I’m here!

I swear I really am around, I just don’t know where my time goes anymore!

Eleanor is growing and growing and growing. She’s getting huge. Even her dinky little feet aren’t so dinky anymore. : ( She’s also learning new words at an amazing rate, and strings two or even three together pretty regularly. Usually it’s just something simple along the lines of “more please” (or “mow pea”). Too cute!

She’s become obsessed with spoons and other kitchen implements, so we’ve decided to get her a play kitchen for Christmas. In the meantime I gave her one of my old pots and a couple wooden spoons to play with, and she has a grand time! She’ll also walk around the house with a “purse” over her arm (really the little box with a handle that came with her sorting blocks), saying bye-bye to you.

It’s not all fun and games though, of course. She’s also becoming more bossy and physical when upset. Out of nowhere she started biting. She doesn’t do it often, but still. We have no idea where she picked it up! None of the other kids she sees on a regular basis has done something like that around her, and she didn’t see it on TV that I know of. It’s odd.

She’s still nursing, but is down to just once a day. I’m really worried she’s going to decide to wean herself before the cold and flu season is over, and that makes me nervous. I had finally wrapped my head around nursing her to 2-2.5 years just a few months ago, only to find out she may not want to nurse that long! It’s such an odd concept that she could so easily negate something that I decided for her benefit. I suppose this is the first in a long line of decisions that will be taken away from me, as she gets older. It’s pretty bittersweet.

New breastfeeding blinkie

Finally got around to making a 13 month breastfeeding milestone blinkie.  : )  It’s on the Graphics page.

New breastfeeding blinkies

I put up blinkies for 11 and 12 month breastfeeding milestones.  Enjoy!

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.  ; )

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!

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.  : ) 

My milk came in!!

I pumped twice overnight and got only 5mL between both pumping sessions, which was disheartening.  That’s about what I was getting in single sessions yesterday.  Then I took a two hour nap this morning with Nora on my chest, and woke up with engorged breasts!  I pumped and got 22mL – about 2/3 of an oz!!  Holy milky!  That’s the maximum amount Nora has taken in a single feeding (either of formula alone or combined formula and colostrum), so she’ll get at least one milk-only meal today.  Woo-hoo!  We have her first pediatrician’s appt this afternoon, and I’m so glad we worked all of this out before the appt.  I hope she’s gained a bit of weight since yesterday.  : )