It’s been another week! No huge updates this week, but there have been a bunch of little things. I keep meaning to take more regular notes about what’s going on during the week, but I’m mostly just glad that I’ve been getting around to making these updates every Wednesday, since it all changes so quickly.
Overall, I’d say Lydia was in a pretty good mood this week. The almost cold of last week went away. There were a few times where she was quite upset, but her overall mood was good.
No big disruptions this week. No more camping :-). One party where she fell asleep pretty early in. We did go see Birth Story in the Mission, which went okay but not great. From the invitation posted to the home birth mailing list, I thought there would be more babies there, but my friend Tiffany and I were the only ones who brought ours. Lydia was fine during parts, but would also make noise sometimes. When she did, I stepped outside with her. Our midwife, Maria came in late and took her for a while, since she’d already seen the movie, which was really nice!
So, it probably wasn’t super appropriate to have her there, but it was way more acceptable than having her at any other movie would have been. And a few people came up to me afterwards and said it was nice to hear the babies from time to time, since it was thematic.
I would recommend the movie to anyone interested in Ina May Gaskin, birth, or hippie communities.
Sleep
Lydia’s mostly been on an earlier schedule ever since the camping trip. And it often happens that she’ll let me know when she’s ready for bed. During the day, she’s usually content to sleep in my arms on the couch, or in the carrier, but at night she often shows a clear preference for the bed. Sometimes, she wants me to take her to bed when I’m in the middle of hanging out :-(. Not so convenient, since it doesn’t work well for me to leave bed once she’s asleep.
I haven’t swaddled in a long time now, though I haven’t ruled out using it again. She’s had some times where was awake in the middle of the night for a bit, but nothing that required me to get out of bed except diapers.
Ah, diapers. She’s had a big nighttime EC regression. I’m wondering if this is due to the few days we had her in disposables, but she used to go most if not all of the night without peeing, but now she’s back to peeing every few hours. I’ve started pottying her while feeding her if she’s stirring but not interested in food, and that works okay. Sometimes she’ll pee in her diaper instead, and then I change it.
If the disposables for a few days did cause this, it doesn’t seem particularly worth it in retrospect, but it could be coincidence. I don’t see much to do about it now in any case.
Mornings are on the earlier end, usually between 7 and 8, though I’ve had a few days where she slept in until about 9. When she gets up seems to have more to do with when I get up than when she went to bed. She stirs enough in the morning that unless I’m really tired I’ll usually get up by 7:30, so then she’ll get up soon after. If I stay asleep next to her though, she can go longer.
Eating
I tried pumping again this week, since we had a date night planned for today (more about that later). If I pump after she’s recently fed I can usually get 1oz pretty quickly (half an hour?), then maybe 2 if I go for a long time. It’s happened that I’ve gotten a second let down way into pumping. But one night this week I got up around 5:00am, so I tried pumping then. I got 3oz pretty quickly, presumably because she hadn’t fed in a long time.
Nursing is the same as usual, not much to report there.
The plan is still to do baby-led weaning at six months. She’s interested in most things, but I don’t think she’s interested in food in particular. But she can sit up really well, so I’m going to give it to her to play with at six months even if she doesn’t seem more interested by then. If she doesn’t eat it, that’s fine with me!
I was feeling a bit impatient about the food thing, so I went ahead and got some gear. I had previously considered having Lydia on my lap for meals, but she grabs everything and has already knocked over my water while I’m eating, so I decide it would be nice to have somewhere else to put her. Plus, the point of baby-led weaning is to let her manipulate her food, so it seems like she would have some sort of flat surface in front of her so she could pick things up.
I liked the idea of having her at the table with us, so I knew I wanted one of those adjustable height chairs you can pull up to the table, and then lower as the kid gets bigger. We got the Keekaroo chair mostly because it was cheaper than the Stokke Tripp Trapp and also because the less modern look fits in with our furniture a bit better. I knew I didn’t want the trap, since the plan was to have her at the table, and I gathered from the Amazon reviews that, given that Lydia can sit, I wouldn’t necessarily need the infant seat.
I set it up, putting the seat at the highest setting, and the footrest at the highest setting below the bar, and it works. The foot rest is too low for her to get much use out of it. I maybe could have had it higher, but the instructions did make it seem as though the setting it’s at now was the highest height. I don’t think it matters much that she use it, and she’s getting taller somewhat quickly.
I don’t know if it’s super secure. I wouldn’t feel comfortable walking away for very long leaving her in there until I’ve observed her in it more, but so far I’ve had her in there a few times, and she seems very stable. She didn’t enjoy being in there when she was fussy, but I had her in there when she was otherwise happy and it wasn’t a problem.
My plan is to start having her in the seat while I’m eating. That way, I won’t have her grabbing at my food, and we’ll be able to see and communicate with each other.
Since I’m not giving her food yet, she needs something to occupy her, so I’ve been giving her this cup and these utensils.
No idea when she’ll figure out how to use either of these things, but I figure it can’t hurt to let her explore them. The Little Grips spoon and fork seem to be good teething toys if nothing else. She likes throwing all the stuff on the floor, naturally, and currently seems a bit startled by the noise it makes.
The idea with the Doidy cup is to skip the sippy cup. As long as I’m nursing her, she doesn’t really water anyway, so I figure it doesn’t matter much if she can’t use it properly, and if she’s going to be practicing something, it might as well be something that leads into drinking from a regular cup. I was convinced by this post that sippy cups aren’t awesome, and I’ve definitely met preschoolers that are still using them.
I did put a little water in the Doidy cup once, which she promptly poured on herself and the floor, as expected :-).
Elimination Communication
As noted above, Lydia is having a nighttime EC regression. Calling it a regression is somewhat hopeful, actually. It’s possible she just changed her mind about wanting to hold it at night, and that won’t return for years. Oh well.
During the day, I think she cares less about wet diapers, though I’m not totally sure. It’s probably more that she cares more about other things, like doing her insane acrobatics, so she doesn’t always complain when her diaper is wet. I think she can hold her pee longer than she used to though, and she hasn’t been resisting me taking her to the potty except when she’s acutely tired or hungry, in which case I deal with that first.
She had a run of pooping to wake herself up in the morning, which was not that fun, but didn’t happen the past two days.
When I say she hasn’t been resisting, I mean at home. It’s happened a few times recently that she’s started screaming as soon as I take her into a strange bathroom. I immediately take her out, but I don’t know what’s bothering her so much. She’s typically willing to pee outside though, so that’s usually a decent option.
Babywearing
Not much to say here. She likes it when I wear her, but I do it less now that she’s more interested in being on the floor. I still do it though. I used the back carry again this week, after not doing that for a while. I loved it at first, since I could bake without disturbing her, and she fell asleep easily. But then I couldn’t figure out how to sit down in a position that was comfortable for me without waking her up.
I went to a babywearing meetup, which was nice for camaraderie but not much I didn’t know.
Motor Skills
Still can’t crawl! But she’s stronger by the day. I’m begging to think that what I’ve been referring to as her “trying to crawl”, actually isn’t. Maybe she’s trying to stand up. She’s awesome at being on all fours (not hands and knees–hands and feet), and I’ve even seen her do about one crawl’s worth of crawling when she was trying to get a toy, but she’s mostly interested in pushing her bottom as high into the air as possible. She gets a huge kick out of supporting herself on the first stair or the bed, and loves it when we hold her in the standing position.
I’ll make a weak prediction that she’ll start crawling in the next week though, despite what I said. She seems really close.
Personality/Other
Lydia’s had a few seemingly out of nowhere crying fits, which may or may not be teething pains, but she’s been pretty happy the rest of the time this week, other than a few times in the car where she got upset before I pulled over and comforted her. It was a pretty fun week.
Maria, my midwife, has a free Zumba class with childcare for her clients on Fridays, so I went to that with Lydia this week. The way it works is that there are few people to take care of the babies in one room, and we do Zumba in the room next door. The class is two hours, I think. I had just fed Lydia before we got there. I went in once when I heard her screaming from the next room, and was told that she had been fine until just then. She was easily comforted then, and I didn’t hear from her until the end, when Maria took her out to me.
The feedback I got about Lydia was that she was mostly very independent. She wasn’t asking to be held, and when she got upset it was related to her play, like not being able to reach a toy. But then, Maria also said that when Lydia did want me it was very clear, and there was no distracting her.
That sounds about right to me, and it’s always interesting to hear what people who have experience with lots of babies think of her, since I don’t have much of a baseline.
On the other hand, Will and I tried to leave her with our roommate Caroline again to go out on a date, but she wasn’t having it. She seemed okay when we left to go around the block, but when we got back she had been crying most of the time. So we stayed in and tried to gradually get her used to Caroline. I think it worked okay. She was playing with her on the floor for pretty long periods before she wanted us. And she eventually let Caroline feed her the pumped milk I’d left in a bottle. She even eventually fell asleep on Caroline in the Ergo!
There were some rough moments, and she seemed somewhat anxious about the situation for a while even when she wasn’t crying, so I wonder if I should have taken things more slowly. I think I would next time. But I’m sure it was the right call not to leave, so we could comfort her when she wanted us. I’m also pretty sure it’s the right call to keep scheduling times with a babysitter, even if we don’t end up leaving the house.
Me
I think this was a good week for me. It’s hard not to overweight the last day or so, especially since I don’t keep many notes. I’m mostly well-rested. A good friend of mine from NYC just moved here and is interested in hanging out a bunch during the day, which I’m excited about!
I’ve been getting some stuff done. A little less than I’d like, but the gap isn’t huge. I’ve recently accepted that I’m going to be flakey about emails during the week, and set the intention to catch up every Saturday. My newest idea there is to commit to uploading some new Lydia stuff to Facebook on Saturday too.
