6 months!!!

I have a 6 month old child! That is fairly nuts! Time is flying by with my baby.  I saw a quote a while back about motherhood: The days are long, the years are short.  I can very much relate to this now.

Talia one month ago!

Talia today!

So many new things with this little munchkin!

*She is starting to sit up for several minutes at a time on her own before toppling over.

*She is beginning to think about scooting around, but hasn't found the right motivation.

*she started solid foods today!  We gave her rice cereal with breastmilk, and will move onto some puréed veggies in a few days.  She LOVED eating!  She snarfled up the whole bowl!

*She is babbling like crazy!  Her favorite is "mah mah mah" but she throws in some "dahs" and "gahs" for good measure.

*She can pick up and grab absolutely anything.  She transitions from each hand really well!  And everything goes into the mouth.

*She loves her mama, and will cry when I walk away from her.  It's at once endearing and exhausting!!

*Her eyes are still bright blue!! And her hair gets blonder all the time.  

*She had a great month of weight gain!  As of Monday, she was at 13 pounds 8.5 ounces, which is in the 9th oercentile.  We will see next week at her 6 month check up if she keeps it up without me being on fenugreek.  I didn't pump much last week after nursing her, but I'm trying to get back in the game now that the holidays are winding down.  I'm trying to keep a clear head about it, and really be open to supplanting with formula if she falls off her curve again.  I'm still working hard to keep this up though!

*She was an excellent little traveler on her first flight!  We went to California for a week for work for Kevin, followed by a train trip to visit Uncle Robin and auntie Thao!

*Still no consistent rolling over.

*And no signs of any teeth! Phew!

*Sleep continues to be extremely difficult to come by.  She will only nap for 30-40 minutes at a time during the day if I'm lucky.  At night she either goes down and stays down for insane lengths of time, or she screams for hours on end and will not give in!  We feel like we have tried everything short of cry it out, which we aren't super comfortable with.  I'm just so glad I'm not working this year so I can sleep in with her in the mornings!  Coincidentally, she likes to sleep in, so I'm lucky there!

*She is such a super smiley happy baby! Except for sleeping, she rarely cries, and generally goes with the flow! 

*She loves reading books with us! Which is good, because she got a whole lot of them for Christmas!!!

*She's the most awesome and delicious little lady ever, and I'm so glad I've had her for 6 months!

5 months!

Our little baby is growing up seriously too quickly! It's insane that I have a 5 month old baby, with little opinions and desires and abilities all to her self!

Talia one month ago!

Talia has grown so much this month, although not a whole lot weight-wise!  She has a ton of new skills and her personality just keeps getting bigger and bigger!

Our little Halloween owl!

She is giggling, albeit only for me! But oh is it the sweetest most joyful sound I have ever heard!  She loves having her ribs nibbled on, and zerberts are the bees knees.  She smiles for just about everyone she meets these days. She babbles constantly, especially on the changing table and in the car.  She fake coughs, and it is adorable!  

She is so so close to rolling over from back to front!  She's forgotten how to roll from front to back! She can grab anything she zeros in on (watch your hair!). Everything goes into the mouth.

She is just starting to sit up for a few seconds at a time.  She usually gets distracted by her feet and topples over!  

She loves sitting in her high chair at the table with us, and usually lets us eat dinner without incident.  She expressing interest in food, but we are going to wait until Christmas to start solids.

Her sleep patterns are a little tough.  She usually sleeps well at night, though she has stopped sleeping for 10+ hours straight - which is good, more on that in a bit!  The last couple weeks she has gone down some nights without a fight, and others she screams for a couple hours.  There appears to be no rhyme or reason.  Sometimes she wakes and nurses and settles down right away, and others she screams again for a couple hours.  The exception is if I just let her sleep on my chest.  Then she's great, but I can't sleep!  But generally she goes to sleep at 7:30, wakes up one or two times, and gets up for the day around 7:30.

Naps are basically crap.  She will not go down drowsy anymore, she has to be rocked into oblivion, or else she screams.  She then generally only sleeps 20-30 minutes. Ugh.  Sometimes I can rock her back to sleep for a bit more, but she usually is pretty perky and ready to go!  It makes for a pretty long day for me and I can't get much done around the house.  We are still trying to always put her down drowsy but it's just not working this month!

Then there's eating.  Oh Lordy, how many tears have I shed, how many tight hugs I've needed from Kevin, and how tired I am of trying to make this breastfeeding relationship into some magical, easy, and mutually satisfying thing.  

Talia has always been small, and has dropped in her growth curve at each visit to the pediatrician. We thought perhaps she's just petite with a high metabolism, but I've never felt too confident that she was getting enough.

She was sleeping solidly through the night, 10-12 hours at a time.  I would get up and pump, putting away milk in the freezer for our stash, because everyone says that babies will make up the calories  during the day when they start sleeping longer.  Well not Tali! 

We borrowed a friend's baby scale a few weeks after her 4 month check up, and learned she hadn't gained a single ounce in 3 weeks! Not good!  We then measured my 24 hour output by weighing her before and after each feeding, and learned I was producing exactly 1 ounce per hour.  So when I was stashing 6-8 ounces of milk at night, she was getting far less than she needed each day to grow!  I have felt like the worst mother, knowing I was not giving her what she needed!  :/. She's so tricky, because she is super happy, never signals that she hungry, and seemed like she was just thriving, but small.

Long story shorter, we saw another lactation consultant, as well as her pediatrician, and I am now on a rigorous nursing and pumping routine to increase my supply, and always giving her a bottle of anything I pump in the night or day.  I'm also eating lots of milk boosting foods, and taking an herbal supplement called fenugreek to help.  

Today we measured all but her last nursing of the day, and my output is up at least 3 ounces, probably closer to 4.  So it is working!  We also took a naked weight, and she's about 12 lbs 6 oz today.  So she's gaining weight! A half pound in the last 2 weeks.  

We are still unsure if that is good enough.  Our ped would like her to be higher still, and doesn't want me burning out with this crazy amount of pumping.  She's given me prescriptions for a couple drugs good for boosting supply, but Kevin and I are both wary of side effects for both me and Tali.  She has also encouraged supplementing with formula.  Which gives me the worst anxiety, and I know it's irrational! So I've been working really hard, and will continue on this route at least one more week before we make any further changes.  

                        First snow!

This post feels very disjointed! I've been writing it off and on for 3 days now, so all my thoughts are jumbled up! Bottom line, Talia is a super awesome tiny baby, and I can't wait to see what adventures this month will bring!  We are just hours from her first plane ride and arriving in California, her 4th state to visit! :)

4 months!

And in the blink of an eye, our girl is 4 months old!  Seriously, when people say it goes by fast, that doesn't even begin to describe it!

Talia one month ago

Our little lady has made some serious changes!  She's a smiling machine these days.  She loves it when Kevin walks in the door, when we yawn, pretty much anytime I kiss her or lift her in the air, and is social smiling for others a ton!  

We had our first giggles, but true to her form, she is very discerning with sharing them!  I've gotten a few good ones when nibbling on her tummy, and a couple days ago she was moved by something while playing on her activity mat and giggled on her own! We keep trying to pry more out of her, but she just isn't entertained by us, I guess!  ;)

She rolls over every once in a while from her tummy to her back, but it isn't consistent at all yet, and she still gets very frustrated during tummy time! However, she tolerates it for much longer stretches now, sometimes smiles while doing it even!  She's also gaining a ton of control of her movements, and has started pushing her butt up in the air with her feet to scoot forward! 

She is soooooo close to rolling from her back to her tummy! It is going to happen any day now. She's constantly arching her back and rolling on her side, especial when she is trying to reach something.  She's figured out that she can spiral her body using her head as a pivot point to get to what she wants though, so she hasn't been forced into rolling over to get at something!  It is so cute to watch her doing it!  She also rolls on her side a lot in her sleep, so I think her first official toll might be during a nap or nighttime, which should thoroughly freak her out!

She has discovered her feet, and tries so hard to eat her toes anytime she is naked!  Toes are yummy, after all!

Sleep.  Ah the mysteries of sleep and babies!  She's been pretty good lately at night, having a lot of 7-8 hour stretches.  Which are great, except I still have to get up and pump, and then lay awake wondering if she is going to wake up before my boobs are satusfactorily filled for her!  Last night was the first time it went haywire.  She went to bed at 7:45, and I woke up at 12:45 needing to pump.  I sometimes will just pump some off to decrease the discomfort if it has been a long time and seems likely she will wake up soon. So that's what I did, and then couldn't fall back asleep!  She woke up at 2, and I nursed her, but she just wouldn't go back to sleep after that! I tried everything, including giving her a bottle of the freshly pumped milk from earlier that night, to no avail.  I finally cried uncle, and had to ask Kevin to take a turn with her so I could get a little sleep!  So he took over at 3:30, and I have no idea how long he was up but I didn't  wake up again until 7:30 when she started rustling!  

Anyway, long story short, I never know what kind of sleep we will get!  She does seem to be liking her 7:00-7:30 bedtime though, and has gone down pretty easily then!  I prefer that she wake up at least once a night, but sometimes she goes straight through til morning (especially on the weekends when Kevin is around to help with night shifts...she sleeps great those nights and he rarely has to get up with her! Ha!). 

Naps are a totally different monster.  She was napping really well, giving me at least one long 2-3 hour nap a day with 2 shorter ones.  The last week or so that went away, replaced by the 20 minute cat nap.  That ain't cutting it for either one of us!  She's cranky and tired, but just refuses to sleep.  All the tried and true tricks aren't working well either.  We think she might just be trying to catch up on eating since she's sleeping so long at night, so I'm trying to nurse her more often in the day. But we are both tired and cranky again! :)

Breastfeeding.  Ugh. She and I just can't seem to get on the same page!  Things were finally starting to feel okay, when suddenly she became aware that she had to wait for milk about 5 minutes into her feeding.  And boy is she impatient!  She yells at me, and pops on and off the breast, and then eventually gets so frustrated she cries...and me too sometimes.  I try switching sides which will help a little.  Sometimes I just make us take a 15 minute break and try again.  It's frustrating and makes nursing take even longer than it used to, and neither of us leaves it with the warm fuzzies.  Add to that my anxiety about her weight gain, and there are days I am ready to give up!  But we are going to keep trying.  I really want to breastfeed for a year.  She has a pediatrician appointment tomorrow so we will see how she measures up!

She loves to read stories, and turns the pages and only sometimes tries to eat the books! 

She's awesome when we go out, and has yet to throw an embarrassing fit (knock on wood!). She loves walks in the stroller or the baby carriers, and cranes her little head to see everything! 

Her hair is getting long and blonde!  And her eyes are still mostly steely blue, but her right eye has a slash of green brown growing.  She still loves bath time, and adores music.  I love the way she coos along sometimes!

Other monents I love:

When I'm rocking her and suddenly she melts into my arms, a sleeping beauty.

The way she plays with our faces, especially my hair and Kevin's beard!

The way she will smile hugely and then get embarrassed and look away.

The way she's starting to really coffe me.

How she cranes to find me or Kevin when we leave a room.

Watching her concentrate to accomplish something, like grabbing her feet or getting something into her mouth.

Seeing her changing every day into this little personality and just falling more and more in love with her and our little family

Happy 4 months, Talia!!!

Edited:  We just got back from her pediatrician appointment.  Well, she has not gained as much weight as we would have hoped, but the doctor isn't overly concerned.  She wants me to see a lactation specialist again to see how much she is taking in during a normal feeding.  Today she weighed 11 pounds 13.5 oz, which is the 7th percentile...So she really is my tiny sprite!  We ended up doing a nursing while there to weigh her before and after.  I'd fed her about an hour and a half earlier, so wasn't expecting too much.  She took in about 2 ounces.  During a normal feeding she should be eating about 4 ounces.  So we might just have a little lady with a very high metabolism, or she might not be taking things in as efficiently as she could.  We shall see...

4 month stats:

Height: 24.8" - 65th %ile
Weight: 11 lbs 13.5 oz - 7th %ile
Cuteness factor:  Infinite :)