Happy Birthday Baby!

Eleanor turned one year old yesterday!  We had a party for her on Saturday with about ten people, mostly family.  It was a good party and she got tons of new toys and clothes!  She spent all day yesterday playing with her new push toy (from mommy and daddy).  She loves to walk around behind it.  She is so close to taking her first step on her own, but isn’t there quite yet.  Hopefully soon!  For now she moves much more quickly crawling so she doesn’t have much incentive to walk.

She’s now saying dada and versions of mom (mama, ma, nen, even Jenn recently), as well as “hi” and “up”.  Her little voice is so sweet!  She learned those last two in just the last week or so, so she seems to be learning quickly now.  I’m looking forward to hearing the next word!

She doesn’t have another appt until the end of the month, so I weighed her (on our Wii Fit, haha) and measured her myself.  She’s now about 18.5 lbs (13%) and 29″ tall (59%).  So she’s still  skinny, but not as much as before (she was 16% weight and 87% height at 9mo).  We’ve been feeding her a ton but I guess she might need even more.  Yikes!

We gave her soy milk for the first time the other day and she loved it.  I’m hoping to swap out a couple nursing sessions a day for it, but so far she seems to be treating it as more of a supplement than a meal.  Now that I know her stats, maybe that’s a good thing.  I’m planning on continuing to breastfeed for the foreseeable future, hopefully until she’s about two, which is the WHO recommendation.  We’ll see how it goes.

She popped her first molar on the 12th, which brings her grand total up to nine teeth!  Her sleeping is still all over the board, largely from the constant teething.  Though apparently I was a horrible sleeper as a baby too, so it could just be that.  I am so thankful that I’m able to stay home with her!  Besides the fact that I love being here with her, I would be a zombie at work most days.

I can’t believe my baby is one, but I also look at her and see a one year old.  This year just went too fast.  I hope the next one is a little slower, and I can’t wait to see what it brings!

Mama finally gets some sleep + 10 mo BFing blinkie

I put up a ten month breastfeeding blinkie.  Wow, ten months!  Crazy!  The last few months of breastfeeding have been a breeze, especially compared to the first few.  Eleanor still has her moments of not being the nicest nurser – especially when she can’t breath because of a cold, poor thing – but for the most part she knows exactly what she’s doing now and how to do it without hurting me.  Even with her seven teeth, she very rarely does something that hurts me.  The only time she comes close to biting is when she gets distracted by a sudden noise or something.  I was so worried about breastfeeding a baby with teeth, and now I’m a little surprised that more moms don’t talk about how easy it really is!  I guess that’s probably partly because few women even breastfeed this long these days, and the majority of ten month olds don’t have seven teeth.  Haha!  Hopefully a few moms out there can learn from my experience.  I always enjoy learning from other people’s successes and mistakes before embarking on my own journeys!

Last night was the best night for sleeping that we’ve had in this house in I don’t know how long.  Eleanor was up only once to eat!  She gave us a six hour stretch of sleep.  To give you an idea of how rare that is: I woke up engorged and leaking! I never leak anymore, at night or during the day, unless I’m nursing her on the other side.  I hope my body gets the chance to adjust to this.  I know it will in a few days, if Eleanor just keeps this up!

As you can probably tell I’m in a very good mood today!  A little sleep can work wonders.  : )

Just another daddy’s girl!

In the last few days Eleanor has decided that John is her new favorite person, and she’s also saying dada appropriately!  It’s enough to break a mama’s heart, though at the same time I’m so proud of her for saying her first word.  Haha!  Being a mom is quite confusing at times…

I remember my siblings going through phases where they preferred one parent over the other, then switching back, so hopefully this is only temporary.  I’ve also read that babies usually say dada before mama because they understand at an earlier age that daddy is a separate being from them.  They think of mommy as being the same person as them (separation anxiety is a symbol of them starting to understand that mommy is a separate person after all, if I’m remembering this correctly.)  I just keep telling myself all of this so that I don’t get jealous!  It’s working.  Kinda.

I think she might be teething again, since she’s chewing and drooling and sleeping like crap.  Up every 1.5-2 hours all night long, and usually only nursing will console her back to sleep.  Ugh!  This is her typical teething pattern, though she tends to take a long time to pop the teeth.  She’s been doing this for three weeks now and I am running on empty.  John took her yesterday morning and let me sleep in and I slept until 11am!  I usually hate doing that – such a waste of a day – but I obviously needed it.

Nothing else new going on.  I’m already over winter and want spring to get here.  That’s one problem with going down to So Cal for the holidays: you get a taste of lovely weather and it makes winter seem interminable.  We went to the local nursery last week and bought some indoor plants, which helps.  I really want an indoor lime tree, but can’t really justify spending $50 on something that I will very likely kill!  I think I might just go buy a few limes and plant the seeds.  And maybe make maragaritas.  ; )

Two more teeth!

Eleanor’s been pretty fussy for a few weeks, and finally yesterday she popped her third tooth!  The first two came in right before five months, and are on the bottom.  This new one is on the top, and the one next to it is bulging like crazy, too.  I really hope it pops by the end of the day and we get our happy baby back.  It would be a nice Treat for today!  ; )

I have to admit that I can already feel the new tooth while BFing her, and that sucker is sharp.  Eeek!  I hope she very quickly learns how to be nice.

It’s been too long!

I’ve been busy enjoying summer and early fall with Eleanor, and lost track of this blog!  I’m sure all you mommies out there understand.  : )

We’ve all been doing well.  I’m still BFing Eleanor, though she’s also eating some solids now.  She’s eating one “meal” a day, though yesterday she had two and we’ll see what happens today.  So far she’s liked everything but avocado, though she loved the taste of guac John gave her the other day.  I make most of her baby food, and have successfully stuck to all organic things to date.  We’ll see how long I can keep it up!  She’s still sensitive to dairy, though it’s not as bad as before.  Nw if I eat it she gets a little fussy and gassy for a few days, which is mean to do to her but not nearly as ill as she used to get.  I’m hopeful that she’ll outgrow it by the time she’s a year old, though I’m planning on BFing well past that so that we don’t have to wean her to other milk.  I’d like to avoid giving her cow/goat/soy/etc. milk for a while (she reacts to cow and goat cheese, and we’re not completely sure about soy), and rice milk has almost no nutritional value.

Eleanor is trying to learn how to crawl right now, though we won’t be surprised if she walks before crawls.  She loves to stand up and can do so for a few seconds completely unsupported now, though it’s hit or miss.  She stands at her activity table until she gets bored, or tries to lunge for something else and topples over.  She doesn’t seem to quite get that she can move her feet *before* moving her body, lol!

She’s gaining well and growing like a weed.  I’m not completely sure what her stats are right now (forgot to take them at seven months), though I think we’ll be moving her into the next car seat soon.  We got her a Britax Marathon, which I’m happy about.  I feel safe moving her into it.  I’ll miss the ease of carrying her in her infant seat, but she’s getting too heavy for me now, anyway!

Nothing else much is going on in our lives.  I’m a  political junky, so I’m loving all the election stuff.  I’ve also been sewing diapers for Eleanor, since I finally figured out I could probably do it better on my own and for less.  (Bamboo fleece is a wonder fabric!  It absorbs so much liquid, and is very thin.  For once my cloth-diapered baby doesn’t have a huge bubble butt!)  Oh, and we’re heading to Disneyland for Christmas!  I’m so excited about this!  We haven’t been in probably five years, and of course this will be Eleanor’s first time.  I think she’ll be too young to enjoy it, but we sure will.  : )  We’re going with my immediate family, and also visiting some relatives down South for a week after, so it’ll be a long trip.  Should be fun!  I just hope it isn’t too stressfull with Eleanor.  We’ve taken quite a few smaller trips with her (across the mountains to see Grandma and Grandpa), but nothing like this.

I hope to be a better blogger in the future, though I’ve always been bad at this sort of thing, lol!  Maybe I’ll expand out a bit from just writing about Eleanor…

Four mo appt and laughing her tiny patootie off

Eleanor has started really laughing in earnest now, and it’s a crack up!  I love baby laughs in general, but hers is of course the cutest.  ; )  I can usually get her to laugh a couple times a day, sometimes doing things that she didn’t used to react to.  I remember how stoked I was when I could get her to smile a few times a day.  Now I get all upset if she doesn’t smile at me when she wakes up, haha!  How quickly you take these little things for granted.

We took her in yesterday for her four month appt.  I finally talked to her ped about her dairy sensitivity, and her ped agress that that’s what’s going on.  She was actually really surprised.  I started off by saying that I think she’s sensitive to dairy, and the ped din’t really say anything.  So I listed off her symptoms and she looks at me with her eyebrows high and goes “oh, wow, so it probably is then!”  LOL!  She said she gets moms telling her all the time that their babies are sensitive to dairy, but it’s rarely the case.  Apparently the GI difficulties (diarrhea and gassiness especially) I listed were the tipping point for her.  She told me to avoid dairy but keep trying it every once in a while.  Nothing I didn’t already know, but I’m glad that it’s in Eleanor’s chart now.  She also said that we’ll have to talk more about it when it comes time for Nora to start eating dairy, if she hasn’t outgrown it by then.  That shouldn’t be for a while (I think it’s nine months for yogurt/cheese, though that could be wrong.)

Other than that, the appt went well!  Nora is now 12lbs 10oz – I was guessing 13lbs, so I was a little off.  She’s 24″ exactly, and her little noggin is 16″.  That’s 28%, 41%, and 40%.  I think she was 32%, 50%, and 50% last month, so she seems to be heading back toward her birth percentiles.  Apparently BFed babies get ahead of the charts for the first few months, then they slow down and FF babies catch up to them.  At one year and beyond, they’re the same.  So she’s normal.  : )

She got her second round of DTaP shot and rotavirus oral vaccines, and did fine.  Screamed for a second during the shot, but once we picked her up she was all smiles for everyone.  Crazy baby!  We didn’t give her any Tylenol this time, and I’m just playing it by ear today.

She’s been doing the classic four mo old eating/sleeping thing, where she doesn’t eat terribly well during the day and then makes up for it at night.  It’s tiring!  Plus she somehow gave me a blood blister on one side the other night, and it’s excruciating now.  I pumped that side all day yesterday, but then fed her once right before bed (little painful, but fine), and again at 5am today.  That 5am feed was a huge mistake.  It didn’t hurt much while I was feeding her, but 2.5 hours and two ibuprofen later it still feels like someone’s poking me with a hot needle.  Youch!  So I guess it’s back to pumping that side all day today, too.  I hate doing that!  I hate pumping in general, it’s a pain to wash the pump and bottles several times a day, it’s always bad for my supply, and I don’t like giving her so many bottles.  But I hate the pain more, so I’ll deal, lol!

I’m putting a couple more pics up.  They’re from the last few days.  Enjoy!

Long time, no write!

OK, I’m back!  From where I’m not sure, but I’m back nonetheless.  : )  Maybe from new-mommy fogland?

Where to begin…  Well, John went back to work on May 12th, which is the main reason I haven’t written a new post on here in ages.  Nora has been quite the handful for me, and since I’ve also taken on the majority of the night shift (John needs to sleep on weekdays, and he can’t breastfeed anyway) I’ve been pretty tired. Every time I think we’ve gotten on a nice little schedule, Nora throws a curve ball and it seems we’re back to square one.  She does go to bed at about the same time every night – 9pm – though she wakes pretty erratically.  Some nights she’ll go seven straight hours, others she wakes every two hours.  Ack!

Nora has gotten one round of vaccinations so far.  We decided to follow Dr. Sears’ alternative schedule, so at two months she got the rotavirus oral vaccine, and the DTaP shot.  She seemed to do ok.  She slept most of that day, and we gave her Tylenol every four hours which kept her fairly happy when she was awake.  She was supposed to get Pc (pneumococcal) and HiB (hemophaelus influenza B) this past week, but there’s apparently a nationwide shortage of HiB and they were out.  We’re going back next Tuesday to get those.

Cutting dairy out of my diet worked, yay!  Her colic and reflux got much much better.  Every time I eat too much dairy (she can tolerate small amounts, depending on what it is) she has a very bad, fussy day, and gets diarrhea and diaper rashes.  Poor thing.  : (  It really stinks not eating dairy – I miss pizza! – but it’s worth it.  Supposedly she should start growing out of this in the next few months, but we’ll see.  In the meantime I’m taking lots of calcium supplements.

New fun thing making her fussy though: teething!!!  She started at 10 weeks!  She’s chewing everything, especially her own hands, drooling like crazy, fussier than usual, and sleeping poorly (hence the tired mom!)  I didn’t really believe that was what was going on until I talked to my parents and found out that I had two teeth at eight weeks.  Unfortunately for us, Nora is now almost 14 weeks old and still hasn’t popped a tooth.  I keep hearing that the worst is over once the teeth show themselves, but that it can sometimes take months.  I look every morning, but nothing yet!

Milestone-wise, she’s doing great!  She’s holding her head up very well now.  She still gets a little wobbly after a while, but will hold it up almost indefinitely in any position you put her in.  She likes to sit or stand, and will do either one with minimal support.  She’s not quite ready for her Exersaucer, but I think in a couple more weeks she will be.  She’s not rolling yet, but can lift herself up pretty well while doing tummy time, so she’s not as miserable doing that anymore.  She lasts about five minutes on her belly before yelling at us for mistreating her, instead of the previous two, haha!  She’s down to about eight nursings a day, which is apparently a little more than average for her age but I’m thrilled with it!  She’s cooing and smiling like crazy, and is learning how to squeal.  She definitely knows mommy and daddy and gets very excited when she sees us.  It’s so sweet.  : )  She’s not quite grabbing things yet, but will bring anything in her hand – our fingers, a terry cloth burp rag – to her mouth and chow down on it.  We bought her a little floor gym last weekend, and after a couple days she figured out how to kick her toys to make them swing and rattle.  She loves it and will happily play there for up to half an hour at a time!  It’s wonderful for her and great for me.  ; )

The cloth diapering is going well, too.  I think the Thirsties pocket-AIOs, and the Thirsties wraps with Kissaluvs contours are my favorite methods currently.  The Thirsties just seem to fit her best right now.  She’s pretty skinny for a baby (32nd percentile for weight, but 55th for height) and a lot of the diapers seem to have leg openings that are too big.  When we tighten them enough to fit well around the legs, they become too tight around her tummy.  I’m sure things will change as she grows, though, as they have so far.  (We liked the Proraps and BumGenius one-size pockets best when she was littler.)

Oh, what else…  Oh, we made our first real car trip with her!  We drove to my parents’ across the state, which is normally about a four hour drive.  The way there was awful.  We stopped twice to feed her, which I had expected, but then she was so unhappy most of the rest of the drive.  We ended up stopping another time so I could get in the back with her and keep her happy.  She fell asleep immediately, so I think she was just lonely back there.  The way back was great – she slept most the way – and the visit itself was wonderful!  My family is absolutely in love with her, and she seems to return the affection.  It was great having so many people around to entertain her and keep her happy, and it was like a little vacation for John and me, lol!  I think our next trip will be in Sept, when we go for a friend’s wedding.

OK, Nora just woke up from a nap and is hungry.  : )  I’ll post a pic or two really quickly, in the pictures section.  The Super Nora one is my new favorite!

Crabby little girl!

Well, it’s happened: we’ve hit the 3-6 week fussy zone, and my happy little girl has turned into a crabby little girl! Eleanor does ok during the day, but she’s incredibly fussy at night, eating about every half an hour to an hour from around 10pm to 3am, and needing to be walked/rocked/held or else she screams at us. We’ve finally given up on trying to get to bed before about 2-3am, which has helped our stress level tremendously. It’s a crazy schedule, but thankfully John is still off of work for another four weeks. I really hope by then that this has improved!

I know this isn’t her fault, and emotionally I’m handling it much better than even her occasional fussiness of the early days. I guess my pp hormones have finally started leveling off, thankfully! That is one roller coaster I am thrilled to be off of.

We’re actually a little worried that she has some bad reflux going on, but we’re just keeping an eye on it for now. She does much better when she’s propped up, but even with that she started spitting up a couple days ago. : ( Poor baby. I know spitting up is normal to a certain extent, and she’s not doing it a ton, so hopefully it won’t get worse. We tried some mylicon drops yesterday at a couple of her feedings which seemed to help, so maybe she just has some gas issues. I’m going to cut most dairy and all spicy foods for a couple weeks to see if that helps, since those are the most common food culprits in BFed babies. I really hope neither of those is causing this, though: I don’t know how long I can happily go without those two foods, lol!

When she’s in a good mood, she’s smiling like crazy now! It is so cute! She also loves playing little games with me, like Pat-A-Cake. She gets all excited! She still loves the outdoors, too: I took her out on the deck yesterday evening when she was a bit fussy, and she just laid in my arms and stared up at the trees against the sky. She kept looking around trying to find the source of the chirps she kept hearing, too. Such a smart little gal. : ) I can see her little personality starting to form, which is so much fun. I wish she spent more time like this and less time uncomfortable and crying, but I know this is just a phase. I remind myself that about every hour… ; )

Quick update

I really don’t have much to report, which is kind of nice!  Little Eleanor appears to be gaining weight, which is great to see.  I hope to have some new pics up soon.  BFing is going much better: I no longer have any pain beyond the first latch-on, at least when I use the nipple shield.  We’ve tried a couple times without the shield, and she just doesn’t seem to get it.  It’s also quite painful for me.  I have a feeling weaning her off of it is going to be very difficult! 

We have her second ped appt tomorrow, then we’re going to go out with my parents for dinner.  They live about four hours away, and are in town for one night before flying out of here for a vacation.  It’ll be our first outing to a restaurant, which should be interesting!  We went to BRU the other day and she did very well, so I hope she does as well tomorrow.

I’m feeling pretty good and seem to be healing well from the c/s.  I’m down to just taking an ibuprofen every four hours now, which is great!  I hate taking meds  but I also kind of like walking without an inordinate amount of pain, so it’s a trade-off.  : )  As of this morning I’ve lost exactly half of the 36 lbs I gained, which I’m quite happy with.  I only look about four months pg now too, instead of seven or eight, haha!

Oodles of news

In the last three days we’ve had a pediatrician appt, two blood draws, and another LC appointment.  Whew!  We have had an appt or lab visit every single day since we’ve been home with Eleanor, and are so looking forward to a quiet weekend!

Pediatrician on Wednesday:  Nora was up to 6lbs 5oz, which was a gain of 3.6 oz in the 28 hours between the first LC appt and this visit.  Woo-hoo!  She was perfect in all ways but one: I had been worried that she had more jaundice than she should, and the ped shared my concern.  She ordered blood draws so we headed there next.   Her billirubin came back at 17.7.  Under 12 is considered normal, 12-18 is the “watch” zone, and above 18 calls for UV light treatment.  Since she came in just barely in the watch zone this meant another blood draw the next day to see if it would go down.  If it did, then she would be declared ok and no further testing would be necessary.

Blood draw Thursday, and visiting Daddy’s work: we went for the second blood draw on Thursday, and it came back at 15.2!  Still high but dropping, which is what matters.  Even at 15 it’s the likely culprit behind Nora’s sleepiness, so hopefully it’ll be gone soon. 

We did the draw at the same health campus where my husband works, so of course we had to make the rounds!  I was having a good day, pain-wise (I actually stopped taking the Percocet that day and switched to normal acetaminophen), so we wandered around for a good hour showing Nora off to all his co-workers.  They were thrilled to meet her, and I’m glad we got her first round of stranger-meetings in while she still has all my immunities.  I keep reading that the first few weeks are the safest time for babies to be exposed to new people, which is really counter-intuitive to me, but I guess it makes sense. 

LC appt today: This appt went really well!  She’s now up to 6lbs 8oz, and is on track to be up to her birth weight by ten days, which is what they like to see.   My milk supply is now keeping up with her demand, so I’m not surprised she’s started putting on weight so well.  Even better: we were able to get her to latch on to me using a nipple shield, and without causing me a ridiculous amount of pain!  Apparently the problem is that she has a very “narrow palette”, which basically means she can’t latch on to me without causing pain, no matter how good the latch is.  We’ve been doing it mostly right since day one, which was comforting to hear, though I got a few pointers today which I think will help.  This will get better as she gets bigger, and then I’ll be able to wean her off the shield.  I wish I didn’t have shield-weaning to look forward to as I’ve heard it can be very difficult, but at this point I am so happy to have her getting nourishment straight from me that I just don’t care! 

It still hurts a little with the shield, so we’re going to do BFing on the breast in the morning/early afternoon and then just pump during the evening/night and continue with finger-feeding, since she’s more fussy and frantic later in the day.  I’m also only to give her 20 minutes at the breast unless she’s nursing well, and if she’s still hungry at that point we’ll do some finger-feeding to fill her up.  This is both to help me continue to heal and also to encourage her to not dawdle.  She has a tendency to latch on and fall right to sleep, which would be cute if it weren’t so frustrating!  We’re also supposed to keep up with the skin-to-skin, so she thinks of mommy as a safe place to be.  

All in all we’re doing well!  Tired and still trying to figure out her schedule – or rather, dealing with the fact that she has no schedule and there’s precious little we can do to change that at this early stage – but things are improving.   I took some new pics of her last night, but haven’t had time to load them on the comp yet.  Hopefully I’ll have those on the picture page in the next couple days.  She’s developing a little double chin, which is a crack-up!  Nice to see that milk going somewhere.  : )