Lydia tuns nineteen weeks old today, and it was a very active week. She’s getting stronger by the day!
Sleep
Sleep was unmemorable this week, which is exactly where I want it to be! She seems to be past whatever was making her more fitful last week. We have been breaking out the swaddling blanket at night pretty often though. Sometimes she’s clearly tired, but is having a hard time settling, and the swaddle usually does the trick. She still hasn’t been resisting it. If it continues to be useful, I may have to get new blankets though, because I don’t think she’ll fit into the ones we have now for that long.
Last night, Lydia gave a very clear signal that she wanted to go to sleep, which was nice. Around 9:30, she started getting quite upset and rejecting my usual soothing measures, until I tried feeding her lying down in the bedroom. Then she was happy.
I’m not sure how much she’s feeding at night. I tried to track my sleep with the Zeo last night, so I could get some idea of how much I was waking up at least. But it came off after twelve minutes. I put it back on, and I know I had it on most of the night. But I only got data from those twelve minutes. Oh well :-(. I’ll probably have to tighten the headband to the point of discomfort to get it to work, but I’m pretty curious. I may have more news here next week.
In any case, I’ve been staying in bed all night until around seven or so, usually, which is when Lydia will usually start stirring in her sleep and not settle when I feed her. Then, I pick her up and put her on the potty while nursing her and she usually pees a bunch, after which I can put her right back to sleep.
Nine is a pretty normal time for her to get up for the day, but it varies a lot.
She still naps a fair amount during the day, and some of them are long. I’m grateful, because it means I get to rest!
Eating
Not much to add here. My suspicion that she hadn’t gotten bigger recently was confirmed when I weighed her yesterday. Last week she was 14 lb 7 oz. This week she was 14 lb 1 oz. I’m not super concerned about the drop, since I figure she could have had a full bladder and just fed last week and have been comparatively emptier this week. I think readings like this are the reason people don’t recommend weighing your babies constantly.
She’s also been really active, and I’m sure burning a ton of calories.
Since yesterday, I’ve been making a point of offering to feed her even more than I’m usually inclined to. I don’t think it’s making any difference though. I know some people start solids around now, but our plan is to wait until six months.
Elimination Communication
Not much to report on the EC front either. I definitely like having the mini potties. I seem to have determined that past a certain time of night, Lydia is not interested in pottying. So I don’t necessarily take her right before bed. And she can usually hold it most of the night, maybe around nine hours?
I definitely wasn’t expecting her to hold it that long, but that’s what she does.
We do that thing I mentioned where I potty her while nursing a couple of hours before she really gets up. Or, she pees in her diaper around then. Then, in the morning, she pees a bunch of time in a row, maybe every ten or fifteen minutes for a while. She usually poops around then too.
We did have one morning this week where she woke herself up by starting to poop in her diaper while she was asleep. Very unusual for her, though it was around the time she usually gets up anyway.
She’ll typically poop once or twice during the day.
Babywearing
I got the short wrap! It seems to be mostly good for the Rucksack Carry, and I can even tie it in front pretty easily. I haven’t gotten the hang of the Kangaroo Carry, though I think it’s long enough for that. The Front Cross Carry featured in the Didymos pamphlet kind of works. But this definitely isn’t a wrap to use for all carries.
I’ve probably been carrying her around less this past week, since she seems relatively keen to work on her skills on the ground. Sometimes I wonder if I should carry her more though. She gets pretty frustrated trying and failing to crawl. And I believe the research that says that they get stronger and better at balancing just being walked around in the wrap anyway.
I’m also kind of lazy though. I enjoy long walks, but my when left to my own devices my default is usually to lie down. According to my mother, I was a pretty sedentary baby as well :-).
Motor Skills
Lydia can now sit independently for a while. As of today, she’s gone about as long as a minute, I think. Definitely thirty seconds. She can even flail around quite a bit and wave her toys everywhere without getting off balance. Yay core strength!
Once, she did this crazy move where she had her four limbs pretty splayed out, but she lifted herself way off the ground. Mostly though, there haven’t been huge changes in the stuff she’s doing on her tummy. I think one of the biggest things preventing her from moving forward (or backward, I guess, though she does a bit of that), is that she can’t get her knees together and under her torso much. I think her hips are just in the wrong position or something, presumably because she’s young. I may do some research about infant hip positioning.
She also continues to very much enjoy being held in a standing position. She’s been able to hold all her weight on her legs for a long time, but she obviously has terrible balance. She will do the stepping thing if you hold her arms, which we finally got an okay video of today. I read something that made me worry that letting her do this too much would give her hip dysplasia. But she likes it a lot, so I’m torn.
After this week, I’ve updated a little towards Will’s estimate that she’ll crawl at five months, but not that much. I’d still guess closer to six, though maybe a bit before. I am not at all well-calibrated. I asked my mother if she could remember when I started crawling, but she could not. She said it seemed like my brothers were moving around on the floor from almost the very beginning, and that I didn’t and was sitting around six months. Shashi walked at 8 months, Anil walked at 14 months, and I walked at around a year. She couldn’t remember any of us being frustrated at not being able to crawl, but she also said she kept us in jumpers and walkers a lot.
Personality/Other
The cold and runny nose I mentioned last week is totally gone. I wouldn’t say it’s been her happiest week though. She’s been getting pretty frustrated on her tummy on the ground, and I’m once again often not sure whether to intervene. I checked in about this at one of the mom groups I go to, and the basic feedback I got was that we were all pretty similarly calibrated about what was going on with her.
I’m definitely curious to see how she’ll imagine other challenges she comes across when she’s older. Right now, she’ll scream and get upset, but she’ll definitely keep trying. I’m hoping the screaming will taper off as she gets more words to use…
Of course, most of her future struggles won’t be gross motor ones, so maybe that will mean she’ll scream less. As Will pointed out, weight lifters vocalize quite a bit.
I’m still figuring out how Lydia will react to different social/party situations. She was pretty fussy at a small dinner party I went to on Saturday. Then, she was much calmer at a much bigger, louder party later that night. I think some of it was that I was on my feet walking around more. Some of it was that loud background noise seems to be calming. But my instinct is that there’s something else going on with her preferences that I’m not modeling yet.
Me
I’d say I’m pretty well-rested these days, which is awesome. I’ve been setting about one goal a day and mostly getting them done, which works for me for now. If I get a bit better at doing all my weekly goals and keep that up for a few weeks, I think it’ll be time to up the ante.
It’s pretty fun watching Lydia learn stuff. It’s happening more and more frequently these days that I’m actually kind of excited for her to wake up so that I can see what she’ll do next. I can definitely see my brain attempting to tie my self-worth to her accomplishments, so I try to do my best to notice it and remind myself that it doesn’t work that way.
So far it’s worked decently well to take her around with me while I hang out with people one-on-one. Bigger group situations are harder. I think the correct answer is for me to schedule more time with people one-on-one and in small groups.
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