Quinn is 6 months!

Time has flown by. Quinn is 6 months old!

Stats:

Weight: 14 lbs. 14 oz (25th percentile)

Height: 26.75in (75th percentile)

Head Circumference: 17 inches (75th percentile)

So our skinny girl is hanging in their weight wise. Things have been challenging as I've had to return to work and she only drinks small amounts from the bottle to keep from starving. She's had a really bad fever that we rushed to urgent care in the middle of the night, followed by a bout of roseola. Luckily, she healed up fine but there were a few weeks of not sleeping.

She does have a lot more party tricks now and we're seeing her smile and laugh more.  Her favorite person that she laughs with the most is big bro, Derek. They have their own fun "jumping" game where we chant, Jump Jump Jumping Bean! One of her favorites from Baby Yoga Class.

Around 5 months she has started saying, "Mum Mum Mum" and has been rolling over back and forth lots. Quinn  enjoys being on her tummy and can self entertain on the activity mat for almost 20 minute in the morning while I get ready for work.  She is also 'reaching' for mom and dad more, and starting to have a preference for her main caregivers. No teeth yet, but Quinn is also a big fan of chomping on all her toys, and anything she can drool on. I even found her sucking her own toes through her socks! Though she's starting to take up more and more room in bed, we are still cosleeping. Sometimes having to triple diaper her since she's really having some healthy output at night. Overall, our little lady is doing great. We're still in amazement that she's grown so much already and that babyhood is halfway over.

The Enemy

Europe posts have been coming slowly since I've been fighting Picasa and Google+ due to storage space. Its really a struggle since I need to be more judicious about how to use free time (usually I decompose into a pile on the couch). I'm slowly turning into a ludite anyway.In other news, I thought I would post about Quinn's epic fight with her enemy, the bottle.

My second time around with a baby, I should know the ropes a bit better. True to form though, second children know how to throw you for a loop by having different challenges. Nursing with Quinn from day 1 has been pretty awesome. She latched right away, never had weight gain issues and didn't experience the excessive food allergy issues that Derek had. She nurses well, sleep long stretches and has a sunny disposition (with me at least!).

Until...

The bottle.

First of all, I wish I didn't have to use the bottle. I want to return to work, and if there is anything I could change about my arrangement, it wouldn't be that I wouldn't go back to work but that I would go and could 1) work from home full time, so I could nurse; or 2) live closer work so I could easily come home to nurse. Though neither is the case, I'm fortunate enough to have taken 4 months of maternity leave with some ongoing telework 1-2 days a week. However, this means Quinn will still need to take the bottle 3-4 days a week while I'm gone for 9 hours a day. 

Derek took the bottle like a champ. Around 6 weeks, he would switch effortlessly in between and I felt less frightened of leaving him at home for a short stretch while I ran to the store or for quick errands. Derek was such a frequent nurser, that I would actually worry about him crying within 45 minutes of starvation. Quinn can really hold out between feedings. Not one to comfort nurse (until more recently at 3 and 4 months), she will go up to 4 hours in the day without a feeding and longer at night. I will try to offer to her in shorter intervals but she isn't interested. But when she is hungry, the girl really needs to eat.

When Quinn first rejected the bottle around 8 weeks, I didn't worry too much about it. In fact, I was secretly ecstatic that I couldn't be replaced by a silicone nipple even though it had my expressed nipple. She would cry and chew on it a bit more then completely ignore it. It sent our nanny into distress worried about how she would care for her (again comparing her to Derek our eating champ).  I told her not to stress and we moved to alternates like the dropper and the cup.  Both caused a big mess, along with a huge waste of breastmilk, and neither really did the job of feeding her.  I would let her just spend time with the bottle as a toy. It would hang out with us while nursing.

We spent every minute together in Europe basically. The one night I had to go out with Mike for his birthday dinner after bedtime, she slept until 4am the next day. We were going to try to get her to take a bottle a day, a few weeks before going back to daycare but, the whirlwind of life didn't allow for it.

On August 11, I had exhausted all maternity leave - I'd taken vacation leave, sick leave and even leave without pay for a few weeks. I had to go back in the office. I left 10 oz of milk and hoped for the best.

I came home the first day. All the milk was left. She had essentially taken nothing for 10 hours and was in hunger strike mode.  I felt so sad thinking she had cried so much that first day without me. But I had to remind myself, that she was with a loving caregiver.  It feels like the nanny and I might be having more distress over her not taking the bottle. I considered taking a cab home some days from work (cost be damned!) to just see her little chubby face.

The week wore on. She started to weaken her resolve, but she still starved herself out for nearly a week. It wasn't until Friday did she have a few ounces.  In the meantime, I spent every waking hour at home with her attached to me. Mostly because I missed her, more than I worried about her starving. She seemed fine to wake up every few hours at night to eat and I was happy to have her do it.


So she's sometimes taking the bottle, she'll be 6-months in a few weeks here so I hope to just transition her to a cup soon.

No More Swaddling

Its as if she knew the last days of the 4th trimester was up and right around 3 months, no longer needed to be cuddled and protected in a womb-like state. Instead, she's defiant in resisting any attempts to be held down. We do still swaddle her at night since she can still startle herself. Guess she is still just a baby after all.

Q is One Month Old!

(Sorry don't have any of those cute onesies stickers that everyone sees to have so went the old school route of a piece of paper. Check out that poor penmanship.)

Our little pumpkin turns one month old!  She's been sleeping most of the first month, but we've gotten some serious faces as well and sleeping giggles from our little lady.

The first month has been a pretty good one minus all the illness. Here's the report out on the first month for the well-child check up.

Weight: 10 lbs, 1 oz (60th percentile)
Height: 21.5 in.
Head: 14.5 in.

Blowout poos: None!
Times she's peed on us during a diaper change: less than 5
Number of times sick: 2
Number of ER visits: 2 (within a 12-hour time period too!)
Number of times Derek has asked why: COUNTLESS
Percent of time Derek likes having a sister: 30%

Feeding
Nursing had been great. She latched on from the start. My let-down has been difficult for her to
control at times and I think that discourages her from comfort nursing. Unlike Dek who would just hang out and eat for hours. Q likes to only nurse on one side for 15 minutes, gets burped and goes back to sleep.  She's ruthlessly efficient. I offer other times in between but it doesn't seem that she's that interested which disappoints my pro-breastfeeding side.

Her weight gain is adequate but I'm guessing it would have been better if she didn't get sick (twice). I am beating myself up about not being able to shield her from germ-factory Derek. I wonder if its sometimes my fault despite copious amounts of hand washing.  Dek had this amazing run of almost never getting sick. He had a fever at 2 months and then the next time he was sick was a stomach virus at 15 months. He is 3 and never had an ear infection or been on antibiotics.  I always chalked it up to him being a robust breastfed baby/toddler. He nursed until 2.5 - really.  But suctioning Q's nose constantly and hearing her sniffle during nursing is just so, so sad. Seems such a small baby shouldn't have to have constant sniffles.

Sleeping
Ah everyone's favorite topic. She is really great. By no means is she sleeping through the night and I have no expectations of her for doing so for awhile, but she will sleep in 3-4 hour stretches. This is something that Derek rarely did. So if I get 2 blocks of 3 hours of sleep, I feel like a million bucks. I've scaled down alot this time around in terms of visitors, going back to "normal" life and have enjoyed our cuddle times and staring contests. I've really taken to heart what people say about how short the newborn and baby period is (because its so true!) and instead of resenting having to hold her all the time - I really love it. Sometimes I don't want to put her down at all and let her just sleep on me - though I'm pretty sure that's what contributed to my  mastitis. The co-sleeping this time has really saved me some sanity and sleep.

Other tricks:

• Smiles! Though Q seems to be pretty serious for the camera, we do get to see her smile and it just melts us (of course).
• Neck support - Q started holding up her neck around 3 weeks.
• Tummy time: hates it after about 2 minutes.
• Yelp! She's been a pretty quiet baby. Not a lot of crying, but she does do this cute little yelp thing when she is unhappy with something. She is cooing a bit and learning to do something besides yelping. 
• Pooing - everyone's favorite topic! Let's say she goes with regularity (every diaper change!). I think the Anti-Colic diet my midwives recommended has been hugely helpful.