Tips and Tricks: Lactation Cookies

So I know it's been forever since I've blogged last. I'm going to start with a little story. At the beginning of May we got sick (as in Tyler and I got sick. Oliver didn't catch whatever it is we had THANKFULLY!). Nasty stomach bug sick. Mine was worse than Tyler's. Like couldn't even keep down water bad. :( Drinking water is important for everyone, but for a nursing mom like me not staying hydrated is bad for me and my baby. If I don't have water in me I can't make enough milk to feed little Oliver, and that would be a sad day. Now this little stomach bug of terror hurt my milk supply significantly. I was seriously worried I was going to lose it altogether. I literally went from pumping 4-5 oz per session to barely 1-2 oz per session in that 24 hours of sickness. So I turned to my best friend for some help...Pinterest. Ok there are like a thousand million lactation recipes out there, cookies, smoothies, different foods that supposedly help with lactation and increasing supply, etc. Since I have a bit of a sweet tooth I turned to the cookies first. I found a link on Pinterest for the "Ultimate Lactation Cookie" found here. I'm not going to re-post the recipe in this entry because I don't want to and that's not the purpose of my post. :D Anyway, I've made this recipe a few times and I've learned a few tricks that I like. First off I'm just going to say I've found different variations of this recipe (most lactation cookie recipes are going to be fairly similar) and they all have 3 main, very important ingredients that can't be substituted. Those are brewer's yeast, flax seed, and oatmeal. Anything else you can usually fudge a little and still get results. For example, the butter in this recipe calls for special butter with flax seed oil or olive oil. I've gone and bought the special butter to use, but from what I've seen from other recipes regular butter should do just fine. I make this suggestion because the flax seed butter that I was able to find only comes in a 15 oz tub and you need a cup of it (that's about 8 oz) so 1 tub doesn't even make 2 batches of cookies and it costs way more than regular butter. Not to mention the average person is not going to have flax seed butter in their house, I certainly didn't. That's tip #1...let's move on.

Re-cap - Tip #1: Regular butter works just as good as the "special" flax seed oil or olive oil butter.

Tip #2: This recipe calls for Omega-3 eggs. Again, I don't usually buy these eggs I get the regular kind and they work just as well.

Tip #3: Another ingredient change...it calls for raisins. Yuck! Not a fan. I use chocolate chips instead. The mini kind because they're cuter.

Tip #4: When you're sifting together the dry ingredients, the brewer's yeast doesn't sift very well. At least mine doesn't. Everything will sift out and the yeast is left behind. I just use my fingers and grind it up against the sifter to break it up a little. I'll do that until there's not a ton left and then I just dump the little bit left in the bowl. It'll be ok.

Tip #5: In the comments I've read on these recipes there's always someone that asks about how many cookies to expect out of a batch. Every time the author says about 2 dozen. In my experience that's WAY underestimating. So far I've gotten between 65-70 cookies, the batch I just made today came out with 72! That's A LOT of cookies.

• Subtip #5: It's recommended that you eat up to 5 cookies per day. I've noticed among commenters that calories are important. I put this recipe into MyFitnessPal using 1 cookie as 1 serving and getting about 65 cookies out of a batch. So 1 batch = 65 servings. Ladies and Gents this works out to be 66 calories per serving! What?! Healthy cookies?? What is this magic? Isn't it awesome! Bonus - nursing takes up about 300-500 calories per day, so eating 5 cookies you'll take in 330 calories per day just from the cookies. Easily burned off JUST from nursing! No extra miles on the treadmill required! You're welcome!

Tip #6: I've used old fashioned oats for the oatmeal and it's been fine. It calls for "Thick cut" in the recipe, but I have not been able to find that anywhere. I did, however, try steel cut oats the first time I made these and they did not turn out well. They were like hard little oatmeal seeds in there. The old fashioned style oats will get soft in the dough just like a regular oatmeal cookie.


Alright so if you're making these as we're going along I have some pictures for you too once your dough is made. Mine seems to always come to the consistency of a slightly runny oatmeal cookie dough. When I'm ready to start baking these bad boys I pull out all of my cookie sheets (I have 4) and line them with parchment paper. I LOVE parchment paper. First because it makes clean up super easy! The second reason I'll give you in a minute.

I scoop out my dough using a Tablespoon measuring spoon. I don't quite fill it all the way, but I don't level it either. It looks something like this:

Ok so drop those onto your parchment lined cookie sheet about 1 inch apart. Bake.

Mine are usually good after 12 minutes. These ones have about 5 minutes left:

After they are done and you've pulled them out of the oven I slide the whole sheet of parchment off the cookie sheet and put it on the counter to cool. That way I can let the cookie sheet cool a little before I put a NEW sheet of parchment on for more cookies.

Once the cookies have cooled a little transfer them to a cooling rack.

Here's a size reference so you know about how big they are when they are done. About palm sized:

 

Alright remember that second reason I love parchment paper? Here it is. Now that your cookies are baked and on a cooling rack you have perfectly spaced and sized circles on the paper. 

Tip #7: Cut the parchment paper up into squares around the circles left behind by the cookies. Put each cookie on its own square and they won't stick together when you store them! 

Store the cookies in Ziploc bags with 5 in each bag. Don't forget that parchment paper!

That's it! They are pretty yummy cookies. Good luck and I hope this was helpful!

Our Little Oliver!

So little Oliver made his way into the world on January 7th 2016 at 10:18 pm. He weighed in at 7 lbs 13 oz and was 21.75 inches long (though I don't think that's accurate, he hasn't measured even close to that since). We love him to pieces.

This is the first time I held him...well that I remember

Now the story of how he got here.

I had an appointment with my Dr on Monday the 4th and was 80% effaced and dilated to a 2+. He stripped my membranes which wasn't bad, and then Tyler and I headed to work. Nothing out of the ordinary happened over the next couple days. At work on Wednesday I noticed my belly would get hard and tight every now and then, but it didn't hurt so I didn't think anything of it and continued on with my work day. We went to bed that night at our usual time around 11. I woke up at about 12:15 to go to the bathroom and when I stood up out of bed there was a lovely gush of liquid. I made my way quickly to the bathroom (well as quickly as I could at nearly 40 weeks) luckily I missed the bed and made it to the bathroom. :) After doing my business, the water kept coming in little gushes, so I went and stood in the bathtub and waited for it to stop. It took about 30 minutes before it stopped long enough for me to get cleaned up and protected to make the 25 minute drive to the hospital. After I was ready I woke up Tyler and told him that my water broke and we needed to go. So on a little under 2 hours of sleep (an hour for me) we drove to McKay Dee Hospital in Ogden. We got there around 2 AM, got all checked in, and settled in for the adventure of labor.

My contractions were about 2-3 minutes apart from the time my water broke. They weren't terribly painful, more just uncomfortable, definitely not pleasant. I wanted to wait as long as possible before I went for the drugs. I started off with just the stuff they put in your IV to put off the epidural as long as I could (I was slightly terrified of getting one...giant needle in my back...yuck!). I was able to get to about 8 AM before they wouldn't let me get the IV stuff anymore and I had to do the epidural. The on call anesthesiologist was this little old guy from India, Dr Patel. He didn't say much, but we got it done and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. In fact it tickled when he put it in and I kept jumping. (Fun fact: my mom remembered that Dr Patel was the same Dr that did her epidural when I was born. Pretty crazy, right?) All I can say is heaven bless whoever invented the epidural! I was able to sleep through several hours of my labor and was never uncomfortable after that. The best was when I had one particularly strong contraction...like off the charts strong, and I didn't feel a thing!

Anyway...several hours went by and then several more. Long story short I was progressing beautifully until I got to 9 cm and there was a piece of my cervix that was in the way and Oliver wouldn't descend anymore. Problem #1. The nurse had me try several different positions and try some "practice pushes" to try and get it to go back and out of the way. It eventually worked and I got to 10 cm around 5 pm. They had been in contact with my Dr throughout the day, but I hadn't seen him at all up to this point, which wasn't surprising to me. I honestly wouldn't have minded if he didn't show up at all. The nurses however obviously had other plans or there are protocols for that or something, but they had me wait all the while I'm just hanging out at 10cm ready to go. Eventually my Dr did show up a couple hours later. He did a quick assessment and then left again to check on another patient. In the next hour or so the nurse discovered that Oliver's face was pointed at the ceiling instead of at the floor like it should have been. Problem #2. Again I waited for my Dr to come back to try and turn him the right way. That also worked, but he needed to go check on that other patient again and said he would be back in like 15 minutes and we'd get this show on the road (FINALLY, I've been at 10 cm for like 3 or 4 hours by now with no real pushing being done at all). Of course in the time it took for him to get back Oliver had flipped back over to his face up position. Again my Dr tried to flip him back over. I'm not sure how long he tried, but it felt like forever! It was not the most comfortable thing I've ever done, but again thank heaven for the epidural, all I really felt was a lot of pressure. By now, and since I had been sitting at 10 cm for hours with no baby being born, my contractions had all but stopped. All day I was contracting every 2-3 minutes and now they were coming every 10-15 minutes. Problem #3.

Finally my Dr decided that Oliver was just being too darn stubborn and gave me the option of using a vacuum to help him out or try to turn him again...or we could go the C-section route. At the mention of the possibility of a C-section I instantly got nervous. I've said for years that I wanted to avoid that route by any means possible. And at this point in my labor I had done everything right, my body did exactly what it should have done and I was quite upset that it might have to end in C-section anyway. We opted to at least give the vacuum option a shot to avoid a C-section. After about 30-45 minutes of that, which was only like 2 or 3 pushes because my contractions were conked out, it was decided that the vacuum wasn't working. Because of Oliver's face up position his brow kept getting caught on my pelvis and he just wouldn't budge. Problem #4. At that point my Dr said C-section was probably the best option. We could stay and push for several more hours, which would just end up exhausting both of us (as in me and baby) and potentially put us both in distress making the C-section even more necessary and probably more risky. He also let me know that this didn't mean my next babies couldn't be born vaginally, I'm actually quite a good candidate for VBAC next time, there was plenty of room in there for Oliver to come out if he were positioned right. With that reassurance from him I consented to the C-section and after he left I wanted to cry. I was headed for major surgery that I was in no way prepared for and it was the last thing I wanted out of this experience. I also felt defeated. I had just spent 20+ hours in labor, about 5 of which was spent waiting doing nothing, and to have it come to this...almost like all that was for nothing. But I was tired and I just wanted to meet my baby.

A C-section is an interesting procedure. You get strapped to a table in a T position, arms straight out to the side (imagine crucifixion only horizontal). Then there's the blue divider that makes it so you can't see anything, and a bright light in your face. My Dr kept poking at the incision point asking if I could feel it, which I could. Eventually I had to be put completely under. I didn't get to see my baby's first minutes or even hours. I have no memory of his actual birth. I remember bits and pieces after...the nurses asking if I wanted to nurse him. I said no because I was barely coherent so the nurses hand expressed some to feed him. That was an odd feeling...and it hurt. I don't remember a lot after that and I for sure don't remember seeing Oliver until the next day. I remember being transferred from the operating table to the hospital bed (that hurt too) and then being wheeled to my recovery room.

After all that and with the disappointment I felt at having things go the way they did I'm glad we were able to go home with a happy, healthy baby (well...after 4 days in the hospital). I'm grateful that we opted to deliver in a hospital, who knows what would have happened had we chosen a different option. Yes, I'm sad that I had to have a C-section and the recovery was harder than a normal delivery would have been (probably...I don't actually know), but I'm glad Oliver made it here safely and nothing too traumatizing happened. I'm recovering nicely and I'm not as sad about the C-section now as I was at the time it was happening.

So there you go...there's the story of our cute little boy. We love him so much and are so grateful he's ours and we get to teach him and watch him grow through the rest of his life!

Here are some more pictures of him for you to enjoy. Can't believe he'll be a month old on Sunday already!