18 Weeks Old

Norah turned 4 months old last Monday! She had her check-up that same day, along with her shots. They were pretty traumatic (for me!), just like the two-month shots, but her fussiness only lasted for the rest of the day this time, thank goodness! Last time she was unusually cranky for nearly a week. I gave her some Tylenol beforehand, which may have helped some. I like to think it did, anyway.

She’s a big girl! The doctor was impressed that she was trying to sit up when he laid her flat on her back on the table…she has more or less been doing crunches! She weighs almost 15 lbs now (75^th percentile), and is 26 ½ (I think…) inches long (90^th percentile). If I’m remembering the length correctly, she has gained 6 inches since birth!

She is outgrowing her 3-6 month clothes already!!! The cloth diapers add some bulk, though, so that’s part of it. 6-9 month clothes fit her pretty nicely, though!

Thumb sucking has become one of Norah’s favorite things lately. I didn’t think she was going to be a thumb sucker because it took her so long to figure it out, but she does it all the time now. It’s adorable now, but I hope she’s not still doing it when she’s five!

She’s been really fussy in the evenings lately. I guess that’s common. She’s been especially inconsolable when I’m off teaching – poor Travis! Sometimes when I get home, Travis says she’s been screaming for an hour or two, and then as soon as I nurse her she’s fine. He wishes he had such an easy fix!

I started my violin lessons at the Day School last week. I have two students there on Mondays and three on Tuesdays, all between the ages of four and six. It’s a challenge teaching such young children, but MOST of them seem older than they are and are very bright. Most of them. J The hardest thing is that they are all quite impatient and want to play the violin, with the bow, NOW. And you can’t over-explain. You have to keep it simple. Every time I start to explain why we have to learn one thing at a time, etc. etc., I get interrupted by a story about what someone’s adorable silly puppy did yesterday… J But, all in all, I think I’m going to have fun as I teach myself how to teach kindergartners to love music – because, really, that’s the point.

So, after being at the Day School for two mornings in a row, I found that my milk supply seemed to be declining during those hours. I was going to pump during my breaks, but there was no electrical outlet I could use, and my batteries were dead. I have new batteries now, so I shouldn’t have any issues from now on.

I stored so much milk in my freezer that I was able to donate some to a local mother with a baby in need! J I gave her 56 ounces, which probably will only last her 7- (or 8?) month-old son a couple of days, but I was glad to help out anyway. I still have something like 30 or 40 ounces for Norah, and we don’t have to use the frozen milk very often. I’ve been pumping about 6 oz. per day, and Norah usually only drinks 3 oz. from a bottle on the days I’m gone for a few hours, unless I don’t have time to nurse her before I leave.

Norah has been doing a bit better with naps. She’s still not on an exact schedule, but she always takes a few naps a day, and I’ve discovered that I can usually get her to take a long one in the middle of the day. If she wakes up, I just go in quietly and give her the pacifier, and she will often go right back to sleep, sometimes for another hour or longer! It’s great, because I still can’t seem to get much done when she’s awake. She’s high maintenance! And I haven’t had much success so far putting her in a sling or other type of carrier while I do housework.

I’ve been really missing Travis while he’s at work and Norah and I are home by ourselves! I kind of feel like I’m not myself without him. It’s kind of hard to explain. When it’s just Norah and me, I feel like I have to work at entertaining her. When we’re all here, it comes more easily – it just feels like we’re all having fun together. I don’t know why. I wish we could win the lottery or something so we could be together all the time!

I guess that’s about it for this week! Enjoy the photos, and check out the videos in the two previous blogs if you haven’t yet! I still have two more videos I’ve been working on…coming soon!

Video Number 2!

Here's another movie, with photos and video footage from the entire pregnancy, plus Norah as a newborn! Enjoy!

Video!

Click below to see a very, very belated video of us announcing the pregnancy to our families, September 2010! More videos to come within the week!!!

P.S. The music at the beginning is from my senior piano recital at Furman. :-) I miss performing sometimes!

16.5 Weeks Old...Almost 4 Months!

(Sorry, I don't know why the text is tiny and has a white background...I can't fix it!)

I've been bad about doing a post each week! I'm considering not even trying to do one every week, but then I'd have to come up with a clever title for each one...

Here's what's new:

Norah is trying really hard to roll over! I guess that one time a couple months ago was a total fluke. She can roll onto her side, and she might be able to go all the way, but I don't think she wants to end up on her belly! She hates tummy time.

She's also started to pick her head up when she's lying flat on her back! It seems like she's trying to sit up on her own. If I hold onto her hands and pull her up, she'll go straight from lying to sitting to standing, no problem. She doesn't need any head support anymore, and hardly needs any support when standing. Just a bit to help her balance.

She seems to be getting eager to move around on her own, and I'm anxious for that, too! Maybe she'll be able to entertain herself a little more when she can sit up by herself. I know it seems like I'm always saying that, like I don't like spending time with her. I love playing with her, but I just can't get anything done, especially since she barely naps! She's a wonderful sleeper at night, though, which I am thankful for. The other night she slept from 9:30 until 6:00 without waking up, and then slept until 8:00, and then went back to sleep again until 10:00. Usually she's up earlier, like at 7:30 or 8:00, but on Sunday morning with no alarms going off and both of us still sleeping, I guess she didn't realize it was past her usual wake-up time. :-)

Our potty thing hasn't been going very well lately. I usually know when she has to go, but our current pattern seems to be that she can't or won't go when I put her on the potty, and then 10 minutes later when we have to leave to go somewhere, as SOON as I get her buckled in she goes. Ugh. I'm considering looking for a potty chair small enough for her to sit on with some help, since she doesn't seem to like the position I hold her in over the big potty. She squirms and kicks constantly. We'll see...

We got Norah an amber teething necklace. I'm not sure how long these things have been around, but it seems like a pretty new thing in the US at least. It's supposed to secrete some sort of natural analgesic to help with teething pain and reduce drooling. Some say it also improves general well-being and may boost the baby's ability to fight off infections. I have NO idea whether it works or not! We've been using it for a week or so, and I haven't noticed a difference so far. :-( It's cute, at least!

Norah and I are signed up for a FREE mother baby music class at a local church!! It's only 25 minutes once a week, but it's a nine week class and will teach me some new songs, rhymes, and games I can do with Norah. I'm pretty excited about it since I'm always trying to think of new things to do with her! She likes The Itsy Bitsy Spider, and I've also been singing songs from a 1979 Sesame Street record we've been listening to, in addition to whatever else I can think of. Naturally, I place a lot of importance on doing musical activities with her. I've sat down at the piano with her a few times to show her what it does and play a few songs like Twinkle Twinkle, but she isn't interested in it yet.

She did well today when I had to teach a lesson while holding her! She had been fussy, but since I was standing up and rocking and bouncing her and she had the pacifier, she did fine and even fell asleep half way through (I guess she was fussy because she was tired...). This was our first try at that, and later this week I have a few more students starting lessons at my house when I won't have anyone to watch Norah. Hopefully she'll continue to do well with it and I won't have to come up with another plan.

On Labor Day we went to visit Travis’s grandma (Norah’s only living great-grandparent) and his Aunt Carolyn and cousin Leanne. They hadn’t seen Norah since she was two days old!! Grandma Galloway was just taken with Norah, and she kept telling Travis what a good daddy he is. She also was thrilled to see me breastfeeding, and said, “Look, she’s feedin’ her natural!” I thought that was cute. :-)

I’ve started sewing again! It’s been a long time! I made Norah a dress, which ended up looking Christmas-y and is just barely big enough… oh well. It was my first attempt at a dress, and I made up my own pattern. I also didn’t buy any fabric…the white print fabric was in our attic, and the green was a shirt of mine that had holes in it. :-)

I also made her the red polka-dotted skirt that she wore to Grandma Galloway’s house, plus another one she hasn’t worn yet.

I guess that's all I can think of for now. I have been working on uploading video footage, and once I get it edited I'll post it, hopefully in a couple of days! It goes WAY back to early pregnancy, so it's been a long time coming!!!!!

Almost 15 Weeks Old!

I can’t believe how fast Norah is growing up!!!

Last week I had her weighed at the doctor’s office and they said she was 13 lbs. 13 oz., and today they weighed her again and said she was 14 lbs. 5 oz. She had clothes on both times, and they used the same scale…so I don’t understand how it could have gone up so much in a week! Who knows?

Sorry for the lack of a blog last week…things have been hard…although nursing is still going great!!! I think we’ve finally passed that hurdle once and for all. It feels so good to say that. I even have less pain than I did when I wrote the last post…it is very near nonexistent. I also now have about 70 ounces of milk in the freezer!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We’ve had a rough week because Travis caught a bug at school and passed it on to Norah. So she’s been pretty congested in the mornings, and coughing a little bit. She also has felt a bit feverish off and on and has been screaming and crying in the evening out of nowhere. She’s happy one minute, inconsolable the next. She’s more fussy and needy than usual during the day, too, and she has started sometimes refusing to nurse on the right side unless I put her in the football hold (so she’s in the same position as she would be if she was nursing from the left). I suspected that she might have an ear infection which made it painful to lie on one side, but I took her to the doctor today and he couldn’t see anything wrong. He said to give her Tylenol and bring her back if it seems to get worse…

I did that this evening, and she seemed to cry for a shorter length of time, but I just wish I knew what the problem was. I don’t want to just be giving medication “willy-nilly,” if you will. :-P I’d rather treat the cause of the symptoms than just the symptoms. Hopefully, whatever it is, it will resolve itself soon. Anyway, I’ve had a hard time getting much done lately.

I wonder if the nighttime crying could just be because she’s tired…? She goes to sleep as soon as she calms down, but it sounds like a pain cry.

By the way, the doctor also said that even though she appears to be teething, she probably doesn't have any teething pain yet and it will likely take a couple of months for teeth to start coming through. He might be right, but it seemed to me a couple of weeks ago that she was in pain.

She’s been sleeping well once she gets to sleep. For a few nights she has slept for 8 hours in a row, then nursed and gone right back to sleep for a few more hours. I hope it isn’t just because she’s fighting off a cold. I don’t usually do well getting up at 7:00 AM even after I’m on that schedule for a week or a month or more. I’m just not a morning person. I feel the best if I get up around 9. I guess it doesn’t help that I’m not getting continuous sleep for all those hours.

Every night (early morning, really) when I go into Norah’s room to get her, I find that she has spun herself around at least 90 degrees from where she started…and always in the same direction! I think she kicks one leg harder than the other…and she does like to kick! But I’ve known that for about seven months now. J I worry that she’s going to kick so hard she’ll break a toe on the crib slats! She’s already gotten her arm stuck between them twice, too. I finally bought a bumper pad even though they’re not recommended because of the SIDS risk. I haven’t put it in the crib yet. I am such a paranoid person. Maybe I should just dress her in armor and tie her down. (KIDDING!!)

Oh!!!!! NORAH LAUGHED TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!! She has been making laugh-ish sounds for a long time, but this was a real laugh. Travis was playing with her…he said she laughed at him when he burped! J Then they just laughed at each other laughing for a while! SOOO cute! I missed the actual first laugh, though… L

And my last bit of news is…I have SO MANY students this year! A private school nearby sought me out and asked me to teach private violin lessons a couple days a week during the school day, which is so great! I would much rather teach during the day than in the evening. I have more students in all of my other teaching venues as well…the total is something like 30 right now, but kids are still signing up! Last May I ended the year with 21. Honestly, I hope I don’t get too many more!!! I need some down time!

Ok, it is WAY past my bedtime, so I will leave it at that! Have a fun Labor Day weekend!

Oh, one more small thing:

I have put two polls on the sidebar. The first is asking who Norah looks more like. We've heard a lot of both, but mostly people think she looks like Travis...I think so too!

I also want to know which of the following photos you think would win if we entered a photo contest! Please vote for the one you like the best! Some of them aren't great in terms of lighting, but Travis can fix them up. I'm numbering them so it will be easy to vote. You can also click on them to see them bigger. Thanks!!!

Number 1.

Number 2.

Number 3.

Number 4.

Number 5.

Number 6.

Number 7.

Number 8.

Number 9.

Number 10.

Number 11.

Number 12.

Number 13.

Number 14.

13 Weeks Old

Lots of news this week!

First, breastfeeding is going way better! As soon as the supplemental nursing system (the tube thing) came and I used it once, I realized I no longer needed it because nursing had suddenly become much less painful. Now I really wish I hadn’t wasted my money on it! It worked great, though, so if anyone out there needs something like that, Lact-Aid is a good one to get. (If you want mine, you can buy it cheap!!!!)

I’m not really sure what changed. It might just be that her mouth is now big enough that it doesn’t hurt, even if she’s still tongue thrusting. Leslie told me that would probably happen eventually. Anyway, it still hurts a bit – sometimes more than others – but it is NOTHING compared to what it was. I can even fall asleep while nursing her during the night, which is something I’ve been looking forward to being able to do. And I am quite certain (and very hopeful) that this is a permanent improvement, since I’ve been nursing her day and night for almost a week.

I’ve also experienced some other great improvements regarding breastfeeding:

Norah nurses less frequently and for a much shorter amount of time than she used to. It used to take 45 minutes for her to finish, and then she’d be hungry again in an hour. Now she eats for 10 to 15 minutes at a time, every two or three hours.

I don’t have to worry about her having enough to eat. My supply seems to have increased from all the pumping I had been doing, and just since last Monday (a little over a week ago), I have stored 12 bags of milk totaling 51 ½ ounces in my freezer!!!!!!! I am SO excited about that – and relieved! Maybe she’ll never have to eat formula again! I wish I had started storing milk when she was born. I was worried about ending up with an oversupply…ha!

Breastfeeding has FINALLY become easy! When I decided to breastfeed (which really wasn’t much of a decision – I just always knew I would), I looked forward to the simplicity of it. No hassle. No mess. No baby crying while I prepare a bottle. But up to now it’s been much harder than I had anticipated. Finally, all I have to do is latch her on whenever she gets hungry! I’m also spending MUCH less time hooked up to the pump. I’m now pumping every night after Norah is asleep, and some mornings if I have more milk than she wants. I will keep storing milk until I have no room left in my freezer! If she doesn’t drink it all, it’s good for making baby food.

In other exciting news (depending on how you look at it…), Norah seems to be teething already! She’s been a little fussy, especially in the evenings, and drooling everywhere, and chewing on her fingers. She’s also suddenly taken to using a pacifier. Before last Thursday, when I offered it to her since nothing else was doing the trick, she had done without it completely for two weeks or more. Now she’ll take it almost every time we offer it. She doesn’t seem to like the teething ring much, though. We got her two different types, and she doesn’t really like either one. She might like them more when she’s a bit older. The discomfort is, unfortunately, causing some fussiness while she nurses, but hopefully it will not cause me any undue pain. As adorable as she’ll be with a few little teeth in that smile, I am not ready for this yet!

That covers all the big stuff, I think. Norah has started to jump a bit in the doorway jumper, and she’ll entertain herself in it for longer than she used to (maybe 30 minutes). She says a lot of new syllables, like “die,” “gee,” “ghghee,” etc. She is beginning to use her hands with more purpose. She pulled out her pacifier and put it back in twice in a row today!

She loves to sit in the Bumbo seat on the table while we eat dinner. Someone even gave us a tray for it, which is great to put toys on.

She’s so big! We just got out the 3-6 month clothes, and some of them are barely long enough!!! I guess we should have gotten them out sooner! I’m not sure what she weighs now. I’m guessing around 13 lbs.

She is a great sleeper in the sense that she will put herself to sleep quickly and with no fussing if we put her in the crib when she’s tired. I would like to get her on a better schedule though. She tends to take three naps a day, but they’re all usually less than an hour long. I’d like her to have a longer nap, even if that means eliminating one. It’s been really hard for me to get anything done during the day.

Travis started back at school last week, which is a huge change for us after a whole summer of the three of us together all the time. It’s a challenge, for sure. Even though I feel like I don’t have much time to get anything done, I actually feel like a more productive person than I ever have been. There can be no procrastination with a baby, because you never know when you’ll another free moment. While I wish Norah could stay a baby forever, I’m also anxious for her to be able to entertain herself a bit more.

Another thing I’m anxious for is to have her talk to me. That way I won’t have to guess what she wants, and my whole day won’t feel like a one-sided conversation! I mean, she’s attentive for sure, but…you know what I mean.

I am going to start doing some sign language with her. I’m starting with the sign for “milk,” so she can tell me when she’s hungry. We’ll see how long it takes for her to start doing it! (It’s a super easy one. You just pretend like you’re milking a cow.)

Anyway, I guess that’s it for this week! J Have a good one!

Here are a couple of pictures of Norah playing dress-up. Ok…I was playing dress-up.

11 1/2 Weeks Old

Norah has a few new tricks this week!

She can sit in her Bumbo seat! We tried it a few weeks ago and she wasn’t ready for it yet, but now she can sit up fairly well in it and seems to like it! This photo is the first time she sat in it successfully.

She sleeps in her crib! We started putting her in there for some of her naps, and she seemed to like it. She looks at the mural on the wall and sometimes smiles at it! I’ve also seen her staring at blue things a lot, so I think it’s her favorite color – glad we picked it for her walls! Anyway, we started putting her in there for her first stretch of sleep at night, because I have a hard time sleeping when I’m so honed in on her that every move she makes wakes me up. And I’m finally at the point where I’m less paranoid (I don’t feel like I have to check on her every five minutes). I also think it’s good to get her used to going to sleep in her own room, so eventually when she sleeps through the night she’ll just be in there all night.

She also can go to sleep on her own sometimes, which is wonderful. In the middle of the night after I feed her, I put her in the playpen next to our bed (which is really more like a bassinet, with the platform up high) and she always goes back to sleep unless she’s still hungry.

This next one amazes me.

I started working with her on opening her mouth wider when she latches on to nurse, and I would say, “Ah,” and let her latch on when her mouth was open wide enough. A couple of days into it, she started saying, “Ah,” after me, and now she usually does it without me even reminding her! Today she even did it to let me know she wanted more!!! I would almost consider that a first word – verbal communication! She also cries less while waiting for me to let her latch on because she knows what I want her to do. It is so amazing.

So, nursing. Let’s talk about that.

Breastfeeding has been such a roller coaster ride for me. I keep thinking things are getting better, only to realize that I’ve been injured all over again and it still hurts more than I can stand. At the moment, things are no better, except that I’ve gotten into a routine now. I pump during the day and only let her nurse on the left since it hurts way less, and during the night I nurse on both sides. I do nighttime nursing because it’s really annoying to pump when I really want to be asleep, and the pain isn’t that bad if I give it a break during the day so I’m not constantly getting bruises on top of bruises.

Oh, AND I finally bought a new pump (the Medela “Swing”). I hate that I had to go and buy an expensive electric pump, when under normal circumstances I would have done fine with my five-dollar like-new manual one. It just got to be such a pain when I’m doing it all day long. I felt like I was going to end up with carpel tunnel. I do like it, though, if you can attribute the word “like” to something that accomplishes something so un-exciting. It’s much easier, and I don’t dread it so much. (Ooh! I just discovered that I can type and pump simultaneously with this thing if I prop it up with the Boppy pillow!)

I say things are no better “at the moment,” because I’ve come up with an idea that I have high hopes for. First, I’ll tell you that I called Leslie again to see if she had any more ideas for me. (I am so grateful to her. She has taken on my problems almost as if they were her own, and diligently sought answers for me.) She got in touch with a retired lactation consultant named Elsie, who had a few pieces of advice. First, she gave us a better way of doing the suck training (use daddy’s thumb, since it’s bigger, and pull down on her chin). She also said that we really need to get her off of bottles, because “she’s learning to be a good bottle drinker instead of a good nurser.”

I had already been aware of this since I know that nursing and bottle feeding require different types of sucking, but I didn’t know what to do about it because she has to get her food somehow.

Elsie’s idea was to feed her with a cup. She said to use a small cup, like a medicine cup, touch it to her lips, and make her “lap it up like a kitten.” The idea is to teach her that she has to stick out her tongue to get food. This sounded a little ridiculous to me, but I would try anything.

It was a total disaster. It would take three people (or a strait jacket) to keep her still and hold the cup at the right angle without spilling, plus I think it would have taken literally all day to finish one feeding that way. It was pointless.

So, I came up with an idea of my own (after also trying and failing with a syringe).

Supplemental nursing system. It’s a container of milk with a very thin tube that goes into the baby’s mouth while nursing. It’s usually used when the mother wants to breastfeed but has a low milk supply, sometimes temporarily and sometimes long term.

I just ordered a Lact-Aid brand one new from Ebay, and can’t wait to get it! It gets better reviews than the Medela version. It’s another gadget I really wish I didn’t have to spend money on, but it will be worth it if it can get Norah to nurse better by avoiding bottles. Even if we had to use it long term I’d feel better about that. I feel a little bit heartbroken every time she gets a bottle, because I feel like it’s taking away our precious bonding time.

I’ll just do a better version of what I’m doing now: pump from the right, and nurse on the left with the pumped milk coming through the tube. Another positive is that it might help increase my supply on the left, which is the low-producing side.

Another encouraging thing Elsie said is that most babies eventually grow out of tongue thrusting on their own. However, I have no idea how long it usually takes. So we’ll keep working with her on it, and my hope is that I will only have to use the tube thing for a few weeks.

We took Norah on her first camping trip! We neglected to bring the camera, but she seemed to really like it. We only went for one night in order to avoid the heat, which worked out pretty well.

I guess I’ll leave it at that for now so I can get this posted! As usual, here are some more photos!