Most first-time parents, to track their newborn’s poops, pees, and feeds, use a mobile app of some sort to track, at least for the first few months, at the request of their child’s pediatrician. A lot of parents stop tracking after the first 3-6 months. In our case, Chris didn’t want to use an app like Huckleberry because he wanted to own the data, so he went ahead and constructed a massive Google Sheet complete with a raw data tab that links to multiple charts and pivots. I added some rudimentary tabs tracking breast milk output, solids introduced, and associated pivot tables. And this is how Chris has been, in real life and real time, making “data driven decisions” for our daughter. We still update it daily; Chris wants to update it until her 1st birthday. I will likely keep tracking my breast milk output until I fully wean, and I want to keep track of her solids introduction for as long as I can.

I reference the sheet occasionally to my colleagues, and two of them this week asked to see the doc. So I shared my screen to show them, and both of them had their jaws literally drop. One of them had a look of fear on her face.

“Ohmigod, this is unreal,” one of my colleagues said. “Chris did all of this? And you guys update it… EVERY SINGLE DAY?”

I insisted that it was really just a raw data tab that needs updated, that everything else gets automatically updated. But they all looked in awe of the tabs, charts, and pivot tables, saying that this document was really “#goals” as a parent.

“I hope I can build something similar when I have a child!” a colleague marveled in total admiration.

Since Kaia’s birth, my cubital tunnel has flared up again. All the holding and picking up/putting down of a baby really wears at your hands, wrists, and arms. And then, in late March/early April, I started getting mommy thumb in one hand. Then, I got it in a second hand in May! What joy! While I’ve splinted, taken ibuprofen, and iced, the pain comes and goes. Certain things trigger it, and when I least expect it, some action I take aggravates it, and it feels like a tendon in my wrist snaps. As that probably sounds, it’s really, really painful — a sharp pain that makes you think… FML.

This afternoon while grabbing something while feeding Kaia solids, I accidentally knocked my right thumb against the wall, which then caused a sharp pain to shoot into my wrist. From that point forward, the thumb side of my right wrist has been hurting. Even putting on a sweater sleeve makes my wrist feels tender, as pathetic as it sounds. So I finally contacted Galileo Health through work to see if I can get a referral to see an orthopedic specialist who may be able to give me a steroid injection. I was hoping I could avoid it, especially with gradually weaning down my number of pumps (hand expression is definitely contributing to the thumb/wrist pain), but it seems like the condition doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon, sadly.

I wonder what it will be like, to be able to move my wrists and thumbs again without the threat of a sharp snapping pain. It will feel like I’ve been reborn if this actually works!

Before I gave birth to Kaia, I had this little fantasy in my head that I would have so much breast milk left over from her nursing sessions (thanks to using the trusty Haakaa!) that I’d already have built a small freezer stash of breast milk by the time I returned to work. I had two sample breast milk freezer bags as a part of a registry welcome gift box. I left it on the shelf of my bedroom closet as a motivation. While I had put a 100-count pack of Medela brand breast milk freezer storage bags on our baby registry, no one purchased them. And that was probably for the best because if someone had, every time I would have looked at them in the first 3 months of Kaia’s life, I’d likely feel guilt and shame that I was never able to use even one of them.

Well, fast forward to 9.5 months later of exclusive pumping and a long, unsuccessful attempt to nurse her, and we’ve finally come to a point where she is pretty much exclusively eating breast milk, along with her solids that she’s enthusiastically embraced. Her milk consumption has decreased as a result of two hefty solid meals a day, and now, every time I look at the top left shelf in the fridge, I’m a little overwhelmed when I see how much breast milk is there. I’m essentially pacing 1 to 1.5 days ahead of her eating. Breast milk is safe in the fridge for up to four days, at which point it either needs to be frozen or discarded (yes, there’s no pasteurization of breast milk being done here! And definitely no preservatives!).

“You should really consider freezing some breast milk,” the nanny said to me today, wide eyed while looking at all the bottles of breast milk in the fridge. “Kaia can’t keep up with your production!”

I looked into freezing again. I looked into the brands of pre-sterilized bags to buy and what would provide safety and also be cost effective. I also read about how much the nutrition of breast milk decreases after freezing. Fresh milk is the best milk. One day old milk is better than two days old milk, and so on. Refrigerated milk is better than frozen milk. And what goes into the freezer first should be the first to be removed for a defrosted feed. Antibodies for COVID (among other things) are still retained in frozen milk… but it starts to degrade after just one month of being frozen. So that was annoying to learn. All those moms who have huge freezer stashes… their milk is likely in the freezer for 4-6+ months. And while the nutrition doesn’t degrade entirely (it’s not like it becomes water!), it still degrades. And so that made me feel conflicted. I rather feed Kaia 2-day old refrigerated milk than feed her 2-3+ month frozen milk that has far less nutritional value due to the chilling. But I also want her to still have breast milk when she’s 15-16 months old.

I never thought I’d be conflicted about freezing breast milk. I thought I would get excited by it and be so proud of myself. But instead, I now feel confused about what I should do.

I was having a chat this week with a colleague who has two kids, ages 5 and 2. She asked me if I was still breastfeeding, and I said yes… exclusively pumping. Her eyes lit up, and she revealed to me that she exclusively pumped for both her kids. For her oldest, a boy, they had latching problems that frustrated her to no end, and he wasn’t gaining weight in the beginning, so she decided to switch to pumping completely and to forget about nursing in its entirety. She realized it liberated her so much from being the only one to feed him that when she had her second, she decided she didn’t even want to try nursing, and after birth, she asked the nurses to immediately bring a hospital grade pump to her room. She said she didn’t really care to nurse the way many moms initially intend; the direct breastfeeding didn’t really interest her anymore, and if anything, it stressed her out a lot during the first few weeks of her oldest’s life. And she didn’t want to stress over that. With exclusive pumping or “EPing” as we call it, she had total control: she knew how to build her milk supply at the most critical time, in the first two weeks of her child’s life. She didn’t have to deal with the trial and error of getting a baby to “learn” how to eat properly. She had done EPing with the first, so she knew exactly how to do it for her second and had nothing new to learn. The nurses scoffed at her, saying she really needed to at least try direct boob feeding, but she refused. And she went on to feed both of her kids pumped milk for 14 months.

I rarely meet people who talk about EPing, so it was comforting to have her share this with me, not just about her first experience, but how she willingly chose to do it for her second child. Most of the time when you hear about moms who EP, it’s because of issues like latching, poor milk transfer, weak suck — all the things I’ve heard of and have experienced first hand. So it was good to hear of someone who actually wanted to choose this path for herself and her baby.

While I’ve generally followed the Solid Starts guide and database when it comes to introducing solids and finger foods to Kaia, I haven’t always taken all of their advice. Things I haven’t followed include: avoiding introduction of “hot” spices until after age 1 (why??? If she gets mad about it, she’ll get over it at the next feed, if not sooner), and introducing one allergen at a time (yeah, so maybe I did introduce dairy AND nuts at the same time…). Some solids feeding guides suggest introducing one food at a time for three days before moving on to the next one, but Solid Starts doesn’t do that. Plus, there are only so many days in a year, so if you did that, you’d be severely limiting how many new foods your child would be introduced to, and there’s a finite amount of time before they hit their toddler years, which is inevitably what everyone says is the time that “picky eating” habits tend to descend upon us.. even with toddlers who as babies, pretty much accepted everything. So I am cognizant of this and trying to get Kaia to try as many new foods and spices as possible before she hits her first birthday.

I clearly have had my priorities, though. Things that may seem a bit unorthodox to introduce her to, like Thai chilies, cayenne, kasoor methi, or amchur, she’s already had countless times that I can’t even remember. But it wasn’t until today that I finally gave her a potato. Potato seems like a pretty normal thing to give a baby learning to eat solids, especially if it’s mashed. But lo and behold, after steaming it and serving it with a little olive oil, pepper, and nutritional yeast (the “vegan substitute” for cheese), she took about two bites of it and started swatting it away. That’s a strong sign she’s not a fan. When I tried to insist she try some, she started whining. Welp.

What was she probably saying? “Too bland!” “Boring!” “Where’s the flavor?” I served it in a big wedge. Maybe next time, I will do it mashed, or even in a curry to give to her. We shall see how it goes, but she seems to prefer big flavors over plainer foods so far.