We are quickly learning that every week is a new challenge and a new adventure with a new baby.
This week Sonia gained another 7oz, bringing her up to 6lb 12oz and making me a happy EBF mommy. She’s also filling her diapers as she’s supposed to, which thankfully fit her a bit better now that she’s grown a bit and we started with the gDiapers hybrid cloth/disposable system, which we have been happy with so far. It’s a little odd, but one of the places I can tell that she’s grown is her ears. Because I spend more than 3 hrs a day staring at her ears while I breastfeed, I have really noticed that what used to be not much more than flaps of skin are now well-formed, cartilage-stiffened, cute-as-a-bug’s-ear ears. 🙂
Along with the physical growth, this week has seemed to be an in-limbo week in some developmental growth as well. She seemed to be more interested in getting her hands to her mouth, and has been finding her thumb with a bit more regularity.
However, since she still can’t control her arm movements or override her grasp reflex, this proved to be quite frustrating for her and so we introduced the pacifier to calm the ensuing fussiness. I was really hoping to avoid this step for another couple weeks, or maybe altogether, but she seems to like it, and I’d rather have a calm, happy baby. Still, we are trying to use this tool sparingly, and now she just needs to learn how to keep it in her mouth.
Her schedule spontaneously shifted this week as well so that she is now often awake from 6-8ish when Eric is home. This means Daddy has gotten to spend more quality time with her, such as by reading books together after bath time.
She is doing quite well at night too, going about 3.5 hrs between feedings on most nights. However, we’re still a far cry from having a solid routine, leading to nights like Tuesday where she decided to be wide awake from 10:30pm-1am for no apparent reason.
All this change was a bit hard for me to keep up with, and early in the week I got a bit of the baby blues. For a couple days I dreaded feeding her, and found myself crying at the drop of a hat and not eating very healthily, culminating in a mini meltdown when she decided to be awake on Tuesday night when I was already so physically and mentally exhausted. Thankfully Eric helped me through that night and Sonia helped me get back on track by being all smiles the next morning. The rest of the week I felt much better adjusted and happy, and by now I should be ramping down on the postpartum hormonal roller-coaster, so hopefully that was the extent of that. Physically, I feel like I am back to nearly 100% and plan to start back up on a more intense exercise regimen again this coming week.