Mini Mensa

Emma's head is officially fuzzy. She was born with this hilarious looking old-man hair... her hair basically grew in the back and a little on the sides, but not much of anything on the top. But finally, she's getting some fuzz growing on the top of her head. In fact, it's growing pretty fast and soon she'll be looking a little reminiscent of a Chia Pet and I can't wait for that.

I'm back in the office full time now and my god do I miss Emma during the day. I look at her pictures every so often and think about her every second. But I had to go back, and in some ways I'm really glad I did. Mostly because I have to have an income and I take pride in my work- working from home was getting to be nearly impossible to maintain because I was getting new cases and had lots of staffings, meetings, etc. that required my attendance. I felt like I was treading water but about to fall behind and that is certainly not my style. So now I'm back and luckily I was able to get a whole bunch of work done in a short amount of time so I'm well on track and not feeling on the verge of falling behind any longer. Whew. I did realize something though- no matter how much I want to deny it, I'm kind of cut out for dependency/child welfare. So I guess I'd better settle in and make myself comfy... there's no point in trying to find anywhere else to go. I've put in three years and haven't died. Yet.

The issue with being back to the office full time is with child care. Sure, we have relatives that can help out... but I've always had an issue asking for and receiving help from others. Especially if I have any inkling that the person doing the helping would be inconvenienced in any way. So needless to say, it's been a little difficult for me to accept help with watching the baby without feeling anxious and horrible about leaving her with someone knowing that there's no way they're going to get much of anything done that day. I need to relax about it. I'll get there one day... the biggest stressor of the whole thing is that the people who watch the baby live in the exact opposite direction from my office, which happens to be a 23 mile drive from my house in the first place. This is going to be a major adjustment... kind of like everything else I've experienced over the last 16 weeks of my life.

Yep. 16 weeks ago was when I was admitted to the hospital. My darling little pumpkin will be 13 weeks this coming Monday! My how time flies.

The sleep issues are getting better, I think. It helps that I dont' turn on the monitor at night so I only hear her when she's actually upset and needs me, not when she's just being fussy or noisy. We've done a 9pm bath/swaddle/bottle/bed routine for almost a week now and she's been doing alright. She was a little overtired the other night so she screamed for a little while before finally falling asleep and staying that way for quite a while. She has definitely fallen into somewhat of a schedule now: we do our bedtime routine at 9pm and she's usually in bed around 10 or 10:30. She falls asleep at some point, but I'm not sure when because I don't sit with her until she does so- I let her stay in her crib as long as she's not crying or overly fussy. We put some stuffed animals up along the crib rails and she usually looks at those while she slowly gets groggy and eventually drifts off to sleep. She then wakes up at 2:30am for a bottle, although last night she was up at 2am. I'm not considering a 1/2 hour difference to be enough of a deviation to consider it a change in her pattern. And definitely not after one night. Anyways, she gets up again sometime between 5am and 6am, depending on how much she ate at 2:30. Lately she's been wanting to stay up to play for a little bit, usually about an hour or so, after her 5am/6am bottle. And then she'll go back to sleep for a little while. In fact, she slept for quite a long stretch yesterday morning. She took 1/2 of a bottle around 6am, played just a little, then  slept until 11am. I'm not sure how consistent her daytime schedule is because I'm not with her during the days now :(

After much internet research, I'm completely against sleep training. If you've done it yourself, please don't be offended. I much prefer using a little structure to help a baby learn to go to sleep at night- that's the purpose of our bedtime routine with Emma. She's learning that 9pm starts the routine and she will eventually know what comes next and what to expect. But we aren't forcing anything else on her... and we certainly aren't going to let her cry it out. She is falling into her own schedule and we're helping modify it just a bit and that's as far as we're going to go with her. I just don't see how it's healthy to force a child into a schedule... given time, they'll sink into a good schedule and routine. I'll be patient until then, and we'll all be a lot happier in the end. And much better bonded, at that.

I believe my nursing days are over. It's a tough call, especially as we're entering flu season and she would really benefit from the antibodies in the breast milk. But she doesn't really want to nurse much anymore, to the point where I think she's only getting a few drops before she gets super angry and has a fit. She latches on and I think we both enjoy the bonding and the closeness, but I timed it the other day and she stayed on for a whopping 2 minutes. And that was one of her better attempts recently. She just gets hungry and wants food now. She's an instant gratification kinda gal, I guess. So I've followed through with what I set out to do a few weeks back when I was really struggling to figure out how to proceed- I let her wean herself and set the pace for our nursing experience. Well, to an extent, as I elected not to nurse her throughout the night because I didn't want her to fall asleep while nursing and not end up getting anything to eat, causing her and I to be up all night doing frequent feeds. And now that I'm back at work in the office, I can only nurse her first thing in the morning and in the late evening. My supply has dwindled too much and she gets too angry. So I guess we're done, and I'm really more sad about it than I thought I'd be. It really is an amazing experience and I'll never ever get to do it again...

She's growing so fast and I often find myself feeling a little sad about each passing phase. I sometimes try to cling to every little behavior and experience as I know that she's changing so rapidly and she'll never again be as she is today.

My precious baby girl is absolutely amazing- she's starting to hold up her head much better and likes to pull back away from us while we're holding her upright so that she can look around. She's also really good at baby push ups and has started cooing and smiling like crazy. She absolutely loves to be laid on a blanket on a random spot in the house so she can look around the room and study her surroundings. I'll also occasionally have a smile flashed at me while changing her diaper, provided she's not so ravenously hungry that she's screaming her head off and could care less if I'm making funny faces at her. I put her on her playmat this morning and you would have thought she was drugged- I turned on the toy that flashes different colored lights and makes nature sounds or music (I chose nature sounds this morning) and she just stared with her mouth open. Then she got excited and started to stick out her tongue and move her mouth like she was trying so hard to make noise. Her arms started flailing and she hit some of the other toys hanging from the playmat, which made her smile and caused her to keep flailing her arms so she could keep hitting the toys. I like to think she's a genius... she's technically less than five weeks old ;)

No pictures this time- I'm far too exhausted to mess with it. My apologies!