This is silly.

This is silly. It is ridiculous. It is so ridiculous it just might work.

You see, our morning routine attempts at day care drop offs were resulting in my not getting fully ready for the day until 8 or 8:15. If I leave for work at that time I will be very late and have to STAY very late to get in a proper day's work...especially with a couple breaks to express breast milk. Yikes!

So this morning we did trial run #1 of our new approach. I think it's going to work...I'd have gotten on the freeway about 7:05, which is a substantial improvement over 8/8:15! (Getting on the freeway about 7 means a 45-minute commute instead of a 1-hour-plus commute, so it's more than just the hour of time at this end that I gain.)

The new routine, and the reason I say it is silly/ridiculous, involves me dropping Ian off as I go, and Scott leaving later with Drew. Scott works closer to our house and has a shorter day (but works M-F where I work M-Thurs but more hours each day). On the face of it, it should be less efficient, but what was happening was that Ian did not want to be set down and we were scurrying around trying to hold him, help Drew, etc. Drew doesn't want to wake up as early as we had been waking him, so there was a fair amount of time when nothing productive was getting done.

New routine:
5:30 - I get up and express milk (same as before). But instead of what I had been doing, immediately after I pack up everything but the bottles for both Ian and myself, get breakfast, brush my hair, get dressed, and load anything I can in the car. Then I gather up Ian and his milk, and go.

Somewhere in there I will usually have to change and feed Ian, unless he's been up just prior to the pumping (he was this morning, but I *still* needed to change and feed him again, heh). Also if Scott's not up by 6:30 I wake him at that point. If Ian wakes up while I'm getting ready, Scott will take care of him until I'm available again; Drew doesn't generally wake up until 6:30 or 7:00 even if we're trying, so Scott is free to focus on him once I'm ready for the day.

I didn't bother with breakfast this morning, although I had some down time just cuddling Ian. This is because I'll need grab-and-go type breakfasts, and I haven't prepared/set aside any yet, but I have a pretty good idea what I want to do in that regard.

It's still silly to have two separate drop-offs. I'd complain about the extra driving and the environment, but actually I'm going maybe a few hundred feet out of my way?...to swing by day care, en route to the freeway. Well, on one of my two possible routes, but they're both roughly equivalent driving.

Fingers crossed. This may work.

*weary* Well, probably not.

I have heard back from one of the two milk banks with local collection centers. It is the one I was more hopeful would let me donate, as their site lists recipient categories where I hoped that Claritin in my system would not necessarily be an issue.

For NICU babies and other fragile infants, it would be - they don't want any unexpected medicines/substances there. But these folks also list babies whose own mothers can't supply milk due to their medications, multiples whose mothers don't have enough milk, etc. - not categories that are guaranteed to be medically fragile. And their web site says that if you take medicines other than the standard list of known-okay ones, you need to contact them to see if you can donate. So I was mildly hopeful, but only mildly.

No, they won't, but they'll be happy to take any milk I express starting a few days after I stop taking the claritin, when it will have fully left my system. Except claritin is a daily/maintenance medication that I've been taking for years, and without it my allergies (which occasionally manage to be annoying anyway) peak and are miserable, sometimes leading to sinus infections from the congestion. If I were to stop taking the claritin, it'd be to try something else, NOT to go without an antihistamine.

I still have a query into the other milk bank, but their web site is more crisply cut and says no other medications. I asked anyway, but I don't hold out high hopes.

The minimum donation for the milk bank that has already responded is around 100 ounces. For the other, it's around 150. This can be gathered over weeks or months if need be. I'm getting 10-15 ounces more than Ian needs per day. If I didn't take Claritin, most of that could be donated. (Being realistic, I occasionally take a Tylenol or a Sudafed PE and I'd need to not collect for them for a certain amount of time after either, I suppose, so not all of it would be able to be donated, but most.)

There's a group trying to start a milk bank here in the northwest. They're still gathering funding, though they've had space donated by one of the local health organizations. I sent them some money. It may be the only kind of donation I CAN make for this cause, which is frankly heartbreaking but still better than no contribution at all.

I hate my allergies more than usual today. LOTS more than usual, since I'm fairly used to them, but very unhappy about the sheer waste they are causing.

(And yes, before anyone says it, I know some people do person-to-person donation. I am not comfortable with the legal and medical risks therein, even with all precautions that can be taken within that setting.)