Following My Heart

A TREMENDOUS Thank You to all who posted on my previous topic! It makes me feel so much better about my concern about the dropped feeding. I know we're told over and over again that mommy instincts are incredibly accurate and we should go with them, but sometimes it's difficult to feel that you've made the right decision when one with a medical degree is telling you to do the opposite of what your heart says is right. I do have the utmost respect for Margaret's doctors' opinions, but when it doesn't feel right, it doesn't feel right, and this just didn't from the start. Margaret got back her "last" feeding tonight. To hell with his opinion in this case! I will cut back when she is ready for it, not when he tells me to. After all - she's only a baby! It's not like she has any understanding of eating just for the sake of eating. That's an adult (or at least, older child) concept that's beyond her still. She looks to eat because she is *hungry* and because she needs it. Plain and simple.

I also want to thank Jackie for posting all those guidelines. Margaret actually does meet those guidelines, but I still don't think she's ready for solids. Either that, or she just doesn't like anything she's been offered yet. :) We'll keep trying, but I'm not going to force it on her. There's no need to, especially at this age.

Hopefully I'll be able to rest easier tonight, with a clear conscience and a baby that actually sleeps.

Does The Doctor Always Know Best?

On October 14th we had Margaret's 4 month appointment. It was at that time that her doctor expressed a concern about Margaret's continuing trend of being off the charts on weight. Mind you, she was 9 lbs 2 oz at birth and has been gaining steadily. In fact, last month was the smallest gain so far in a month's time. And she's 26 inches tall. Regardless, her doctor told me to cut back her formula by 1-2 oz per feeding! She had been taking in 36 oz/day in 6-6 oz feedings and since we normally had to wake her for her last feeding at 9:30PM, we decided to try dropping that one. Her doctor also wanted me to start giving her cereal. I originally intended to wait until she was 6 months old to start cereal, but I knew she wouldn't be happy with less formula unless she got something else in exchange.

The problems. Well, for starters, she hates cereal. In 5 feedings, she only once ate it...at the first one. Every time I've attempted it since, she's screamed, spit it all out, and refused to eat. So Friday I stopped trying to give her cereal, figuring this is her way of showing me she is not ready yet.

Next are the sleep problems. Margaret started consistently sleeping through the night at about 6 weeks of age. There were a few instances when she did not, but those were mostly when she was ill. However, once we started cutting feedings, she stopped sleeping through the night. She was 17 weeks old when we started this, so it had been a couple of months that she had been sleeping well before this. The sleeping problems keep getting worse. She used to sleep 9:30PM to 6:30/7AM. Last night, she went down "for the night" at 8:30PM, but woke up at 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5:45AM. She went back down pretty quickly for most of the wakings, but at the 4AM one, it took me 40 minutes to get her back down. (And I didn't get back to sleep after that because Brian's alarm clock started going off at 5AM, but that's a whole other issue...)

I'm thinking of disobeying the doctor's orders. If it were only a night or two, I probably wouldn't be concerned... but she hasn't slept through the night once since we changed her feedings. It seems to me that she needs more than 30 oz/day to function properly. Heck, my mother told me my brothers were taking in 40 oz/day at her age and she wasn't told to cut back (and their doctor is the father of Margaret's doctor, actually). I just don't know what to do. But I do know that what we're doing right now isn't working.

No Paper Undies For My Baby!

LOL! I laugh every time I see blinkies proclaiming: "I don't wear paper undies so why should my baby." It makes sense, it's just a funny thought. It's right up there with the "I don't eat in the bathroom so why should my baby" blinkies. Great statement using humor to get the point across. At least, they're humorous to me.

Anyway, back during the first time I was pregnant, I had done a lot of research on cloth diapering and really wanted to do it. However, I was met with extensive opposition (including my own sister who proclaimed she would not watch baby-to-be until s/he was out of diapers if I chose to use cloth). The second time I got pregnant, I was more concerned with actually having a baby in the end than how I would diaper, so it went to the wayside.

But it's been on my mind again lately. There exist many reasons to cloth diaper, and I won't get into them here. There are plenty of sites advocating it that you can turn to if you're looking to be converted. For me, there were a couple of reasons. #1 chemicals. There are so many chemical in disposables and it bothers me. Think of that absorbant gel...what is it anyway? How good can it be to have that against the skin? #2 cost. So much money literally thrown away every day. #3 Margaret only pees at night anyway. How hard can it possibly be to wash some pee diapers?

Well, Margaret's daycare doesn't do cloth, so she'd have to be in sposies there anyway. But I figured I'd give it a shot at night and maybe incorporate it into the weekends if I like it. Last night was our first night trying. We used a borrowed Fuzzi Bunz pocket dipe with 2 borrowed microfiber inserts in the pocket. I do have to say that the smell you get in the morning after your baby sits in a cloth diaper for 10 hrs is less than appealing. I never did like the pee smell in sposies, but with cloth, it was like straight ammonia. Yuck! But she did stay dry all night. I also bought my own Bumkins AIO (all in one) and I just had to try it yesterday evening. They're the closest you can get to the convenience of a disposable in the cloth diapering world. Very easy to use. I was definitely pleased with that. I think if I could afford to go with all AIOs, I may just give it a chance on the weekends, too.

Now if only I could get over my huge aversion to poo, then I would have an easier time cloth diapering more than just at night....

More Sleep

Let's see... Tuesday night there was a bit of a fight, but not as bad. During that night, however, I was awakened at 2AM not by Margaret's cries, but the by the cries of the upstairs tenant's 1.5 year old daughter. I kept bringing the monitor to my ear to be sure, but it didn't sound like Margaret anyway. She even woke Brian up, and he never wakes up to Margaret's cries! Margaret didn't want to be left out, I guess, because she woke up at 4AM and 5:15AM on Wednesday. I ended up having to wake her finally at 7AM to get ready for the day (she normally wakes at 6:30AM on her own). I was exhausted that day. Wednesday night, no fight for bed. She was down by 8:30PM. Woke up at 3AM, but went back to sleep very quickly. I think she wanted her pacifier, but I don't want to get in the habit of waking up to replace a binky. She slept until 6:30AM after that. But last night... that was golden! In bed between 8 and 8:30PM and slept straight through until 6:40AM! I don't know if her long nap at daycare had anything to do with it, but I'll take it!

Now if only Brian and I weren't both sick, we would have gotten some sleep last night...

I wanted to bring Margaret to a pumpkin patch this weekend but it's supposed to rain. More rain. As if the 9 days we had in the recent past isn't enough, we'll now lose the 3rd weekend in a row to rain.

Sleep

Well, in spite of Margaret's desperate protests to going to bed last night, she was asleep by 9PM and stayed that way until around 6 this morning. It was incredibly bizarre to be in my bedroom and ready for bed before 10PM since I'm normally not in there until 11 or 11:30. Of course, I lost most of the time advantage when I spent nearly an hour surfing the net on my iBook. Darn that addiction! In any case, that's 2 out of 3 nights that she slept through even though she had one less feeding. I hope this trend continues. Well, minus the 45-minute screaming ritual.

Tons of Fun

You know, things were just fine before cereal and reducing formula. Margaret went to bed 99.999% of the time without hassles and slept through the night. Now, all hell has broken lose. Last night was a real trial in patience when it came to bedtime. And then she woke up at 3AM, requiring over an hour of soothing to go back to bed. Tonight is even worse. I worried that maybe I tried to put her down too early last night, so we figured we'd start at 8:15PM or so. Except Brian chose to hear what he wanted to hear and just put Margaret in her crib after changing her diaper without even giving her a chance to get used to the idea. No transition, just plopped her into the crib. This sent her into a frenzy of crying that continues even as I type. It drives me nuts that we could have avoided this entirely if he wasn't so careless. And that he insists upon taking care of her, even though he's not doing a thing that would be considered calming. I'm exhausted as it is...I got a grand total of 4 hours of sleep last night, at best. But being forced to listen to screaming that I can do nothing about, even though it might have been avoided, is really pushing my buttons right now. After several attempts to get Margaret from Brian so I could try to soothe her, he banished me to the bedroom, which is a whopping 10 feet from the living room. Screams readily permeate the walls. It breaks my heart and drives me crazy all at the same time. Yup, tons of fun around here tonight. Waking up at 3AM again would really be the icing on the cake right now.....

Damn doctor's suggestions....

Happy 4 Months Old!

Margaret celebrated 4 months on this earth by eating her first food today. Oatmeal. Not something I enjoy, but I decided it was a better food to start with than rice cereal. She didn't even seem to realize she was eating. Surprisingly, we didn't lose much of it out of her mouth either. The only problem: the bib. I thought we'd use her big girl bib that isn't absorbant. Big mistake as she decided to try to eat the bib, as well as rub it all over everything. Next time I'll be sure to use something that will really contain the mess.



I want to thank all of you for reminding me that guidelines are exactly that: not rules that must be strictly adhered to, but rather a collection of what works for the average situation. Margaret had been exhibiting signs of readiness for solids for weeks now, but I've been trying to hold her off because of the guidelines. Even with her doctor telling me to feed her cereal, I still resisted. But Margaret was not ready to give up formula (as directed by her doctor) without getting something in its place. So I threw the guidelines out the window and gave it a chance today. After all, she is the size of your average 7 or 8 month old... it only stands to reason that she'd be ready for food a little bit earlier than your average 4 month old.