Daycare and Gas

I am feeling all bound up. Like my darling Clara.

That's what's been the issue by the way with why she's not been sleeping well. She's totally a gas bag. It seems that I have overproduction problems, mainly because Clara is a comfort sucker and so I am overproducing milk and thus having a more forceful let down when she first chomps on. Poor thing. So we're fixing that by me pumping off the first 5 minutes and then letting her latch on, this way the first let down is gone and the rest go a bit easier. Not sure how it's working yet. Ray feeds her the pumped portion. We were originally going to go with bottles to feed her the extra (since the pediatrician gave us the go-ahead to start her on that so she would take a bottle once she's being watch by someone other than me) after she gets off me but the nipple flow is still way too fast for her causing dribbling and gas (which we are trying to avoid). So we are back to finger feeding to avoid the gas issues until the nipple flow isn't an issue any more. I'll try again with the bottle tomorrow night.

The reason I am all bound up? The daycare situation. So, silly me didn't think about doing all that much research on the whole daycare bit since, at the time, I only needed daycare one day a week. I figured- how hard can it be to find a daycare for her one day a week? Well apparently very hard. The situation was supposed to be me two days a week, Jen (my SIL) one day and my MIL one day. But my MIL can no longer do a day so I am left with two days that Clara needs daycare. Still not really an issue-it will cost a little more but no problem we are okay with that. The issue is now finding a place to put her two days a week. The three day care places I contacted all have waiting lists or don't take infants part time :(.

I checked craigslist for part time nannies since that's really the only option. The question then becomes "how reliable are these people" and "how do I pay them so that all the right taxes and things get taken out?"- most of the nannies advertising are child ed students at the local university- 22 year olds. How much infant experience can they have? But, in truth, my SIL probably has just about as much experience, if not less, than these folks do- but since she is my SIL I am way less worried about it. For two days a week, as long as the person has decent references and doesn't want 100 bucks a day I might consider it. Of course Ray thinks this is crazy-he rather, I guess, have her in a facility with 15 other infants where she won't be nearly as well monitored. I dunno. There are pros and cons for each. I just wish there were more mommies around here that worked part time so that we could trade off days...it just ugh.

So now I have about 4 weeks to square a few things- health insurance, daycare, my work schedule and Clara's baptism. So much stress....