Our Breastfed Baby Girl

Our little angel baby was four months old on Saturday!

It's hard to believe that this wiggly, 13lb chunker with the chubby cheeks and double chin is the same little newborn who struggled to reach her birth weight by the third week (the goal is by two weeks).

 

Look how big her diaper was on her!

I am so proud of her; so proud of us, for fighting through our eating challenges.  Those first few weeks were rough - the problems latching, the nipple pain, the hour to an hour and 45 minute feedings.  Those two days when I couldn't wake her up to eat for more than three minutes before she fell back to sleep, and sometimes couldn't wake her up at all. The waiting for weeks to get an appointment with the ear, nose, and throat doctor and pinning so much hope on that getting her tongue tie clipped would solve all of our problems (which it didn't).  I would whisper to her all those hours at night - "We're two smart girls.  We can figure this out."  

I remember when the lactation consultants advised me to pump after feedings to keep my supply up, and I only had a hand pump at the time, so 15 minutes on each side added up to a half an hour.  After trying to feed her who-knows -how-long.  Before they told me I didn't have to do it at night (OH THANK GOD), I sat, pathetic in a bean bag chair, pumping away and longing for sleep.

When she didn't gain her birth weight back until her third week, another lactation consultant looked grave, and got us on a plan to pump and bottle feed.  I know I already posted about this, but I was so relieved to have a plan, rather than just, "Eh, give her a syringe of milk if it seems like she didn't eat enough." LIKE I HAD ANY IDEA! But, at the same time, I was so scared that if we bottle fed, she wouldn't breast feed.  However, there were two moms at the support group who had been in the same boat we were, and they had chubby, healthy four-month olds.  So I had faith.

And now, here we are, with our very own chubby, healthy four-month old.  We've weaned her off of bottles (save for special occasions and a night time one with Daddy), weaned her off a nipple shield, and gone down from an hour, to 45 minutes, to around 20 or sometimes even less.  So, I'm here to say to moms struggling with breastfeeding their babies:  Hang in there.  You and your baby can do it.  Get help, and there may be more than one way to reach your breastfeeding goals.  When I told Lactation Consultant A that Lactation Consultant B had told us to pace bottle feed, Consultant A looked stern and said that she would've had us use a Supplemental Nursing System (SNS), where Mom hangs a bottle of milk around her neck and tapes a tube to the nipple for the baby to get extra (these are the same people who had us using a syringe and never mentioned an SNS).  Consultant A said she'd never seen a pace-bottle fed baby transition successfully to nursing.

WELL, HERE IS ONE:

I see that a lot of women find the SNS or syringe feeding to be what they need to help them and their baby get through their feeding challenges, so I don't mean to trash those methods. I just want to say that different approaches will help different people, and to find what seems to work the best for you and your baby.  I couldn't be happier with how things worked out for me and my little girl.

I'll write a follow up post with information on some local breastfeeding support groups.

Laughing Abby

I love this picture we took of Abby for Easter, because she looks like she's laughing:

...but I love this video even more, because she actually is laughing:

I knew I would miss something while I worked this week!  I thought it would be rolling over, but it ended up being her first laugh.  Just before this, according to Kevin, Abby was working on rolling over, and was so close!  So, her daddy gave her a little extra push to get her on her belly, and she was just so delighted she started laughing! I haven't been able to stop watching it all day.

Baby Talk

I know some people (her grandparents) would like to see more videos of Abby.  Here's the thing. Although she is a very photogenic baby, as evidenced here:

Don't worry, I'll post more of these soon!

...she does seem to have a little bit of stage fright.  She'll often be wiggling around or cooing, cute and active as can be, but as soon as I take out my iPhone or a camera to take a video, she'll just kind of lay there.  Still adorable, of course, but no one (except maybe grandparents) wants to watch a video of someone else's baby just laying there.

Well, last weekend, Abby either got over her stage fright, or was so enthralled with what she was doing that she didn't notice that her daddy was recording her.  She's moved from the basic coos of last month's video to all sorts of tones and modulations (that sounds so technical!).  The video is precious, though - watch how she reacts when she when she sees me in the mirror with her.

We love watching her figure all this out!  We wonder if she thinks she's saying actual words, actually telling us something, or if she just thinks she's making fun noises.  If she is trying to talk to us, I wonder what she's saying?

Learning by Accident

As I mentioned in the last post, we are definitely seeing Abby's personality develop.  It's so fun to see her figure new things out.  We don't always know if achieving these "developmental milestones" are an accident or not, but I figure they probably all start out as accidental, then a baby realizes, "Hey, that's something I can do!" Abby's been working on a few.

Smiling

You've seen the pictures.  Abby's been smiling like a champ for weeks, and her smiles just get better and better.  She's such a charmer.

And, in case you missed the video on Facebook:

Tummy Time

We got this spiffy little tummy time mat at the WeeCycle Consignment Sale  the other weekend, and Abby actually seems to enjoy tummy time on it.  There's a mirror, too, and she loves looking at the baby in the floor.  So, I don't know if it's her age or the mat, but at least she's getting to enjoy some tummy time.

Reaching for Things

This may have been an accident, but last week, while sitting in her rocker, she reached up and touched the toys dangling from it.  Ok, it may be more that she was flailing about and happened to touch them.  She did it more than once, though.

To be honest, she hasn''t been successful with this since, but she continues to reach!

Talking

Abby has become a little Chatty Cathy!  We have full on babbling conversations.  The thing is, she gets shy as soon as I start videoing her.  I did catch her cooing a bit while playing on her new play mat.  She loves talking to the baby in the mirror!

Thumb Sucking

This also has only happened once, so it might have been an accident.   I have mixed feelings about the thumb sucking - I sucked my thumb for a LONG time - until I was six - and had to have a head gear, braces, the whole shebang.  But at her age, it IS developmentally appropriate - not to mention, freaking cute.  :-)

S.F.P.

In college, I was notorious among my friends for having what we affectionately referred to as a "severe facial problem."  Meaning, if there was a situation that required a poker face, it was guaranteed that I would have just the opposite.  For example:  The boy my roommate has a secret crush on happens to sit with us at lunch and unwittingly makes a double entendre - which is only a double entendre if you know that roomie has a crush on said boy.  I was unable to take this in stride.  My face would contort as I struggled to keep it from showing surprise, then amusement, then turning red as I tried to not laugh.  This resulted in me drinking copious amounts of tea in college, as that was  my escape.  Awkard moment = me getting up and saying, "I'm gonna get some tea."  And then try to hide my face behind my teacup, should further hijinks ensue.

The "severe facial problem" became such an inside joke among my friends that when I made my own webpage (as was fashionable in the late 90s, before MySpace and Facebook and all that), I had one dedicated to "Severe Facial Problems," featuring photos of friends with unusual (and usually funny) facial expressions.

More and more, when I look at myself and Abby in the mirror, I have to admit that, at least for now, she looks more like her daddy.  I tell her, "That's ok, you're daddy's pretty good-looking."  However,  some photos make me wonder if she might share her mother's propensity for "severe facial problems:"

"Mom, I'm only 2 months old.  I'm not ticklish, yet."

"Well...."

"World domination?  No, of course, that's not what I was thinking about."

Also, that sleeper no longer fits her. : (

"Mom, like I even know it's Dad's birthday."

I love that we're starting to see her personality come through more and more.  :)

Smiley Girl

For the past several weeks, we've been transitioning Abby from pumped breast milk to breast feeding.  Now, we're at every other feeding on the breast, so I still need to pump about 5 times a day.  As Abby has gotten to be more alert, it can be challenging to squeeze in a pump while she is either asleep or in a good mood.  Little girl wants to be held almost any time she's awake - she doesn't tolerate sitting alone for too long!  And pumping is one of those things I can't really do while wearing her.  For the past few days, it's been working well to have her lay on my lap while I pump.  She  was actually pretty happy last Friday:

I love when she is like this!

The Lady with the Baby

When I wrote what I thought about being pregnant, I mentioned that everyone is nice to you.  I've discovered, though, that as the mother of a newborn (or nearly newborn), people are still really nice to you.  Or, I should say, they are nice to your baby.  People see our charming little baby and say things like, "Oh look, how sweet/precious/adorable/awesome (we did actually have someone tell us she was awesome)," and I have to remember to be polite and say, "Thank you," and not, "I know," which is what I'm thinking.

Women dragging toddlers and preschool children look at me pushing little Abby Bear, and they aren't thinking, "Gosh, I sure am glad my child can walk and feed himself and use the potty and sleep for six hours in a row."  No, they are thinking, "Gosh, I miss when he was that small."  I can see the wistfulness in their eyes.  And I think, "Do you really?  Do you really miss planning your day around feedings that are two hours apart?  Getting no more than 2.5 hours of sleep in a row?  Not being able to figure out why your precious little one is screaming her head off and not knowing what to do about it?"  However, I'm sure there are a thousand challenges that toddlers and preschool children present that I have no idea about, that when I have children that age, I might shrug and say, "Maybe I do miss it."

Therein lies what I am realizing is a paradox of parenthood.  For every hour of sleep I long for is someone saying "It gets easier."  And, although I still wonder WHEN, I can still see that it already has.  Kevin and I say things like, "We can't wait until Abby ________."  Sleeps more than three hours, laughs, is more interactive, can tell us what's wrong.  We can't wait to take her to the playground, have tickle fights, go swimming, try "grown up foods," etc.  But I am keenly aware that for every "can't wait until" that comes to pass, we lose something.

A couple of times a week, Abby and I go to a breastfeeding support group that we affectionately refer to as "Baby Breakfast."  This week, at one of them, I realized that Abby is no longer the tiny baby there.  We first went when she was only five days old, and I looked at several month-old babies like they were giants.  But now, I see babies who are even three weeks old, and born weighing more than Abby, and think they look so tiny.  And while Abby is certainly still small enough for snuggles, and will be for awhile, she's already gotten so much bigger.  The tiny baby phase is fleeting, and I try so hard to be conscious of that.  I don't want to spend so much energy "waiting until" that I don't appreciate how precious she is now, and at every stage, and how she will only pass through each for a short time.

"The days are long, but the years are short."  I try to remind myself of that during every long day.