Halloween!

Happy Halloween from a crazy New England family!

First cold

The punk has her first cold! Right now she is just snorty and snotty, and when it goes into her throat she coughs and sputters. Poor little peanut. And poor mama! I got two hours of sleep last night between the snorting and the restlessness and the waking up and the whining.

She is sleeping in her swing right now. I thought the upright would help her be less snorty. But I wish there was a swing for me to sleep in, too.

Yawn.

Four month sleep regression

I think it has found us. Our perfect little sleeper is a little less perfect these days. Or maybe she's just perfect in different ways. Remember that last post about naps? Yeah, now she's anti-nap. If I try to swaddle her for a nap, she screams bloody murder and wants her hands. If I try to lay her down without the swaddle, she screams bloody murder and can't settle. The only thing that will get her to sleep is if I put her in the Big People bed, lay with her, and stick a boob in her mouth.

I don't even mind, really, because I miss nursing. When I stopped taking the dom.peridone, she nursed before every feeding for about a week before she realized that the milk was gone. And then she started screaming at the boob, and that majorly bummed me out. But now she loves the boob again, and if I get to sneak in a little napperoo at the same time, well, sign me up!

She also has been a little weird about sleeping at night. She used to sleep straight through from about 7:30pm until about 6:30am with one dream feed at around 11pm. Now she is going to bed like usual, will be awake around 10:30pm and hungry and will go right back to sleep, and then will wake up whining around 3 or 4 and wants to be brought into the Big People bed and have the boob until she's ready to get up around 6:30.

Some friends and I were talking about how the Four Month Sleep Regression seems to involve a lot of comfort sucking (and some extra feeding in there, too). It's win-win for me.

Besides, she's incredibly cute.

A question about sleep

My dear sweet little punk will not nap for longer than 45 minutes for the most part. Occasionally she will surprise me, but it's usually 30-50 minutes per nap. Because of this, she seems tired every two hours or so and I swaddle her up and plop her down for another cat nap.

Is this normal? Should she be sleeping more? Sleeping less? Am I putting her down for a nap too much? She really does seem to start cranking and eye rubbing, and will resist a couple of times in the swaddle but then conks out, so I feel pretty correct in that she's tired. (She wouldn't fall asleep otherwise, would she?)

She sleeps about 11 hours through the night, solidly from about 7:30pm to 2am, and then more restlessly for the rest of the night, so from about 2am until 6am, I am patting belly, reswaddling, readjusting, patting belly, stroking cheek, trying paci, etc. And then she will nap at like: 7:30am, 10am, 12:30pm, 3pm, 5pm.

Weird, or no?

Baby Care 101

Since I have returned to work full time and Jude has been the stay at home mom - I have by turns felt incapable of the veritable magic that Jude produces with the baby and worried that I will never learn....

And sometimes I get it right and I realize it's just that Jude has had more opportunity with Gus than I have and I can produce my own magic - I type this as I listen to her sleeping on the baby monitor. Sleeping because she was cranky and tired and I got her to go to sleep - by myself.

Our little Gus likes to sleep but hates falling asleep as much as she hates waking up before she is good and ready. It's always a trip. Up until, today, actually, Jude has been doing the bulk of getting August to sleep and I have done other things, like cook dinner or work. I had promised this week we would switch roles so I could learn more and Jude could cook dinner. So this week it will be my responsibility and this morning's success definitely helps. It also is good since this was Jude's turn to go to Church.

Yay for sleeping baby.

But for all you Gus fans out there I leave you with this....



Because she is the cutest baby EVER!

One year ago today

One year ago today, the eggs and sperm that would become August Ruth and her twin sibling met in my fallopian tubes. It was the first and only IUI I would go to alone. Jen had her first day of work at her new job in Western Mass and we thought it best that she not ask for a pass on her very first day. (We originally thought we would be having IUIs over the weekend, since I usually had them around CD15). It was CD12, a Wednesday. It was National Coming Out Day.

This was possibly my last TTC attempt. I had tried three cycles of Clomid and three cycles of Follistim. Two Clomid cycles were a bust; one was cancelled because I wasn't ovulating early enough for my RE. Two Follistim cycles were also a bust, though I still believe FSH/IUI #2 did not contain follicles, but residual cysts. (My RE refused to do a CD3 scan or bloodwork.)

The RE we saw at The Baby Factory was a rather gruff, aggressive, arrogant man who was trying to essentially push us into IVF because we live in a mandatory insurance state and IVF brings in higher success rates and big dollars. We weren't ready to commit to IVF; we weren't sure we ever wanted to do IVF. We knew we didn't want to do IVF with him regardless.

After FSH/IUI #2 was a complete and total disappointment, I called and insisted to speak with him and not a nurse. I called his secretary and scheduled a time for him to call me back. I threw a major hissy fit on the phone. He didn't like what I had to say but reluctantly agreed to be more aggressive on my next FSH/IUI after I told him that we would not be pursuing IVF and we were moving away after this try and this was my last chance.

I got the increased Follistim dose that I wanted and had four eager follicles rather than the one of previous cycles. I never felt so fertile in all of my life. We had optimism that we hadn't had since our very first try, as this was our birthday cycle and that had to count for something.

Our sweet baby girl has been growing and developing for a whole year now. Happy Conception Day, punk!

Little Flirt

My little punk has discovered PEOPLE.

I mean, sure, she had Mommy and Mama and they would do things like Provide The Milk or Become A Warm Bed, but she preferred to do her talking and laughing at certain inanimate objects, like green giraffe, or the wheel of the stroller. We would get those "I just woke up!" smiles but she was /really/ into toys.

But not this weekend.

This weekend, she started openly engaging and interacting with Other People. First it was Michael when we went to some friends' house. And today with Morgan. Big eye contact, big smiles. And with us, she's just full of big grins and coos and it was a long wait but it feels so nice.

Until she pukes. Because then of course she starts screaming again. But oh, the smiles!

Rolling baby

I can roll over by accident.



But I'm not sure that I like it.

Three Months Old!

My little punk,

You are three months old today. For a quarter of a year, you have been on the outside learning about the world. I can't believe how much you've grown and how much you can do!

Just three months ago, you weighed 6lbs11oz. A week and a half ago, you were 12lbs3oz! Where did my little baby go? We had to move most of the 0-3 month clothes out to make room for the 3-6 month clothes. They are a little big but it's more comfortable for you to have "room to grow" than for everything to be stretching out. You have long legs and a tiny little bum, so your cloth diapers still look so big sometimes. You are getting big for the infant prefolds but we are using them anyway because the one-size AIOs are still so huge.

You are a tummy time champ. You can tell that your mama worked in Early Intervention because you are the best tummy timer in the whole mama-and-baby group we go to on Thursdays. You are really starting to become interested in toys and will occasionally reach for something if it is dangling really close to where your eyes are anyway. You are a good tracker when you are interested and you like to watch people leave the room. You haven't really noticed the cats yet.

You have such a cute smile and a really infectious laugh. Sometimes it's hard to get you to laugh but when you do, it is all worth it. You laugh at the wall in the nursery, you laugh at the green giraffe on the bouncy seat, and you laugh when you are splashing in the bath. Sometimes you laugh at mama when she sticks out her tongue. Mama laughs when YOU stick out YOUR tongue!

You have a little gang of babies from the mama-and-baby group that you like to hang with. The other day you were at the park with Baby Anna and it was so cute to see the two of you checking each other out. Both of you starting cooing and your mamas were so happy! You also like Baby Ella and Baby Glenn and Baby Kate and Baby Austin.

Mama nursed you for three months with the help of a lot of medication, and she decided to stop taking all of the pills since it wasn't helping much. Her milk is almost all dried up now and she hopes you won't forget all of the sweet nursing time you shared over the last three months. You have gotten donated milk from your fake-aunt Emily and from some foster mamas and now Austin's mama is going to give you some milk. So many mamas love you, little punk, and want you to get big and strong.

You want to kick and move all the time. It is so great to see you getting so strong, but all of that moving around has really sent your reflux into overdrive as your sphincter muscle can't keep up with your activity level. When you are really active, you sure do spit up a lot! Sometimes it goes really far! Spitting up makes you sad and it breaks mama's heart to see you cry. Mama started taking you to a chiropractor to see if that will help with the reflux, and we are just waiting for that day when your stomach is strong enough to keep all of your milk in. You also have a mysterious case of petechiae that no one can explain, so mama has to take you to a pediatric dermatologist an hour away! Everyone just wants to look at you, I think.

Everyone says you are a beautiful baby, and I am inclined to agree. As you grow and change I can see more ways that you look like me, though you have features that are all your own, like the dimpled chin and your stick-out ears. You have a small head like your mama and we definitely have the same mouth. We are waiting to see if your eyes change color or if they will stay blue.

You have really changed my life and baby girl, sometimes I don't think I am strong enough to be your mama. I just want to be able to be and do and fix everything, and everytime you cry, a little part of my heart dies. It's a good thing it's big enough because it's so full of love for you. You and your pretty smile are the light of my little life. Thank you for choosing me to be your mama!