Single Parenting: Day 1

Bye bye, Daddy!

E left late last night (early this morning) for China. He's going with a group from church to help out at a new orphanage for disabled children, and will be there for 3 weeks. I will be trying to update this blog more often so that he can see what G's up to while he's gone. It is his first time away from her since she was born, and the longest he'll be away from me since we were married.

This morning, when G woke up, she was hysterical. And not in a good funny way. Normally, G wakes up around 7-8, which is also when E wakes up, so he retrieves her from her crib and brings her to our bed for me to nurse her, then takes her back to her crib to go back to sleep for a few more hours. This morning, I went to get her and brought her back to the bed. And she became very upset and didn't want to nurse, but was just hysterical crying and writhing around. After a few minutes of not being able to console her, I set her down on the floor by her exersaucer and went to the bathroom. By the time I came back, she had calmed down, and I brought her back to bed and was able to nurse her. She then slept until 11:30.

Today we had a picnic lunch (G's breakfast) in the park with two other friends. Then we went to Costco (yes, E went there yesterday for me, but I wanted to get more stuff and was in the wrong direction to go to Whole Foods), where I expected G to nap while I shopped. She apparently had other plans and didn't sleep until we got home and I put her in her crib, but at least she had a nice long nap. My women's group met at my house tonight so that I could put her to bed at a normal time, which worked out well, since they ended up staying rather late (it was a good time of catching up and sharing). 

I'm considering adjusting her schedule and not letting her go back to sleep in the morning so that she can have meals at more normal times. But that also means that I would have to get up earlier too.

Crib updates

I forgot to mention that G also got her crib lowered last week. Here she is helping Daddy.

Here she is not sleeping in her crib. She looks so proud and happy. Mommy and Daddy were less thrilled, but thought it was funny enough to take the picture.Last night when we put her down for bed, we had to re-put her down several times as we kept finding her standing up. Finally we gave up, and so did she.

In other news, we took G to the doctor yesterday, I finally called to get advice about her sleeping less, recent weight loss, and the little rash on her face. The doctor says her sleeping less is normal as she's more active, and didn't notice any weight loss. At the doctor's office, G weighed in at 15 pounds, 8 ounces, so that was exciting! Less exciting was that she is just under the 8th percentile. The alarming news, however, was that the doctor thinks that G's rash is ringworm, a fungal rash that is infectious. She wanted to prescribe an anti-fungal cream which will take 2 months of twice daily application. I said I'd prefer to wait it out. After going home and of course, researching ringworm, I'm fairly convinced that she does NOT have it. I think it's just food/drooling-related eczema. We have her 9-month appointment coming up in a few weeks anyways, so we will see G's regular pediatrician (who wasn't in when we went in, saw a different ped) and see. As of this morning, the rash is barely noticeable and really doesn't look like the pics of ringworm that I've seen online.

All good things must come to an end...

S's parents have been here all week, which could explain why there haven't been any updates since last week. Also, G's schedule has been changing, well, a lot of things have been changing. For a few weeks now, she's cut down her night time sleeping to 11-12 hours, which is fine with us, but I just have to be more disciplined about waking up earlier to do all the things I want to do before she wakes up. Lately, she has also become more fussy when away from mommy, this week, she began waking up at 6am, and yesterday afternoon started a runny nose that by the middle of the night, we realized was probably a cold. Today I found out that one of the babies in the church nursery (this was only her second time there, the first time was the week before where she was in for about 10-15 minutes only because of nursing and nap time) was sick. Live and learn, I guess - now we will ask if any of the babies are sick before leaving her there. So aside from her current cold, we don't know if she is 1) teething, 2) having a growth spurt, 3) developing separation anxiety, 4) adjusting to Wai Po and Wai Gong (grandparents) living with her this week.

Here are two of the pics we submitted to the Gap photo contest... the other two we picked were the one with the ball and the one from Gap that they took.
Here she is hard at work. We love this toy because it helps keep her occupied when in her high chair and the suctions on it are GREAT! She can grab the wires and pull herself, high chair included, towards the table. So far she only spins the beads, she hasn't gotten the concept of sliding the wooden beads along the wire yet, but we're confident she'll figure it out soon. Seems a lot of our pictures these days are of her eating. Maybe because they are so funny. I think this was zucchini.

E took this picture one early morning, it's my new desktop picture.

Houdini baby

G took a 4 hour nap this afternoon. When I unzipped her sleep sack (bag that zips up for sleeping, has holes for head and arms), she was only in a onesie. As I looked at her, I thought, didn't I put pants on her before she went to bed? Sure enough, at the bottom of the sleep sack was her pants. Weird. I have no idea how she did that!

There are now 4 new babies at church that are younger than G (all boys). Plus another friend outside of church has a 2 month old (a boy), and we have 4 more friends expecting this year (all boys), and one due in January (finally another girl!). E held one of the new babies (1 month old) last Sunday at church. At first he was hesitant to hold him because he looked so small and fragile. When we got home, E wanted to look at G's hospital and newborn pics to see how small she looked because he said it seemed like so long ago.

What's G working on these days? She can sit, and she can creep, but she can't go from sitting to creeping, even with the most enticing thing in front of her (S's plastic foot massager, gross!). We'll have to try again tomorrow, maybe with S's water bottle. She's also working on standing herself up and learning to "fill and spill" her toys (beanbag toys in giant empty Costco animal cracker bin).

What has G mastered? Creeping, she's really fast now. Pulling her carseat sunshade, she uses both hands and both feet to get it down super fast, as well as pulling it all out of shape!

The Blessing of Good Sleep!

The other day, G woke up after we put her down for the night. She was crying and eventually she spit up, so I had to change her and the crib sheets (luckily it only got to the first two layers, she's got 6+ layers on her bed for just this type of situation), and also feed her again. Oh well. It was probably our fault because we changed her sleeping routine slightly.

Two nights ago, G woke up again about 30 minutes after we put her down. After a few minutes, I went into her room. At first, I just put my hand on her chest to comfort her, no good. Then, I sat her up, which stopped her crying, but when she laid back down started up again. Eventually, I picked her up, but stayed by her crib, in her room, in the dark. We talked about how it was night-time and how she was supposed to be sleeping in her crib by herself. After a few minutes, I put her back down in her crib, and she didn't cry. Yay! Then we said goodnight to her and walked out of the room, and she didn't cry. Yay! A few minutes later she was asleep, double yay! We're very proud of G's sleeping habits. She's a good sleeper, even if she's too distracted to sleep when we are out (I tried to put her in a friend's crib when we were out on a play date, she just kept looking around and not sleeping, oh well).

Standing

Yesterday G slept 14.5 hours overnight. Crazy, I know! How does she do it? Well, apparently she does it be eating her hair in the middle of the night. I've noticed hair in her diaper a few times and wondered about it but just thought that her loose hair somehow wiggled its way down into her diaper since it's often on her clothes. Then, after talking to another friend whose baby did the same thing, I figured out that she's eating it. That explains why I only see it in her poop. I know for a fact that G loves pulling on her hair. If I didn't hold her hand down while nursing, she would be pulling on it (the second I let go of her hand it springs up towards her head and grabs a little fistful and I have to pry her fingers open and say, "Don't pull your hair!"). It doesn't seem to hurt her. She also will pull my hair and E's hair if she's given the chance to. So, anyways, it doesn't seem to hurt her, so if she wants to eat her hair in the middle of the night, I can't really stop it. Funny baby!

I caught her sucking her thumb the other day when I peeked in on her sleeping, so cute!

So what's with the grabbing? G's hand dexterity has grown to open and close her fists in a pumping motion, grabbing and holding on to anything she can get her little hands on (and her hair seems like such an easy one because it's always available, it doesn't roll away after she lets go, has access even in her crib, etc.), and waving her fingers in a flicking motion (for spinning a toy on her jumper).

G's new favorite thing to do is standing. She has loved jumping and standing with us holding her. But just recently we figured out that she can actually support her own weight now. All we have to do now is hold her hands for balance. She loves it!

Coming soon... toe grabbing pics!

Anatomy of Sleep

Like I said in a previous post, G sleeps 11-12+ hours at night now. What exactly does that mean? Just like adults, babies (and kids) have sleep cycles. For babies, their sleep cycles are 30 minutes long and get longer as they get older. Anyways, I thought I'd detail out how G sleeps (and how she spins).

Last night we put her to bed at 11:20pm (yes it's late, we are still working on shifting it earlier, I started feeding her at 10). She complained a bit, had one loud cry, then fell asleep by 11:30pm. All's good. Sometimes she is so sleepy she doesn't complain at all when we put her to bed and goes right back to sleep, I think the longest it took her to go to sleep was maybe 45 minutes, but it was mostly talking and complaining, no crying. If we put her down too early like we tried to the other day, she just complains and cries, and we (the royal we, which is actually just me) eventually (I think it was over an hour) had to just feed her again.

Around 12:30, we heard her cry. It was actually crying, mixed with loud complaining. We listened to her from the family room and waited (listening mostly to see if her crying would get louder or softer). E timed it - 8 minutes later, she was back asleep.

This morning around maybe 6 or 7, I heard G cry again. I have no idea how long it lasted, it wasn't loud enough or long enough for E to wake up. I laid in bed listening to her, to see if I needed to get up. Eventually she fell back asleep, and so did I.

When E left for work this morning around 9:30 (late for him), he checked in on her, she was partially awake, rubbing her hair. She cried for a few minutes, then I just heard her talking to herself (and maybe to the animal friends she has on her crib bumper), heard her sneeze a few times, she got the hiccups, and eventually went back to sleep again.

She doesn't always cry so many times during the night, in fact, last night was more on the unusual side. My guess would be that she might half-wake up 1-2 times. But E & I continue to agree that we are very lucky when it comes to G's sleep.

Here are some pictures of how she spins herself around:

G's starting position (actually, before I got the camera, her feet were pointing towards the giraffe)

Leg lift & Ab crunch #1

Back arch #1, check position

Leg lift & Ab crunch #2

Back arch #2, look around

Insert fingers and go back to sleep

Photo Update

This is how we put G down in her crib:

This is how we sometimes find her:

So the question is how many times each night is she spinning around in her crib? Does she do it in her sleep or when she semi-wakes up? We'll need a night video or video monitor if we want to find the answer. Last night I went to check on her about 20-30 minutes after I had put her down for the night and she had already done her 180. She unfortunately woke up about 3 hrs into the night, but was still able to get her 10.5 hours in after that.

Here is G in her new bathtub. Bathtime is Daddy-time. Now we need a collection of bath toys for her. Notice her ball, which used to be tied to her stroller has now been reallocated for bathtime use. A few of her teething toys that we used to link things off her play mat have also been reallocated. I'm excited, because I've been eyeing this since before she was born, and now we have an excuse to get it. I thought it was so cute (and functional as well, easy clean up and has a drain hole too! I don't care about the mounting issues from reviews because we have to eventually remodel this bathroom to put in a proper showerhead instead of the handheld we installed, or at the very least, re-tile it because it originally didn't have a showerhead, so the tile doesn't go up very far).

I realized at some point that all her toys were unisex. That's not a bad thing, I'm actually a big fan of unisex toys (why push the whole gender stereotype stuff on them? I want her to do and be whatever she can dream, without being hindered by gender. Growing up a tomboy, I was never into the girly/doll thing, my toys of choice growing up were legos, back when you actually needed imagination to build stuff, not just following instructions to build what's on the box, but that's another rant). Anyways, so I liked this one because it's not all girly. Notice the natural wood rings at the arms, and I picked the blue one, it also came in a pinky-purple. Supposedly it smells like lavender too, but who knows. When she gets older, I will probably get her these dolls, they're un-stereotypical & multi-ethnic, if she wants dolls to play with.

When E's parents were in town last weekend, we took a little trip to Hakone Gardens. G handles her paparazzi very well. At one point E was holding her and Grandma, Grandpa, and Mom (me) were all taking photos of her.

Several people have commented over the last few weeks about her eyelashes being curly. No, I'm not curling them, they are naturally growing like that. And no, I'm curling her hair either, it's also natural, comes from S's maternal grandfather, who has wavy hair, as do all of S's maternal uncles. S's hair didn't become wavy until post-college.

The price we pay

G slept 9.5 hours last night!

When E picked her up, he noticed her clothes were a little wet and commented that maybe she spit up. Later on, he noticed that the bed was also wet where her head was. After futher investigation, we had to pull off all 5 layers of her bed (two crib sheets and 3 burp cloths) to wash this morning, which means that she's now back to sleeping in her bassinet. I don't know what we will do in this situation once she outgrows the bassinet, let her sleep on our bed? I don't really like that thought because I don't want her spitting up on our bed either, but maybe that's the only alternative. Unless I open up her portable tent and let her sleep there.

Anyways, to finish the story of G's busy morning, while I was still nursing her, she pooped. As I was changing her diaper, she apparently hadn't finished pooping and more started coming out. We thought she was done and pulled away the old diaper, but the poop kept flowing. I think it was one of the first times we had actually seen it coming out (luckily it wasn't shooting out, and didn't get anywhere outside the diapers). One feeding, 3 diapers, I don't know how many wipes.

She spit up again after I finished nursing her, but just a normal amount. And only a little on me (most of it I caught in her burp cloth, unlike last night where she spit up right down my shirt).

I told E that G missed us because she slept so long, so she wanted to give us a lot to do this morning.

Now I'm waiting for my bass to arrive...

Sleeping on the Beach

Capitola was great. Relaxing, nice weather, great retreat. We kind of spoiled G by letting her sleep in our bed for many of her naps. Can you even find her in the huge king-sized bed?

I wanted to take G to the beach to see, and maybe touch, the ocean. Many people live their whole lives never seeing the ocean, so it's a reminder to me of how blessed we are to live where we do. I had bought her a cute bathing suit also, giraffe print, with board shorts. However, the beach was freezing Sunday morning (it was warm and nice Saturday afternoon when I went by myself). So G saw the ocean, briefly...

...before she fell asleep. I guess she was bundled warm enough.

Yes, G was wearing her A's outfit for Daddy. She also surprised him with a photo of her in her A's gear, asking Daddy to take her to a game (E's request for a Father's Day present). G (with Mommy's help) also surprised Daddy with a framed scrapbook collage of photos of them together doing different things. It was a good Father's Day.

So, what's the latest with G this week? She's not rolling over as much, but talking up a storm. She's discovered her vocal chords can make sounds of all different pitches. Soon she will be out-talking E. We're finally (mostly) ready for G to resume transitioning to her crib. She had slept in it successfully a few times, but because of a few mishaps (spit ups, messed up bumpers), we've had to put a hold on transitioning her. Our new strategy includes putting on several layers of crib sheets alternating with spit up cloths. This way, if (when) she spits up, we can just pull off a layer (or two) and be good to go. We are also doing away with keeping her crib pristine. If there's spit up on the crib skirt or bumper, so be it. We can try to spot treat it, and maybe once in a while clean it, but we no longer feel the need to have every bit of spit up washed immediately.

Today, I had to drive to SF with G. My cell phone died over the weekend, and since I bought it while we were still living up there, I had to go back to the same store. Luckily, they are really nice to deal with. I have a loaner phone until mine gets fixed. It was an hour drive each way, roughly totalling $18 in gas. It was fun, though, to take G around the "old neighborhood", showing her where we used to live, and walking around the familiar streets with her.

15 & 9

G is now 15 weeks old, it's so hard to believe how quickly she is growing. I saw a mom with her baby at BRU over the weekend, and the baby was only 8 days old. I thought fondly back to when G was that small. Yesterday at the mall, I saw another newborn, the mom had to stop in the middle of the aisle to attend to her crying baby, and I smiled at her.

So, what is G up to these days? Well, the big news around town is that G slept NINE HOURS last night! She must have known that her parents needed that because they stayed up late talking. It was a good talk, though both E and S were tired. We need to do more of that, talking, that is, it's good for our relationship. This is how we found her this morning.

This was not the first time she has squirmed into a funny position in her sleep. Here are some other ways that we have found her:


Also in G's headline news, she's outgrowing her newborn and 0-3 month clothes. We are cycling through them, taking last pictures, as S is figuring out how and where to pack them away. We've started putting her in some of her 3-6 month clothes, lots of onsies and summer dresses.

G traveled again this week. Another day trip, but this time to Coloma, a small rafting town near Folsom. It was a grueling drive there and back. We went for E's Grand Canyon rafting trip reunion, one of the guides was giving a talk, with dinner planned afterwards. S and G missed most of the talk because they were in the car trying to eat, but mostly being fussy because G wanted see what was going on around her new surroundings (probably also fussy from the poop she was trying to get out all day, and finally managed to just AFTER we finished changing her diaper).

What are G's favorite activities for this week? She loves to arch her back, probably practice for rolling over. She is getting better at grabbing her ball and is also starting to bat at her hanging toys. Did I mention last week that she started sucking her upper lip? So cute! Oh, and she's also practicing her ab crunches, bringing her legs and knees up and in, then stretching them out and hitting the floor (or bed). When she does this in her bassinet, we can see her feet come up over the sides, which is really funny. We think this is how she gets into the funny positions we've found her in. Also, her naps are becoming increasingly shorter, pretty much just an hour these days, unless she's out, then she might get 2+ hours.

We just got back from a play date in the park. I didn't get a chance to take a picture of G in her play tent before she had a huge spit up all over everything. It was in her hair, her ear, all over her play mat, and soaked through both layers. Guess what we're doing tonight? Laundry and a bath! But at least she fell asleep afterwards and is still sleeping now.

The good & the bad

I had to take G to worship practice with me last night. It's my off month, but there's a new drummer that I was curious to jam with. However, I didn't realize when I offered to play that they changed practice to Wednesday night, which is when E has one of his Bible study groups. Ususally, E meets me at church, where I nurse G during our sharing/prayer time and then he takes her home and by the time I get home from practice it's just about time for me to feed her again. It's a good routine. So, this week, stuck with no one to watch her, I had to keep her with me at church. So I packed her portable tent and play mat, a few toys, and hoped for the best. Half way to church, I realized that I left the tent on the couch. Oops. On to plan B, which was to just leave her in her car seat and hope for the best (worst case scenario, one of the singers could maybe hold her).

G did awesome! I was so surprised, especially because she wasn't in the mood to finish eating at church (I fed her half a meal at home). She didn't cry at all and stayed in her car seat the whole time. There were some other kids that were there that occasionally made faces at her, but for the most part, she just looked around and seemed rather content. She even fell asleep while we practiced one of the slower songs. And even when she woke back up when we started rockin' out, she was ok. What a relief and answer to prayer!

Today, we decided to stay home. We've been out so much, trying to run errands. I wanted to go to the mall to return some stuff, but decided at the last minute to just stay home. The last few nights, by the time G is on her last feeding of the day, I can barely keep my eyes open. I managed to make pasta salad (I'm practicing making bigger batches of food so that I don't have to cook quite so much, it's good to have leftovers and to have a husband who will eat left overs), though it took two of her naps with a feeding in between to finish making it. Then, for dinner, we had steak with truffle butter (I looked everywhere for my grill pan, turns out it's probably at E's office), melon and prosciutto, pasta salad (I forgot to cook the potatoes), and caprese salad (tomato, basil, mozzarella, buffalo, of course, with balsamic vinegar & olive oil). Most of the meal was organic too. Oh, and the best part of the day was that I got to take a two hour nap w/ G (she only sleeps for 45-60 minutes during the day now, unless in her car seat, sling, or being held.

The down side of her long nap was that she didn't nap for the next two feedings, making for a very cranky baby. So we put her down a little earlier than normal.

G hasn't slept in her crib again because the bumper got ripped so we have to return it.

Speaking of returns, 7th Gen is awesome. I had a problem with some diapers we bought, and I ended up having to call the company. After a few tries, I finally got a hold of someone who was so nice and ended up offering me diaper vouchers or a refund. Initially, I was going to take the vouchers, since we really like 7th Gen and G is no where near the point of not wearing them anymore, but then I thought, hey, it would be nice to have the cash. And I told the guy how much we love using 7th Gen products, and he offered to give us some coupons too. Yeah, baby!

10 weeks!

Wow, G is 10 weeks old today. And for her 10th weekiversary we are graduating her to a bassinet, thanks to some great friends who loaned us theirs after their two kids outgrew it (actually, they didn't use it much on #2 b/c he was so strong they were afraid he would tip the whole thing over!). G has taken 3 naps in it so far (one yesterday, and two today). Hopefully, we will start her on it at night either tonite or tomorrow night.

In other sleep news, we are trying to give G a better nighttime routine to help her with her sleep. She's always been a good sleeper, but we just want to reinforce her natural tendencies. We've read that giving babies a bath can help them sleep better at night because it raises, then lowers, their body temperature (our bodies naturally lower in temperature which signals some chemical in our bodies to release which in turn signals sleep). So we decided to try it Saturday night. Unfortunately, G decided to go ahead and sleep 6 hrs before we could try it, from 6pm to midnight. S was sleeping during the same time which is why G never got woken up. Anyways, we still tried it out, gave her a bath anyways, and she did sleep maybe 4 more hours for the next cycle.

To prevent the above from happening again, we are going to try to have G have her last feeding for the night between 9-10pm for her to start her long sleep cycle (so, like Sunday night, we had to wake her up around 9:30), which would mean she would wake up around 4-5am for a quick snack and be back asleep for another few hours.

The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades!

(Yes, they look like boy sunglasses, but I bought a blue flower headscarf thingy (apparently really popular for baby girls, saw them everywhere at the mall) for her too. The pink sunglasses were just way too pink and flowery. Couldn't find a hat that I liked and was cheap enough for me to buy, though.)

Sleep & other things

I wanted to post something on my reflections of being a new mom, but since G didn't really sleep all day yesterday (night was fine), and seems to be on a similar trend for today, I thought I'd save that for another day when I have more energy.

G has always been a good sleeper, but she's also always been very alert and curious. These two traits seem to be in contradiction to one another, but this is how it works: When she is awake, she is constantly looking around, and her eyes are so big. When she gets sleepy, her eyes are the last thing to "go to sleep". Her body relaxes, same with her head, and her arms and legs. Even her face will be relaxed, but her eyes will fight closing to the very end. Sometimes they will even stay open a little, and you can see her eyes rolling back. Eventually they will close and she will look so peaceful.

However, yesterday, she discovered power naps, or cat naps. Despite being tired, she will fall asleep, but if we try to put her down, she will wake up. The interval can be anywhere from 5 to 40 minutes. Then she will cry, one of us will pick her up (ok, during the day it was all S, but the minute E came home, he was on duty) and she will fall back asleep, put her down, and repeat the whole thing. I hope this phase doesn't last too long. We are guessing (hoping) this is just a little growth spurt.) But on the bright side, since she slept so badly all day, she slept from 9pm to 4am straight! Woo hoo for G continuing the 7 hr nightshifts!

Here's an interesting article I found on a baby recently born in India.

Mixed Blessings

So having your baby go for longer stretches between feedings is a great thing, especially when it happens at night.

Having hard breasts and plugged ducts because you baby is nursing less often is a horrible thing, especially when it happens at night.

This time around, I'm not even sure they are plugged because it doesn't have the same INTENSE PAIN that it had before, it's just lumpy. Maybe it's in the early stages? Who knows. I've put in a call to our lactation consultant as well as to the La Leche League. Hopefully someone will call back.

Speaking of calling back soon, we finally had to call the pediatrician/on-call advice nurse. I feel good that we lasted 6+ weeks without having to call. But this week has been stressful... worring first about G having a cold or fever and trying to use the nose sucker and ear thermometer (yes, I know that in infants the ear one is less accurate, but I was NOT going to put the butt one in without E around to help), then noticing yellowish gums around where her molars would be, and in the process of examining the yellow gums, finding a white bump along the front of her gums... sigh. 

For reference, it was the yellow gums that worried us enough to call the doctor.

Oh, and I did mention the longer periods between feedings, right? That's interspersed with periods where she does not sleep at all between feedings even though she's tired. How do I know she's tired? I don't have that great alert calm baby period, instead I have the yawning, almost dozing, then crying, turning to wimpering, then sleep, then waking up and crying, repeatedly until her next feeding. This occurs both when we try to put her down (we can get 20-30 minutes of peace) and when we continuously hold her, either walking around with her or just sitting with her.

We're chalking it up to her 6 week growth spurt.

6 weeks

When we scheduled my post-partum appointment for 6 weeks after G was born, it seemed so far off. But here it is. The appointment went well, I got the all clear that everything is ok (won't go into details) and most importantly, I've lost all of my pregnancy weight from G plus some. However, I always add 10 lbs to my pregnancy weight because of my first pregnancy, the 5 lbs I gained from it, and the 5 lbs from after our angel went to heaven. So all told, I still feel like I have 5 more pounds to lose. We'll see if it actually happens, since I hate dieting (I like to eat too much). If I want to get back into my wedding weight, I'll probably have to lose a bit more.

On another note, we had a parenting high last nite, where G went SEVEN hours between feedings! We were kind of shocked when we woke up at 4:30am both of us wondering if we had missed a feeding (her last one being at 9:30pm). The downside of it was that she had only nursed on one side before, so I was majorly full and G unfortunately could not completely drain that side (and I was feeling some hard spots and became deathly afraid of getting those AWEFUL plugged ducts again). So we spent the next hour and a half sterilizing all the breastpump parts E had literally just purchased before coming home that night and trying to read the online directions on how to put all the pieces together to make it work. I managed to pump out another 7 ounces total! After we finally went to bed at 6:30, I commented to E, if G had just nursed for 5 more minutes, we could have gone to bed an hour and a half earlier. It's amazing to me how even a hospital-grade pump is still nothing at all like the real thing. However, unlike a pump, you can't control when the baby wants to nurse and for how long.

G's second major accomplishment for this week is that she is getting much better at burping after her meals. For the first 5 weeks, it was as if she just refused to burp. You could pat and rub her for hours and she still wouldn't burp, though often you could easily get a spit up. The rare burp that she graced us with almost always was accompanied by the hiccups, which of course helped wake her up more and thus making it take longer to put her down to sleep. Somehow, in this past week, she has been so much better at burping. I think it's a combination of her getting older and "learning" how, and also her parents learning the tricks for how to best burp her. For G, it seems that most of the time you just have to sit her upright holding her torso straight (as opposed to hunched over because she likes to curl up in a ball lying upright against us), I usually do this with her facing me, and within a minute or so, she will give you a great burp. Sometimes accompanied with spit up, but still, a burp nonetheless, and without the patting, though usually I will pat her for a little bit before sitting her up in front of me. Very handy trick...