Crash course in parenting - Life as a foster mom

Welp, Mr. Ben is not tongue tied - yay!  However he has some bad habits that he learned in the NICU while trying to control the flow of the bottles to protect his air way.  And a poor latch.  And I have vasospasms (loss of blood to the nipple during nursing, which causes pain) and a bleb (damaged milk duct on one side, then when it heals the skin grows over the hole, which could be the reason for recurrent clogs on one side).  The bleb is the cause of my severe pain on that side, and it is exacerbated by the vasospasms so that's awesome. So, we've got issues! The plan of attack is to only allow him to nurse if he is actively sucking and swallowing, and limit him to 20 minutes at a time. If he's still hungry after that, offer a bottle of pumped milk and pump (pumping will be easier on the nips than his piranha latch).  Apply heat after nursing to bring the blood back, put this anti-bacterial stuff on to keep the bleb from getting infected, write dow...

Yeah, that's me! We are having an awful time with sleep.  Ugh.  Ben will only take partial feeds so he keeps waking up! If he takes both sides and does a good job he'll sleep for 2 plus hours, which is nice. If he only takes one and falls asleep...he's back up an hour later.  He's been also having nurse-a-thons once a day, of one to two hours long. Two nights ago he had one from 12:30 a.m. to 2 a.m. which was awesome...not!  Last night he was up from 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. with some bad toots, it was super sad, he'd just start crying every 10 minutes or so until he tooted.  He was nursing like crazy and then started spitting up because he was eating so much, then I convinced him that his pacifier is, in fact, NOT the devil and he will most likely not die if he sucks on it instead of me, so then it was much better for us both.  Once that was over with it was good the rest of the night, he even got a two hour stretch of sleep (yay!). We are bed sharing.  I...

Miss M is totally and absolutely experiencing the terrible twos. The wrath of this child is something that I hope is not a permanent fixture in our house. Oh, the screaming.  She will just sit there and scream if she even THINKS you are telling her something she doesn't want to hear.  Last night I asked her to get ready for a bath, but then Ben was hungry so I was nursing him. She was running around naked and I asked her to go sit on the potty to wait for me to get done. Cue screaming, and repeats of "I don't want to go potty! I don't want to go potty!" I told her she didn't need to go potty, but just sit on the potty until I was done and then we could take a bath. Scream, scream, scream. Ben finished, I went in the bathroom, she was still screaming and not on the potty. I calmly asked her to get back on.  She screamed that she didn't want to go potty. I told her again you don't have to go potty, just sit on it until I get the bath water ready (no wate...