10 weeks and a slight taste of sleeping through the night

It’s 3:17am and I really should be sleeping while Kaitlyn’s sleeping in her cot for the moment. But somehow my brain refuses to switch off. So here I am.

She’s 10 weeks today (I think LOL, starting to lose count here). In the last couple of weeks, she’s learnt to turn from back to side, coo and smile at the mirror, grab and shake rattles and stare endlessly at the lights on her playmat.

Week 8 and 9 were really tough as she simply refuses to sleep or even settled unless being held by me. So I had to carry here EVERYWHERE ALL DAY EVERYDAY. I slept on the rocking chair for weeks! It got so bad last week, when I looked at my feeding log, I realised I had put in the same dates over and over without noticing it for over a week. So, here I was thinking it was the 17th still and had a big shock when I looked at the calender and found it was really the 27th!! Talk about being stuck in a time loop.

So, in pure desperation, I booked us into an Infant Sleep Centre for a day to learn how to break Kaitlyn’s bad sleeping habits. The lady at the sleep centre was very nice. After a day there, we learned that Kaitlyn’s overfed and overtired. Overfed@!?? Who would’ve thought. Here I was thinking I had low supply, hence baby was feeding so often. When it turned out that my suppy is just fine and the frequent feeding was giving baby a bad case of heartburn and gas, hence the fussiness. With the fussiness, she couldn’t sleep, and no sleep means more fussiness. Ah the Merry-go-around.

So, here is the plan we’ve been following since Friday last week:

Feed every 3 hours, preferrably 4
Watch for tire signs and put baby to cot, awake, wrapped and tucked in
Allow for 3 minutes of wind down crying when putting baby to bed (this is a hard one to follow, 3 minutes just seems so long when baby’s crying and every bit of me wants to just rush in to make her feel better)

We also have to put her on antacid for 48 hours, and thicken her feeds as Kaitlyn has a bad case of reflux and all the spitting up is making her cough and as the spit up burns her throat, she cries.

After 2 days of following the plan, we were seeing results. For the first time since week 2, she slept from 10pm to 4am! That’s SIX WHOLE HOURS of sleep! The last week has been pretty good, night sleep wise. She generally will sleep between 10pm to 8am, with a couple of feeds in between, but will go back to sleep without too much hassle. Day time naps though is another matter, but we are working on that.

This whole parenting thing is challenging and by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s true that one never really know what “tire” is, until one has a child. But then, there are many rewarding moments. Now, I should try to get an hour or two sleep before the next feed.

2 months!

Woot, another month down. Kaitlyn’s 2 months old today. :D The second month is a loth harder than the first month. She has bad gas pains and refuses to sleep on her own these days as she would sleep for a little bit then wake up screaming in pain and kicking her legs like mad. We’ve tried almost every colic stuff out there, infacol, gripe water, Infant’s Friend, Fennel tea, peppermint tea etc. Nothing so far has worked for more than once. Here’s hoping her gas pain gets better after 3 months.

Kaitlyn went to my parents for 6 hours yesterday while I tried to catch up on some sleep. I didn’t sleep for more than an hour at a time still. I guess my sleep cycles had synchronised with Kaitlyn’s… Then it hit me… I will NOT sleep through the night for the next 20 years… By the time she gets over the gas pain, teething, wetting the bed, running into my bed from nightmares… I will be in bed awake waiting for her to come home from slumber parties, going out with friends, boyfriends… etc. /sighs Ah the reality of parenting. I shed a few tears when it was time to go pick up Kaitlyn from my parents’. I just didn’t realise how much I missed the “quiteness” in the house.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my baby, and for the most part I love being a mother. She’s getting a lot more interactive these days. I just missed “MY” time occassionally.

8 weeks old and our first day out

Kaitlyn’s 8 weeks old today :D She’s discovered her hands and grabs everything that comes close… especially my hair! ouchies. She was even “holding” the bottle at the last feeding. It was very cute.

Quite a bit happened last week. We went to the 6 week check up, the follow up visit to the paediatrician for her fall, had a blood test, and I took her out on my own, on public transport, for the first time!

Everything went well at the 6 week check up. The Paediatrician told us to get her a blood test (for her jaundice) and a head ultrasound (to make sure she’s not injured from the fall). So, we had the blood test yesterday… It was painful to watch. The nurse did a heel prick and had to collect THREE TUBES of blood! My poor tiny little baby. THREE TUBES of blood… Well, it took more than 40 minutes and Kaitlyn cried for most of that time. I think it’s more from her foot being held so tight than having blood drawn… But either way, I think I was hurting quite a bit just watching her being “tortured”. A couple of times, I almost said to the nurse, stuff this, we are going home. But we stayed. I want to make sure her jaundice is not serious and maybe find out WHY she’s still jaundiced.

After the blood test, we went shopping at Parramatta. She was a good baby, only cried twice because she was hungery. I didn’t know it was school holidays already yesterday. It took more than an hour to check out at Target! There I was, standing in the queue, carrying the crying baby with one hand, and trying to push a pram full of shopping with another, and trying to move along the queue. It wasn’t all that fun. It was nice that Westfield has parents rooms that has breastfeeding booths!

By the time we got home yesterday, it was almost 6 hours since we left the house in the morning. I couldn’t believe we were out that long, and couldn’t believe I survived on my own, with baby, going around town, by public transport, for that long. I feel quite proud that’s done. I feel more confident now with baby. I hope soon, we can take an excursion into the city. Maybe when the weather clears up a bit…

Oh, by the way, whatever the council is doing with Church Street, in Parramatta, I hope they finish soon. Walking Church Street with a pram is like running an obstical course… Arrgh.

Kaitlyn's 6 weeks checkup

Just a quick update on Kaitlyn’s stats at the 6 week (ok, it’s more like 7 and half week when it was done) checkup:

Weight: 4.75kg (50th Percentile, up 1.3kg from 2 weeks checkup)
Height: 58cm (50th Percentile, up 7cm from 2 weeks checkup)
Head Circumference: 38.5cm (50th Percentile, up 3cm from 2 weeks checkup)

She has good neck/head control, good eye contact, smiles lots and follows voices. All in all, she’s doing great.

6 weeks mark... so is it getting easier?

***Too much information warning, more breastfeeding mentioned ***

Kaitlyn’s 6 weeks today~! I am still breastfeeding, well, that, and expressing. With mum here helping during the day, pumping is a little easier, as I could hand baby to her to hold while I pump rather than getting very frustrated when Kaitlyn doesn’t settle straight away. I bought my own pump now, an Avent ISIS IQ UNO (and an Avent ISIS IQ DUO on its way from the USA) . I have come to accept that this is likely to be the only way I can feed my baby breastmilk. I don’t know how much longer I can go on, thinking too far ahead is a bit depressing as a lot of the time I’d rather be holding and bonding with my baby than dealing with my pump. But, I am taking it one pumping session at a time and a day at a time. I am already very happy and proud that I made it this far considering all the difficulties we encountered on the way. I know each additional day from now on, is a bonus. Right now I am especially happy because I pumped 125mls in one session!!! Considering at the very beginning I was getting 25mls in an entire day of 10 session, this is heaven.

Tomorrow, I am taking Kaitlyn to the GP and once again going to ask for a referral to the Tongue-tie Clinic. It’s such a simple fix really, a little snip and her tongue-tie will be gone. But I have seen 3 different doctors and and everyone goes on about it’s not really a problem (yet, till she starts to speak), and seeing she is taking the bottle ok and gaining weight, no one seems to care that it affects her ability to breastfeed and how exhausting it is for me to have to feed and pump and feed constantly. While I understand their reluctance to NOT perform any surgery (yes, even a slight snip of the tiny muscle connecting the tongue to the bottom of the mouth is a surgery) if not totally necessary. I feel it’s still a stumbling block in her being able to feed properly. SO, until a paediatric dental specialist tells me that it is NOT going to affect her at all, now with feeding and later on with speech, I am going to keep seeing different doctors till one is willing to give me that damn referral to the tongue-tie clinic.

Kaitlyn also has been spitting up and vomitting a lot, as well as getting gas pains. So she’s been fussier than usual. I still think she’s a good baby though because she really still only cries when she is hungery or hurting. We suspect that she has acid reflux as she would wake up 1 to 2 hours after a feed screaming beacuse she just throw up again. We tried feeding her less more often, holding her upright for 30 minutes after each feed, burping her thoroughly etc. She still throws up constantly and it’s making her voice go a bit hoarse. So tomorrow, we will see if the GP will give her anything for it. Perhaps we just have to ride it out and hope that in a few weeks/months as her digestive system matures, she will outgrow this problem.

She’s now smiling a lot… sometimes, in the middle of the night, when I am really really tired, her smiles keep me going and makes everything all wonderful again.

Kaitlyn's Tongue-tie Operation

Just a recap, Kaitlyn had a slight tongue-tie, where a thin bit of muscle was holding her tongue to the bottom of her mouth so she wasn’t able to move her tongue very freely, hence breastfeeding was difficult. She ate slowly and got tired easily even on the bottle. On the bottles, she was unable to eat more than 50mls each session. Baby’s her age should be eating between 100mls to 150mls each session. So she eats very often. On the breast, she could eat for an hour and still scream in hunger.

I went to a few different doctors and they all said it wasn’t a problem as she was still gaining weight. But it was a problem for us, as I was spending EIGHT HOURS a day trying to express enough milk for her to eat EACH DAY, not to mention the mountain of pump parts and bottles to wash constantly. Anyhow, I finally gave up with the public system and called a private dental clinic, and got her “operation” scheduled for Wednesday.

Yesterday, I went to my Obstetrician for my 6 weeks postpartum checkup. I mentioned to Dr. Cocks that the tongue-tie was making breastfeeding difficult and that I was so desperate that I was going to a private clinic. He asked me how much it was going to cost. When I said $650, he raised an eyebrow, then made a phone call. Apparently he knows the nurse that fixes tongue-ties in Westmead Public Hospital!!. So, he talked to the nurse, wrote us a referral and sent us down the road to see her RIGHT AWAY! Oh I was so happy!

We went to see the nurse and she was wonderful and understanding. She explained the procedure to us, which involves cutting the tongue-tie with a pair of sterile scissors very quickly. Kaitlyn was fast asleep when they started the ‘operation’. I had to walk out of the room because 1) I faint at the sight of blood and 2) I hated to see my baby hurt… Kaitlyn handled it very well! There was no screams of pain, just some cries of annoyance for being held down by nurses and fingers in her mouth. She was able to breastfeed right after and had stronger sucks. There wasn’t even much blood.

We had the “operation” at 11am, and now it’s 4am the next day. We still have NOT used the bottles at all. It’s all been breastfeeding so far. She no longer screams after eating and was quite content after 20 minutes on one side and was able to sleep for a couple of hours before asking for food again. There are still “clicking” sounds occassionally when she eats, and her latch is still not “perfect”. But I hope in the next couple of days, she would discover the full use of her newly freed tongue and able to eat even better.

I am worried that she may not be getting enough to eat, but she is wetting her nappies almost every nappy change and appears content after each feed. How many wet nappies a day is normal? I hope we will see a poo soon so I can rest easier knowing she is getting enough food.

It feels weird not using the pump LOL. But it’s a good thing, all of a sudden I seem to have so much more time, to well, sleep! I hope this is the beginning of breastfeeding being “easy”...

One month on...

Kaitlyn turned 1 month old yesterday. She’s officially outgrown her newborn size (0000) clothes and graduated to 000 size. It’s almost incredible how fast babies grow.

For me, it’s been a roller coaster ride of a month. There are still times that I look at Kaitlyn and thought, oh my god, it’s a real baby! I am still getting used to her not being in my tummy, but out here in the big bad world, crying, farting, pooping and almost constantly eating. Occassionally I miss being pregnant, especially feeling her move inside of me. But hey, now I get to see her and hold her, so it really ain’t so bad. :)

On the c-section:
I will do it again without any second thoughts. With Kaitlyn’s size, I would not have been able to birth her the “other” way anyhow. So definitely no regrets. The recovery had been amazingly quick and easy. I must get my obstetrician a Thank You Card.

On being a mum:
It’s definitely the most difficult thing I have ever done, mainly because the total lack of control. Everything is dictated by the little person. There are times that I feel like sticking a ‘return to sender” note on her forehead and asking for a refund. However, I do love her, the love of a parent to a child is quite an amazing thing… Do I love being a mum? Yes for the most part. I do look forward to seeing what new things each day brings. She’s growing so fast, I am almost afraid to blink, in fear that I may miss something.

On life before Kaitlyn:
Occassionally, snippets of events, people and memories float to the surface, and they all feel so far far away. I do mourn the loss of certain aspects of the Life before Kaitlyn.

On Kaitlyn:
I am totally in love with this little person. I think she’s the cutest thing LOL, even when she’s all smelly and cranky. She smiles AT people now, it totally melts my heart when she does. :)

Well, here’s to surviving the first month, and I am sure before I have a chance to blink, she will be starting school…