u/curlycattails

Multiple times I have thought, “I wanna read a fic about XYZ,” only to scroll and scroll and change the search filters, and even though it seems like an obvious idea that multiple people would’ve written about, it doesn’t seem to exist.

So, whatever, I’ll just write those fics myself but surely I can’t be the first person who wanted them to exist?

My baby was born in January and came home at the end of April. I handled everything so well. But processing this isn't linear.

I'm just feeling so blah nowadays and can't stop thinking about our NICU stay, and further back to my traumatic emergency C-section and horrible pregnancy. All these one year anniversaries are passing by. This time last year, I'd already had a few episodes of severe bleeding, been to the ER once, and had multiple scans to check on my subchorionic hematoma. I was also supposed to take it easy, so I was stuck at home all the time.

It's crazy too because at the time, even though I was anxious, I've always been a positive person so I just assumed everything would clear up and I'd have a normal full term pregnancy (like my first two pregnancies). That's what my midwives kept telling me - subchorionic hematomas almost always go away on their own. I was one of the unlucky few. One year ago I had NO idea what was coming.

I guess it's just hard looking back on it because I was a different person then. I mean, I'm happy with how my life is now, and I don't take anything for granted, but I will never be the same.

I was baking yesterday, had to weigh some butter in a saucepan so I put the saucepan on the kitchen scale. It was 1080 grams. My baby was born at 1060 grams. I just held the saucepan in my hands for a minute remembering how it felt to pick up my preemie for the first time.

Winter will be even worse, as far as anniversaries go. The week before Christmas was nightmarish; that was the closest I came to losing her. I was 22 weeks and a few days, bleeding heavily and cramping/contracting. I was in and out of the hospital but obviously there wasn't much they could do. Then it was just modified bed rest and counting the days, hoping to make it as far as possible.

That's it, that's the post. Just some rambling. I have always disliked this season because it's cold and dark and rainy. And now all of that reminds me of the hardest thing I've ever gone through.

The sink was full of dinner dishes. There was an empty pesto jar beside the pans on the stove. The table was covered in crumbs, crumpled napkins, dirty dishes and the high chair tray.

Bottles and pump parts were lined up beside the sink.

Then there was the overflowing basket of laundry that I've been neglecting for the past few days.

My 4 year old cleaned up her toys before bed while my 2 year old dumped out another bin of toys. So the living room floor was still covered in toys. On the coffee table there was a colouring book and a bin of crayons. My 2 year old had thoughtfully added some crayon art to the surface of the table.

I realized I forgot to empty the pee out of the potty.

There was another half-finished bottle just lying in the middle of the floor.

And of course the floor needs to be vacuumed. It usually needs to be vacuumed about 30 minutes after vacuuming.

I can't be the only one who lives like this, right?

I'm kind of disgusted with myself but also just exhausted from trying to keep 3 kids happy and healthy every day.

Has anyone ever used breast milk to make ice cream?

I have a Ninja Creami.

I have a slight oversupply. My baby is 7 months actual/4 months adjusted, so we'll be starting solids sometime in the next couple months depending on signs of readiness. She barely nurses, mostly gets bottles and even that can be a struggle sometimes so I'm hoping she takes to solids quickly.

Anyways, that thought just popped into my head today and I wondered if my baby would enjoy consuming her milk in the form of ice cream lol.

Okay, so we used to watch Daniel Tiger on CBC Gem, which is free.

Then CBC Gem removed a couple of the seasons. A few months later, they removed a few more seasons. Now, the only available seasons are 6 and 7.

I thought that sucks but we can watch the other ones on Youtube. The CBC Kids channel had a playlist for each season, which I'd saved to my playlists. Well, my daughter requested Daniel Tiger yesterday so I went to the playlists and they're all empty. The channel removed the episodes!

So I randomly mentioned that to my husband and he went searching. Apple TV apparently has seasons 1, 3, and 5 available for purchase, and Internet Archive has a few episodes...

I don't get it. Why is there nowhere to stream it? Why do they make these things so hard? I don't get why it even had to be removed in the first place.

My husband is just planning to pirate it and add it to our Plex server lmao.

Not sure if 27+1 counts as a micropreemie but I’m looking for answers in and around that range.

She had a really smooth NICU journey. We started oral feeds at 34 weeks. She latched right away and sucked. The next day we tried again and she got some milk. But to make a long story short, she didn’t make any progress. Every time we did a weighted feed, she only got 5-10 ml. So we switched to bottles to get her home. Even then, she struggled a ton with bottles and narrowly avoided coming home on an NG tube.

Even at home she struggled to take her volumes, took a long time to eat and needed fortified feeds. Her team advised me to not nurse her very often because it would just tire her out and expend calories. I nursed her a few times a week but I was so busy with my older two kids, pumping, and washing everything… By the time she was 5 months actual/2 months adjusted she was finally taking her bottles pretty quickly, and I started nursing her again but she didn’t want to nurse anymore. She’d pull away and cry.

I bought a supplemental nursing system and have been trying off and on for the past 3-4 weeks. I’ve gotten her to latch a few times. Most of the time she fusses at the breast and when I bounce her and rock her to get her comfortable, she just lays there sort of latched and falls asleep. She hardly ever sucks anymore because she’s lost the automatic suck reflex.

I feel so much regret for not nursing her more regularly when she was smaller 😭 She used to love nursing even though she couldn’t get much milk. At the same time, she was struggling so much to eat and I just wanted her to grow. I was just trying to survive each day and get everything done. I nursed my older two girls and I really want to nurse Matilda too. It would save me so much time in the day to not have to pump and wash all the parts. It’d be so convenient when we’re going out.

Right now I’m trying the SNS 2-3 times a day and just trying to give her positive experiences at the breast. But maybe she’s already too old and won’t go back to it now… She's 6.5 months actual/3.5 months adjusted.

She was born at 27 weeks. She's now almost 6 months old actual, almost 3 months corrected. So I've been exclusively pumping for almost half a year now.

When she was about 34 weeks gestation we tried oral feeds for the first time. She surprised me by latching and sucking right away! The second time, she actually got some milk! It seemed like we were doing great, but as we kept practicing and started doing weighted feeds, she only ever got 5 ml. Every single time.

Finally we switched to exclusively bottles and even then, it was HARD. She got so tired and had to take lots of breaks. We were almost sent home on a NG tube but managed to get her volumes high enough to be sent home without it.

From then on, her volumes didn't really increase. I did latch her once in a while just for practice, but getting her to finish her 2 oz bottles was hard enough.

At her appointments I'd do weighted feeds and she was able to get about 20 ml. But they said to focus on bottles more because she really needed to gain weight faster.

Within the past couple weeks, she has finally started to want bigger bottles and finish them faster. So I tried getting her back to the breast but she'll hardly latch anymore. She'll cry and pull away.

So far, here's what I've been trying:

- switching from Dr. Browns to Philips Avent (so that she has to keep sucking to get milk, it doesn't just drip out)

- going back to using the nipple shield

- supplemental nursing system (I think I will make more use of it when she's showing less aversion to nursing)

- lots of skin to skin in the cradle hold position, rocking her and singing to her so she feels positive associations with being in that position

Does anyone else have any tips or experiences to share? Since she's almost 3 months corrected I'm worried that I've "missed the window" and she will have a bottle preference forever :( I've gotten used to the schedule of exclusively pumping but it's so time consuming. I would love to nurse her.

She used to like nursing, but wasn't strong enough. Now she's strong enough, but she doesn't like nursing...

I have a 4 year old, 2 year old, and 5 month old (preemie so she’s been home for only 2 months).

My kids haven’t been getting bathed as often as they really should because we just couldn’t quite get our shit together in the evenings. My husband always washes the dishes and bottles after dinner. I’m often pumping or feeding the baby. By the time we get all done it’s almost bedtime and we tell ourselves we’ll do the bath tomorrow 🥴

Tonight the baby had already eaten and I’d pumped before dinner. So I herded all the kids into the bathroom, bathed the baby first, dressed her and then tied the stretchy wrap and put her in it. Then I bathed my big girls, shampooed and showered their hair, conditioned it, the works. The baby fell asleep in the wrap while I was showering them. So she got her nap when she needed it, and everybody got clean 😭

When I type it all out it doesn’t sound that impressive but it felt kinda like a supermom moment! I never had much trouble doing a bath for two, but with three we were always like, what do we do with the baby?? And I think I’ve finally found a system that works.

We were very blessed to have a smooth, uneventful NICU stay. So as hard as it was, I didn't really feel traumatized by it, although I do think of it often (she's been home for a couple months now).

The worst parts weren't the beeps or wires. Going home without my baby was really hard but even that wasn't the worst part because at least I knew she was safe. But I was reminiscing about stuff today, because it was her baptism.

It was my third pregnancy so I assumed it was going to be another routine pregnancy. But at 6 weeks I started bleeding. Then the next morning, I started cramping. I went to the ER to see what was going on. I was so nervous, I couldn't eat a bite all day. I was literally shaking on the exam table. All I could think about was that I must be miscarrying and I would have to live the rest of my life wondering who this baby would have been. At first the ultrasound tech said the baby was measuring like 2 weeks behind and I started sobbing, but then she did an internal ultrasound and the baby was only measuring a few days behind. So then I was diagnosed with a subchorionic hematoma.

I'd heard of a SCH before and figured they're pretty common and shouldn't be that big a deal. My midwives told me they almost always resolve on their own.

I had a few more heavy bleeds in the first trimester. I attended my brother's wedding, but started bleeding on the way there. Had to turn around, go back home and clean myself up. Then I filled 3 or 4 pads that evening and nearly decided to go to the hospital before it finally subsided.

Then I didn't bleed for a long time, but at my anatomy scan, I was surprised to find out the SCH was still there, still very large, and right over my cervix.

Two weeks later, I woke up in the middle of the night, literally covered in blood, and cramping. Braxton Hicks were coming regularly too. So I called an Uber and headed to L&D. I was admitted for the day and they did all kinds of tests to see if I was going into preterm labour, if baby was in distress, etc. I was lying there in the hospital bed looking at the bassinet in the corner of the room just knowing I wasn't supposed to be there. They told me if she were born now, they wouldn't resuscitate her.

They told me to come back every time I bled, but I bled every day so I came back to L&D for four days in a row. That was the week of Christmas so I was literally in L&D bleeding on Christmas eve. Finally the head OB came to talk with me and said that I would probably bleed every day for the rest of the pregnancy, so I should only come in if it was large clots, extreme pain, or regular contractions. He was concerned that my pains were caused by a partial placental abruption, but we couldn't confirm it. Christmas eve was when it really hit me that I could actually lose her. I cried so hard.

For days I could hardly think about anything else, I was just white-knuckling it until I got to 24 weeks. Literally counting down the days. I also put myself on "couch rest" and was doing as little activity as possible (not easy with my other two kids at home). There was one night where I woke up and I felt my belly tighten into a contraction, and it was painful, and I was trying to figure out if it was painful enough that it could be an abruption... and then that was all I could think about and I couldn't stop shaking. I guess maybe it was a panic attack. My husband had to put his legs on top of my legs so I wouldn't shake anymore.

After that I refused to sleep in my bed anymore. I was bleeding every single night and I just couldn't do it anymore. I slept in the recliner in the living room. I remember texting my mom that it was like a nightmare but in real life. The fear was like nothing I've ever felt.

I made it to viability and could breathe a little sigh of relief. I had extra ultrasounds and blood tests. I saw MFM and they said everything looked great.

Two days later, I had another painful contraction that just held on for like 5 or 10 minutes. I crawled into bed and laid there waiting for it to go away. When I got up, I went to the bathroom but my pad was soaked with clear fluid. I think I knew then but I told myself I'd go get checked "just in case my water broke."

Yep. My water broke at 27 weeks exactly.

I had the steroid shots, suppositories to stop the contractions, all kinds of blood tests, got sent by ambulance to the big hospital with the higher level NICU, baby was having worse and worse decels throughout the next day so I had an emergency C-section and the rest is history.

As horrible as it was to spend 3 months in the NICU, after I gave birth I felt this tiny bit of relief like "at least it's finally over." Not having any control over what was happening and not knowing the outcome was super scary for me.

Anyways, that's why, in my situation, pregnancy was actually worse than the NICU stay.

I'm 5 months postpartum from having my third baby. She was born at 27 weeks so you'd think I'd "bounce back," but considering she's my third, my belly was already pretty big by the time she was born.

She was in the NICU for 3 months during which I didn't do any exercise or even think about my body shape/size at all.

Now she's home and we're back to "real life" and doing swim lessons with my older two kids. There was no way I was going to squeeze into my old bathing suit. I bought a new two-piece bathing suit a while back but in my old size, assuming it wouldn't be much longer before I could fit into it. When it came in the mail I tried it on and it did not look good. So I've been wearing my maternity swimsuit even though I had a baby months ago...

Today I finally decided to try on the new two-piece again. It did fit but the waistband is really tight so I've got this roll of fat and loose skin that sticks out above the waistband. Then below the waistband there's a big pooch as well.

Idk it was easy to give myself grace for the first few months because I literally just had a baby, she was in the NICU, it was winter and I could wear sweatpants every day. Now it's summer and I still can't fit into most of my stuff. I'm only 10 lbs over pre-pregnancy weight but I think I've got some diastasis recti going on. I do a 10 minute exercise to help with that, most days, when I can find the time lol.

The only thing that made me feel better was thinking about all the old guys with big beer bellies that sit in the hot tub. I mean I've had three kids so why should I feel bad about having a mom tummy? Still, it's frustrating to look in the mirror nowadays...

I remember going down to see my 27-weeker for the first time and I had this weird feeling like I was looking at somebody else’s baby. I wasn’t even a first time mom but it felt like a totally new experience. I knew what to do with an 8 pound baby - I didn’t know what to do with a 2 pound baby. She slept 99% of the time and I wanted to touch her but I was worried I’d bother her. I wondered if she heard me talking to her or if she even knew I’m her mom.

Eventually I realized that amongst all the nurses, I was her only constant. I was the one who was there every day. And babies remember your voice and your heartbeat from when they were in the womb. I’m pretty sure she recognized other voices too … the day I ended up having my C-section, my girls came to visit me in the hospital before she was born and I felt her wake up and start kicking when she heard her big sister’s voice. Babies also know their mother’s smell.

So when you hold your baby, they know it’s mom. They can hear you and smell you. You keep coming back to hold them and that makes them feel safe.

My baby was born at 27+1. She's now 4.5 months old, 1.5 months corrected.

She came home on fortified breast milk. We were doing 2 tsp formula for every 90 ml with the hope that we'd be able to decrease the fortifier as she started taking larger volumes.

Only... she didn't really start taking higher volumes. She stayed pretty steady at around 50-60 ml per feed.

A couple weeks ago her dietician said I could try decreasing the fortification to see if that would help her take more in her bottles. So we went to 1 tsp formula for every 90 ml.

She started taking a little more - she went from around 450 ml per day to 500 ml per day. But it only lasted a couple days, and then we started dealing with a serious bottle aversion. I guess I was pushing her too hard. That was last week; and we spent a couple days really taking all the pressure off for feeds, doing positive touch on her face and head, etc. She got better and started taking her feeds like normal again.

But yesterday and today, she just seems totally uninterested in her feeds and will only take like 30-40 ml per feed. It's like she only wants to eat the bare minimum so she doesn't feel TOO hungry but isn't really full either.

Idk what else to do. She doesn't have any tongue ties or latch issues. She can breastfeed a little, too, so I nurse sometimes for comfort/practice, but she doesn't transfer much. I thought at some point she'd just start drinking more.

This is pretty much blasphemy in this sub.

My 4 year old started laughing like Bluey and it’s so annoying. She started complaining that everything is “so boring” and “you always make us do so many boring things” which I realized is a direct quote from the show.

I’ve tried watching it with them and I don’t find it particularly entertaining, myself. My kids laugh super hard at it though.

It’s a well made show but I can’t stand them copying the characters’ mannerisms 😒

For years I’ve been seeing posts on the new parents sub and beyond the bump asking “How does anyone have more than one kid???”

I never felt like that. I always thought, “I’ll just figure it out when it comes to it.” After my second child I felt the same.

Now that my third came home a few weeks ago?? I get it. Every day it feels like I’m at my limit. I’m getting just barely enough sleep to function. My baby spits up a lot so the laundry is relentless. There are endless bottles to wash. My big kids (4 and almost 2) take out so many toys and it’s like pulling teeth to get them to clean up. We were in survival mode while my baby was in the NICU for 3 months so I’m trying to get back to normal - cooking healthy food again, TV detox, trying to teach my 4 year old to wipe her own bum and some preschool stuff, trying to potty train my toddler, trying to transition my baby from pumping to breastfeeding…

I do on some level feel like the new baby fits right in - we’re already used to handling multiple kids so getting out of the house isn’t too bad, although I have to time it around pumping/feeding times. My two girls entertain each other while I’m dealing with the baby. But it’s that “extra” stuff like education and basic life skills, as well as actually playing with my kids, that feels like it’s lacking. All I do all day is feed the baby, pump, do laundry, wash dishes, and tidy.

I do want another baby in a few years, for some reason 🥴😂 but I’m just like … how???

I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets flashbacks now and then. My baby has been home for a few weeks but there are some things that I can't forget.

- When I change her diaper, I remember how surreal it felt to change her diaper when she was only 2 pounds. I couldn't believe how tiny the micropreemie diaper was when I first saw it.

- My husband took a photo of her the moment she was born. She had this wincing expression on her face, with her brows furrowed; I'm sure it felt so bright and cold all of a sudden. Now that she's bigger, she makes that exact same expression when she's about to fuss or cry.

- Last night I rocked her to sleep in the recliner and remembered how I slept in that recliner for a couple weeks back in December. I was bleeding every night and just praying to make it to 24 weeks. At some point I couldn't bear to sleep in bed anymore so I moved to the recliner instead.

It's not too painful for me to think of those things anymore - I feel normal. But it's weird to just get into your normal routine with a newborn (this is my third child) and then all of a sudden remember what a traumatic journey it was to even get here...

My baby is almost 4 months old, almost one month corrected. So she’s the size of a newborn and looks just like a newborn.

We’ve been taking her out more lately and of course strangers see her and want to make small talk. But it’s a more complicated answer than they were expecting! I don’t mind explaining but sometimes I feel weird saying she’s almost 4 months.

Do you explain that your baby was a preemie or do you just say their corrected age?

Do you think there’s certain personalities that thrive with many kids and others that can’t handle it?

I’m asking because I think some aspects of my personality lend itself quite well to having a large family.

For example:

- I’m an optimist. I always tend to assume that things will work out somehow.

- I’m pretty type B. I don’t really get too stressed, anxious, or angry.

- Mess and noise don’t bother me too much.

Anyone else like me? Or are you the opposite and still thrive with a large family?