Foooooood

[ailbhe]

Here I am breastfeeding a newborn again.

FEED ME.

I am barely functional and hugely short-tempered, most days, and it's entirely due to inadequate food intake. I can't do anything needing two hands because if I put Astrid in a sling she spits up on me, but she also doesn't want to be laid flat on her back because that makes her spit up too. We need to buy a reclining bouncy chair device. I'm sure we used to have one but Rob can't find it in the attic and we may have given it away.

For brief periods (long enough to put something oven-ready in or out of the oven) her sisters can prop her up, so oven-ready things are fine. But even cutting a bagel in half can be a problem, unless she's asleep.

I really need to figure something out. We need oven-ready dinners for evenings, which are easy enough, but we also need something ready to eat lunchwise. We tried reversing it, but it takes Rob just as long to get a bunch of sandwiches ready in the evening (when I'm feeding the baby more or less constantly) as it does to get a basic cooked dinner. And that makes the evening meal too late.

Weekends spent cooking things up are the answer for the evening meal... but what about snacks and lunchtime?

I bet by the time I have this figured out she'll have stopped eating so much. Two days now, maybe three, she's eaten almost constantly from noon to 7pm, sometimes eating in her sleep. As I said earlier, if she doesn't weigh 13lb by Monday I'll send her back.

Comments

[nitoda]

Ah, the joys of having a new baby! Soon as you work out how to cope with what they throw at you, they change it to something new. How about making big batches of smoothie and having biscuits/ raw veggies around for snacks? If I remember this right, you need lots of fluid as well as lots of calories to make all that wonderful instant Astrid food. ;-) I believe Milk Stout used to be recommended to nursing mothers ... but I don't like beer so it never appealed to me.

[br3nda]

for me is was toast toast toast - with marmite or peanut butter or jam. or just butter when i was too exhausted to find anything else. also muesli bars and so many milos.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Pre-made stews and soups? Smoothies?

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

Oh honey, I wish I knew the answer to this because I felt the SAME WAY. Still do occasionally.

Fruit delivery? Some pre-made stuff even though it's against what you usually do? Even a case of pre-made smoothies or something?

Have Rob preslice a dozen bagels in the evening so that during the day all you have to do is grab it? Have him pre-slice cheese and/or other things to put on bagels and have them in the fridge and then you just have to assemble one-handed?

N.

[clarahippy.livejournal.com]

I am amazed by the constant hunger, although I am very very lucky to have someone available to feed me constantly as well!

(mine is now 10 days old squee!)

[ailbhe]

Part of the thing, I have realised, is that I feed the children first, and then am too tired to feed myself. Ha ha. Yeah. That's really clever.

[snorkel-maiden.livejournal.com]

Snickers? I used to hoover them up after diving- as they actually have some sort of nutritional value as well as chocolate and sugar. Or other cereal bar type things? Could Rob do a batch of home-made flapjacks once a week? They are very calorific especially with dried fruit etc, and could be eaten with one hand.

[ailbhe]

Squee! Mine is more than twice as old as yours, I'll apply for her pension...

[akcipitrokulo.livejournal.com]

I have a bouncy chair I can bring over if that helps? Also if you want can pop over & help if I wouldn't be getting in the way.

[ailbhe]

We used to do flapjacks and stopped when Emer's teeth got bad. But maybe...

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

I do this too! Oy.

Put up a note that says "A fed Ailbhe = well-fed & cared for Children. Feed Ailbhe first for now!"

N.

[snorkel-maiden.livejournal.com]

Is Emer old enough to understand that she needs to have something else instead? I don't know how these things work :)

[sidheag.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite getting it. In what way is your food intake inadequate? I first read this as a "I just can't get enough calories" post, but read that way it TBH just doesn't make sense. If calories were your only consideration, it's not clear why you'd need to cut a bagel in half, and not clear why one of the older girls couldn't bring you a bagel on demand. Sounds as though there's something more interesting going on here. Is it that you feel you need more protein, rather than more calories, i.e. the bagel is only useful once you've cut it in half and put something inside? Or is it more about appetite, e.g. that you could grab a plain bagel and gnaw it but the idea just doesn't appeal, maybe because you want to feel that you or someone have enough time to take care of you that you get "proper meals"? Or what? I think the right thing to do might depend on what the real issue is, and that's not quite clear, to me at any rate.

[astrogeek.livejournal.com]

Do you have some kind of upright carrier like a Moby Wrap - Alistair would spit up the second I put him in a sling or chair, because it would squish his tummy up, but in an upright hold in the Moby he did a lot better.

[heraldis.livejournal.com]

a box of your favourite cereal, straight from the box? Dried fruit and a jug of water by your nursing table

When making the girls any food, make twice as much and eat the leftovers?

I lived on chocolate milkshake when I was in this position, but I know that wouldn't work for you...

[the-changeling.livejournal.com]

Dried apricots, everywhere. Stuffed in drawers etc. No matter where you are sitting to feed Astrid, there should be dried fruit or oatcake packets, where you are. Bananas. Keep nibbling, so your blood sugar is kept up - then you'll have the energy to do more than just nibble. :-)

[ailbhe]

Uh, if it were just calories, I could just eat icing sugar straight from the packet. That really *would* be inadequate food intake, though definitely easy.

Anyway, the issue with a whole bagel is that chewing a whole unmoistened bagel would be more work than it's worth - it would make me tired of eating long before I'd managed to eat enough fast-burn white processed flour to even slightly fill me up. I suppose I could dip it in water, but the idea doesn't appeal.

Edit: Just realised you said "inside" the bagel. I tend not to eat bagels cut in half and re-assembled because they are too big to put in my mouth comfortably. Which is why biting into an unsliced one is not fun.

[ailbhe]

I'm hoping she will have forgotten how much she loved flapjacks, or something.

I did just remember a downside to flapjacks - oats are a galactogogue, ie help make more milk. Hm.

[ailbhe]

Oh, yes, I'm using sling to mean "baby carrier," not ring sling or similar. I have about nine, five of which are upright carriers.

[quentinwrites.livejournal.com]

This might sound rank but I used to eat Heinz baked beans cold, straight out of the can. Strangely delicious and quite nutritious as well.

[ailbhe]

I should tell the children that when I get cross they should tell me to eat, too. Definitely.

[barakta]

I've done this when low on blood sugar and spoons.

Recently I've taken to cheating premenstrual hypoglycaemia with 'energy drinks' sipped slowly for several hours after food but suspect that wouldn't work for ailbhe either.

[ai731.livejournal.com]

Have you tried drinking a lot of fruit juice? It would at very least help keep your blood sugar levels higher.

[ailbhe]

I do drink some first thing but I need to be careful not to, um, mess around with the long-term effects of the injuries from the first birth. Fruit juice affects my digestion...

[ailbhe]

How did you open the tin?