Fat vs Thin vs Bottle vs Breast vs ...?...

There's a lot of speculation out there about feeding a baby too soon, with a spoon, and feeding it rice/oatmeal/etc.  They say it causes obesity and diabetes, but where are they getting this information?  IF they are getting it from looking at our generation, and even our parents' generation, it doesn't correlate.  We're obese/diabetic because of our current lifestyles, not because of what we ate 30+ years ago! Genetics does play a role; as I've said before, my brother and I were fed exactly the same way as babies and yet he turned out slim & fit whereas I'm morbidly obese.  His parents were small and thin, my parents were average and stocky. 

I even read an article just now about a "study" they did on 92 spoon-fed babies vs 63 breast-fed babies.  10 of the spoon babies were overweight, and 9 of the breast babies were overweight.  First of all, they clearly stated that all the children were within a "normal healthy" weight range - so these "overweight" children were probably just the top 10 and top 9 of their groups.  Second, 10 out of 92 (10.87%) is significantly less than 9 out of 63 (14.24%), which to ME would indicate that the breast-fed children were actually the ones who had a "problem"!  In fact, I have a friend whose son was born 10 days after 4L, and is considerably larger than him.  

Due to the complications from my C-section, I only nursed 4L for about 10 days, while her son has been nursed the entire time.  Using that as anecdotal evidence, in combination with the aforementioned "study", I'd say breast-fed babies do tend to be larger - and it makes sense!  They get all the nutrients, calories, antibodies, etc etc etc EVERYTHING from the mother, and who knows what she's eating (I don't mean my friend here, cuz she is healthy, but I mean other mothers that I don't know!).  Spoon-fed babies are fed specific amounts at a time, leaving no question as to how many calories they are actually getting and from where those calories are coming.

Obviously, I'm not a doctor or scientist, and I only took one nutrition course in college.  That being said, I do read a lot, on both sides of the argument (whatever the argument may be!), and I have my own experiences to draw from.  Personally, and I know others who agree, I think that nobody really, truly knows wtf is going on with babies, and it's all just speculation.  Thirty years ago my parents were told to put me on my stomach to sleep, along with millions of other babies, and we all lived.  4L HATED sleeping on his back, and now that he's old enough to roll around on his own, he sleeps 99% of the night on his stomach.  Babies who sleep on their backs still die from SIDS, because nobody knows what causes SIDS. I would be willing to make a bet that in less than ten years, we'll be back to formula is the best and sleeping on the stomach is correct.  I can picture it now, doctors telling insanely obese/diabetic mothers that their milk is just too diseased/fatty/diabetic/etc to feed to a newborn, and that formula would be safer. Right now there's a big push for ADHD medications/diagnoses, and I think that in less than ten years the medical field will agree that it's lazy parenting because they'll have moved onto the next thing that Big Pharm wants to hawk.

...And that's my blogpost for the morning.  Now we're off to baby laptime at the library, cuz one thing is for sure- books will never be bad! (Unless you're CS Lewis in Fahrenheit 451... ok, gotta stop there!)

Wait, wait... I never had a chance to love you...

Ok, so the title of this post may be a little dramatic.  I'm just struggling right now with some things, and I feel like life is flying by while I hang on by a thread.

1) 4L is growing so fast! Too fast!  He's almost four months (only 4 days til his 4 month mark) and he's already rolling over, grasping, wanting real food, drooling like a puppy, and almost sleeping through the night.  He scoots off his tummy time mat, and I'm afraid he'll crawl away one day and I won't be able to find him, or he'll get stuck under the couch, or crawl down the steps & fall. He sat up the other night, all by himself, but he hasn't done it again since then.  I just want him to stay little!  At the same time, I can't wait for him to grow up.  I'm so excited to see how advanced he will be, if he will be like me and read at an early age, what he will like, if he will like dinosaurs or trucks or animals... I am just so excited and nervous at the same time.

2) I need to chill the fuck out, seriously.  I am so hard on myself, and people have always told me this, and I know that I have always been this way.  It's just so hard to let things go.  Like I told my friend Psyn, I'm so full of guilt that if I was any more Catholic, I'd be Jewish.  I know I should take time to do things just for myself, but it is so hard to justify anything that doesn't benefit my family in some way.  I feel selfish even just thinking of having a hobby that is just for me and just for fun!  My hobbies right now include clipping coupons, cooking, and researching ways to save money.  Poke said Tupperware is a hobby, but to me it's more of a job (more on that debacle later).  I also need to figure out how to get more sleep.  My brain won't shut off because I'm so hysterical (in  my mind) over hundreds of things that I literally lay in bed and just think.  There have been far too many times in my life, especially in the last four months, that I have been awake for 24+ hours just because I was stressed over what was going through my mind.  If the brain's thinking isn't keeping me awake, my brain's need for order is doing it - forcing me to clean/organize/tidy up/etc around the house so that it gets done while 4L is sleeping and Poke is sleeping/at work.  I can't even watch my favorite TV shows, I put them on and fold laundry or read the paper or do something so that I can claim multitasking and now feel lazy.  I just feel that I need to justify staying home, even though it's financially and emotionally best for us.  I'd feel even more guilty if 4L was at daycare, so that's one thing.  On the other hand, since I'm not bringing in any money (more on that later too), I feel like everything has to be spectacular for Poke so that he doesn't think I'm just some lazy woman mooching off his hard earned paycheck.  He's NEVER said anything like that, but I'm worried that we'll get in a fight or something one day and he'll say it.  I guess I'm just paranoid.

3) Tupperware - what a mess.  I did my first bazaar last Saturday and it was a bust.  I only got two orders, which would have been okay, except for I messed up the prices and now I have to try and get other orders to fix the problem, or pay the difference ($60) myself.  Luckily my work friend is having a party next Monday, so hopefully I can add them on to those orders - as long as I GET the right kind of orders! I came home from the bazaar and cried my eyes out for 20 minutes.  I was very frustrated because I have never been good at retail and I should never have gotten involved in this selling business.  The only good thing about the bazaar was that I did pass out a lot of catalogs and collect a lot of names, so now my info is out there and maybe I'll get some kickbacks from that.

4) Student Loans! I will finally start paying, almost three years after they started to come due.  This whole time I have been unable to pay, and not because I didn't work - even when I was working full time I still couldn't pay because the total for all my loans was well over $1,000 per month.  Sallie Mae refused to work with us on anything, and eventually the forbearance ran out.  Well, about a month ago, a guy named Paul came and knocked on my door.  He handed me an envelope and said he had an opportunity for me to work at CCI part time to help pay my student loans.  I was like yeah, right, and threw the envelope in the trash.  That was on a Tuesday, and on Thursday this girl Ashley called me about it.  I told her that I wasn't going to do it because there was no way I'd be able to get a sitter and blah blah blah Poke's weird schedule blah blah blah, but then she said it would be $25/hr and I could work basically whatever hours I chose.  So I went to the orientation, saw some old friends, met the new director, and got hired.  I'm working one day a week, four hours, cuz that's all they'll let us work.  My new student loan payments are about $200/mo, which will let me have about $125 in extra money/mo, and I can save it all or give it to Poke if he needs it for bills. Yay!

5) On the 27th, 4L will be baptized in the Catholic Church.  Poke isn't any religion, but I was raised Catholic, and originally we weren't going to get him baptized.  Then I started thinking about his tiny little soul, and was overwhelmed by the thought that if something were to happen to him, where would his soul go?  I would never be able to live with myself thinking that my baby's soul was just lost in limbo.  Poke and I talked about it, and he agreed that having 4L baptized would only do good, so that was that.  Since having 4L, I've gone back to church, and it's pretty good.  A teacher once told me that Catholicism wasn't a childrens' religion, and I think now that she was right on.  I understand more now, and I care more, and I'm taking it seriously.  For the past 14-ish years, I wandered around looking for answers and trying to find my own way, and eventually I was led back here.  I guess this is where I belong.