Babies LOVE Sugar

Baby IK has been eating some formula from the beginning. Just a little bit to supplement my low production boobs. We started out giving her the Similac Advance that we got as a sample can from the hospital. When that ran out, we switched to Earth First Organic which gave her crazy gas. So then we went back to the Similac Advance. The lactation consultant told us that Similac made an organic formula so we were delighted to try that out next.

Similac Organic seemed like the right answer for us -- the organic ingredients assuaged our guilt about having to feed her formula in the first place and IK seemed to tolerate it well. We were psyched to have settled on a formula.

IK's Nana then started mining her contacts at work to get the pharmaceutical rep's opinions about their various products. The Enfamil rep pointed out that the organic Similac contained sucrose as its primary sugar rather than lactose. Sucrose??!? Turns out the third ingredient is cane sugar. That's the same ingredient in swedish fish and Fruit Loops.

Ugh. Back to the drawing board.

Turns out I'm not the only one suffering this conundrum. An article in the NY Times points out what IK and I have already figured out. There are no easy answers to the formula question. We can read every label, every article, every study, but in the end we just have to listen to our babies and our guts and try not to suffer the guilt when the decision you make still doesn't feel like the right one.

Dressed by Noon

While I'll be the first to say that blogging seems largely narcissistic, I've decided to add my voice to the din. As the mom of a six-week-old gorgeous little munchkin, I guess I'm looking for a way to connect with the world during my maternity leave. Staying home with baby is awesome, but isolating. Hence this little tether to the outside.

The name of this blog is an homage to my mom. About two weeks after IK was born my mom admitted that her goal when my brothers and I were kids was to be showered and dressed by noon on Wednesdays so she wouldn't have to greet the cloth diaper delivery guy in her PJ's. Now, mind you, my mom is a super hero. She worked as a nurse and a nurse practitioner, raised three great kids, cultivated a garden most summers, drove me to ballet and my older brother to soccer and my younger brother to music lessons, helped my dad rehab a 150 year old farm house, and she did it all without air conditioning. I'm not saying that I imagined that she got up in time to put on makeup for the 3 AM feeding, but it never really seemed hard for her to keep it all together.

So when I was struggling to adjust to motherhood in those early weeks it was a HUGE relief to hear that what-a-mom had struggled too. Now that IK and I are finding our way I maintain my mother's goal to be showered and dressed by noon. Sometimes I make it, sometimes I don't. There's no diaper delivery guy keep me honest, but it helps to have something to shoot for.