Eureka!!

No pun intended, but we're making baby steps. ;)

Jillian started on a prescription formula on Tuesday and that seemed to help out a bit after the initial "shock" of the taste and feel of a bottle of formula. We had no major screaming fits until yesterday. She'd drink maybe an ounce to an ounce and a half and either start really fussing, escalating to a full-on scream, or she'd fall asleep only to wake up a 1/2 hour to an hour later, screaming and acting hungry again. By last night, Mark and I figured out it was the bottles and nipple size/flow rate she didn't like. She'd be sucking away for about 20 minutes and only drank an ounce. We figured out that maybe she needed a faster flow nipple.

I talked to Michelle this morning and she told me that she had good luck with the Playtex Nursers with the drop-in liners (Jonathan was colicky, too), so I decided to give those a shot and went to BRU this afternoon to get a couple. She also recommended putting the Mylicon drops directly into the bottle... well, I don't know if it was the new bottles, the faster flow nipple or the Mylicon drops, but she's been a perfect angel since her last feeding. :) She drank that 3 oz. bottle down in no time flat and promptly fell asleep, and has been sleeping since. YAY! Like I told Michelle, she's my hero! ;-) Knocking on wood, of course.

So now we've hopefully {{knock, knock!!}} got the screaming for hours after every feeding thing AND the frustrated fussing at the bottle situations taken care of. :) I'm just so relieved to see her resting comfortably. There is seriously nothing worse than the totally helpless feeling you get seeing your teeny little newborn baby girl so miserable that she's got tears running down her face. I'll do anything to make her feel better, even if it means letting go of my pride at "failing" at breastfeeding.

I'm still pumping, though. I checked it out with my insurance and they'll provide an electric hospital-grade pump to you with a doctor's prescription... so Dr. Harris wrote me one and I picked it up and have been a pumping fiend. :) Mark'll never be able to look at me the same again. LOL!! Sorry... I know that a lot of you are out there saying, "Okay Alex, I'll take 'Things I Didn't Need to Know' for $100.00, please!" Anywho, I have quite the stock of frozen breast milk going, and I intend on slowly mixing that with her formula eventually to see how she takes it. If it goes well, I'll feed her half breast milk/half formula 'till my supply runs out.

The prescription formula is also covered by my insurance. And when the paperwork goes through, they'll even reimburse me for the stuff I already bought! AND the script is for the ready-to-feed stuff!! Sweet!

She had her one-month appointment today. Her stats are 8 lbs, 4.5 oz, 21" and head circumfrence was 36 cm. 50th percentile all around. :)

Now for some news on the Matt front. ;-) He's so freakin' cute. I think he's almost ready to start potty training!! This past week he comes and tells me when he's pooped. The first time he did it I was laughing my head off (on the inside, of course... I didn't want to make Matt feel bad). I went into the kitchen because I could see him from the family room kind of standing in the corner. So I asked him what he was doing and he looked up and said, "Poopin'." He he!! Then he did it again the next day when I sat him in his high chair for lunch... he started squirming and said it again, so lo and behold, he needed a diaper change. Yesterday I brought him out to the car, got Jillian in, too, the car all packed up (we were going to the beach to hang out with Ronni, Jill, Sarah, Ian, Jackie and Jadyn), and he started squirming and said 'poopin'... so {{sigh}} back into the house we all go to change Matt. It's good that he can tell me now, because you all know that I have no sense of smell. :)

Here's a picture I took of my two little sweetpeas yesterday, on Jillian's one month birthday: