Blueberry Dutch Baby

One of my favourite breakfasts is none other than the dutch baby. It's a cross between a pancake and an eggy bread because of the high egg to flour ratio. It's super simple to make and I always have the ingredients on hand. I've made it with fresh and frozen blueberries, both with great results. Today's was made with "throw many in the garbage and pick out the moldy ones" blueberries. The recipe I have used again and again is from Always with Butter. I don't follow it exactly because I'm lazy and don't want to take the extra step in melting the butter, although I should try it one day and see if it makes a difference. 

3 eggs
1/2 cup milk (I've used 2% and 3.25% with good results)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1-2 tbsp butter
1/3 cup blueberries
powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 425 with a 12" cast iron skillet inside. 

Whisk the eggs in a large bowl with the milk, vanilla and salt. Dump  flour and cinnamon into the egg mixture. (You can mix the flour and cinnamon first beforehand if you like extra work =P).

Whisk until well combined. Take hot skillet out and melt butter in the hot pan, ensuring butter covers the entire bottom.  

Pour mixture into the skillet & sprinkle with blueberries.

Bake for 15 minutes, then turn heat to 325 & bake for an additional few minutes until golden brown. (I know a few minutes is vague. I can sometimes pull it out after the initial 15 minutes and other times I leave it in 3-5 minutes longer. The initial recipe calls for 10 minutes which I have never done before). 

Dust with powdered sugar and devour with maple syrup! 

Lentil Bolognese and Biltong Jerky

I miss the blogging world so I decided to try and randomly hop back on to share random ramblings every now and then. Posts will be short and sweet. Tonight for dinner I tried a new recipe for lentil bolognese from The Endless Meal. It isn't the first time I've used lentils as a meat replacement and won't be my last. The final sauce was nice and hearty and although the flavours did remind me of a rich bolognese, the texture did not. Lentils have a starchy texture that just can't replace the texture of ground meat. I added some mushrooms and only used half a red pepper. I would definitely make this again. 

Onto the next topic, biltong jerky. What the heck is biltong you ask? Apparently it's an African type of jerky. Jamie has tried making it a few times with little success but he picked up some from a local African market and it's really quite delicious. The key difference is it's not smoked but rather dipped or marinated in vinegar, coriander and other spices so it's got quite the sour tang to it. My house reeks and I remind Jamie every time I leave the house and come back in to a smack in the face vinegar smell, to which he replies, "What?! It smells awesome."

What Being Burnt Out Looks Like for Me.

It's been a long time since I last blogged and lots has changed. First off, we had a second baby! Little E has been amazingly typical and we are so grateful. Not so Little C just turned 4 and she's been keeping us so unbelievably busy. To give you an idea of how busy we are and why I am burnt out, here's a snapshot of last week and this week. 10 weekdays, 12 appointments. That's right. TWELVE. And not all appointments are just "show up and the work is done" type of appointments either. Oh no folks. Most of these appointments are "here's your homework" appointments. Little C has both private and publicly funded speech therapy sessions, all 1 hour long. It was also time to visit the pediatrician, dentist, non-invasive ventilation clinic, and the multidisciplinary team (OT/PT/SLP/psychologist). That doesn't include the half day camps that Little C was in last week either. I've been running on fumes for a while now but today the camel's back broke a bit. Actually it broke last week when I completely lost it on my poor child after she repeatedly bit me while trying to floss her teeth. Because our first dental visit made me feel like crap. Never mind the 3+ years that we fought and fought to brush Little C's teeth only to have finally gotten to a decent place with brushing the past few months.  Let's add that to the never ending list of things to work on. 

Fast forward to today. A simple visit with the non-invasive ventilation clinic to talk about how the CPAP is working for Little C. It was a new respirologist who immediately rubbed me the wrong way when she couldn't wait 5 damn seconds for Little C to attempt saying hi. Saying hi is a really new thing for us. It's not quite a hi, but more of a "haauh..." Everyone, and I mean everyone that we have stopped to say hi to was able to read my social cues (me cuing Charlotte for the practice, modeling how to say hi, and waiting beside her) and would patiently wait for Little C to say "hi". This includes random strangers on walks, in the grocery store, you name it! This physician comes rolling in, talks over us and Little C in her greetings and cuts off our poor girl who started to say hi but then stopped. Then it was 30 minutes of her telling us that we need to sleep train our child so that she can self soothe at night because we had mentioned that she was waking up more often than normal this past month. She tried to hide her cringe when she realized we stay in the room with Little C until she falls asleep, but I saw it. She asked about parenting courses and lectured us on how we really need to have her learn how to self-soothe. Nothing she told us I didn't already know. So we left the appointment having gained nothing but to wait 6 months for another sleep study. 

On the drive home, it finally dawned on me why I was so irritated and defensive with this physician. She doesn't know our journey or Little C's struggles. We have worked so damn hard to be where we are at today. She doesn't fight us to put on her CPAP mask. She happily reads books with it on and will sleep the entire night with it blasting air up her nose. I'm not sure how many of you have tried a CPAP, but it EFFING SUCKS. So if I choose to sit in my child's room until she falls asleep because she's got a CPAP on and crying with it is not at all enjoyable, let alone vomiting with it on, then you better stand the eff down. 

So I was angry. And with anger always comes tears. And the tears weren't all angry tears. They were "I'm exhausted, frustrated, and I have so little left to give" tears. Our days are filled with appointments and constant work. I don't even know how to juggle all this and still keep our sanity. If we aren't teaching Little C a new ASL sign that we just learned, we are modelling and teaching her how to use her augmented and alternative communication device, or getting to her to try to turn on her voice. Fit in some strengthening activities, a heck of a lot of crying (because she can't communicate what she really thinks), and your "normal" day to day activities and I'm pretty sure we have negative time left in the day. 

So that's the rant. Ironic that I have no time but made time to blog. I told the hubs that I need an outlet. I need somewhere to rant about how hard it is to have a child with a disability. How all consuming and isolating it is. I am thankful for the support and love that we have because we would never survive without it, but on days like today, when all it takes are some mindless words of a physician who has not walked 1 second in our shoes to make me feel like I'm not being a good enough parent for my child, I need to remind myself that we are freakin' ROCK STARS. 

My Breastfeeding Journey

A lovely gift from my sister in law. It brought me to tears. 

1 year, 4 months, 11 days. I pumped for a total of 498 days. Boy that seems long when I put in that way. Today I did my last pumping session and surprisingly I wasn't all that emotional. The end was coming for a long time and I had a hard time letting go. I grew attached to my little Medela Freestyle double pump. It and I were honestly BFFs. In the beginning days, it felt like I spent more time bonding with it than with my newborn baby. My good friend, Leslie, told me that she wrote a letter to her son when she weaned him. What a fabulous idea. So I pulled out the journal that I'm writing to Charlotte in and the tears started to fall. I feel like I'll remember every last bit of this journal to share with Charlotte when she's older, but I wanted to share my story here as well. A bit of my story anyways. 

In my past work life, I helped new moms after they came home from the hospital. It was my job to help moms latch their baby and feed. I did that for 5 years. Yah I was pretty rocky at the beginning and looking back, I feel bad that those moms got very textbook ideas/instructions. By year 4 and 5 though, I had attended quite a number of breastfeeding conferences, I've shadowed lactation consultants, and I've successful helped countless numbers of moms with their breastfeeding challenges. I felt quite prepared to handle whatever latch problems would come my way. I did after all, supposedly know all the tricks and strategies. What I wasn't prepared for was a lack of supply. Breast hypoplasia, meet me. Me, meet breast hypoplasia. I had some classic symptoms of it, but talked myself out of them because that's what I did for many many moms. Reassured them that their body is designed and programmed to produce milk for their baby. Just trust their bodies. 

So I didn't have any breast changes during pregnancy. That's okay. Not everyone does. 
So I have small breasts. That's okay. Breast size doesn't dictate whether or not you can produce enough breastmilk. 
So I didn't have any leaking colostrum towards the end of pregnancy. That's okay because, again, not everyone does. 
So I was only engorged for like 1 hour when my milk came in. That's okay because... well I didn't realize that this was anything bad. One of the many things I learned on my journey. 

I should've known things were not going well when I nursed my girl for a solid 20 minutes, active sucks and swallows, and when we went to do a post-feeding weight check, we thought the scale was broken. It wasn't. My poor girl just wasted 20 minutes of what little energy she had, only to get not 1 ml of milk. Not ONE!!! I remember the first night we came home to sleep a couple hours while Charlotte was still in the NICU. I had my friend's electric pump that she lent me and was so thankful that she did. We had gotten home close to midnight and I made Jamie go digging for the pump. I got so little and in my attempts to get every last drop into the bottle, in my lack of sleep zombie state, I manage to spill out a good portion. I was devastated. Thank goodness there was still some left that I could bring back. Then on another occasion, I managed to drop the bloody bottle while setting it down. I was so angry over spilled milk and all I could do was cry. And cry. And cry some more. 

As the days went on, I saw lactation consultants. I scoured the web for more "unapproved" methods of increasing milk supply. I pumped 8 times a day. I set my alarm to wake me up to pump. I was on over 30 pills a day including motilium, fenugreek and blessed thistle. I was eating oatmeal every day. I made sure to drink enough water, skin to skin, think about baby, watch baby videos, be with baby, drink nursing tea, acupuncture twice a week. You name it, I've tried it. I got loads of unsolicited suggestions. Maybe you're too tense. Babies can sense when you're upset and it inhibits letdown. Are you drinking enough water? Have you tried this? What about that? I was starting to question all my own actions. Maybe I'm not drinking enough water... Maybe I am too tense... Maybe I need to watch more videos of Charlotte while I'm pumping. No. I was doing everything I possibly could and nothing was working. 

On top of my lack of supply, I had a baby who (likely because I had no milk!) absolutely refused to latch after the first day. It quickly progressed to only latching with a nipple shield. Then it was only when I would syringe milk into her mouth. Then it was only when I would syringe milk into the shield. Then we tried a supplemental nursing system that our wonderful birth photographer lent us (because nowhere carries them and it has to be ordered in!!!) and we were able to latch a couple times. It was so stressful and truthfully, painful trying to latch her. I got very frustrated, as did Jamie. What saved that grief was the fact that Charlotte ended up getting her swallowing assessed and had to be on thickened fluids. I kept telling myself that the thickened fluids likely wouldn't flow through the SnS tubes, but I never did try. That was my out for not fighting my poor girl to feed. Every. Single. Feed. She hated it. I wanted it but hated it. She wasn't going to increase my supply by nursing directly on the breast. There was no win in this for me if I kept fighting her. 

My visions of breastfeeding my child, while sipping coffee with my girlfriends and their babies, never came to fruition. I had to lug around hot water, cold water, bottles, formula powder, thickener. I hated feeding Charlotte in public. I often did all that I could to plan my day so that I could feed her at home. Part of the challenge was the amount of guilt and shame I felt. I just didn't feel good feeding her in public. Around all my friends who nursed. Everyone was always very supportive, but the inner demon won and it won often. 

Out of the 3 lactation consultants I saw, the last one was the most supportive. She had no techniques for me. Nothing new to try. No encouraging words. Just told me what I already knew. I wasn't going to produce more. No matter what. Period. It's unfortunate, but the reality. I grieved for a very long time and I'm still grieving. I think I'm finally at the acceptance stage and that's good. I need to move on. Hopefully with my next pregnancy, my breasts smarten the heck up and grow some more glandular tissue. Because apparently there's only 2 occasions where a woman can develop more glandular breast tissue. 1. Puberty 2. Pregnancy

Some ask me how I did it. The worst part for many is the washing of pump parts. Sterilizing. It's a pain in the arse. Imagine pumping 8x a day, 20 minutes each time, taking another 6-8 minutes to clean all your equipment. So essentially 30 minutes x 8. 240 minutes. 4 hours a day. It was brutal. Especially if I slept for any length of time at night, I had to squeeze in all the pumping in an even shorter time period. I still remember Jamie always saying, "What? You have to pump again? But you just pumped." Most of the time he was right. I did just pump. Like barely 2 hours ago. I know some of you are thinking, well that's how often babies feed! It's not the same. I can't articulate it for you here, but trust me. It's not the same. Then this one blog post I read, from a mom who also pumped full time, offered me a saving grace piece of advice. Why wash all the pump parts every single time? Breastmilk is good for up to 7 days in the fridge. Why not just pump, store it in the fridge, and pump with the equipment again? She washed and sterilized everything once a day. I followed suit. That saved off over an hour a day of just washing crap! I can honestly say, it is one of the reasons I was able to pump for as long as I did. 

So fast forward 400+ days. I weaned off all my medications and cut my pumping from 8 to 7 to 6, 5, 4, 3, and finally 2 times a day. I've been waking up early to pump before work. Going to bed later so I can pump right before bed. I travelled 3 times on vacation while pumping. Pumped in airports and on airplanes. It really has been quite the journey. Now Charlotte doesn't even really enjoy my breastmilk. You read that right. Not enjoying. So why even continue? I'm pretty sure my milk had a higher amount of lactase and since I had such small quantities of milk, it often took several sessions to get enough for a half or full feed. In the last few months, with an ever decreasing supply, it took even longer to build up a decent amount to feed her. She actually preferred formula. That broke my heart. Truly. We often have to coax her into drinking it or trick her by mixing it with some formula. And when she doesn't finish, the wasting of liquid gold just rubs salt into my ever aching wounds. So it's time. It's time that my journey with breastfeeding come to an end. In the whole 498 days, I only ever managed to say out loud that I was nursing my child once. It was to an oral surgeon when he asked about a bone scan for my jaw. "I'm breastfeeding." It was surreal to say and I remember being taken aback. I never did say it again. I hope that for my next baby, if I'm lucky enough to be blessed with one, I will be able to have a different journey. And even if the path looks the same, at least I know where some of the shortcuts are. 

Whole Wheat Coconut Oil Vegan Scones

Whole Wheat Coconut Oil Vegan Scones

Original recipe from Gimmesomeoven. 

Ingredients

- 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

- 1/2 cup whole wheat flour

- 1/4 cup unmelted coconut oil (solid)

- 3/4 cup vegan milk (coconut, soy, rice etc.)

- 2 tsp baking powder

- 1/2 tsp salt

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 425°F. Mix dry ingredients together in a bowl.

2. Cut in the solid coconut oil with a pastry cutter/blender or forks. 

3. Mix in the milk and combine until a dough forms. 

4. Turn dough out, flatten into a 1/2" layer and cut out rounds. 

5. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until barely golden (I couldn't get mine quite golden without over baking). 

Vegan Baby Banana Oat Mini Muffins

Ah, what did we ever do before Pinterest? Rather, what did we ever do before the internet?!? +Elizabeth Der pinned this simple banana oat mini muffin recipe and I decided to give it a try. It was super easy and I almost always have the ingredients on hand. Since Charlotte is allergic to cow's milk and eggs, it was simple to make these vegan. 

Vegan Mini Banana Oat Muffins

- 1/2 cup quick cook oats (I did a quick blitz in the Vitamix)

- 1/4 rice milk

- 2 ripe mashed bananas

- dash of cinnamon 

- splash of vanilla

- 1/4 tsp baking powder

Directions: 

1. Preheat oven to 350°F, grease mini muffin tin (I used a coconut spray and toaster oven!)

2. Mix all the ingredients together.

3. Divide batter out between all muffin cups. 

4. Bake until muffins are set. It took about 15 min for me. 

Quilt for Reid

 Way back (a couple years ago) I made a quilt for my niece, Annalise. Fast forward and she is now a big sister to little brother, Reid. It just seemed so perfect to make a boy version of the same quilt. I used the same pattern from Kati Cupcake Pattern Co. called Willow.  It might look a little intimidating and complicated but trust me, it isn't. It was my first attempt at making a quilt on my own after my quilting class that I took with +Jinnee Barazzuol. The cutting part was quite labor intensive but the sewing part came together relatively quickly. After piecing all the blocks together, I played them all out to decide what layout would look best. It would've been easier if I had a bit more forethought before I sewed them all because some of the prints had characters that were right side up so it bothered me if I put any of them upside down! 

With Annalise's quilt, I used a darning foot and quilted the entire thing at home on my little Singer machine. I'm not gonna lie, it was rough. Like really rough. If you can imagine rolling up the quilt so that it could fit into the little hole in your sewing machine and then needing to maneuver it around at a steady speed to get a design. One of the doctors that I work with introduced me to Sparrow Studioz and I will never quilt on a home machine again. The last 3 quilts I quilted with a long arm machine, I followed a pentagram but I decided it was time to venture out to free arm quilting. It was scary but oh so fun. I think it'll be free motion from here on out! I chose flannel for the back for the very first time and I love how soft flannel gets as it's used, washed and loved. I hope Reid gets good use out of it!