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Baby milestones: 4-5 months
I really haven’t done a good job mentioning some of Natalie’s developmental “milestones” — selfishly, this is purely so I can look back on this blog to remember when these all happened since something new seems to happen all the time. I’m going to try to remember to do this a little more frequently from here on. 9/3 – she feeds herself for the first time. That is, she held the bottle while drinking from it. Very cute 9/4 – Rolling from tummy to back for the first time. She’d never shown any signs before and rolled both to the right and to the left. We think she has a…
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Maternity Leave complete
In approximately 36 hours, I’ll be heading into work for the first time since mid-April. Wow. It’ll be so strange going back and I’m sure it’ll take me awhile to get back into the groove of things. I’ve had such a wonderful maternity leave and I’ve really enjoyed my time with Natalie. I’m so glad I took this time off, I’ll miss it tons. While I was at it, I thought I’d list some of the things I’ll miss while being on leave: Almost daily walks with Natalie–mostly along 35th in my attempts to get her down for a nap (and of course, she’d only finally fall asleep about 2…
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155 ounces
155 ounches — that’s the amount of milk I have saved up until now. Tomorrow, Natalie starts with the nanny and my so-called “freezer stash” is going to start getting used up with her spending the day with a nanny. My hope is to be able to use everything that I pump the previous day so that I don’t need to dip into the freezer stash much. Tomorrow will be my first day fully pumping for a day. I’m a little concerned about my supply right now as my pumping hasn’t been as efficient recently due to a) a stupid milk blister that I’ve been fighting for the last few…
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Keeping Track: Journal of Eat and Sleep
From the day Natalie was born, I started keeping track of some aspect of her schedule. It started off being the frequency by which she ate—mainly so I could remember which breast I last fed her on. I did this by recording the time and which side. It also gave me a sense of the frequency by which she was eating. I didn’t bother with recording sleep times because there wasn’t really a routine; however, when she started sleeping through the night around 8-9 weeks old, I started paying more attention to her sleep schedule and have been recording that since. This is a bit anal but I use a…
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Firsts: Feeding Herself and Rolling
With Natalie turning 4 months this week, we’ve had some new firsts! The first is feeding herself—while giving her a bottle before bed last night, she grabbed the bottle and started holding it all by herself! Now, since we don’t always give her a bottle, it’s possible she could’ve done this earlier, especially as she’s used her hands a lot more in the last couple weeks…but still, it was amusing to watch. Then today, she rolled for the first time during some tummy time. Before this, she hadn’t shown any signs of rolling at all. She would just sit there til her head started to droop and then she’d cry…
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Sometimes breastfeeding just sucks
I’ve been breastfeeding Natalie exclusively since she was born (except this one bottle with formula due to some poor advice from a lactation consultant when she was just a few days old). I love it–it’s a wonderful bond between mother and child. I love looking at her as she gazes her eyes at me…or seeing her grasp her hands onto my shirt. It’s a quiet time for me to just hold her in peace. But sometimes breastfeeding really sucks…now is one of those times. I’ve been dealing with a milk blister for the last 2 weeks, which has also caused me THREE clogged ducts. Ugh. AND–this blister is on my…