Newest Mommy Worry ...

Or should I say worries? Again, they are surrounding food. These bother me so much because I am complete charge of what she eats really. Mike just follows my lead. All the "rules" have changed since we were babies, so our parents are a huge help and we don't see the doctor often enough to ask him. Mike said, well ask our home visitor. Well, last time finger foods came up with her, she said we were doing fine and not to rush it and to just continue on with what we were doing. That made me feel like she though we shouldn't really move forward. I don't want to push Natalie, but she loves her finger foods. I want her to have more of what she loves. Plus, I've read that giving variety in taste and texture is good for her and giving her just the same stuff doesn't provide her with that. And, as I told Mike, I'm hear alone all day. I don't have much else to think about.

So, I've been worrying really about two things. First of all, that same worry which pretty much never goes away: Is she getting enough breast milk. Its been bothering me particularly today because my breasts have felt very empty almost all day. But, this could be because some times at night I have her both sides, which affects how they feel in the morning. Anyway, I'm still wondering if I should add the afternoon session again. But, when I did that yesterday, it didn't make much difference. She's been very clingy, but in a new way. She will pretty much hug me. She sucks her thumb and rests her head against me. It used to be a very rare thing, but now she does it multiple times a day. The last two days, we've had sessions where she has crawled all over me putting her head down and sucking her thumb at various times. Yesterday, I thought it might have been because she was still tired or needed comfort, because it was after a nap and she had a bit of a cold, but tonight she did it in the evening and it seemed like it was about fun for her. I have this feeling that this snuggle is her saying she wants to nurse, but nursing yesterday didn't make it much better. Maybe this snuggling is just to replace the closeness of nursing? I'm fine with that, I just wish I knew. I like snuggling with her.

My other worry is about getting her solid diet more established. Particularly adding non-jar veggies and meat. As of yet, she has not had meat. She gets yogurt, which is on the protein area of the food chart from the doctor, so I guess its not a total lack of that food group, but I feel like things should be more balanced. I've wanted to give her finger food veggies for a while now, but we often don't eat veggies at dinner because Mike and I will have meat and a side. We really don't need a second side because we get left overs and then those don't always get eaten. But, we really only eat frozen veggies and we eat green beans and corn. I like broccoli and carrots, but Mike really doesn't and they don't come in convenient freezer bags either. I'll also eat spinach, beets, zucchini, and asparagus none of which Mike really eats. (I used to eat Lima beans, too, until I had a random bad experience with them. And as far as meat that we eat, well, we eat a lot of hamburger and sausage like stuff. It doesn't seem very healthy when we look at it that way. Especially now that it is summer and we don't want to bake chicken, ham, pork roasts, or fish because it just heats up the house worse.

Mike gives me a hard time for using Yahoo Answers to get advice about Natalie, but really I don't have very many other people to ask to get a real response. He thinks I take too much stock in what people say. I don't feel I do. Just because I repeat to him what people have told me doesn't mean that I feel it is gospel. Besides, these are real women with kids. Who else am I going to ask? I'm not going to call the doctor because they are just going to tell me what the hand out they gave me said. Also, the two times solids have come up when we've been at the doctors it was when we saw two different doctors in the practice and guess what? They told me two different things! I have only a few friends with kids and they are all friends who aren't very close. I could ask them, but that would but its not much more reliable and not as immediate. I know that there are so many ways of doing things and that I really probably can't mess things up, but its hard to be the sole responsible one over what goes into her body. I'm in charge of when we try a new food and what that new food is. I'm also in charge of how we give it to her. Usually, I"m hear alone when she tries something new, too. In fact, except on the weekends, I feed her all three meals by myself, and I usually do the majority of the feeding on the weekends, too. In a lot of ways, I wish that I could just put Mike in charge of it for a bit. Let him figure out how we are going to expose her to many different kinds of foods with the diet we eat now. Even if we don't rush it now, eventually, we are going to need to adapt or I'm going to making her separate food in the middle of the afternoon, which just seems silly since she has to sit with us when we eat anyway.