The Gregor Family: 2 Months Old!

Well, I am about 10 days late. He was 2 months on the 1st. In compared with how I am doing with posting Christmas pictures I think that is pretty good! I did finally put away the Christmas stuff last week. Pretty pathetic I know. It had been sitting on my dining room table for weeks just waiting for me to have a spare hour.
So my little Nolan is 2 months and as cute as can be! The major changes from last month is that now Nolan is getting super smiley and loves to make cute little cooing sounds. He gets so excited when we smile at him and he smiles right back! He loves his little play mat...same one I had for the girls where the star lights up above him. He loves to lay on it and kick and stretch his legs. Totally just realized I don't have a picture of him on that.....Mom needs to get with the program....been a challenge doing that with 3 kids now. :) Nursing on the other hand has been a huge challenge since about 6 weeks. Him liking to nurse has not been the problem. He developed an allergy to something in my milk right at 6 weeks. When we took him to the Dr I pretty much got....he is allergic to your milk so you will have to put him on special formula. What?? Seemed kind of extreme. I of course did not like this at all. We initially put him on the formula for 5 days and he got better but I took it really hard that I could not nurse him anymore and was very upset. I started reading about it and asking around with friends and decided that he was not allergic to my milk, just something I was eating. Kind of bummed his Dr did not let me know this up front and encourage me to restrict my diet. The most common is dairy and soy. So I decided to try and cut that out of my diet. Super huge challenge in that most everything I eat has dairy or soy in it....things that you would not even imagine has it in it. It can also take 2-3 weeks for you to see results in baby once it is cut out. Well after about 1 1/2 weeks he really started to get better. The new problem was that during that time of Nolan just on formula my milk supply really went down after switching him to formula for those few days. I was still pumping about 3-4 times a day when I was not nursing him but it really went down. So now I was dealing with struggling feedings feeling like he was not getting enough. I was doing everything in the book to get my milk back up and it was still a struggle for a good week. It finally started to come in a little better and then I got mastitis. Oh great....here I go again. That is what lead me to have to stop nursing Alexa. I got mastitis three times in a row with her and I did not think it was good for either of us to have to keep being on antibiotics so I stopped nursing and just went to pumping for awhile. Well, on Saturday was my last day of antibiotics and during that time the mastitis kept coming and going so I am just not sure what is going to happen now. I think I am just prone to get it. And on top of it I feel like it is now a constant battle to keep up my milk supply. I am exhausted with it to say the least. Lately I feel like it is taking almost an hour to feed him and he still barely gets enough. Not easy with 2 other ones with schedules. On the other hand it breaks my heart to have to stop nursing him so soon. I know for my sanity and lack of things to eat on the dairy/soy free diet I should really stop. Now I will just wait and see what happens with the mastitis. That may make my decision for me...and of course if I just can't keep up my milk. Okay, so that has been my drama this month. I keep praying it will get better but I feel like I am fighting a loosing battle. I know I just need to be thankful that he is a healthy growing boy even if I have to put him on formula.
On a happier note here is his cute two month pictures!

So excited to take pictures of Nolan in our special cradle. I love how my Grandpa made it for my sister and then passed down to me, my cousins, and then all my kids. So exciting that my sister will get to use this soon!