Some Stuff Happened

I'm super tired tonight so I'm just going to give you some of the basics. I pumped 18 oz today. That's pretty good if I do say so myself. I pumped 9 on first break, 6 on lunch, and 3 on last break. I think my body is just getting used to pumping and that is why it does so well. Baby is screaming. Gotta go feed him and put us to bed. :)

Oy, Mondays

It's funny but now that I have been getting up at 5 am for 4 weeks, I am not really "awake" until I've had my coffee. I am kind of zombie like until I have my first glass and after my second (I make myself an Iced Mocha every morning for the drive to work) I feel like I am ready for the day. The drive to work was pretty good. I was just really tired today and I don't really know why. I guess I went to bed an hour late last night and then I wore myself out cleaning yesterday (and donating half my shoe collection). Speaking of cleaning, I have such a good little house husband. ;) He did dishes all last week, some laundry, and kept up with the cloth diapers. He kept our place tidy and made me dinner. Finally in the kitchen where he belongs.

Pumping was good today. I think it is just starting out the week pumping that makes me pump a little less than Friday. I only pumped 13 oz today. There is a new woman pumping now at work. She has a 7 week old baby in the NICU. He was born at 25 weeks. She returned to work temporarily so she could have some time with him when he comes home from the hospital. That is so awesome that she is pumping and feeding her baby. She told me she isn't allowed to attempt actual breastfeeding until he is 34 weeks (gestational age). I hope she keeps at it. She said she needs to buy a pump because the one she is renting from the hospital is $60 a month! Isn't that insane??? Pumps like the one she has are between $80-$300. For a little bit more money she could own it and keep it.

Alrighty, ladies and gents. Nighty, Night.

Fridays Are Overrated!

Today started off pretty good. Driving to work was awesome. We hit almost no traffic. I arrived at my CBs house early and she told me to come in. I was able to see the inside of her house and her girls. I have to say that her house looks bigger inside then from the front. It really is deceiving. We left for work and driving went pretty smoothly. You learn a lot about someone when you are in the car with them every day for an hour to and from work. Since we arrived at work a half an hour early again we forgot to clock in. Not that it matters that much but it's just funny that when you are late or on time all you can think about is clocking in and when you're early it's not even on your mind. We got to see what we will actually be doing with all the steps and systems open. We made blind calls to a bunch of numbers. It was funny. My CB was able to understand a man with a heavy Spanish accent and I thought he was talking a completely different language. Guess I have to brush up on my accents a little.

Pumping went well today. I pumped 9 oz on my first break, 4 on lunch and 3 on my last break. We got an hour lunch today so while I was pumping, my friends went to McDonald's and bought me 2 McDoubles. It's still outrageous that they charge an extra $.29 for a piece of cheese. Wendy's gives you it all for $.99. Anyway I was happy that I got another 16 oz today. I think I pump more at the end of the week than at the beginning. I forgot to see if the pumping in the dark helps me pump more. I got more than yesterday when I was in the dark so maybe it has something to do with the end of the week and being more consistent with it. I might try it on Monday. On Fridays I am a little more run down so I don't have the energy to think about that kind of stuff.

Cole had an appointment today and he ended up weighing 22.3 oz and is 28.5 inches. He is growing very nicely and he has only been drinking breast milk. He just started eating rice cereal when I went back to work. The doctor says that we should put him on a veggie or fruit every week now. So he will be eating rice cereal, a fruit/veggie and breast milk every day. They also said he is ahead in his development so I am very proud of him.

Xyler weighs 29 lbs and is 34.8 inches. Of course he is a lot more active than Cole so he has gone down in weight a little. They said that he is very active for a two year old and way ahead of most toddlers his age physically. He is right on track for his communication skills.

My drive home from work was a nightmare. We were paid today so I went to deposit my check in my bank and I then drove to the gas station. My card was denied both at the pump and inside twice. I called my husband and asked him to call our bank. My CB said lets go to a 7-11 to cash her check and the one we went to didn't have that capability. While I was waiting for Anthony to get back to me I figured I would just try to pump at 7-11 and sure enough it worked. When I called him he said he hadn't even gotten a hold of a live person yet. By the time we left Highlands Ranch it was 5:30 and I didn't get home until 7:00 pm. I'm worn out from my long day. I hope my direct deposit kicks in soon so I don't have to worry about that crap anymore. :D

Have a good weekend and I will see y'all on Monday!

In The Dark

Yesterday was a day like any other. I pumped 13 oz. We learned a lot of information in class yesterday and my brain was fried. I wanted to just veg out and watch YouTube videos last night. About the only interesting part of my day yesterday was there was a firetruck and a tow truck in the HOV lane last night on my way home. Don't know why and don't care but it was interesting to see that.

Today was crazy. We got to work 30 minutes early and there was almost no traffic this morning. We didn't learn quite so much today. Plus it's Thursday which means tomorrow is payday and jeans day. I'm excited to dress down. :) I wonder if tomorrow is going to be as long as last Friday was... Hopefully not. I got the days off I want when I go to the night shift. Friday and Saturday. I think I am the only person in the class that got a weekend day and a weekday together. I'm excited for my schedule. I am also excited to make more money when I finally start my real shift.

Today was the scariest pumping day I've experienced. I get into the room on my first break and just as I got everything set up, dun dun dun..... the lights went out. Okay so it's not that scary but I am a little scared of the dark. This is a secret room inside of a bathroom, mind you, so they don't have back up generators or anything in this room. I felt like I was blind and I had to feel my way to my purse and feel around my purse to find my phone. When I finally pulled it out it barely lit the room up. I grabbed my purse and ran out of the room with the key and left my stuff behind. I ran out to the trainers who were smoking outside and had no idea what was happening. I told them what was happening and they said wait for the power to come back on. Well, the break gets over and still no power (except back up lights and computers). They let me have an extra break and the training manager gave me her iPhone with a flashlight app for lighting. I went in and got the 3 batteries out of my bag and put them in my pump. It required four. I was just about to go ask the front desk (which was a bazillion miles away) for batteries when I remembered they put a clock in the room for me. I took the clock off the wall and put the battery in my pump. Sure enough it worked. So I am basically sitting in the dark and I picked up the phone to see how much I had pumped after a few minutes and to my disbelief there was over 4 oz in each bottle. I think from now on maybe I should pump with the lights out! I have never in my entire pumping life got 8.5 oz in one sitting. That is just craziness. I put the battery back in the clock and set it by my manager's phone. Shortly after I got back to class, the lights popped back on. Then from lunch I pumped 4.5 oz and my second break I pumped 3. That makes for a grand total of 16 oz. That is awesome. I am going to turn off the lights in the room after I get set up tomorrow and see if I get the same results! I know it's crazy but I like to experiment with different methods to see what happens. Yes, I know. I am easily entertained. :D

Just Another Day

Today was pretty basic. We learned more stuff. Work was work. I'm becoming to good of friends with my carpool buddy and the girl that sits next to me in class. They both picked the morning shift and I picked the evening shift because it's more money. When training is over we won't see each other as much. It will be a lot harder to get together. I really want them to switch to evenings with me but they need the day shift. If the day shift paid more, I would switch to it in a heartbeat. That's probably why the evening shift pays more, though.

Pumping was pretty much the same. I wore a dress that is pretty tight up top and doesn't allow me to it to the side to pump so I was in there with the other woman that pumps turned away from her with my dress up. That makes for an awkward situation. :D I apologized to her but she said she didn't care. I need to go buy some dresses that allow me to stay mostly dressed when pumping. Unfortunately, there isn't a whole lot out there that caters to nursing women. They only have a few styles and only at select places. If more of the clothes had style for a good price there would probably be more women pumping. For those of you who like the numbers, I pumped 13 oz today. It all went into bottles at work and into the fridge when I got home. The bottles are so much easier and if they tip over 99% of the time they won't leak. That statistic might be a little off but so are a lot of statistics. 80% of statistics are made up so it really doesn't matter. :D

Ending on a good note: Traffic was awesome today. We made it home in under 45 minutes! I can't believe that. We didn't stop almost the entire way home! If only traffic could be like that every day. Do you think that half of the people in Denver could be persuaded to move to a different state?? A woman can dream can't she? Until tomorrow my friends. :)

Long Day

I'm sorry I forgot to post on Friday. It was a long day. The drive to work was fine and then the day just sucked from there. It felt like I was at work for 24 hours. Every hour was taking forever to pass and even the trainers were dragging. They wanted the day to be over as much as we did. While pumping, I ran out of bags and use the bottles I use to pump. We got paid and when I got off of work after sitting in traffic for an hour and a half I deposited my check into my bank. I was also sick the last half of the day so I was really not in the mood to sit down and talk about it. :)

Anyway, on to today. My Carpool Buddy and I got to work about 40 minutes early. It doesn't phase us anymore. We just go inside and talk until class starts. Today went by pretty quickly. We learned another thousand systems. Sometimes I wonder why they don't just merge all these systems into one smart system. Maybe my thinking is to technologically advanced. I was a little more annoyed today with a lot of people for some reason. I don't really understand why. Maybe it's what my husband says and I'm just a woman. Our moods change like the weather apparently. Some days I really appreciate the quiet of the Mother's Room because I get away from the constant chatter.

Pumping was really nice today. I only got 12 ounces but I had bottles to put them in today and not baggies. It was so much easier just leaving it in the bottle I pumped it in and just putting a cap on it. I also bought a better insulated bag. I take my lunch in it and then bring the bottles home in it. I don't know why I didn't get as much today. It may have something to do with not pumping over the weekend. By the end of the week I'm usually pumping a lot more.

Mondays are hard. I'm dragging. I need to get a good nights sleep and wake up early. Catch ya later.

Ugh! Traffic!

So my carpool friend and I decided since we were 40 minutes early to work yesterday, that we would leave 10 minutes later and hope we weren't so early today. Well, I picked her up and we got onto US-36 and took the HOV lane. Everything was going swimmingly and then we got to almost the end of the HOV lane and there were a lot of cars stopped in the lane (which I've never seen in the HOV lane. So we waited a while and merged into the fast lane. It was slow all the way to Santa Fe. (Sorry if you don't know the street names but let's just say it was a long stretch of highway. We finally see what is slowing down traffic and it is a huge dump truck just sitting in one of the middle lanes of traffic with his hazard lights on. I was in the lane that was behind him. I go to get out of the lane and the car in the lane next to me is waving me on and a guy from the lane on the other side of him decides he wants to get into the lane I'm getting to also (because he is soooo impatient and wants to get into the very left lane). So we are both halfway in this lane and I stop to let him go and he has the dumbest "what are you doing" look on his face and he just sits there starring at me. I can't go until he does so I motion him like Dane Cook would and say "Fuckin go!!!" Excuse the profanity. He finally goes and then I'm able to go. At this point we still have 40 minutes to get to work so I'm not freaking out too bad yet. We are just praying that nothing else goes wrong because we still have about half way to go. As we pray the traffic slows down again. In the right middle lane (5 lanes) there is a Scion stopped on the highway with 2 cop cars on the sides of her and I don't even know what happened there but the traffic ate up another 15 minutes. Then things are good for a while I hear on the radio that someone ran into one of those cop cars we just passed and was in pretty big trouble. As we are laughing about that traffic starts to crawl again. We are just thinking, "What now??" when all of a sudden one of the signs that usually tells you about construction or weather on the highway now says, "Car on fire ahead, Smoke visible!" and I look and I realize that the big cloud in front of us is smoke from a burning car. When we finally get up to the car, it's pulled over to the side of the highway with 3 fire engines, an ambulance, and a ton of police cars sitting in the middle of the highway. The car pulled over has it's entire front burned to ashes. By this time we are gagging from the fumes. Traffic finally thins out again and we book it doing 80 (sorry cops) to work. We run from the car into the building and clock in at 2 minutes late. By this time both of us realize we had forgotten our potluck items at home.

We sat down and took the assessment. I got 2 wrong answers out of 74 questions. While I was taking the test I realized that one of those questions was wrong but once you answer it and hit submit it takes you to the next question and you can't go back. It doesn't really matter though because I passed and that's all I needed to do. The rest of the day was easy, peasy. Potluck and hanging out.

I pumped all 3 times today and was able to get 13 oz. I ran out of breast milk bags this morning though. I put all 4 oz from lunch into one bag. Then at my last break I put it all into one of the pumping bottles and put the lid on it. When I got home I just transferred it into one of my sons bottles. I just figured out that that would make it easier for my husband in the morning if he didn't have to defrost the milk at 7 am. So I will do that last part from now on.

When we got out to Andrew's car after work we discovered the Pepsi that she had left in the car by accident in out rush to be on time had exploded all over. I don't care who you are, when it is 97 degrees outside that is a hot day. I don't even know what it was inside the car but it smelled really sweet when we opened the doors! :)