Again. I had solid intentions of blogging on a regular basis to track her growth and share it with all of you - more so, Lucy, one day when she was interested.
Turns out, motherhood/parenthood is still insane.
Awhile ago she turned over a couple of times but it didn't seem to stick so at 5 months and 1 week, we are still waiting for it to become a regular thing. We try very hard to entice her to roll over by setting out all of her favorite toys and books just out of her reach. She's nearly there but needs to figure out that she just needs to shift her shoulder a bit OR get a little more momentum. In fact, as I type this - she just rolled over to get her stacking blocks (September 1st).
We gave her a little rice cereal last week (August 24th) to see how she would like it. Rice has no nutritional value, really, so it's basically just a filler. But she definitely enjoyed the texture, grabbing the spoon and licking it off in her mouth until there was no more left.
We started daycare this past week and on the first day she drank 20 ounces. I about peed my pants. On the market, breastmilk goes for about $4/ounce. Therefore, by using simple mathematics, she drank $80 in milk on day one in less than 8 hours. I was beyond stressed....how was I going to be able to pump 20 ounces of breastmilk to support her while at daycare? Infants her age eat 24-30 ounces total in a 24 hour period. I have one prep period (45 minutes) and a 25 minute lunch. There was no way 20 ounces of milk was going to make it in 70 minutes. I quickly blew through my freezer stash I felt I worked hard for. Towards the end of the week, I had given the daycare provider a slower nipple for her bottle and with it only 3 - 5 ounce bottles. I told her to try to limit the feedings to those three bottles and to use the slower nipple. Well, when I came to pick her up - I had a bottle left! Only 10 ounces in an 8.5 hour day - WAY more normal!
We've suspected, for the last two months that she was working on teething. She was crankier than usual and drooling a lot. And then finally, just yesterday (August 31, 2014) a tooth finally poked through her gumline!
Daycare: Week one went okay. Apparently she's not a napper even there. She did sleep for 2 hours on Tuesday but the other days she maybe slept for 10 to 25 minutes (once in the morning and the other in the afternoon). Aside from her overeating, it was reported that she is quite happy when being held and is much better in the afternoon at keeping herself busy than in the morning.
She has super strong legs to which I'm not even sure if it's normal or not. But she can fully stand up and support her weight as long as we hold her up. She's our mini-derby queen!
As for me returning to work it's been a double edge sword. I LOVE the multi-tasking I am able to accomplish with two hands and one fully focused mind. Because I have a horrible schedule, I spend what is really the only time I have during the day to pump, wearing a graduation robe and pumping at a computer in an office full of windows. My office mates don't care. I don't care. I need to make food for my baby and that's more important than anything else.
This parenting gig is truly an amazing blessing full of unexpected surprises and nights of interrupted sleep. I wouldn't change it for the world!
