Zebra Abuse

I am not ashamed of the fact that it's 9:51pm on a Friday night and I'm seriously contemplating going to bed. Oh, but wait... Emma is unhappy. In fact, she's yelling and squealing. No bedtime for me yet.

What a week it has been, though, as Emma has really continued her trend of making big strides with her development. On Monday (10/8), she apparently laughed for the first time and it just so happened to occur in the presence of my father-in-law ("pop"). She was apparently looking at him and smiling and let out a laugh :) And today, 10/12, she discovered that she can hit her toys with her hands and make them move and make noise. She beat the crap out of her zebra rattle that was hanging from her playmat by punching it repeatedly. Poor zebra... and Emma just sat there smiling like the greatest thing in the world had just occurred, arms flailing and legs kicking.

She's such a happy baby now, although the happiness is still mixed in with some bouts of serious anger/fussiness/crying that is seemingly for no reason. She smiles a lot and just loves to look around at everything that surrounds her. She learns and sees something new every day and you can tell that she's getting smarter by the minute. Gosh... to think back to her being a tiny little baby sleeping all day in an isolette in the NICU, to the still tiny baby that came home and stared blankly at the ceiling. And now she's this responsive, cooing, smiling, squealing little bundle of joy. And gas.

She's been strictly formula fed for a while now... up until a few days ago, I was still breastfeeding two-ish times a day but she wasn't getting much of anything out. She started fighting it more and more and it was getting to the point where it would interfere with her ability to take a full bottle. I decided we were done, and it made me very sad. I have a lot of regrets about it- looking back, I know I could have tried harder and should have tried nursing her more when she came home. But back then, I was so scared from the bradys and so overwhelmed by the whirlwind of the prior seven weeks of my life. But without revisiting every last reason why it didn't work out for us, I do know that we did what we could given the circumstances and I'm not beating myself up over it.

And despite eating the same food day after day, she still has random days of being extremely gassy and uncomfortable. It doesn't make any sense- it's clearly not what she's eating since most days she's just fine. I guess it really is a case of a growing and maturing digestive system and some days just aren't so good for her. And on those days, it sounds like a war is going on in those size one Pampers.

Bedtime has been going mostly well... the first week of the bedtime routine was surprisingly great. We gave her a bath around 8:30 or 9:00, depending on when she would start to get hungry. Then dress her, swaddle her (usually in her SwaddleMe), turn the light off in her nursery and give her a bottle/rock her with her night light on. Some nights, she wanted to be held and rocked and on other nights she wanted to be put down so she could hang out in her crib. But typically, I could put her down and she would wiggle and grunt until she was comfortable and then she'd fall asleep. Easy peasy. Then she'd wake up around 2:30am for a bottle and sleep again until 5 or 6am. Sometimes she wouldn't want to go back to sleep after that, but typically she would.

This week? Hmph. She started acting funny over the weekend, when she started eating small amounts of formula frequently. Great for reflux. Awful for sleep. And then on Sunday night, she wouldn't go to bed without a fight. I ended up staying up until midnight with her, constantly going in and giving her the pacifier, which would calm her down until she spit it out and got all pissed off again. She finally fell asleep around 11:30pm and as I drifted off to sleep I suddenly heard a hungry cry come from down the hallway. She was ready to eat. Bah! I gave her a bottle and she finally started to get drowsy and went to bed. We slept until 4am, when it was time for another bottle. She went to bed just fine on Monday night, and had another party on Tuesday- this time until 1:30am. Mommy was not really in the partying mood, either. Especially since I knew I'd be doing a ton of driving the next day. Wednesday night was alright. Last night was fine at first, but then she decided to be up every two hours to eat one ounce of formula at a time. *sigh*

She's been needing a pacifier to help her get to sleep most nights. It really sucks that she did so well for the first week and suddenly has no recollection of the wonderful schedule we had gotten on. But, such is parenthood. I really can't wait until she can sleep through the night. I know that a lot of parents feel that it's a race to get to that point, and that the earlier a child sleeps through the night, the more successful they feel as a parent. But that doesn't make sense to me at all- Emma's need for a bottle at 2:30am doesn't make me a bad parent. It makes her a hungry fat kid. And I'm ok with that.

I've come so far; truly I have. I was so terrified of everything in the beginning and I'm finally starting to relax a lot more. I still have an incredible fear of SIDS but I don't feel as if she's going to automatically die if I let her nap without her motion sensing diaper clip on. But that clip is a serious relief. I would worry so much more without it. Anyways, I'm making my way down this crazy and sleepless path of parenthood and learning the old-fashioned way about a lot of things. But that's the point, right? If someone were constantly telling me what to do at every moment, then it wouldn't be as fulfilling. It's such a feeling of accomplishment when I learn something new about her on my own and without someone instructing me every step of the way. She's my child. My only child. I want to find my own way in my own time and enjoy this whole experience as it shapes me into a new person. Yet, I still haven't completely grasped the fact that I'm a mother now. Especially after all we've gone through to get here.

So, this poor kid has a bunch of people trying to monopolize her time and attention... me, her daddy, Grammy, Pop, Grandma, Grandpa... she's quite the celebrity.

At this point, I'd normally post pictures of my little crabby patty. But I'm having USB cable issues right now and I don't feel like fussing with it. Maybe this weekend I'll upload the pictures from the Nikon that I've been meaning to put on my computer for ages. Maybe.