Baby update- 6 months

Just wanted to update friends and family on Baby's vitals, since she had her 6 month appointment today! She is 28 inches tall (98th percentile for height), 19 lbs 2 oz (95th percentile for weight), and her head circumference was 45 cm (average for her ht/wt). I'm told she's doing great, very healthy, and developing as she should!

She also had to get three shots today (DTaP, Hep B, and Polio in one; PCV13, and the flu), plus Rotavirus orally, and that was no fun. It gets less fun as she becomes more aware too, since she is upset for longer :-( But seeing her cry for a few minutes is far better than seeing her cry for days or weeks from being really sick, and of course better than any of the horrible outcomes associated with those diseases! The nurse also used longer needles this time so the vaccines would go into her muscle rather than under the skin. I think it was probably more painful initially, but the reason is that the first couple rounds of vaccines gave her some painful, localized swelling, which is more likely when the vaccine lies just under the skin.

Obligatory vaccination opinion post to come...

Baby Led Weaning

As I mentioned in the Thanksgiving post, we are doing a method of solids introduction known as Baby Led Weaning (BLW). How you wean your baby is another one of those contentious topics that starts mommy wars, so let me preface this by saying it is not for everyone. I totally get the paralyzing fear of Baby choking and if you are stressed every time your baby eats, she will be, too. Although it's easier in the sense that you don't have to puree your food or spend lots of money on jarred baby food, it's definitely messier at times. My partner and I are both prepared to act on an emergency, but we try not to be paranoid about it. It makes sense for us and Baby enjoys it, so we're doing it.

The premise: The idea of mushed up baby foods and rice cereal are actually a fairly new concept. Babies digestion and eating techniques have not changed remarkably in the last century, so the "rule" that they can only eat soft foods at first or that they need to start with rice cereal is a myth. Rice cereal became popular during the era that formula and processed baby food came into focus, and was introduced as early as 3 months to help "fatten baby up." Because babies that young cannot eat solids (they are prevented by a tongue-reflex that pushes food out of their mouths... now thought to be a protective mechanism because they shouldn't be eating solids at that point), moms were told to mix rice cereal with milk and then progress to other thicker, but still pureed, foods.

Now the American Academy of Pediatrics and World Health Organization both recommend exclusive breastfeeding (or formula feeding if breastfeeding is not possible) until 6 months. At 6 months, the tongue-reflex starts to decrease and babies this age can start handling finger foods. Thus, the mushy baby foods and rice cereals are really unnecessary. Babies should be getting most of their nutrition from breastmilk or formula up until about 12 months anyway, so how MUCH they eat is not as important as how many different tastes and textures they are allowed to experiment with. Yes, this means lots of hand smushing, face smearing, throwing, and funny faces. It's hilarious and I love it. We never used to laugh as much at meal times as we do now!

And now, I will shut up and show you funny videos and photos of my little goober eating her first solids:

If you give a baby an orange slice... she will make a funny face but continue eating it

Lurking... 

... always lurking!

Happy girl!

I now know that avocado, peanut butter, and cheese should be a meal reserved for right before bath time.

Nom!

Bon appetite, Baby!

Happy 6 Month Unbirthday!

Baby's 6 month unbirthday party was a great success! It was characterized by family, friends, cupcakes, muffins, mulled cider, and (adult!) conversation. And plenty of cuteness, of course. Case in point:

(Thanks Laura Kozlowski Photography for the gorgeous shot! http://laurakozlowski.com/)

It took her a little while to warm up to all the new faces in the room, but once she did, there was much baby snuggle-time to be had, and I got to pretend I was my own person for a few minutes.

Checkin' out her grandma

Playing with cousin Alli

A new friend came to show Baby how crawling is done... they seemed to really hit it off (and by hit it off, I mean they wanted to grab parts of each others' faces and eat them)

And Auntie Rachel knew just what to bring:

Despite her lovely unbirthday dress, Baby still insisted on showing off her birthday suit.

Thanks to all who celebrated with us! We had a great time!

Laughter is the best medicine... especially baby laughter!

This first video already made its debut on facebook. It was actually the very first time I was able to get Riella to laugh for more than a second. What an amazing feeling!

The second video is more recent and very silly :-) Hope they brighten your day!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I wanted to do a nice long post about all the things I'm thankful for, of course My Little Peanut being #1, but given that there are only 3 weeks left of the semester, I think my time would be better spent on a quick Thanksgiving photo-dump and then working on my management memo!

Happy Thanksgiving, readers, I hope you had a great holiday!

I will explain baby led weaning in another post, but we started solids just in time for the Thanksgiving feast! It only made a LITTLE bit of a mess... having her naked, sitting on a beach towel helped.

This also helped... Leigan strategically placed himself right underfoot!

Resting her post-turkey belly with Daddy

Hanging out with her first cousins once removed

Getting Crafty: Replacing velcro with snaps and making a no-sew babywearing poncho

For some unknown reason, I decided I wanted to be more crafty. I will probably never be one of those moms who sews their kids' Halloween costumes from scratch, but maybe I'll get there. Anyway, there are two craft projects I've been meaning to complete and I finally got to them (at least partly) this weekend.

Replacing aplix (Velcro) with Snaps

We were given 12 Bumgenius pocket diapers by another JP Mom (JP Moms is like Craigslist mixed with a Q+A parenting forum for parents in my neighborhood), which is totally awesome because they are like $22 apiece, new. The aplix, however, was really worn out, so they kept coming undone at night and she would smell like a homeless person the next morning (although she kind of does regardless... we always do a butt bath first thing in the morning!). The aplix tabs also scratch her thighs.

Rather than give you the step-by-step of how I did it, let me instead direct you to the how-to I WISH I had read before I started: http://www.kamsnaps.com/bumGenius-Snap-Conversion-35.html. It took me forever just to get the aplix off the darn thing; that how-to gives some tips on how to make the process a little speedier. 

The supplies I bought for the actual snap setting are: KAM Handheld Snap Pliers for plastic snaps ($15) with a 2nd quality awl (included in plier price), 1 100-piece set of Glossy size 20 plastic snaps in BG111 Dazzle color ($4). That's it! Plus $6 shipping and handling = $25 for materials, which is about the cost of one new cloth diaper. Well worth it.

I chose to do two rows of snaps for a snug fit. I did not do snaps all the way across the front because as Partner pointed out, she isn't going to grow any smaller! Here is the first (okay, only) diaper I completed:

Next time I'll probably only do 3 rows of two on each side (I did 5 here), since as you can see, I have a couple extra there. So, one down, only eleven more to go! :-p

The No-Sew Babywearing Poncho

Being the "capitol" of New England, Boston is known for its chilly winters. What you might not know is that Boston is also apparently THE windiest major city in the US-- not Chicago-- "The Windy City" is actually a political rather than meteorological reference. Since November rolled around, naturally I find myself in need of some kind of outer layer to keep both me and my peanut warm. A decent babywearing coat upwards of $150, which as a grad student living on my husband's income, I wasn't able to justify. 

Instead, I bought 4 sheets of fleece, 2 yards each, from Joann Fabric online. I chose to stick with anti-pill or blizzard fleece prints, since a friend told me they are thickest and easiest to work with. Two of the sheets of fleece are for my poncho and two are for Partner's. He chose a brown bicycle print for his "fun" side and a brown plaid for his slightly "classier side, since it turns out it looks like you're wearing a Snuggy, I'm not sure "classy" has anything to do with it.

Anyway, here's the how-to I used: http://www.fineandfairblog.com/2013/09/diy-no-sew-babywearing-poncho-coat.html

She also links to a video on how to use it, which I found useful for back-wrapping. 

And here is the final product:

Okay, so I might be called into "What Not To Wear" going around town in that thing, but it was pretty darn comfy. Baby thinks so too!

In retrospect, I wish I had cut the fabric with it lying on the floor and then borrowed a sewing machine to sew the two pieces together (in order to make it double-layer). I had laid it over an arm chair to cut it because the floor was, of course, covered in dog hair. This resulted in some pretty interesting "lines," as you can imagine. I then hand-sewed the two pieces of fleece together-- three sides and the slit and neck hole first, leaving the fourth edge at the bottom open so I could then turn it right side out and do more careful stitches on the outside of that edge. Hand-sewing it made the edges kind of thick and lumpy for lack of a better description. 

When I tie it with her on my back, I have been tying it over the tail piece if that makes sense, to close off the fabric under her bum so air doesn't blow up underneath. I also use the sides of the part I'm wrapping around to cover her feet. So she's snug as a bug, even if my arms are a little chilly!

A Home Birth

I have to play some catch up since I'm starting this blog 6 months after Baby's birth, so here is a brief post about her birth day. I promise it won't contain any gory information and I did my best not to include obvious nudity or guts ;-)

I was very restless the day I went into labor. I painted my toe nails, tried to play some cello... I kept having hot flashes and couldn't stay still. When my partner came home I asked if we could get take-out and go to Jamaica Pond for a picnic because I just needed to get out of the house. We got some Indian food, thinking the spice might get me going. Apparently it wasn't necessary because I had about 3 bites and then told my partner we needed to go home. This was around 7pm.

We tried to watch Milo and Otis. I made it maybe 20 minutes in before I couldn't concentrate. I called one of my midwives and she told me to eat some more, get in a bath, and try to relax/sleep. I did, but there wasn't a whole lot of relaxing going on. Things continued to progress and the midwives (Tara, Audra, and Catherine-- their apprentice) arrived around 3am.

I truly believe that things would have gone differently if I hadn't had the birth pool. Even though I didn't give birth in it, it helped so much with letting me relax earlier on in labor, especially because I had crazy hormone-induced tremors. Before the midwives had arrived I actually made my partner call them because I thought I was having seizures or something. They assured me it was normal (maybe that's not the right word), but dang was it annoying!

When I first got in the pool, the midwives asked me how it felt. My response, with a totally straight face, was "I am going to marry this tub." They also recorded that I said "I'm adopting next time" and "Where's my orgasm?"

Coconut water and a few bites of yogurt with maple syrup were all I was able to eat during the 12 hours of active labor. My partner kept asking me every 20 minutes or so if I wanted chocolate truffles. My answer was no every time, but every time he seemed surprised!

I don't know why he's smiling, but to this day it makes me want to smack him! Also he did a horrible job putting that headband on me. I look like a disheveled ninja.

I also labored on all fours on the bed and crouching on the birth stool, but those photos were a little too graphic to post here. Ultimately, though, Baby was born when the midwives insisted that I sit on the toilet and try to pee. Instead I had a huge contraction and she crowned. On the next contraction, Catherine yelled at me to stand up and good thing too, because two pushes later and she was out! Baby was still inside the bag of waters when she was born, which is called en caul, and is apparently an Irish blessing. It's very rare nowadays since it's often considered routine to break your bag of waters in the hospital to speed things along (apparently it does tend to work, but at the expense of making things way more intense/painful).

Okay there's a tiny bit of blood in this photo, but I look so elated I couldn't help sharing :-)

Trying to take her in. Totally in awe.

How can you not immediately fall in love with that face??

First time nursing. She latched on maybe 30 minutes after she was born. 

Tara and Catherine try to decide whether she was 8 lbs 1 oz, or 8 lbs 2 oz. Since she had already pooped at that point, they gave her the benefit of the doubt ;-)

Grandma dubbed this her "cheerio face."

Checking her hips

Despite the cross-eyes, she was trying to look at us the moment she came out!

This was my absolute favorite newborn-related purchase. It's basically a shirt that you wear your baby in so you can be skin-to-skin. Aside from nursing, this was the best way to settle her and felt amazing from my perspective, too!

The happy ending! Or beginning, rather!

I do want to add that it was so awesome to be able to crawl into my bed with my new baby and just stay there for basically two days straight. My midwives also came to me for postpartum visits, checking on both me and Baby... I can't even imagine having had to get in the car with my little peanut that early on to go to a clinic. Giving birth is overwhelmingly challenging, but I'm so glad I did it at home!

Welcome!

Dear Viewers,

This blog serves a couple of purposes. It is mainly intended as a way to keep track of events, photos, and thoughts/opinions on parenting, so that some day my daughter can have a lens into her early life. After much deliberation, however, I have also decided to make the blog public. I find it very difficult to separate my personal life from my academic/professional life and so I find myself wanting to post maternity care, birth, parenting, etc. articles that don't necessarily relate directly to my own life, but I hope will be helpful or interesting to others. If you, The Reader, would like more or less of a particular type of post, please feel free to tell me so in the comments.

I hope you enjoy watching us grow!

Love,
Molly, Partner, Baby, and Leigan The Dog