Ingenue Mom

This week was Christmas! It was so fun!! Nursing: Same as last week. Both sides at a time, exclusively breastfeeding. Waketime: Hour & 15 minutes to Hour & a half. Nighttime Sleep: Dates of 12/21-12/27. Due to all the Christmas stuff, we had some difficult nights, but it was worth it! Night 1 - Friday night - I fed her at 7:15 and put her to bed. She woke up at 11:15, 3:30 & 7:15. She had 2 feedings after we went to bed (11:15 & 3:30) and her longest stretch was 4.25 hours from 11:15 to 3:30. Night 2 - Saturday night - I fed her at 7:30 & put her to bed. She woke up at 12:00, 4:00 and 8:00. She had 2 feedings after we went to bed (12:00 & 4:00) and her longest stretch was 4.5 hours from 7:30 to 12:00. Night 3 - Sunday night - I fed her at 7:15 and put her to bed. She woke up at 12:30, 4:00 & 7:30. She had 2 feedings after we went to bed (12:30 & 4:00) and her longest stretch was 5.25 hours from 7:15 to 12:30. Night 4 ...

I'm so behind on these. Thank you, Christmas festivities! LOL so I'm going to keep this one short. Nursing: Things are normal. Nursing both sides every time. She's feeding every 3 hours. I'm not going to stretch her past 3 hours until after she starts consistently sleeping 12 hours. I want to make sure she gets enough during the day. I also met with the pediatrician at Lux's 2 month appointment and she said not to do formula once a day unless I have to, so I stopped. I mean, we've done it a couple of times because we needed to when I had an appointment and had to leave or something, but other than that, I've just been exclusively breastfeeding. Waketime: She was at 1 hr and 15 minutes this week. Sometimes an hour & 30 minutes. Swaddling: She is successfully unswaddled. I have her in the blanket sleepers. She will either wear a long pants, long sleeved pajama outfit with a sleeveless blanket sleeper over it or she will wear a short sleev...

Best thing about this week was that we had 2 nights where Lux slept through the night & didn't have a night feeding!!   Nursing: Nursing has been great. I'm still doing 1 formula bottle a day most days. She also started sleeping longer at night really consistently, so I've added a pumping session around 9:30 to get me through the night & build my frozen supply. She's doing both sides at every feeding except the first one of the day & any in the middle of the night. Waketime: She has been being a lot more interactive during waketime! You can play with her more, which is so fun! I love taking pictures of her, which is really obvious from my Facebook & Instagram. She's very clearly alert for longer, so waketimes have also gotten longer. Swaddling: I've been transitioning her out of the swaddle at all. She's still got both arms out, but she's swaddled around her torso. My friend Laurel gave me some more swaddle blankets that ...

Nursing: This week I started doing 1 formula bottle a day most days. I pump in place of that bottle & save the breast milk. That way I'm building up a supply & Lux is getting used to both taking a bottle & taking formula. She's done great with both! We are using Tommee Tippee bottles. We used Born Free with Isis, but after seeing the Tommee Tippee & how many fewer parts they have, it's just way easier & I actually like them a lot more.  Actually nursing has been fine this week. She nurses from both sides most feedings now except in the middle of the night and first thing in the morning. Both of those I seem to be really full on just 1 side, so she just takes 1 side and is fine. Reflux: If she eats a lot, she spits up. That's really all I've seen. There is a little spit up with most feedings, but nothing crazy. I didn't notice any change with breast milk as opposed to formula. She seemed to do fine with the formula, both with bowe...

The week I earned my Parent Card. Seriously. The week began with Thanksgiving celebration at Lew's parent's house. 2 days later, the stomach bug hit our house really hard. Lewis got it bad and it basically lasted the whole week between him, me & Isis all getting it to some degree. Thankfully Lux didn't get it, but it did end up affecting things with her. Here's how: Nursing: Nursing was fine at the beginning of the week. Then Tuesday I got sick. I never had the vomiting like Lewis did, but I had other stuff and I lost my appetite completely and didn't eat the entire day. So then on Wednesday, I noticed a significant drop in my milk supply. It was clear that Lux wasn't getting enough and finally on Thursday I had to supplement with some formula a couple of times. I usually can pump from one side and get 5 ounces since I was doing single side nursing. On Thursday, I decided to pump one time to see how much I was producing and I got 2 ounces total from...

(I wrote this last week & then never edited & published it. Whoops!)   First of all, I need to get back to posting on this blog! With the holidays, our week was a little crazy and I don't even think I opened my computer!   Nursing: Nursing has been about the same this week. I tried a few times to offer both breasts for feedings. Sometimes she will take the other one, sometimes she won't. The biggest thing this week was a growth spurt on Sunday. She ate every 2 hours the entire day.   Burping: Also about the same. I try to burp her after every feeding except the middle of the night. Sometimes she burps, sometimes she doesn't.   Reflux: She spit up several times this week, but several times over the course of a week really isn't bad.   Waketime: I'm doing about 1 hour of waketime at each cycle. At night she will go longer before bed. Sometimes I can't get her to go a full hour, so she goes down early. I've been trying ...

Nursing: I had some issues with nursing this week. I had mentioned last week that I wanted to start pumping more to build a milk supply. Well, I tried that, but it didn't work. Because I nurse from one side at a time, when I pumped in the morning, it just basically took what I had and it hadn't fully replenished by the time she would eat next. So I tried feeding her from both sides all day, but she never seemed to have enough & she wouldn't sleep well & would be fussy all day. I tried it for 2 days & decided it just wasn't that worth it to build a pumped milk supply. I went back to just feeding her in the morning & doing one side at a time all day. As soon as she starts sleeping 12 hours consistently, I can pump at 10:00 before I go to bed to get a bottle.    I'm also going to just pump when I'm at school when I go back to work & just have that. This means I'll have to supplement with formula, but I knew I would have to do that ...

I've been looking back through old posts from when Isis was little. I think it's no secret that we really loved the Babywise method and the idea of a consistent routine as we were helping Isis learn to soothe herself to sleep and learn to sleep through the night! I thought I'd give an update as to how this has played out in our lives throughout the last 2 1/2 years!  In 14 Steps to an Easy Baby , I shared several tips that worked really well for us. Of all of these, the idea of consistency and not setting up bad habits worked really well for us! We have been really consistent with Isis throughout her life. We really focus on intentional parenting, whether that's sleep schedules, daily routines, feeding practices, discipline, etc. I want to post more about this later, but as far as sleep and routine stuff goes, it has worked out extremely well as far as our family goes.    Why we used a Routine Some families don't thrive under a consistent routine. Some...

Dear Isis, You are changing and growing so much lately! In the last few months, you have grown 3+ inches and you've grown even more than that if I measured attitude and personality in inches and pounds! You are so like me and your daddy. Independent, feisty, opinionated, but also sweet, sensitive and caring. You are apprehensive at first around new people, choosing to sit back and wait before joining in on the fun. This is more me than your dad. You're developing such a little attitude about things. You have opinions now on what thing you wear and what things you want to do. You are becoming more and more independent as each day goes on. We recently had to let you cry again at night because we had let you get into a routine over the holidays (due to all our life changes) of crying at night and us coming in to comfort you. When it got up to about 4-6 times a night, we decided we needed to do something. We let you cry without coming in one night. It only took one night thi...

Ah, the elusive dream of all new parents - a full nights sleep! I have posted a lot about our sleep training efforts. Some people have agreed with what we've done and some people haven't, but man oh man - it worked!! I've been waiting to post this to make sure things were consistent, but now I'm ready!! If I haven't already told you this, I have kept a log of how much I have slept at night since Isis was 2 weeks old. I've had to take several measures with my baby blues that most people probably wouldn't have had to take. For me, knowing exactly how much I was sleeping really helped me to calm down and not feel overwhelmed. So anyway...look at this... (keep in mind that Isis goes to bed between 7:30 and 8:00 every night and we get her up between 7:30 and 8:00 every morning) The night of March 25/26: Isis woke up once at 4:30am meaning... I slept 7 hours, 15 minutes with one long stretch of 5 hours, 15 min! The night of March 26/27: Isis woke up once at 5:30 m...

Now, don't get your Pampers in a bunch, the title of this is a joke. But I have noticed that so many people tend to say to me, "Oh you're so lucky that you have such an easy/good/happy baby!" And I want to go, "Um, thanks, but we've worked our butts off to help her get to this point. There's nothing lucky about it except maybe that she wasn't colicky." Granted, she was a healthy, full-term baby which is definitely a blessing, but she wasn't easy at all from the beginning. The important thing is that we started from the beginning to set up for the future. I believe in patterns and schedules and helping encourage a routine for the baby so that they know what to expect. I've seen her thrive in this system and have talked to so many other mothers who have experienced the same thing with their babies who are very different than Isis. In the end, though, every baby is different. I personally think that means altering the specifics of your routi...