After a brief experiment with store-brand formula, we have switched back to Enfamil. I just couldn't get over an irrational preference for the name brand, or the way the store-brand powder looked grainy and obviously artificially colored. Or the way "lactose" was the first ingredient (it's #4 on the Enfamil). Plus, although our pediatrician said store brand was OK, the pediatrician we saw when we went to a baby fair a couple of months ago said not. David said, "Sure, they all meet minimum federal requirements. Just like all dog food meets minimum nutritional requirements, but one is made of hooves and tails and another is made of organic chicken. If I want to feed my dogs Innova, I can't justify giving my baby store-brand formula." So we are another marketing success for Enfamil.
If I could get on mailing lists for Similac and others, I could go on-line and swap coupons for the brand I use. Enfamil sends me coupons worth up to $4.00; there's a lot of coupon-swapping going on at Baby Center, as you can imagine. But I am only on the Enfamil list, so I have nothing to swap. And I have discovered that in most cases you can't just sign up on the formula companies' websites; you have to get one of their samples from a doctor or hospital. Oh, well. We can afford formula for our little guy, though it is pricey--nearly $25 for a can of powder that lasts us about a week. I can see why public health folks want to encourage poor women to breastfeed, rather than, I suppose, expose them to the temptation to save money by mixing weak formula.
Adrianne offered me some leftover cans of formula they have. She bought in bulk whenever it was on sale, I guess, and then Noah went off formula cold-turkey without warning, leaving them with many unopened cans. But Carla said, "Su and David can afford formula. We should give it to a food bank." I agreed with Carla at the time, and now that I see how much it really costs to feed a baby formula, I agree with her even more.
Last night at bedtime Eric was a little fussy, and since I was sleepy I decided to take him up to bed and see if I could cheer him up there. I put him down on the bed and lay down beside him, and he was instantly asleep. I guess he is learning the routine. And today, I swear, on two different occasions he quit fussing just from seeing me or hearing me come into the room.
He also sat and looked at his hand last night, which is something he is "supposed" to be doing at about this age but which he hadn't previously done. And David and Scott both saw him smile. He also looked in the direction of the sound of a rattle, and followed a moving rattle with his eyes. He did all these things in close proximity to each other while in his bouncy seat, and I got so excited that one of the fellas, I don't remember which, told me to chill out before I frightened him. I wonder if Eric's clinginess yesterday had anything to do with getting ready to leap whole-heartedly into the fabulously stimulating world of the seven-week-old.
By bedtime last night, I was actually feeling a little tired of having a baby attached to me, despite the break I always get in the evenings when Scott and David take him. I thought, Holy Cow, this baby has to be with someone constantly for the forseeable future, and that someone is almost always going to be me. I was just tired, and needed a good night's sleep, but I do find that, as much as I am enjoying my days with Eric, I look forward to Saturday and Sunday when I can share him with David throughout the day.
"needed a good night's sleep": and amazingly, I pretty much got one. Eric continues to start his nights with a good 5 or 6 hour break between feedings (I don't always get to sleep all that time, because his final evening feeding is often earlier than my bedtime). Then we get up between 2 and 3, and then again between 6 and 7, and then we usually go back to bed and cap off our night with another 90 minutes to two hours, and roll out of bed around 9 or 9:30. I like 9 better because I like to be up early enough to see David before he and Scott leave for work. This has been our schedule since last week, and the cumulative effect is that sleep-wise I feel almost but not quite like a normal person. I like it that Eric's long period is in the beginning of the night, because I always used to find the first night-time feeding, which often came only an hour or 90 minutes after I had gotten to bed, the hardest. If I was going to catch myself dozing off while feeding him, that was always the feeding at which it happened, because I hadn't gotten any sleep under my belt. Once I've got four hours in me, Eric can go on an every-three-hour schedule for the rest of the night and morning and it's fine.
Today I have hardly managed to do any of the things on my to-do list, though I have done dishes, brined some chicken breasts to cook for dinner, done my laundry, entered receipts in the money program...what else? It doesn't sound like much, and it's all so invisible, which is of course the curse of the housewife, that the work is only visible when it's not done. The sweeping we haven't done lately, for instance, is manifesting as mountainous drifts of dog hair which are being heaped up in certain places by the prevailing fan and air conditioning winds.
I hear Eric stirring, which means it will be anywhere from a few minutes to an hour until he wakes up hungry. I think I will go throw the chicken in the oven while I can.
Posted by Su Penn at July 19, 2003 10:22 AM | TrackBack