Princess Fart-a-lot

Well, it's been another week...and another week of a very gassy baby. What gives? We've tried three different bottles, the surplus of which clutter our cabinets in what little space we have left for the baby supplies and we've switched formula from regular to soy, hoping that would help. I'm not quite sure it has. We've spent $15 for a bottle of Gripe Water which is supposed to be this wonder drug of a concoction but has yet to really work. Oh yeah, and if we were to use it at every feeding, that $15 bottle would last probably a week. Hey, if it worked, I wouldn't care if it was more...

We've been supplementing with formula since she's been born because she had jaundice in the hospital and they told us she should eat as much as she can...hard to do when your milk isn't it, so they gave us some formula. Plus, we thought that she would sleep more during the night with the formula...So, we decided to give her formula at night for all of our sakes. Little did we know this superior formula from the hospital was giving her gas. During pregnancy, companies are all too happy to give you free stuff, especially formula and I'm not talking a little baggy of formula either... I'm talkin' the full on cans. So, I started collecting them and had about five different formula cans by the end. Low and behold one of them was soy!!! So between the changing of bottles and switching to soy her gas problems should be solved right? Um, yeah, no. That would be too easy. Motherhood isn't meant to be that easy. But we found a decent bottle that seemed to help with the gas and we assumed the soy would have to help somehow...maybe it was...but something else was lurking around that distracted us from the actual problem at hand - the fact that her farts smelled like a dead animal crawled inside of her and died!

My beautiful, perfect child could now put any frat boy to shame with her farts... Holy moly... And they're not silent but deadly ones either...Oh no...they vibrate the couch and little wiffs of it comes out of her diaper slowly so you have to endure the smell longer than should be legal!

Regardless, this has been our life. However, she IS starting to sleep more at night, only waking up twice before 6am usually, which is great...!

Last night I came to a simple (yet with my mommy brain it wasn't so clear until now) conclusion: stop the formula and exclusively give her breast milk. Duh! Maybe it's the formula...breast milk is the easiest to digest and sometimes formula isn't, even soy. So, last night we started breast milk exclusively. It's not like it was keeping her asleep longer so why bother. Hopefully that'll help.

Oh another milestone (remind me to add that to her calendar): we took her out of the bed and put her in the pack-n-play. We were expecting a bassinett from someone and we never received it so we're using the pack-n-play. She did really well and it allowed us to sleep without worrying of rolling on top of her...Now, I just have to worry about her smothering herself in the pack-n-play or choking and my not knowing it...I guess the worrying never stops.

This morning, another epiphony: if we take out formula, that'll help, but what if we only use bottles half the time? What if I could finally get her to latch on and breast feed during the day. There's no air coming out of me (that I know of ) so maybe that'll help. Well, to my surprise, she actually did it. I used the shield I got in the hospital, which is plastic so it'll feel the same as a bottle and not piss her off too much. She totally went to town... I'm still figuring out the process and different holds, but maybe that'll help. I certainly have nothing else to do during the day so why not spend most of it with a baby on my boob until we both get it under control? Maybe that'll help...

oh yeah, and did I mention that the grocery store had her soy formula on clearance for $7.50 a can (half off) and I bought four? Too bad we're not using formula anymore...

2 packs of Avent bottles - $40
1 Playtex bottle - $5
6 Dr. Brown bottles - $30
4 cans of formula - $30
1 bottle of Gripe Water - $15
Relief from crying and atrocious smelling gas - priceless.


Until a new adventure,

Liz