Lydia turned five months old this week, and also went on her first camping trip. I got a really mild cold for a few days last week, though Lydia didn’t seem to be affected much. She was a bit sneezy, and I think she may have been sleeping more because of it.
We were camping from Friday-Sunday. We hiked to a camp ground Friday, stayed there Friday night, then hiked more and went to Harbin hot springs and camped there Saturday night. Sunday, we hiked a bit more before heading home.
My prediction had been that she’d like camping, and that was mostly borne out. She definitely liked hiking. Camping was okay. Sleeping in a tent didn’t seem to be her favorite, but it wasn’t a disaster either. The car rides were probably her least favorite part, though she did spend some time sleeping.
We got her a long-sleeved wool onsie, wool pants, Smartwool socks, fleece booties, a fleece hat, and a raincoat. We already had fleece pants and a fleece hooded jacket. She didn’t wear all of these things when I was wearing her in the wrap, since that would have been too hot, but they were nice for holding her while I was hanging out around camp at night.
I also have the Peekaru fleece babywearing vest, so I used that some of the time.
Sleep
I didn’t like sleeping in a cold tent much, but I don’t think Lydia was too affected by the temperature, bundled up as she was. The first night though, I was dressed in a bunch of layers myself, and it took forever to get them off to feed her when she woke up at night. I usually sleep in just a tank top, if that. For one waking, she got so worked up that I had to sit up, hold her, and soothe her before she’d settle again. The next night, I learned my lesson and wore fewer layers on top, which worked much better. She slept pretty late both mornings we were in the tent, and Lydia and I were some of the latest risers in the group we were camping with.
For now, Lydia is on a somewhat earlier schedule. We both had an early night on Thursday last week, since I was coming down with a cold. Friday, I was up late, but she was mostly asleep in my arms after it had been dark for an hour or so, though not sure of the time. Saturday, we both went to sleep around 8:30. And since we’ve been back, I think she’s been in bed before 9:00 every night. So, not early for a baby, but early for her.
Oh, and the daylight savings thing presumably also shifted things earlier for her, even though the change did start before that.
Currently though, Lydia doesn’t usually sleep well lying down in the bed without me sleeping next to her. If I’m awake and moving around next to her, I’ll sometimes wake her up. If I’m not there at all, she’ll eventually reach for me and wake herself up. So, her going to bed much before I do is not very convenient. It usually works better for me to have her sleep in the wrap or in my arms. But sometimes I can tell she wants to go to sleep in the bed, because she’ll complain until I take her there.
I’m not sure what the right answer is here. If I do swaddle her and put on white noise, her sleep situation is a little less fragile, so maybe I should do that.
The past few nights, Lydia has also been squirming more at night because she needed to pee. Often I’ll just feed her, since she doesn’t always like being pottied when she’s really tired, but even though feeding is relaxing, it obviously just makes her need to pee more. I think I should change my approach here. More on that in the EC section.
Eating
She’s definitely bigger. When I weighed her yesterday, she was 15 lb 5.6 oz. Not much to report about nursing patterns though. She still does it pretty frequently, and she will often but not always nurse to go to sleep. I know I’m currently feeding when she wakes up at night to get her back to sleep, even if she’s not actually hungry. Not sure this is the best system, but it’s convenient enough that I’ll probably keep doing it for a while.
Elimination Communication
When we went on the camping trip, we mostly had Lydia in disposables. She waited two days to poop, since she mostly likes to go at home, but then she eventually did one of the times I took her out to see if she wanted to go.
The disposables were interesting. She peed at almost every opportunity I gave her, but she went in her diaper too sometimes and didn’t seem to notice or care much about being in a wet one. Because of this (with all the other stuff going on, and the cold weather), I wasn’t as motivated to do much EC with her for long periods of time. I worry a little that this has screwed up the nighttime stuff a bit, but if so, we’ll just have to keep trying.
I definitely don’t like disposables much. They’re not as heavy as cloth diapers, which was the main advantage for the trip. And it was sometimes nice not to have to worry about changing her diapers as quickly, but she still fussed before she peed, so just letting her go isn’t a great solution at this point. I’d have to retrain her to be okay with going in diapers, which I don’t like.
Aside from somewhat more peeing at night, things seem mostly back to normal now that we’re at home. I’ve heard that EC breaks can teach kids to hold it longer, since they get to experiment with that, but I don’t think that really happened with her either.
Babywearing
Lots of babywearing while we were hiking, all in the wrap. It’s nice, but sometimes she has pretty distinct preferences about where she wants to be looking that are hard to accommodate in the carrier. I use to be pretty skeptical of carriers where the baby is facing out, since I had read that they were bad, but now I’m in favor of doing what babies want unless there’s a good reason not to. I tied her facing outwards in the wrap a few times, and I’d do it again. Though I think the real answer is that I need to learn a hip carry or two.
Motor Skills
Still can’t crawl :-). She’s getting pretty good at balancing on two feet and one hand, while using the other hand to grab something. And while she hasn’t moved from crawling to sitting, she obviously could if she put the pieces together, since I’ve seen her do movements that would add up to that. She started grabbing her feet, sometimes with both hands, and sucking on them when I’m pottying her sometimes, which I find super cute.
She’s also more solid in her ability to scoot forward, and the whole being on her tummy thing doesn’t frustrate her nearly as much as it used to.
Personality/Other
This week was much less fussy than last week. It’s hard to compare the time spent camping, since that’s so different, but she’s been relatively calm the few days since we’ve been back. I think part of it is that the floor stuff is bugging her a bit less now that she’s strong enough to do most of her now-usual gymnastics pretty easily.
It’s also cool to be able to figure out what she wants even more. A few times now, I’ve interpreted her complaints and a sign that she wanted to be held by the person she was cooing at, and I think I’ve been right! Though she does like to greet people, she can sometimes take a while to warm up to actually wanting to be held much by non parents, but it’s cool to see her having longer and more complex interactions.
We took a long bus ride the other day for (I think?) the first time, and she, in addition to liking the motion, was pretty into making friends with her fellow passengers. She does this on BART too :-).
One other thing possibly worth noting. Today, Lydia hardly napped, but then woke up suddenly about 45min (I think) into an afternoon nap crying inconsolably for a good while, maybe 15min. She didn’t want to nurse at all, and seemed to be in pain. She didn’t have a fever. She has been pulling at her right ear, so Will wondered if maybe she had an ear infection, but she doesn’t seem to be showing any other signs. She notably didn’t pee afterwards for a relatively long time. But maybe that was because she was sweating more than usual when crying? Probably nothing, but I’m going to keep an eye on it.
Me
The camping trip was pretty awesome on the whole. I did have a hard moment on Saturday though. I wanted to explore the tubs more, but ended up going to bed with Lydia around 8:30 instead, which was probably a good call. Going to bed early is very often a good call!
I remember thinking, “This is not a vacation for me!”
And it’s true. We were somewhere beautiful, but the main “work” I do all day is taking care of Lydia, and that was with me. It was also much harder to put her down safely, and she was generally a bit out of sorts. Plus, I had to keep track of her temperature. Unless she happened to be asleep, eating meals was challenging. The people I was with started moving a lot more quickly once we all put down our hiking packs (mine was quite small, since Will took almost all our stuff), but I was still carrying her. I think in the future I need to do a better job of sharing how I’m feeling, because it sort of snuck up on me that I wanted other people to know that I was having a difficult time. Not that it wasn’t also quite fun. Just fun plus work.
On the other hand, coming back home did seem comparatively relaxing, especially since Lydia was in a less fussy place than when we’d left.
Overall, I’m enjoying having a slightly older baby who can sit and play, and who often amuses herself for many minutes at a time! She’s currently playing as I’m typing this, which is very cool!
