was worried we were going to have to come up with a really good story to tell the store if we tried to return it.

While we were slowly going crazy when the monitor was still “broken”, my mom (G-Ma) mentioned how all she had for me was audio. She’d have to peak into the nursery any time she wanted to actually see me; crazy, huh?

Being able to hear your baby rustling around but unsure if they are just readjusting themselves or fully awake would drive me nuts! And what about before there were any monitors, how did parents do it?

Okay, I know monitors aren’t necessary, but I sure do feel spoiled after considering how little our parents and grandparents had when raising us. Now we can watch our babies through video on the internet and be on the other side of the world!

It was nice having our monitor with sound and video again, and I hope to never have to experience a time without the monitor when we’re home. Ha, I just realized we actually do this when we spend the night at G-Ma’s house! But that’s only a day, and we can still hear Avery from anywhere in the house, so I’m not counting then!

Have you ever been without a baby monitor or do you even use one?

If you do use one, any stories of a time when you couldn’t?