20 weeks.

Dear Beck,

I know, 20 weeks does not seem like a particularly important milestone age, but ohmygoodness is there a lot happening right now! I feel like your dad and I are noticing new behaviors all the time. In fact, I started reading this book called "Wonder Weeks". It talks about the various cognitive milestones in a baby's development and how there are certain ages where babies go through huge spurts that result in major advancements in their abilities. Well, it's all pretty darn interesting but I was mostly thinking it was another book to make parents feel better about why their baby may be 'fussy' at various points. 'Fussy' that's the nice way of saying crabby, which you have been lately. But then I read the chapter on the 19 week 'wonder week' and read the list of behaviors that we might start seeing. At the beginning of last week, we weren't seeing a lot of them... But, after three very fussy days home with you, I started noticing more and more of them!!! Seriously. It actually creeped me out a little.

So, things you're doing now that you weren't a week ago...
-touching faces
-grabbing toys smoothly and passing from one hand to the other
-throwing toys on the floor, hurrah
-studying your hands and chewing on them too
-grabbing our hands and putting them in your mouth too
-Noticing Lita, staring at Lita, reaching out to touch Lita!
-holding your own bottle, sometimes and only until it's about a 1/4 full because you cannot tilt it that much yet...dad caught this one since you're still not getting bottles from me
-I also converted your activity center to the bouncer this week so you've been enjoying that in short doses. Today, for the first time, we saw you bounce

I'm sure I'm forgetting things already...

Also... On Friday while you spent the day with Oma, she discovered that your first tooth had arrived!!!

So yeah, kiddo, it was a rough week, but you've grown so much over the course of it! You're still chewing like crazy and have been 'fussy' so I wouldn't be surprised if tooth number two is also on its way.

Yesterday we also attended your cousin Tyler's fourth birthday party! You were a trooper despite not napping while we were there. And yes, you are officially bigger at 20 weeks than your nine month old cousin, Charley. Heh.

I know there are even more good things on the way. Keep growing, munchkin.

The one about boobs.

I recently learned that one of my college girlfriends is expecting her first child in May, a girl! I excitedly congratulated and did what everyone does... Offered advice. Being that I am just getting through the newborn phase myself, things are fresh in my mind and I may have convinced myself that I am more qualified than most to be doing so. One of the things that I warned her about, that no one told me, is just how difficult breastfeeding can be. I knew that it couldn't be as simple as just hold 'em up and let 'em suck, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

She asked for some more specifics, so, if I were to give a newbie some advice, I would say:

It will be harder than you imagine. No one prepares you for this. You spend all this time and energy getting ready for/worrying about labor. A new challenge awaits.

If your hospital has a lactation consultant on hand, meet with them as often as you can. Get them to teach you different positions and try to work on that latch.

Hit up the breastfeeding aisle while you are shopping for things to add to your hospital bag. Purchase some nipple cream, nipple shields and those soothing gel things. You'll need them. If I hadn't gotten my hands on some nipple shields, thanks to the advice of Champaign girlfriend, I think I would have quit somewhere around week 2.

When it comes to the advice of not giving a bottle or pacifier for the first month... I didn't and right now, looking back, I'm so glad. Yes, it's hard. And exhausting when it all depends on you. But. But your milk supply is really determined by supply and demand. The higher that initial demand, the more milk those things are gonna produce. This is also why we chose to have the baby "room in" with us at the hospital. When he was hungry, I fed him. At all hours. The nurses wanted to take him to the nursery, but he stayed with us. It turns out that there is such a thing as too much supply and I've dealt with that too, but that didn't come into play until weeks later. For those initial days, the more sucking, the faster your milk comes in, the happier the baby. And for those first weeks, the more feedings, the more milk you will produce, the happier the baby.

Would it be easier to give bottles occasionally? Of course! And if you have the same experience I did, your family will constantly be asking to feed the baby anyway. I was recovering from a c-section during the first 6 weeks or so, so my job was to lay in bed, sleep when possible and feed the baby when he was brought to me. Because I birthed a giant, I wasn't supposed to be carrying him around anyway. Yeah, that was hard emotionally too because I felt like I was just a milk machine. But, again, now looking back, it was totally worth it. Back to bottles, my outlook was that if we were going to feed a bottle, I should be pumping during that time anyway (supply and demand), so its not like the bottle was saving ME any work. I've heard of people doing bottles in the first month quite successfully. And I've heard of others where baby develops a bottle preference and won't go back. Or they don't end up producing enough to breastfeed exclusively. It really depends on you and baby.

After 6 weeks, Dad started feeding him a nightly bottle of formula. I decided to do the formula for two reasons. 1) It gave me a chance to get used to pumping without the pressure of having to produce enough or the baby goes hungry. That milk got put in the freezer because 2) I wasn't sure if I would be returning to work and wanted to start building up a supply. This way, I also knew that if I couldn't pump enough for whatever reason, baby would also accept formula. By the time I went back to work, I had quite the freezer stash.

It's also important to note that people who have no experience with breastfeeding or who have forgotten all that is involved will try to be helpful by saying such things as... "Surely baby can't be hungry again?!" (they probably are). "It shouldn't hurt." (it might for awhile, but it will get better!). And my personal favorite "why don't you just give a bottle" which really annoyed me because I felt like it was an attack against my personal decision to breastfeed. It can be really hard, but maybe for you it will be easy, who knows? It depends on you and your baby. I'd imagine that just like every labor is different, every breastfeeding experience is different.

A quick word on schedules... You can't schedule a baby. Even at four months old, I know vaguely when my kid is gonna be hungry, but it might be different that day. With your newborn, you may be feeding every two hours (or less) for several weeks!!! And keep in mind that feedings are timed from the start of one to the start of the next. If baby is feeding for 30 minutes, you may only have an hour before the next feeding starts. It will get better. Just when you think you can't possibly do it anymore, things will start spacing out. And then, you'll hit a growth spurt and your every three hour feedings will go back to every 90 minutes again for a day or two. It happens and it's normal!!!

Perhaps most importantly, know who you can call to ask questions!! Who you can call when you feel like it's all going wrong. There was no one in my family I could ask. Turns out I was formula fed (I had always assumed I was breastfed), my aunt breastfed one of her kids, but it was so long ago she didn't remember, and my cousin was good for some questions, but had only breastfed for three months, so even she had a different opinion on things (give a bottle). I called Champaign girlfriend, my old boss, and even contacted a La Leche League member with questions at one point. Help is out there, even if it's just emotional support.

It is worth it. Another big plus, it's free!!! But, if things, don't work out, for *whatever* reason, there is absolutely nothing wrong with formula.

Cow, out.

That'll teach me.

I SO paid for that post with a terrible night's sleep. I still don't think he's a bad baby. :)

What IS a 'good baby' anyway???

I've noticed that one of the questions that people LOVE to ask of moms about their babies is 'do they sleep through the night yet?'.

Here's the thing: I LOVE my sleep. LOVE. I will choose sleep over lots of other things. Much to my husband's dismay. But I knew getting into this parenthood thing that my nights of good sleeping were gonna be over for a long time. In fact, this started to become true by late in my pregnancy. Yes, as 'they' also like to say, my body was preparing me for the sleepless nights to come by making it nearly impossible to get comfortable with the beach ball in my belly.

So now, I have a four month old (!!!) and everyone wants to know how he's sleeping. Like that is some indicator of how 'good' a baby is... Guess what? It's not. We are struggling with sleep right now, it's true. But from everything I know, what we are experiencing is perfectly NORMAL. Yes, a month ago he was sleeping better. We would get a four hour stretch initially, feed, another three to four hour stretch, feed, and then maybe a couple more hours if we were lucky... But not in that cold, lonely crib anymore. That's okay. Now, last week that initial stretch dropped to two to three hours. And getting him to go back down after his feeding became difficult. There were hours slept cuddled in the glider or on the sofa. And it was hard! This week is different again because we're getting a three to four hour initial stretch. And then he has gone back to sleep before waking up in the early morning hours and wanting cuddles. He's a baby! Babies like being cuddly warm.

I'm a scientist. So when stuff is happening that I don't understand (I.e. why is my baby sleeping worse than before?) I tend to research. And google. And read. And here's what I found. It's normal! Babies go through cycles of good and bad sleep as they are developing. Especially when the littles are reaching developmental milestones, their sleep turns bad because their little brains can't handle all the information. There's even a fancy term for it: sleep regression. What happened last week? My little rolled over for the first time. And since then we often see him on the monitor rolling around in his sleep. We are facing the 'classic' four-month sleep regression. There will be more! Typically around eight months there's another one. What happens then? Baby is likely learning or preparing to crawl. And then there's walking! Makes sense, right?

Let's not forget that I'm also still breastfeeding and boobie-fed kiddos wake more often at night to eat anyway. Right now, we typically have 3 feedings between the hours of 10 and 6 am, and, from what I've read, I'm lucky that there aren't more!

Anyway, it turns out that during this four-month (which, like all the other month markers, is really just a guideline and depends on how each little develops) regression is when most parents decide to 'sleep train'. Because holycrap! the kid isn't sleeping anymore. Sleep training. There's a can of worms right there.

There are different kinds of sleep training, but the most common one is 'cry it out'. Yeah, that ain't gonna be happening. Who knows, in a few weeks/months, I may be eating my words here, but for now the thought of allowing my baby to cry in a dark room while I ignore him...it feels like a betrayal of the trust we are building. I know lots of parents do it, even some that I know. I understand the kiddo will never remember it happened and it *does* seem to work. But a) I'm not sure that it's necessary and b) I'm not completely convinced that there aren't *any* lasting effects. I don't know. The opponents of CIO claim that these are the kids that have nightmares later in life. Who knows?!

This is all a whole lot of babbling to say that...babies wake up at night. Some more than others. And more one week than the next or the previous. It cycles. Just like lots of things when it comes to babies. It's all normal. Eventually, my baby will sleep through the night. And won't need to be rocked to sleep. And won't want to cuddle. I need to remember these facts at 2 a.m. And I'm partially writing all this down to make myself feel better and realize that it IS normal. Yes, it's hard. And yes, it's frustrating to feel like you're going backwards. But the fact that my four-month old is not sleeping through the night... That doesn't make him a bad baby. Next time I'm asked "how's he sleeping?" I'm going to be honest and answer, "Like a baby."