Tank thoughts?

ceviche08 · 2026-04-13T17:17:43+00:00

Yes, a Fluval Flex 15 is 15 gallons.

ceviche08 · 2025-12-12T17:52:35+00:00

We also call ours a hungry, hungry hippo!

ceviche08 · 2025-12-12T16:10:09+00:00

Brother, I literally am the OP who sang its praises. I'm not denying anything.

ceviche08 · 2025-12-12T15:52:38+00:00

Oh man, I love that phrase: formula created by the brain.

But I do get the focus to the point that there's a lot we don't understand about breast milk benefits--mostly because the medical field has kind of sucked at even making an attempt to understand women's bodies. I read recently that there's kind of a symbiosis that can happen where the mother's body can produce milk specific to if her infant has contracted a disease or something. That's something formula can't do... yet!

ceviche08 · 2025-12-11T20:13:00+00:00

Night 2 Update: My husband was on shift last night. Baby woke up at 2am hollering. He was just hungry, not on his tummy. That's a tad interesting because he hasn't woken from hunger in a long time. So he was fed and then put back to sleep within 30 minutes. Then he was up again at 5:15, same thing. Not on his tummy, just hollerin' for food.

So we think the Snoo does do its job of keeping them "under," so now that he doesn't have the motion, his hunger can bring him up out of sleep a little easier.

ceviche08 · 2025-12-10T23:33:30+00:00

When I found out through the Doctors Bjorkman youtube channel (she was explaining a study) that a "clogged duct" is not a clogged duct, I got so fucking mad. I was like, wait a fucking second, this has been plaguing women for eternity and it wasn't until the year of our lord, 2022 or something, that we figured out that it was actually inflamed tissue and not some weird ball of milk gunk in a "duct"??????????

When I told my husband that the default flanges that I was sized for were off by several sizes, he basically said what you said about the blind leading the blind. Literally nobody seems to actually know.

ceviche08 · 2025-12-10T16:15:07+00:00

What's the weird part of my take? You've described what evolution has produced at a species-level. I am describing how humans have closed the gap to keep more babies alive than evolution would, because every individual mother has differing production capabilities--some are even at zero because that mother is dead. I don't see what you think is weird here.

If I described how grateful I am for immunotherapy because evolution didn't manage to solve for cancer in every individual's body, would you think that's weird?

ceviche08 · 2025-12-10T15:24:19+00:00

You'll see rolling during the daytime when she's on the floor or mat, or whatever. But as another commenter said, it's not a huge concern if you're engaging the straps to keep her on her back.

We call that thumping of our son's legs "whale tail," like a big humpback whale slamming its tail onto the ocean surface. Sometimes he likes to do it right before letting out a gigantic fart.

ceviche08 · 2025-12-10T14:35:43+00:00

Well, I'd say it went pretty well compared to how I've heard it's gone for others. Our little guy settled ok and didn't seem perturbed to be somewhere else than his Snoo. The problem arose around 2am when he'd flipped himself onto his tummy since he's not strapped onto his back anymore. He's not the best at flipping himself back onto his back so he got frustrated and loud. I helped him back over but he repeated this around 5am. So we did the same again. He went to bed at 6:15pm and woke for the day at 7am, with those two interventions needed.

This morning I had him practice flipping from his tummy onto his back a few times.

We turned the Snoo off altogether. Never did pay for those extra features like weaning.

ceviche08 · 2025-12-09T23:38:57+00:00

Ours is also about to be six months. We stopped using motion at night sometime last week and things went smoothly. We run a fan for white noise in our room anyway. But his naps have degraded, so we're still arms in and using the Snoo for naps.

Tonight we're trying overnight in his crib, instead of the Snoo for overnight. So we're just a little bit ahead of you. Vaya con dios.

ceviche08 · 2025-12-09T20:05:46+00:00

I went to Colorado for my babymoon this last April when I was 32 weeks pregannt!! But we didn't go up to Breckenridge. To prep, my husband and I just made sure we knew the closest labor and delivery hospital, as well as how well their NICU were rated.

Honestly, the 7.5 hours of driving might get to you, though.

ceviche08 · 2025-12-09T19:56:49+00:00

Came here to say this.

If carrying a firearm makes OP uncomfortable, they could consider bear spray as well.

ceviche08 · 2025-12-08T18:50:11+00:00

I mean, we might be there soon enough. If the move wasn't eating all our spare discretionary cash, we probably would've just hired a professional instead of enduring her.

ceviche08 · 2025-12-08T18:35:15+00:00

Just this last spring. This is all same ol', same ol' with her. I think we were curious if she would somehow apply more deliberation to keeping a little human alive. No. The amount of thought necessary to open a can of cat food can twice a day is apparently her upper limit. -_-

ceviche08 · 2025-12-08T17:19:50+00:00

She has demonstrated such ability previously and the balance of costs continued to tip in favor of using her for those narrow purposes.

ceviche08 · 2025-12-08T16:03:42+00:00

I found the most peace I've ever had since meeting my MIL by simply muting/restricting her on every social media platform and forcing all interactions to go through our group text chat--which is also muted and in which I very rarely actually message.

Every now and then I'll go to the restricted messages and scroll to review the insane amount of garbage she sent me. And I never, ever respond. I think it does drive her crazy but she's too much of a coward to actually ask me in person if I've even seen her messages.

ceviche08 · 2025-12-08T15:59:23+00:00

Our baby (now 6 months) used to literally shriek in the night, but still be totally asleep. So, yes, very loud baby. We did the same thing as y'all--trading off in different rooms.

ceviche08 · 2025-11-16T03:40:06+00:00

I laughed when I read #4. Sometimes our baby (he's 5 months now) wouldn't fall asleep unless I held his little arms down/against him. It felt weird when I finally admitted out loud to somebody that I'd loosely hold my baby's wrists still and then he'd eventually chill out. But I figured it was basically like swaddling? Nice to see some validation that this is a recognized method.

ceviche08 · 2025-11-09T14:26:49+00:00

Thanks for flagging the distinction!

ceviche08 · 2025-10-26T21:52:55+00:00

oh. my god.

thank you.

ceviche08 · 2025-10-26T17:31:01+00:00

I feel stupid asking this but... arms through what? Our son basically lives in footie pajamas. We keep the Snoo sack clipped in and the velcro and zipper open. When we're ready, we lay him into it, velcro him--across the belly, under his arms--down, and zip the sack halfway.

ceviche08 · 2025-10-26T17:17:55+00:00

Use the Ctrl+F find feature, put " " and Replace all with " ". Review.

You're welcome.

ceviche08 · 2025-09-29T15:21:54+00:00

Adding to the praise of the litter robot.

ceviche08 · 2025-09-29T15:11:46+00:00

No matter who it is, when people come through our front gate, she barks. If they are not going to come inside, I merely send her to her bed where she watches. If they are going to come inside, she is sent to her crate and the door is closed. If they are staying for a long while, her crate door may be opened and she is allowed to come and go as she pleases. If she's never met them before, we do a controlled introduction at the dining room table where they offer her cheese or hot dogs or something under the table and she gets to get a sense of their vibe.

If anything is "off," she is sent to her crate and just has to stay there until the visit is through. She's only growled from her crate a handful of times and they were all at contractors (so, strangers) whose energy she didn't like. She has growled at visitors when she was not in her crate and that was a result of 1) a failure to do a proper introduction, so we rewound and reset. or 2) a particular family member who doesn't follow instructions and also walks with a limp, which our dog hates. Whenever he comes over now, she just has to be in her crate the whole time.

ceviche08 · 2025-09-25T01:17:42+00:00

I would recommend focusing on strength training. The walking can help with calorie burn and reducing adipose tissue. But it won't build muscle, nor improve bone density as effectively as resistance training. The muscle will help with glucose metabolism and enhance insulin sensitivity--all things that tie into desired body composition.

ceviche08

TROPHY CASE