Five Month Foodie

For Nathan's 5 month birthday, I decided to have him try some sweet potato. So, I cut a small piece off of a raw sweet potato, steamed it, mashed it, and fed it to him for lunch. Wasn't interested. Then, later on that night, I cooked some mild chicken curry and I added the rest of the sweet potato from earlier that day. As we were eating dinner, Nathan showed a particular interest in eating. He was even mimicking us by putting the spoon into his mouth. So, I decided to mash up some of the sweet potato from the curry and tried to feed it to him. He loved it! He was even able to swallow the food and not push it out with his tongue. We tried a spoonful and waited. After a few seconds, he fussed and banged his fists against the tray, as if he wanted more. So we tried one more spoonful. He grabbed the spoon and was pulling the curried sweet potato mash into his mouth. I'm so proud of him. I guess he prefers spiced sweet potato as opposed to plain. Yay! I've given birth to a foodie!

Nathan is now also able to sit up for a few seconds on his own. I was able to focus the camera and snapped a few shots before he toppled over. Here's the best one. 

To help encourage sitting, Nathan's cousin lent him a bumbo chair. He kind of likes it, but doesn't like sitting in it for too long. He gets squirmy, but I'm sure he likes to look around from a new perspective. 

Remember a few weeks ago, when he used to stand on a couple of CD drives in order to play in the exersaucer? Well, this boy has grown and no longer needs the extra boost. Check it! 

Recently, I feel like I've had several knock on wood moments. I guess that's what I get when I get a little braggy about the little guy. Here are some examples:

1. We are sitting in the car and I notice how quiet Nathan is being, so I say to Steve, "He's such a good boy right now, he's sitting so quietly back there." And a second later, we start to hear whinny cries. 
2. One night I had just put Nathan down into his crib and went downstairs. I tell Steve, "Wow! we're getting good at this. No cries, no tears!" And a second later...
3. I'm telling other moms in my walking group about Nathan's sleep patterns. The conversation went something like this:
    Me:  "Well, he's doing pretty good and sleeping for a 5 hour stretch followed by a 3 hour stretch." Fellow mom: "Wow, that's awesome."
   Of course that night, and the subsequent nights, Nathan gives me 3 hour stretches. 
4. We went out for brunch one morning and were enjoying our meal as Nathan was sitting contently in his car seat on top of a sling. I thought to myself, "Wow, it's nice to be able to enjoy a hands-free eating session. I'd better not say this out loud since Nathan will probably..." And the boy starts to squirm and whimper. 

So, not only can I not say it out loud, I better not think it either, apparently. Or, I should just carry a piece of 2 by 4 with me wherever I go and remember to knock on it. 

At 5 months, we are still breastfeeding. I have started to feel like my supply was getting a little low, so I started up with the fenugreek herbs again and I have seen an improvement on Nathan's feeding patterns.  He is able to go longer stretches in between and feed more efficiently when he does get hungry. I really wish I understood a bit more about how a woman's body produces milk because my body isn't really following what all the books say as far as supply meeting demand. Before I was taking the supplements, Nathan often got very frustrated as he suckled without reward and was still hungry. Now, feedings are shorter (about 15-30 minutes) and he is happy afterwards. I think I will continue to encourage my supply by taking them for about 2-3 days a week. 

He is also welcoming a bottle now. I switched to a faster flow nipple and am able to give him an additional 2 oz. of expressed milk at the 10 pm dream feed. He is now consistently sleeping from 10:30ish to 2:30. I've been letting him cry it out for a bit before I go in and feed him at 3:00. I'm trying to get him to sleep 5 hours before waking up. I think once he is able to sleep from his dream feed to 3:00 am consistently, I'm going to start moving his dream feed earlier, and gradually take away extra milk. Hopefully, I will wean him off of the dream feed by 7 months, and then the 3 am feed by 9.  Or should I wean him off of the 3 am feed first, before I wean him off of the dream feed?  I still have time to think about this and we'll see what works.

Week 21

Wow! Do the weeks fly by so quickly. Nathan has officially upgraded to sitting inside his stroller (instead of being in his carseat). He likes to be able to sit up and look around as we take our little walks to the mailbox. As you can see in the picture to the left, he is one happy baby.

This past weekend was pretty exciting for Nathan. He had 5 of his friends come over for a baby brunch. It was so interesting to have all these cute babies hanging around different parts of the house. Here they are, all lined up.

It was an exciting day. All the mommies and daddies brought delicious food and afterwards, we kind of went crazy with taking pictures. There was even some baby flirting going on. (At least that's how us adults interpreted it). Towards the end, all the babies were exhausted. Nathan even passed out on his swing...something he has never done before. 

Nathan's one noticeable milestone that he's reached this week is the ability to grab something when held in front of him. He will also on occasion, pick up a toy that is by his head while on the changing table. Nathan will also reach his hands out for Teddy if he happens to be snooping around.

He is also starting to become more responsive to peek-a-boo. I also noticed that Nathan is starting to be able to recognize familiar faces. He keeps a straight face when he meets strangers, but he smiles at familiar ones. (Today he smiled when he saw the ladies who take care of him at the gym). I guess this means that he is starting to remember people. 

This week, I am wondering about whether or not I have him napping for too long of a stretch in the afternoon. It seems like if his normal nap schedule is off, he will make up for it by being an awesome sleeper at night. (5 hour stretches). Otherwise, all I get is 3 - 3.5 hours. I will be experimenting with this later on this week. 

Superhero: A good look for Nathan

The weather this past weekend was beautiful. Steve and I actually got a chance to play a few holes of disk golf. We took Nathan along in the stroller and had a lovely picnic lunch afterwards. It was so nice to get out of the house and do something fun.

Squealing and Shark-like Behaviors

 I don't know if I gave birth to a human or a little wild animal. At 20 weeks, I think Nathan is starting to teethe...whatever that means. He's been attacking objects with his mouth and viciously chews on them. He used to really only chew on his giraffe, but now his mouth seems to be attracted to anything that is solid.  He seems to really like it if I use my fingers to massage his upper gums. Maybe teeth will be poking through soon...I sure hope not.

 Here's a video of him on the jumpy chair chewing on his Chon rubber squeaker.

 And a fierce picture of him chewing on his ball-y-thingy. I mean, look at those eyes and that vicious grip!

I think one of the babies in our centering group already has teeth. I'm not looking forward to the day Nathan decides to bite down while nursing.

He is still going strong, as far as head and neck muscles go. In fact, this week he has started to wiggle and scoot while he is in his crib. When I would go to him for his one night feeding, I would often find him jammed up against the head of the crib. Online articles recommend tilting the mattress a bit, but I'm going to just let him crawl a bit for now since he has not hurt himself too much (As far as I can tell).

As far as other milestones go, he can now roll from his back to his side. Although, there was this one time when his head was laying on my lap and his body on the ground and he rolled over onto his tummy. This happened twice.

Sleep is still pretty much the same. He is waking up at 3 for a feeding and sleeps until 7-7:30, which I am happy with. He used to be able to sleep pretty much anywhere, but now, it seems like he will only sleep in his crib. This makes later nights out a bit more difficult. It seems like we need to be home by 7:30 at the latest, or we will have a super cranky baby on our hands.

Nathan is also starting to squeal. I've been playing music more often because I read that music helps foster math skillz. And since my kid is half Asian  he better be good at math. We've been using Pandora and one of my favorite stations is Sesame Street Beetles. This station plays so many songs from my childhood and it's fun to watch Nathan laugh as I jiggle and dance with him.

I am looking to this weekend because we will be having another baby party. This time, it will be a potluck brunch.

This week I kind of had an identity crisis. After talking to a neighbor and discussing how I feel like I finally have this mom thing/routine down, I felt a bit disappointed. Thinking back to my glorious teaching days when everyday was full of unexpected and interesting events, I find my current life predictable and routine. In the past, I had many opportunities to mold young minds, and today, I am in charge of molding only one young mind. Then, I read an article, that described exactly what I tried to describe, but in a more well written way, and felt a bit better about this shift of identity. I guess e very mom goes through this rite of passage and I've come to realize that it's a good change.

The Discovery of Delicious Toes During Week 19

This week was a pretty exciting week. Nathan was baptized and reached a few more milestones. Towards the end of this week, he was grabbing onto his toes and sucking on them. He is also now able to roll from his back to his side.

Mmmm. foot. looks. delicious.

Jackpot! 

The grandparents came in for his baptism. The picture also shows his Godparents or Sponsors.

Nathan received lots of really neat gifts to commemorate this special day. Great-grandma gave him a silver bracelet with his birth date on it.  He also received a cross-stitch blanket from grandma and a hand printed graphic of Nathan's name and birth information from our friend.

As far as other interesting news goes...

Bracelet from Great-Grandma

It's been a week since he last pooped. 7 days exactly and he decided to let one out during our long walk today. Luckily we were pretty close to the car so I could change him pretty quickly. Apparently, it's pretty normal for babies to not poop for days. Breast milk is just that efficient at providing nutrients to the baby.

I finally was able to get an Ergo Baby off of Craigslist and so far I've tried it out on both a hike and a walk. It is definitely  far more comfortable than the Baby Bjorn, but I found it to be a bit hot to wear. I was able to hike along a trail this past weekend that was semi-rigorous and completed a 4 mile walk with no back soreness afterwards. I'd say that this is a keeper.

I'd say that we've been pretty blessed to have a chill baby. He is sweet, happy, and pretty easy to take care of. (Now that we have had a few weeks of practice).As of last week, the only complaint that I had was his night time sleeping schedule. As accommodating and patient as I tried to be, 4 months of waking up every 2.5-3 (sometimes less) hours was wearing me out. And the articles that say "your baby should be sleeping through the night by 4 months" did not help.

So, after debating or not to sleep train Nathan, I kind of made modifications to what the pediatrician suggested, and now Nathan is only waking up once at night to feed. If you want to know the details, read below. Otherwise, come back next week for more great news! This is how it happened:

One night, I decided to try to add a 2.5 oz bottle to the end of his 10:00 dream feed to see if that may hold him over a bit longer.
10:30 Nathan gets put down and I go to bed myself.

12:08 His crying woke me up and when I looked at the clock, 3 hours had not passed by. I waited a few minutes to see if he would soothe himself and 5 minutes later, the crying had crescendoed to become heart breaking. I went in and patted him for a few seconds and walked out. At that point, I thought to myself, I know he's full and capable of sleeping 3 hours. I will hold out on feeding him until 2:00. Even though he's slept for 5 hours before, I will have him hold it for 3.5. That's reasonable. So, I let him cry it out for 10 minutes. Before the 10 minutes came along, he fell asleep and shortly, I did too.

12:48. Less than an hour or so later I was woken up again. I stumbled into his room, patted him a bit and walked away. This time I went back to the room and fell asleep before I realized that he had fallen asleep, so I'm not sure how long he cried.

2:58 Next time he woke up, it was a few minutes before 3:00. I nursed him for almost an hour and then we both went to sleep.

7:18 Happy with his 3 hour stretch, I nursed him again and afterwards, he fell asleep for another 45 minutes.

Now, even though I got up 4 times that night, I had never felt better. I felt refreshed and well rested. I decided that I would continue this for a few nights to see how it would go. And it only became easier.

The next night, he woke up at 1:15, I patted him down and he woke up at 3:00 to nurse. He then slept till 7:30.

The night afterwards, he slept until 2:45 before waking up to nurse and then slept until 7:00.

The 4th night, he slept until 4:30, nursed and woke up at 7:30.

The 5th night, he slept until 4:15, nursed and slept until 8:30.

We'll see how this continues. But I have been getting lots of sleep and I feel like Nathan has become a more efficient nurser. He is no longer snacking and will nurse with good effort for about 15-20 minutes before he is satisfied and drops off on his own. Before, he was a weak sucker and would nurse on and off for 45 minutes to an hour. So far, I'm happy with my decision and thought that the process wasn't too harsh or cruel.

4 Months check up

Nathan had is 4 month check up a few days ago. He is still measuring up to be on the small side, but the pediatrician is happy with his growth progress. Head circumference and weight, he measures in the 3 percentile, but as far as height goes, he is in the 50th percentile. He has also reached many of the 4 month milestones and then some. He's even learning how to drive. He can't really drive yet because he can't reach the pedals or see above the wheel. But I think he gets it. 

Nathan received his vaccinations, took them like a champ, but became very fussy the rest of the day and had a low grade fever that night. Other than that, he's a happy baby. The pediatrician was a bit concerned about him not sleeping longer at night and suggested that I start to sleep train him and even start him on solids. I'm all about him sleeping for longer stretches at night, but I'm just afraid that I would be depriving him of much needed nutrition if I force him to sleep a bit longer. However, the pediatrician said that he would grow better if he was sleeping for longer stretches at night. I think I'm going to take baby steps as far as sleep training goes. Right now, Nathan wakes up a little under 3 hours at night to feed. I think I will stretch at least the first feeding to at least 4 hours. He was doing this before Christmas, so he should be able to do this now. We'll see how it goes tonight. 

I have to say, it is nice that he is able to fall asleep on his own. This week he has started to go down at around 7:30. We go through the sleep routine and once I put him down, he is asleep in less than 10 minutes with little to no fussing. 

Tomorrow, when I go to the store, I will pick up a box of rice cereal for him to try. I had him try a bit of avocado mixed with breast milk and he gave me the yuck face. I'll try rice cereal first, then sweet potato and banana. If he doesn't show any interest, I think I will wait a month before trying again. 

The baby party finally took place. It was good to see all the babies (and their parents). It was pretty cool seeing how differently each parent interacted with their baby. We did another pass the baby session, and still Nathan is the runt of the litter. Yesterday, I went walking at a local trail with some of the mommies. It was a beautiful cloudy day in the 70's with a slight breeze. I enjoyed the conversations that we had and before I knew it, we had gone 4.5 miles and it was lunch time. I am looking forward to the weekly walk sessions. 

I got a jumpy chair for Nathan at the baby consignment store. So far he likes to sit/stand in it, but he has not figured out how to jump in it. As far as milestones go, 1) he has become much more interested in his toes; 2) he has better aim when grabbing objects ; 3) once he grabs something, usually it goes straight into his mouth and 4) he can exchange a smaller toy from one hand to the other. He has also become quite vocal and his repertoire of sounds now include sounds from the "g" family, along with gurgling. 

This Sunday, he is going to get baptized. The outfit that he will be wearing was Steve's baptismal outfit. I will definitely post pics next week. 

The snot sucking adventures of week 17

If I thought last week was rough, the end of this week was even worse. Let me start at the beginning of the week. Nathan probably went through a growth spurt last week because the day after I wrote the last post, he started to sleep better. He's still sleeping 2.75 - 3 hour stretches at night, but I've come to accept that this is how it's going to be (Although last night, we had a 3.75 hr. stretch). He's still on the small side for his age, so I'm guessing that this is his way of catching up.

As far as milestones go, he is doing very well. This week I've noticed that Nathan is tracking objects better. There is no longer a long 5 second lag. He's also starting to bat at objects and will grab my hair and shirt. When I have him on the ground for tummy time, he is also grabbing the blanket that I have laid down underneath him. He can also sit upright on his Boppy pillow!

And stand up while holding onto something for support.

So it turns out that we were unable to have the baby party afterall. It turns out that the day before the party, I started to get the sniffles. I probably got it when I went to the doctor to get my carpel tunnel syndrome checked out. But, I was sad to have to send out the message to the other mommies, canceling the party. The next day, I felt pretty horrible. All I wanted to do was sleep. Luckily, Steve was home to help take care of Nathan, so I was able to get a bit of shut eye during the day. Fast forward a couple of days, and Nathan starts to cough occasionally. On Monday, he starts to have a stuffy/runny nose. I got a chance to use the Nose Frida for the first time. So if you use the picture below as a reference, you stick the blue end against one of his nostrils and as you suck on the red end, you will see and hear an oddly satisfying sound as snot gets sucked out of his nasal cavities and into the tip of the tube. It's pretty suckin' awesome!

That first 24 hours, I was pretty much sucking his boogers out every 45 minutes - 1.5 hours (even through the night) because he was start to get super fussy. With me getting over my own cold, and waking up every hour and a half, was not fun at all. Nevertheless, we got through that first night and daylight came once again.

That morning, Nathan felt a bit hot, so I took his temperature with the infrared ear thermometer and it read 99.5 degrees...a little hot for him. So, I called up the nurse and she told me that I should bring him in if his temperature was above 100.4 degrees and he was getting fussy. Oh, and I had to take his temperature rectally. I thought to myself, great. He doesn't like getting his boogers sucked out, good luck with sticking a thermometer up his butt. So, I put some lube on the thermometer, turned him onto his side and did it. To my surprise, he took it very well. The whole time, he was looking at stuff on the wall. Before I knew it, the thermometer started to beep and to my horror, it read 101.4.

I then went into panicky first time crazy mommy mode and thought I need to take him in. He has a fever and if it gets any higher, he's going to have brain damage and I don't want to give him Tylenol because there has been studies that correlate Tylenol usage for children under 7 to asthma. So, I called up the ped's office and made an appointment.

Later, when I was a bit more rational, I realized that maybe he didn't need to go in to see the doctor just quite yet. A fever is a body's way of fighting pathogens and plus his fever wasn't that high. Other than being a bit hot and congested, he was still a pretty happy baby. So, I decided to just wait it out, but call the nurse again, just to be sure. She advised me to give him Tylenol and if his fever didn't go down, to give him a nice long bath.

With a sick baby, we made the journey to the grocery store and picked up some grape Tylenol. The rest of the day went ok. He didn't sleep well, but I attributed that to the stuffiness. As obsessed as I was about sucking the snot out of him, it seems as more always returned as soon as I finished.

Last night was much better. We turned the humidifier on in his room and it seemed to help a lot. He was still able to breathe when I went in at night to nurse him. It seems like things are looking up...except Steve now has the sniffles and a sore throat. :(

Not So Sweet Sleep Regressions of Week 16

Oh baby, what has happened to you? This week has been a weird week. Our little one has not been sleeping as well as he did in the past few weeks. First of all, he's been waking up every 2 and a half hours at night wanting to nurse, and his feedings are taking over an hour. Then, during nap times, he is unable to self-soothe himself back to sleep after completing a 46 min sleep cycle. We have come to depend on white noise for him to fall asleep most of the time. Otherwise he will cry his head off when we put him down. I'm not quite sure what is going on, but I have a a few thoughts:

Sleeping like a baby under the blanket that his
 great grandmother made for him.

a) He's going through his 3 month growth spurt. If he was born on his due date, this week would mark his 3 months out of the womb.
b) He still needs to be swaddled. He has been breaking out of his swaddle, so he has been sleeping without a swaddle. I think I will try swaddling him tonight to see if that will help him sleep longer.
c) He's becoming aware of my absence. Maybe he's starting to understand object permanence.

As far as milestones, nothing has really happened this week. The only thing that I've noticed is that he tolerates car rides a bit better. Most of the car rides this week have been relatively cry-free.

After searching far and wide, I finally got a flu shot. Apparently the vaccine this year is 60% effective as opposed to the 0% for the past 7 years. (No wonder I got the flu each time I got the shot). My arm was a bit sore the day afterwards, but other than that, I'm ok.  Also, my wrist has been bothering me more so this week, so I decided to go see the doctor. I am officially diagnosed with having carpel tunnel syndrome. It's not too serious, but I'm just taking ibuprofen and wearing a splint for awhile. I must lay off of playing one handed angry birds at night while nursing.

I'm looking forward to this weekend when we will have many babies in the Havlir home. We're hosting a pot luck for our centering group. It will be a super cute event. Can't wait.

Until then, let's hope for a better week 17.