Supplementing and the Road to Weaning

When Abigail was about 6 weeks old, she started refusing to nurse at night before bed. For a few nights we let it be, and then we tried even harder to get her to nurse. It only ended with a screaming, writhing baby and tears from me. So, I pumped and we gave her a bottle of breast milk. Problem solved. Abby loved her nightly bottle. Dave and I took turns putting her to bed every night, so she never got used to the way that only one person did it. It worked like a dream. There was a catch, though. I had to pump that milk. In the beginning, it was so easy to do. I dealt with oversupply issues and could obtain her nightly bottle in just a few minutes. Fast forward a few months and my milk supply had regulated. I was spending more and more time pumping every night after she went to bed. When she started drinking 6 ounces in her bottle every night, I couldn't keep up. I pumped at night and in the morning, and sometimes had to add another session as well, just to get those precious 6 ounces. When Abigail turned 9 monthly old (exactly), I told Dave that I didn't want to do it any more. I was so tired of being a slave to my pump. I didn't want to go back to nursing before bed either, though, so I brought up the idea of supplementing. In my mind, I thought that he would object to giving Abby formula. But of course he didn't, he supported me and understood my desire to be done pumping. I felt guilty that I wanted to stop pumping her bedtime bottle, but I also knew that I was done with that aspect of breastfeeding. So, we went out and bought formula. I thought that she would hate it, or refuse it, or something of the sort. I wanted to try anyway. The first night we mixed 2 ounces of prepared formula with 4 ounces of breast milk. She drank the whole thing and went right to bed! So we upped the formula, and she still drank the bottle without a problem. We gave her an all-formula bottle (the ultimate test!) and she didn't seem to notice the slightest difference. I started pumping less and less, and last night I didn't pump at all. What a HUGE RELIEF it's been. I'm still nursing her 4 times a day and 1-2 times at night, so our breastfeeding journey is no where near over. But not having to spend an hour or so pumping every day has been wonderful!! Formula is EXPENSIVE, so I don't see me stopping nursing any time soon, but I'm honestly looking forward to Abigail turning 1 so we can introduce whole milk and begin the road to weaning. We are hoping to have another baby soon, and I've read that pregnancy can either dry your milk up or change the taste so much that a baby will self-wean. We will just have to see what happens in the next few months. Until then, I'm quite happy to no longer be a slave to my pump!!

9 Months!

Abigail is 9 months old :) She's been out in the world lighting up our lives for as long as she was baking in my belly! Pregnancy seems like a lifetime ago for some reason. Abby is such a little person these days. I think she looks SO big lately, and then I see her in her dad's arms and she looks like a little baby again :)

Abby has her two front bottom teeth and the two front top ones are going to be poking through any day now. Teething has been accompanied by LOTS of night waking and sleep has been scarce for both of us lately. I'm sincerely hoping it passes and she starts sleeping better soon!! We had a stretch of about three days where she was sleeping 10 hours straight again and that felt like bliss compared to this past week!! She has also just started babbling consonants and her favorite phrases to tell are Yaya and Dada! It is beyond adorable, and I have a feeling that this most recent developmental milestone is another reason for her sleep troubles. I can't wait to hopefully hear Mama soon!

Lil Miss is still not crawling. She loves to walk around while holding onto someone's hands and will do that all day if you let her. She likes to stand holding onto the furniture, but the little stinker bites and scratches the couches so we don't let her as often as I wish we could. We borrowed a walker from friends but then I discovered that it was scratching our wood floors, and unfortunately that is just not a price we are willing to pay to let Abby run around in the walker. She gets lots and lots of play time on the floor and my guess is that she will figure out crawling in the next month or two. She's growing so fast!!

Abby is still nursing 5-6 times a day, but she is back to eating all table food too and loving it!! She enjoys eating so much and will pretty much eat anything we give her at this point. It's going great so far! 

Here are some recent pics:

8 Months Old!

Abigail is already 8 months old!! I feel like I say this every month, but time is just flying! It's so crazy to me that she is eight months old. Next month will make nine months and then she'll have been out in the world for as long as she was growing inside me! Now that's crazy. She is doing great lately despite some teething and not feeling very well. Both Abigail and myself have come down with some sort of cold or virus - it's her first time being sick and while I'm feeling awful, it doesn't seem to phase her too much. She is coughing and has a runny nose though, so I know she can't feel too great! 

Abby still just has one tooth, and it's really visible now! We keep thinking that she'll start cutting her second one soon, but so far I don't see anything yet. We had some major nursing struggles while she was teething, and honestly some days are still a struggle. There have been times in the last few weeks where she would only nurse in the very early morning, and then completely refused nursing for the entire rest of the day. I pumped and offered bottles, but she often even refused those. Things are a little better now, but she still doesn't nurse much during the day and she takes a bottle before bed. Thankfully, for now, the biting has stopped at least. I keep reminding myself that she won't starve quietly...and I just hope that she is getting enough milk. 

Abigail is doing pretty well with her night time sleep again lately. Most nights she is in bed between 6:30pm-7pm, and she usually sleeps straight through until 5am-6am before waking up to eat and then going back down until 7am. Of course, there are always exceptions to this. Basically, I've learned never to expect anything. I would absolutely love for her to go back to sleeping 11-12 hours straight a night, but it will happen in its own time I suppose!  Naps have been pretty consistent lately, and we've gotten into a good 2-3-4 schedule. This means that she is usually awake 2 hours before her first nap, 3 hours before her second nap, and then 4 hours before bed. There are days where she won't take a long nap and then the schedule is thrown off, but for the most part that's how naps have worked out lately. It's been nice to have a predictable schedule!

With Abby on a more consistent nap schedule, we have been able to get out of the house more for story time at the library and play group in the neighborhood. I love taking her out and socializing her with other children - it's good for both of us! Although I'm pretty sure we may have picked up this bug at the library. You can't win them all!

Abby has gone back to eating more purées again lately. All of a sudden she stopped wanting to feed herself and wanted us too feed her instead. So, for now, we are doing a combination of purées and table food. I made some more purées the other day and incorporated some quinoa into some of the cubes. I have to admit that while making the purées takes a little time, it's really convenient to be able to just grab a few cubes out of the freezer and pop them in the microwave. I usually give Abby some table food (broccoli, pasta, cut up fruit, mixed vegetables, couscous, scrambled egg and cheese, etc) first and then warm up her purée while she munches. That way she gets a lot of different flavors in every meal and has the experience of feeding herself, but I also know that she's getting more calories, protein, and nutrients from the purées. I'm sure she'll change her preferences again soon and then we will have to figure out a new system. She keeps us on our toes, that's for sure!! Here are some pictures from the last few weeks :)

Feeding Miss Abigail

Before we were ever pregnant, I knew that when the time came for our baby to have something other than breast milk to eat, I wanted to make my own baby food. We're not super crunchy people- we don't eat all organic or always SUPER healthy. And I don't necessary see anything wrong with buying baby food...I just knew that I wanted to try making purées at home in an effort to save money and feed our baby healthy, real food. So, when we were pregnant we registered for a Baby Bullet, which friends generously gave us as a shower gift. I researched making homemade baby food for quite some time, and when Abby was around 5 months I started getting serious about figuring out how and what we were going to feed her. At first, we talked about not doing cereal at all. But as she got closer and closer to 6 months old, I started doubting that choice (I'm not even sure why!) and we gave Abby some oatmeal baby cereal mixed with breast milk as her very first food. She loved it! From there, I made several different purées - sweet potato, carrot, pear, apple, summer squash, and pea. The freezer was stocked! For a week or two Abby seemed to be ok with eating purées, although she never seemed to really enjoy it and often completely refused. I was at a loss! One night at dinner, I just decided to give her some of our food, and I put some steamed cauliflower and green beans on her tray. She immediately grabbed the food and started eating! I was kind of shocked to be honest. She LOVED feeding herself, and even without teeth she chewed away on the cauliflower and ended up eating quite a bit. After that, Dave and I talked and decided that maybe a Baby Led Weaning approach would be a better fit. At first, she had a hard time getting small foods to her mouth, and we mostly gave her large, soft pieces of food that she could get a good grip on. On a whim, I picked up some puffs (something I thought we would never give her!) in order to see if it would help her pincer grasp develop more. Of course, she loves puffs! Even better, eating those and Cheerios has really helped her self-feeding abilities. Pretty quickly, we started giving Abby more and more table food. Now, at nearly 8 months, Abby eats almost all the fruits, vegetables, and grains that we do. The list of foods she has tried (and liked!) is quite long, and includes things like asparagus, whole eggs, quinoa, melon, chicken, ground turkey and beef, broccoli, beans, avocado, pasta, cheese, etc. The list goes on and on! Breakfast is usually either scrambled egg with toast, or fruit and Cheerios, or something similar. Lunch these days is something like broccoli with pasta and shredded cheese, and for dinner Abby usually just gets a little of whatever we are having, as long as it's not too spicy. The Baby Led Weaning approach is definitely not the route I thought that we would take when introducing Abigail to food, but so far it's been working out great! It's easy for us, and more importantly, she loves food and gets excited about meals. Of course, breast milk is still her main source of nutrition, and she still nurses around seven or so times a day. I'm hopeful that Abby will continue to like food and will grow up with an adventurous appetite like her parents! 

The Loneliest Days (Years?)

I think I can honestly say that the past year and a half that I've spent being pregnant and now a stay at home mom have been the loneliest of my life. I knew it was coming...I thought I was prepared. Being a breastfeeding mother to an infant is a 24 hour job. There's no such thing as "sick days" or PTO. Even the days that we have spent away from Abigail I have spent chained to my pump. And I honestly wouldn't trade it for anything in the world because I LOVE being a mother, and I especially love that I get to stay home with her every day. That being said though...sometimes I miss my old life. I miss the old me. I miss the days of cocktails on a patio at noon just because, and staying out dancing with friends until 3am. I miss actually having girlfriends. I feel so disconnected from so many of my friends lately. It's hard to be a SAHM when none of your close friends are too. No one else gets it, how long the days are sometimes. How I feel chained to the house except for the three hours between naps when we get out to run errands or what not. Even with my friends that are moms, there's a sense of disconnect there. A constant comparison of baby to baby. "Mommy Wars", as I've heard it referred to on the Internet. Then I worry that because we're not doing things the way so-and-so did we are somehow doing it wrong and messing up our kid forever. I'm guessing those feelings never go away. I'm guessing that in the years to come the lonliness and isolation might get even worse for a little while, since we plan to have another baby soon. Then I see my sister, and friends with older children, and I am reminded that life isn't always like this. They're only little babies for such an incredibly short amount of time in the grand scheme of things. Life changes every day, and every year. I'm hoping that as Abigail gets older and we add another little one to the mix, it will get easier for me to meet other moms in town and make some new friends. Why is it that it seems to get harder to make new friends the older we get? Or maybe it's just the stage of life I'm in right now, where everyone is getting married and having babies, and fostering friendships is difficult with so much already on our plates. There are some days when I have to remind myself how lucky I am, and that I am making the choice to be a SAHM, and that I have a great husband and a really wonderful life. It's so easy to let myself feel down and overwhelmed, when I should be feeling happy and grateful for the roof over my head and the love in our home and the sweet baby girl we are so lucky to have. She makes every day so special. 

7 Months!

It's hard to believe that our little baby is 7 months old today.  She's not so little anymore either!  When I pick her up these days I can barely remember what it was like to hold a tiny, floppy newborn in my arms.  Sleep regression is still in full force here :(  A good night for us is one or two wake ups.  I'm hoping that if we just keep powering through she will go back to sleeping well in due time.  I decided a few nights ago to turn the monitor way down, and that way I only hear her if she's really making a lot of noise.  It has seemed to help.  Last night she was only up once (loud enough for me to hear and respond, anyway, after giving her time to see if she would settle), and she ate and went right back to sleep.  This morning I noticed a little blood on her hand after she had been chewing on her fingers, so I checked in her mouth and sure enough, it looks like a tooth is starting to break through.  That sure would explain her extreme fussiness yesterday!  She's still been super whiny and clingy this morning, so I gave her some Tylenol and an ice cube wrapped with a wet washcloth and that seemed to help her feel better.  Now we just wait and see how long this tooth takes to pop through...and then keep waiting for the next one, and the one after that.  I've heard that teething is basically never-ending...oh joy!  ;) 

When we were registering for baby items and getting ready for the baby, I swore up, down, and sideways that I would NEVER want a video monitor.  Ha!  Now that she is active and much more mobile, it seems almost necessary to be able to see her and know that she is safe without having to go into her room and rile her up.  A friend gave me an old video monitor a long time ago, and just a few days ago I finally remembered we had it and set it up.  It has been amazing to be able to see her and know what she is up to!  We love it so much that we ordered a new, portable video monitor right away.  It should be here tomorrow and I'm really excited.  I love being able to just see her in the crib and know if she is crying because she's stuck on her tummy, or in a weird spot in her crib, or if she spit up.  I can't wait to have a color screen model and be able to carry it around the house and outdoors with me.  It will certainly make doing yard work while she is napping much easier.  I won't have to constantly wonder if I heard her crying through the audio monitor only, I'll be able to see if she's actually awake.  Guess this is just one time of many, I'm sure, that I'll have to eat my words!  

I plan to do a post soon on how Abigail is doing with food.  We started with oatmeal baby cereal and homemade purees just shy of her 6 month birthday.  She doesn't really seem to care much for the purees at all, and one day I decided to just give her some steamed vegetables that we had in the fridge and she LOVED them.  Ever since then, we've been doing a combination of purees and what's referred to as Baby Led Weaning, meaning that baby is offered soft, large pieces of table food that they are able to hold and feed to themselves.  She really loves it and has had a large variety of different foods, including pear, banana, blueberries, watermelon, apple, green beans, cauliflower, broccoli, toast, carrots, scrambled egg yolk, and even some pork.  Honestly, I was really excited to make all of her purees and didn't think BLW would be for us, but she really enjoys eating her "big girl food" and it's super easy for us because she really can just eat what we are eating, within reason.  I'll try to write up a more detailed post this week with pictures of Abby's adventures with food!

Facebook Break

I realized very recently that I spend WAY too much time on Facebook. I first joined FB way back when you needed a ".edu" email address to have an account. It has been such a useful tool for me to reconnect with old friends and keep in touch with family. I love being able to see pictures of friends and family and feel more connected to important people in my life who don't live near me. Over the years, though, I've become more and more addicted to Facebook. When I worked as a nanny, I was very isolated in my job and Facebook made me feel more connected to the rest of the world. I think it got even worse when I started staying home with Abby. So, it's time for a little change. I've decided to take the month of August off from Facebook entirely. I don't see myself leaving FB forever, so I plan to return in September, but hopefully I won't check my news feed quite as frequently once I return. In the meantime, pictures of Abby can be found almost daily on Instagram (because I know there are some people out there who still want to see pics!). I'll also share some here from time to time :)