Parsley, sage and other developments

Lots of news around here. First there was the "parsley situation." Dylan hadn't pooped in a few days, which isn't normal for him. He's a pretty regular little guy. So yesterday there was talk among the famiglia about what to do. Call his regular pediatrician? No, she sucks and is available for questions from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. during which time her phone is always busy anyway. If you have questions outside of those hours, you are out of luck. Plus, her standard response to ANYTHING is "It's normal..It's normal." Yes, she's a free state pediatrician alrighty with the state employee attitude (meaning sit on her butt and collect her salary for doing nothing) to go along with it. Call a private pediatrician to make a house call? No, Dylan didn't seem particularly disturbed in any way and his mother wasn't too worried about it, so the idea of paying 100+ Euros for someone to make a house call and tell us he was OK was discarded. Here's where nonna stepped in and saved the day. She took a sprig of parsley (the stem not the leaf, obviously), dipped it in olive oil and put it up Dylan's butt and rooted around in there for a minute. Ten minutes later he pooped.

Breastfeeding update. Ding, dong my milk is gone. Well, it's not gone but I haven't breastfed at all in two days. My baby is growing up (sad face). Now it is up to Mother Nature to let him suckle at her busom and give him what he needs so he grows up big and strong. Today we try avocado. Here's where the sage comes in. I'm drinking a sage infusion twice a day to make my milk go away and little by little I'm beginning to see my B cups (yes, I've been wearing a D maternity bra!) come back into focus. I'm even able to sleep on my stomach now for the first time in over a year! I stopped giving Dylan the breast during the night about eight days ago and here's what happened. The first three nights he drank baby herbal tea and went right back to bed as if he had been breastfed. The fourth and fifth nights he refused the herbal tea and cried. But not for long and we comforted him and put him back to bed. The last three nights, he has slept all night. So take that, Babywise! No, I'm just kidding. I can't get too confident especially because we have a huge trip on the horizon. And teething.

Then there's the story of the stroller we bought for the U.S., which we can file into the "mom always knows best" category. The original idea had been to wait until we got to the U.S. to buy some kind of travel stroller since there is much more selection and things are way cheaper over there. We were going to carry Dylan through airports and on to the plane in the BabyBjorn. When I really got to thinking about it, I realized it was just a BAD idea. The kid weighs over 18 pounds. And we are going to have a ton of luggage. So I started hunting around for a stroller I liked here. I found one and we went to buy it. It was a funky turquoise color, which I wasn't crazy about, but it fit all of my criteria: compact, robust, able to be reclined enough so Dylan can sleep on the road. The girl in the shop told us that, unfortunately, she only had red back in the back unless we wanted the display. We didn't want the display and went for the red. This past weekend, Cristiano had the fabulous idea of bringing the stroller (at that point still in the box) to the beach so we could test it out. I told him, "Let's at least open the box because if there's something wrong with the stroller, we can take it back before we leave for the beach. Otherwise we get to the beach and we have no stroller." Of course, Cristiano kept it boxed up in the trunk of his car and did not take my advice. Guess what? We got to the beach, opened it up and it was not red but FUCHSIA. Yep, we had to push Dylan around all weekend in a hot pink stroller. Now I'm not one of those "boys play with trucks and girls play with dolls" kinds of moms, but I did find it annoying that people kept asking what my little girl's name was. I was convinced we'd never be able to take it back because stores here almost never let you return things - even if they are defective. But Cristiano went in, explained that he'd been in the doghouse all weekend with his wife and that he wouldn't want his son to grow up with a complex, yadda, yadda, yadda. He walked out with the turquoise display. Moral of the story: listen to mom.