Wow, you guys. I cannot thank you enough for the outpouring of support and kind words that you shared on my last post sharing some of the mom struggles I’m having right now. It means so much to me to know I’m clearly not alone in this, and I know that many other women will read those comments and know that they are not alone, either. This mom stuff is so hard and the best thing we can do is to be honest about it, support each other, and share advice and encouragement – so thank you! Riese says thank you, too, because all your support really helped to turn things around yesterday for her mommy. 🙂
Things are looking up on all fronts over here.
First, we had a better night last night, so having gotten 5 hours of sleep vs. 1 hour of sleep like the night before makes everything feel WAYYY more manageable. Second, we got a great lead on a nanny thanks to one of my blog readers who saw yesterday’s post – what luck! We interviewed her last night and really liked her, so she is actually here right now babysitting as a (paid, obviously) trial run. I don’t think she can start for a few weeks, but that may be a blessing in disguise because we kind of need to figure out these feeding issues first anyway so I’m not spending all day (just some of the day, lol) breastfeeding, and we are lucky my mom can fill in in the meantime so I can continue to get some work done and start slowly meeting my AnneTheRD nutrition clients (just ongoing clients, not new ones yet) again. (A couple of you asked if I would consider just staying home with Riese – unfortunately DC is so expensive that we definitely need my income to keep living here, so no work is not an option at all… plus, I enjoy my work and want to keep it up, although I’m feeling fortunate I’ll have the flexibility to hopefully compress my schedule a bit so I can still spend time with Riese on weekdays.)
The third thing that is looking up is that I have a lactation consultant coming to our house for a private session on Thursday! Many of you suggested looking for a tongue/lip tie to see if that’s causing the shallow latch, and she said she is able to check for that, and we will also do a weighted feed to see how much Riese is getting at once, etc. I’m hoping it will help us to figure out a plan moving forward – either way, it will be nice to have a professional check things out and share some advice/thoughts because I clearly have no idea what I’m doing, and neither does Riese. 😉 I’m also going to ask her about a nipple shield, which a bunch of you recommended as well!
Anyway! My mom was over yesterday all day long which was incredibly helpful both logistically and emotionally. On the food front, I was glad we had a ton of leftover Chicken Tortilla Soup (that Matt and I made in the instant pot on Sunday evening… stay tuned for the recipe, I’ll share it next Tuesday!) on hand so my mom and I had something to eat for lunch! So good.
Another really good meal I wanted to share with you that we ate last week for dinner was this Sheet Pan Chicken Sausage with Fennel and Apples that Matt’s mom made us while she was here! It was soooo good… another recipe from Southern Living. I’m going to have to start looking at their website more because the two recipes Matt’s mom made us last week from Southern Living were both really good!
I always forget how good fennel is – I need to cook with it more often. We had the dish with some roasted potatoes and salads on the side – not the best looking photo since it was dark out, but it hit the spot.
I’m going to look around online for a couple recipes to try this week – I thought we had ordered a Blue Apron to come but turns out I spaced and skipped this week without meaning to… whoops! Oh well. I’m really into sheet pan recipes right now – any recommendations/faves to share? (My Sheet Pan Asian Salmon is always a fave, but we’ve had that a lot lately… time to mix it up.)
And… that’s all I have for you guys today! I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post that moving forward (both now and once we have childcare) I’m planning to have Wednesdays as my day off from work where I spend the day with Riese. So that means that I’ll no longer be posting on the blog on Wednesdays moving forward. I know you guys will understand! So I will see you back here on Thursday. 🙂 Thank you again for your support!