J is 5 months old now and wow things are great. She's in a routine, she's happy, she's sleeping through the night. She's a thumb sucker so that really helps as she can always find her thumb to sooth her when needed!!
N is warming up to J to. I have this vision of them being best friends when their older, but right now my 3 year old needs a playmate and sometimes she doesn't understand that she needs to be gentle! But she loves climbing into her crib in the morning and laying down next to her or bringing her princess dolls in with her and playing with them for J. And J ADORES her. Oh my gosh I can't even feed her with N is in the room because J just wants to watch her big sister! She loves watching her play, and gives HUGE smiles to her sister!
It is still a bit complicated playing with both kids though. N is older and wants me to play with her all the time. On the weekends she has trouble occupying herself when I have to feed J or change her. She's getting better at playing on her own though. When we all play together sometimes she gets mad when J touches one of her toys or grabs for something. I think it will be even more frustrating for N when J is crawling around and into everything of hers! But we'll cross that bridge when we get there!
Changing the world one diaper at a time.
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Thursday, January 29, 2015
Second Time Around: Woes
OK so it's been almost 4 months since baby J was born and oh my gosh, she's given me a run for my money. I really thought that I knew what I was doing this time around, and well J just is a different kid. As I mentioned in a previous post, she is super fussy, she doesn't like the car seat, car rides, stroller rides, but she is getting better at being put down. She likes the bouncy seat now and she likes the play mat, and we even put up the jumpy seat (that hangs from a door frame) and she likes that. So she's getting better at liking stuff! Yippee! But here's what we went through to get where we are today.
Turns out J is allergic (well sensitive, not allergic apparently) to milk. Specifically the milk protein as it is broken down by Mom. So I am now on a dairy free diet. I've been doing this for about a month now and wow has that changed her. She would scream bloody murder, and well it was because her tummy hurt from the milk. I only figured it out because a.) i did a little research on line about it (very little) and b.) I just couldn't take the fussing anymore and one day brought her in to the doctor to see if something was wrong. They looked at and tested her poopy diaper. And she had bright green poop - sign of an allergy - and it had microscopic blood in it. So her intestines weren't liking the milk. So the Doc told me to go off dairy for two weeks. I'm thinking no big deal, no ice cream, pizza, cereal...but yikes milk and milk by product are in SO much stuff!! I started freaking out about what I could and couldn't eat! I took one day and spend quite some time at the grocery store reading labels. I did lots of reading of recipes on Pinterest (my favorite place to look for stuff) and found some great snacky food easy to make stuff. Dinners are pretty much the same as we would normally eat, I just might skip the cheese topping on my chili. It actually makes going out to dinner really hard. So we don't do that. The one time we did go out, for my birthday, I had a sandwich wrap with just plain chicken and lettuce and tomato, but I think their must have been dairy in the wrap itself because J was not happy the next day. So I've stopped going out to eat! I get too anxious and its not worth it for me to feel all worked up and not enjoy dinner out and then not enjoy the next day if J is sick.
One of the other things that basically had me on the verge of a nervous breakdown last week was sleep, or lack there of. J had been sleeping in our room in a bassinet next to our bed. And she'd be up every 2 hours at night to eat. And well you can only live on little pieces of sleep like that for so long, and last week I just lost it! I needed sleep! While I have great support around me, my husband, in-laws and parents, I like to try to do it all by myself. I'm stupid like that. But my husband was at work when I lost it and emailed his mom to come over and watch J so I could sleep. While she was over J was sleeping in her car seat and we were chatting (before I took the nap) and we were watching J move her head side to side, stretch her arms, and then fall back into a deep snooze. And it dawned on me, I would wake up because I heard her move, and then I thought she was up and hungry so I would feed her. BUT it turns out I was waking the poor kid up! So we put her in her own bed and wow the kid sleeps 4 hours at a time. And more and more each night! And I've stopped bouncing and rocking here. I put her in the crib and walk out and she goes to sleep. She did cry a lot the first time, but now she cries for a minute or two and then puts herself to sleep. So many huge accomplishments this past week. Sleeping in her own bed/room, putting herself to sleep. Ugh so great.
And the last thing that I've been working on this past week is putting J into a schedule and I'm using the book Baby Wise by Garry Ezzo and Robert Bucknam. Oh my gosh this is a life savor. It talks about how babies need routine and once they get into it they are better at sleeping and eating! The whole theory centers around this eat, play, sleep routine. I'm doing the eating every 3 hours exactly the same time each day. Then we play for a little, J rubs her eyes and I put her down for a nap. The morning nap is always screwed up because I have to drive my 3 year old to school, so J naps in the car, which is not as great as napping in her bed, but she gets a nap. The mid morning nap is always 2 hours. she sleeps from around noon to 2. The mid afternoon nap seems to always be short, 40 minutes, and the late evening nap is also short, but then she goes down to sleep at 8pm each night. Since we haven't even done this for a whole week yet the night is a bit sporadic as to when she's waking up to eat. Last night was great because she only woke up at 2am! So she's getting better at sleeping and I'm getting better at sleeping.
Ugh, the last two months have been horrible, but we're working on making them better. I can't tell if J is getting better due to the no dairy diet, schedule & sleeping in her own room, or if she's just growing and rolling with it more?! She smiles and laughs all the time now and is starting to have her own little personality peek through!
Turns out J is allergic (well sensitive, not allergic apparently) to milk. Specifically the milk protein as it is broken down by Mom. So I am now on a dairy free diet. I've been doing this for about a month now and wow has that changed her. She would scream bloody murder, and well it was because her tummy hurt from the milk. I only figured it out because a.) i did a little research on line about it (very little) and b.) I just couldn't take the fussing anymore and one day brought her in to the doctor to see if something was wrong. They looked at and tested her poopy diaper. And she had bright green poop - sign of an allergy - and it had microscopic blood in it. So her intestines weren't liking the milk. So the Doc told me to go off dairy for two weeks. I'm thinking no big deal, no ice cream, pizza, cereal...but yikes milk and milk by product are in SO much stuff!! I started freaking out about what I could and couldn't eat! I took one day and spend quite some time at the grocery store reading labels. I did lots of reading of recipes on Pinterest (my favorite place to look for stuff) and found some great snacky food easy to make stuff. Dinners are pretty much the same as we would normally eat, I just might skip the cheese topping on my chili. It actually makes going out to dinner really hard. So we don't do that. The one time we did go out, for my birthday, I had a sandwich wrap with just plain chicken and lettuce and tomato, but I think their must have been dairy in the wrap itself because J was not happy the next day. So I've stopped going out to eat! I get too anxious and its not worth it for me to feel all worked up and not enjoy dinner out and then not enjoy the next day if J is sick.
One of the other things that basically had me on the verge of a nervous breakdown last week was sleep, or lack there of. J had been sleeping in our room in a bassinet next to our bed. And she'd be up every 2 hours at night to eat. And well you can only live on little pieces of sleep like that for so long, and last week I just lost it! I needed sleep! While I have great support around me, my husband, in-laws and parents, I like to try to do it all by myself. I'm stupid like that. But my husband was at work when I lost it and emailed his mom to come over and watch J so I could sleep. While she was over J was sleeping in her car seat and we were chatting (before I took the nap) and we were watching J move her head side to side, stretch her arms, and then fall back into a deep snooze. And it dawned on me, I would wake up because I heard her move, and then I thought she was up and hungry so I would feed her. BUT it turns out I was waking the poor kid up! So we put her in her own bed and wow the kid sleeps 4 hours at a time. And more and more each night! And I've stopped bouncing and rocking here. I put her in the crib and walk out and she goes to sleep. She did cry a lot the first time, but now she cries for a minute or two and then puts herself to sleep. So many huge accomplishments this past week. Sleeping in her own bed/room, putting herself to sleep. Ugh so great.
And the last thing that I've been working on this past week is putting J into a schedule and I'm using the book Baby Wise by Garry Ezzo and Robert Bucknam. Oh my gosh this is a life savor. It talks about how babies need routine and once they get into it they are better at sleeping and eating! The whole theory centers around this eat, play, sleep routine. I'm doing the eating every 3 hours exactly the same time each day. Then we play for a little, J rubs her eyes and I put her down for a nap. The morning nap is always screwed up because I have to drive my 3 year old to school, so J naps in the car, which is not as great as napping in her bed, but she gets a nap. The mid morning nap is always 2 hours. she sleeps from around noon to 2. The mid afternoon nap seems to always be short, 40 minutes, and the late evening nap is also short, but then she goes down to sleep at 8pm each night. Since we haven't even done this for a whole week yet the night is a bit sporadic as to when she's waking up to eat. Last night was great because she only woke up at 2am! So she's getting better at sleeping and I'm getting better at sleeping.
Ugh, the last two months have been horrible, but we're working on making them better. I can't tell if J is getting better due to the no dairy diet, schedule & sleeping in her own room, or if she's just growing and rolling with it more?! She smiles and laughs all the time now and is starting to have her own little personality peek through!
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