Normal Weekend... Sort of

Saturday
Yesterday, Daniel and I left Isaac at home with grandparents and went out to run some errands. Namely, refund the speaker/clock/dock for the iPod, and grocery shopping for that night's dinner. We also wanted to look for fenugreek and blessed thistle, two herbs said to help with milk production (more on that later). Plus, Toys'R'Us was having a sale on sleepers and we'd like to check them out.

Since Futureshop's cashiers were inexplicably slow (two cashiers, I was first in line, and it took a good 10 minutes before I was served), I sent Daniel to Loblaws first while I continued to wait in line for my refund.

Grocery shopping took much longer than it really should--after all, I have already decided to have lasagna for dinner. I'm still disappointed that we cannot find any PC Decadent hot chocolate mix at any Loblaws we visited in the past week.

After we were done with Empress Walk, we went to Centre Point to visit a health food store. When we finally found bottles of fenugreek and blessed thistle, I was not prepared to pay the price of $11 per 100-capsule bottles (3 capsules each every day). We left without buying.

Side note: We were both amazed that Centre Point has sort of sprung back to life. With Zellers, Canadian Tire, some semi-decent clothing stores, plus, most importantly for us, a new No Frills, it has now entered our radar again. (The last time Centre Point was relevant to us, it was the alternative to Fairview for movie going. That was back when neither of us had a car. The theatre at Centre Point was long gone, and the one at Fairview was also-ran for the longest time but is revamped and due to reopen soon.)

In case you weren't in Toronto yesterday, the weather--and by extension, the traffic--was horrible. By the time we were ready to leave Centre Point, it was already 6:30, and grandparents needed to be at dinner by 7. So we decided to skip Toys'R'Us and head home.

Sunday
After talking about it for weeks, we finally visited the breastfeeding clinic at Toronto East General Hospital today. The best things about this clinic? It's free, it's open 7 days a week, and no appointment is needed.

At this point, I was rather confident that we weren't doing anything serious wrong and Isaac was relatively well-fed. Still, we'd like some reassurance.

Ideally, Isaac should get a test weight before and after feeding to make sure he is eating enough. However, Isaac decided to wake up and cry for food--frantically, I may add--before we had a chance to take the "before" weight.

He didn't eat for too long, and soon enough he was full and fell back to sleep. When we weighed him (in his birthday suit, the nurse ordered), we were astonished that he was already 9lbs 5oz! That is up 2lbs from his lowest weight!

The nurse told us an approximation formula to calculate the amount of milk a baby needs per day: 2.5oz per pound. This comes in handy when calculating how much milk Daniel should feed Isaac in a bottle: at 8 meals a day, we're looking at 3oz a meal. It also gives me some baseline on whether I've pumped enough milk for the day. Currently, Daniel has been feeding Isaac that much on his shift, but he plans to give a bigger meal, hopefully making Isaac sleep a little longer through the night.

I asked the nurse how I should hold Isaac while I feed him. I have been using the cross-cradle hold that was taught everywhere, but it has been killing my wrists to the point that I suspect I have carpal tunnel syndrome. (I was OK for all these years glued to the computer!) The nurse taught me how to do a cradle hold instead, which doesn't impact the wrist as much.

Isaac asked for another meal before we left the clinic, so I tried out the cradle hold, and, sure enough, it was much more comfortable. We left the clinic after this feed.

As we were planning our own brunch/lunch/afternoon tea (it was already past 2pm), we decided to venture to our usual hangout at Leslie/Finch--and, instead of buying take-out, we wanted to run a little experiment and opted for dine-in. We also had the first "drive" of our stroller. During the whole meal, Isaac didn't wake up a bit. We hereby declared experiment #1 a success!

(BTW, Isaac did start waking up as we were back in our garage.)

Finally, this starts to feel more like a normal weekend!