4 Months!!

Kaitlyn's 4 months now.

She discovered she could scream/yell last week so now she does it ALL the time, regardless of her mood. She seems to just like to hear her own voice. Oh my poor ear drums...

She had one night of sleeping right through the night, followed by a few nights of very bad sleep. Perhaps I just don't have a kid that's meant to sleep through the night. Ah well. I really don't mind the waking up once at 3am to feed her, every couple of hours though, that's bit much. Looking back, I really don't know how I managed to survived the month 2 and 3 as I barely had 2 hours sleep each day for weeks and weeks... So now whenever I have a rough night, I just remind myself, at least it's a lot better than before.


We bought her a highchair and she loves it. It's great for me too, as I can now just sit her in the chair and push her around the house in it while I do housework.


She's sitting great now on her own, "like a normal person" so daddy says.



We got given a shirt that says "Lock up your sons" and a beanie that says "Spit Happens".






There are some more new photos, on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lesetoiles/sets/72157604000653997/

The weather last week or 2 has been really annoying and we were stuck at home most days. It's driving me batty (er). I do like spending time with my baby but sometimes some grown-up company would be so much appreciated. I don't know how full time stay-at-home-mothers do it for years and years... Maybe it gets better once the kids can talk? I don't know. The sun's out today and hopefully for the next week. So we can go out for a few days :)

I finally got the all clear from the Obstetrician to exercise (long story and way too much information if I tell). So I do an hour of exercise a day from a couple of dvds (The Perfect Postnatal workout and Postnatal Yoga). The Perfect Postnatal Workout is great, as it incorporate the baby into the exercise and use her for weight training. Kaitlyn loves the workout too, she normally giggles the whole time. I am already seeing results as I can fit into my "normal" jeans perfectly now and finally have a waist again after all these months! Can't wait to get my flat tummy back.

bad mummy...

Last night after the bath, I put baby to bed. She settled and fell asleep on her own quite quickly. Then about 1 hour later, she started whining and grizzling. I waited outside her door to see if she'd settle back down on her own, but she didn't. So I walked in to check on her. THEN, I realised that I had not turned off the heater!!! The heater had been on its highest setting for the past 1.5 HOURS, and the room was like a steam room!! There my baby lay in a pool of sweat, crying. It took me 3 hours to settle her back to sleep, and she continued to wake every 2 hours throughout the night...

I dread to think what would've happened if she didn't wake up and cry, hence drawing me into her room. Or if we had done the "cry it out" method and ignored her cries. With the room at 30 degrees celcius and her wrapped twice and rugged up... the outcome could've been very disasterous... /sighs once again, I feel like a horrible mummy.

Lessons learnt, Part III -- Caring for a newborn (0 to3 months)

This is my first child and there's just so much to learn every day. Being a mother is the hardest thing I've ever done. Here are the most important things I've learned:

• IF your child has a tongue tie, do everyone a favour, and GET IT RELEASED/CUT. Kaitlyn's tongue tied caused us a lot of crying, pain and sleepless nights. I constantly had sore, bleeding nipples, Kaitlyn never ate enough in one sitting even with bottles and had to eat every 1.5 hours. It's very frustrating that most doctors won't give referrals to have the tongue tie fixed due "political correctness". F*** political correctness I'd say, in this case. I wish I had gotten Kaitlyn's done as soon as she was born. I probably would've have a chubbier baby and would've saved everyone a lot pain.

• The baby sets the schedule for your day

• The nights are long, but the weeks are short

• Parenting is a learnt skill, although you should trust your instincts, there are techniques that can be learned that may make life easier for everyone

• Always respond to your baby's cries. ALWAYS, at least till the baby turns 6 months. Baby needs to know that you will be there for him/her. Responding to the baby's cries, builds the trust relationship between parent and child.

• Buy nappies in bulk. The new born size (green Huggies) will only last a couple of weeks. But from Infant size (4 to 8kg), buy in bulk whenever it's on sale. Kaitlyn used Infant size till she was 6 months.

• Buy baby wipes in bulk. You can never have too many baby wipes, unless you are wanting to use cloths and water.

• Wrap the baby, not too tightly of course. And wrap the baby with the arms near the face as most babies sooth themselves with the arms/hands. During the first month or so, you may want to swaddle, i.e. wrap the legs in as well, so they don't startle themselves when kicking. Gradually, they will not need to be wrapped. Your baby will let you know when.

• The belly button: Bath and clean your baby as you normally would even when the belly button stump is still in. It's ok if it bled slightly, or smelled SLIGHTLY off. It should fall off on its own between 7 to 10 days. Do NOT pull or try to break it off, EVER. If in doubt call the doctor.

• Finger nails: for the first 2 months, their nails are very soft. There's no need to use a nail clipper or pair of scissors to cut them. They can be easily peeled off with your finger nails or your teeth. Remember not to peel too far. This is best done right after a feed when they are drowsy.

• Nursing station: set up a nursing station for breastfeeding. You will need:

• a comfortable chair, preferrably with foot rest. I LOVE my rocking chair, wouldn't have survived the early months without it.
  
• A table next to it where you can put the following: Water, protein bars, moisturiser for the baby, nipple cream, some reading material, burp towels, a clock.
  
• A pillow or 10 for your back, and a blanket to keep you legs warm. You are not sure how long your baby will eat for, so be comfortable.
• If you are someone that gets many phone calls, put your phone close by too
• You will be glad you have everyone close by as walking around with a baby attached to your boobs is NOT a good look and is definitely not easy once they are more than 3 weeks old
• Go to the toilet before you start a breastfeeding session

• Vaccinations: Your baby will have a vaccination at birth, 1 at 1 month old, and 1 at 3 months old. Note the following:
• he/she may get sick, have a temperature, have runny poops, a lot more whiney and clingy. Or he/she might just sleep A LOT right through it.
• If he/she has a temperature above 38 degrees celcius, give baby panadol every 6 hours. If temperature is higher than 38.5 degrees celcius, take baby to doctor right away
• Keep baby hydrated by nursing often. Even if baby is sleeping, wake him/her up every 3 hours max to feed.

• Playtime: You have precious little awake time during the first couple of months. Talk to the baby, let him/her watch your face and expressions. When he/she is a little more interactive around 2 or 3 months, introduce colourful simple toys. Kaitlyn loves a fluffy flower.
  

• Bath time, we bathed Kaitlyn every night. Not because baby gets dirty, but we wanted to set a routine for her. Remember to support baby's neck when bathing.

• Bedtime routines (4 Bs): It took us months before we figure out her routine and introduced bedtime routine. I wish we had done it earlier. Every night around 8pm, she gets bathed, bottled fed, a book was read to her, then we put her to bed.

• Tummy time: do it, and do it often. I wish we did more of it. Put baby on a mat on the floor and on her tummy for a few minutes at a time.

• Reflux and collic:
• Kaitlyn had both. The collic went away around 5 months and Reflux around 6 months. So yeah, eventually it was all better.
• While you are going through it though, it can be tough
• Make sure you have MANY burp towels. just little face cloths that you use to clean up her mess.
• Get changed soon as you get home (if you are working) into cloths that you do not mind being vomitted on.
• Burp the baby after each feed and make sure you get a few burps before laying him/her down
• Keep a food diary if you are breastfeeding, so you know if anything you eat may be stting off worse collic or reflux
• Tilt the bed so baby's head is higher than the feet. Kaitlyn slept a lot better with the inclined bed during the first 6 months. You can lower the head of the bed again when baby's ready.
  

• Making the bed:
  
• do NOT put any soft toys, mobiles, pillows, thick blankets on the bed to avoid SIDS
• Put baby to the foot of the bed to sleep so avoid baby falling under the blankets
• Put the following on the bed: 1x water proof fitted sheet, 1 cotton fitted sheet, then again on top of that, 1 water proof fitted sheet, and 1 cotton fitten sheet. Reason being, if baby did a boo boo in the middle of the night (vomit or wet the bed), you only need to remove the top fitten sheet and water proof sheet and you now have a fresh bed. Nothing worse than having to wander around the house, look for a new set of bedding and then making the bed. Not to mention the noise may wake the baby.
• if in winter and have to use doona, use breathable ones, and make sure the sides are securely tucked under the bed

• SLEEP when baby does. If you only have one child and you child actually sleeps, make sure you sleep as well. Ignore the dishes, ignore the mountain of laundry, etc. SLEEP. You will be glad you did.
  

That's all I can think of right now. I am sure there's plenty more that I have forgotten. A new baby is quite a challenge. Everyday you get more tired, but everyday there's so much joy as you see baby do new things almost daily. Enjoy the newborn period, because too soon, you will realise, they have grown up so big and way too quickly.

Week 16, a quick update

We've had a few very busy weeks. Kaitlyn's learning quite quickly now:

• She finally rolled over from tummy to back at 15 weeks and 2 days.
  
• She's also saying "mama" a lot, although I doubt she knows what it means yet, so I won't count it as first words. ;)
• She's sitting on her own without our assistance now with a pillow behind her
• She grabs things quite well and started to throw things around
• She plays with two hands together
  
• She is starting to show preferences for certain people, although I am trying to take her out often so that she doesn't develop too much "stranger anxiety"
• She holds her own bottle consistently
• She's drooling even more and chews anything that she can bring to her mouth
• She's forming attachments to a little Bee toy that we bought, and her yellow doona
  

There are probably other things I had forgotten, but she's just woken up, so I am off to tend to her needs. Oh, she's almost 6 kilograms and fast growing out of 00 size (3 to 6 months) clothes.

Lessons Leart Part II -- Birth

I had a caesarean section and yes I chose to have a caesarean section. I read many books, about all sorts of birthing options, home birth, water birth, assisted birth with forceps/vacumme, episotomy, c-section. I had thought long and hard over the my choices and I can truly say it was an informed decision and I had absolutely no regrets. To any other women who chose or may choose to have a c-section and had been made (unfortunately mostly by other women) to feel guilty about not giving their babies "THE birthing experience", or to feel guilty about losing out on an experience for themselves... well, follow your heart, your intuition and learn as much about all birthing options as you can. You are the only one who knows your body the best, you are the one who will have to live with whatever birthing choice you may make, with whatever scar/s you may get and wherever you may get them. If people don't like your decision, tell them to get some legos and build a bridge to get over it. Oh and if like me, a man tells you that from personal experience, natural is better. Ask him this: "What personal experience? Have you had an umbrella stuck up your penis and then opened? No? Well, maybe you should try that first before offering advice to a woman on whether to push out a baby." I have read many wonderful natural birthing stories, but I also heard too many horrible tales of babies in distress because the mothers just insisting on "all natural"...


I believe there's no RIGHT way of giving birth. There's no ONE way that is superior than any other way. A woman carried a baby from a single cell to full term of over 9000 billion cells, that's accomplishment enough. Being a mother is not JUST about the birth, as after the birth. the real task of parenting is only beginning. Personally, I did not need to have pushed out a 7 1/2 pound baby to prove I am more of a woman or more of a mother. Personally, I didn't NEED to experience the hours of pain and torture to feel more bonded to my child. But then, as I said it's just my personal opinion. I have total admirations and respect for women who do push out their babies and lived the tell the tale. /hats off to you.


* what to bring to the hospital

I overpacked. I always seem to overpack. So, here's a list of what I do find useful and stuff i didn't use


Useful stuff:

• personal toiletries: shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, facial cleanser, moisturiser, face cream, toner, LIP BALM, hair brush, SHOWER CAP
• slippers, next time I would bring a warm fluffy pair
• tops that buttons at the front if you plan to breastfeed
• warm socks
• outfits that you'd wear when you were around 6 months pregnant
• BRING YOUR OWN DOUBLE ELECTRIC BREASTPUMP. Learn from my mistake, invest in a good double electric pump (I love the Avent ISIS IQ DUO) before you give birth. The first few days of your baby's life, she/he will sleep a lot. Pump every couple of hours from the FIRST DAY so your milk will come in earlier and in more abundance. You really don't want your baby to be screaming in the middle of the night after 3 days because your milk still has not come in...
• disposable underwear in LARGE size. You don't want to ruin your good underwear, also, most of your panties won't fit anyways.
• Remember your camera/video camera and spare batteries
• pen and notepad to write down your thoughts and birth story

Useless things that took up space in my bag:

• books (you will be tired, overwhelmed with emotions/hormones, and busy feeding/settling your new born, seriously, you think you'd still have time to read?)
• snacks (the hospital fed me really well

* Recovery from c-section/birth

My recovery was relatively painfree and easy. I was off all pain meds by the end of the first week, and was able to walk around the hospital on the second day postpartum.

• Be on a semi-liquid diet from the day before the operation
• Stay on a liquid diet till you've passed gas and had bowl movements
• Get the cathetor AFTER you had your spinal block during the operation. My Obstetrician doesn't believe in putting in cathetors as he wants us to get off the bed and move around as soon as possible... well, I could move around without a problem, but having not had any water for hours and hours, peeing wasn't a simple task... They will take out the cathetor after 24 hours anyways.
• Get moving! Move your toes, legs, arms etc. as soon as you can out of the operation, and within hours hopefully you should be sitting up and eventually getting out of your hospital bed by end of the day of the operation. Then after a good night rest (hopefully), try to walk around a bit the next day. Slowly increase the walking during your hospital stay. Yes, it hurts to begin with, but the sooner you get moving, the sooner you will feel a world better.
  
• Pillows! Use the pillow to hold onto your incision site when you need to laugh, cry, cough, sneeze etc. And use the pillows for breastfeeding, it will help to make sure baby doesn't kick your incision site and will save your back and arms
• The only thing I got annoyed with in the hospital was they didn't remove my IV needles for 36 hours... by then, my arm was all bruised and itchy. So make sure you get the nurses to check our IV thingie regularly and remove it when you no longer need it
• Do NOT overdo anything. Basically for the first 6 weeks, your top priority is YOUR BABY. Don't worry about housework etc. You are to feed and care for your baby and nothing else
• Keep warm. For some reason, I was cold and sweating buckets all at the same time for weeks after the birth. If I am as much as catch a bit of breeze, I sneeze and have a runny nose for the whole day, which was very annoying. The postpartum sweating, wow, that's something that no one have told me before, and I have never ever ever sweated so much in my entire life. I would wake up after every sleep/nap covered in sweat, even my hair was wet. The sweating eased up after about 8 weeks for me
• Drink LOTS OF WATER, seriously, LOTS, especially if you are breastfeeding.

Cloning?

The Black and White one was me at 3 months, and the coloured one Kaitlyn at 3 months...

I was so chubby.

I think we look pretty alike, don't you? :D

Lessons Learnt, Part I -- Pregnancy

I have been thinking about writing up some lessons I've learnt throughout the pregnancy, birth and new born times, so that I guess if I get a chance to have a second, I won't make the same mistakes again. For anyone else reading, these are by no means expert advice LOL. As a very wise song once said "Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of wishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling for more than it's worth."

-------

Part I -- Pregnancy

* The sense of amazement and disbelief

Yes, we all know about the birds and the bees, we all took biology classes and saw enough documentaries on the Discovery Channel to know how it could "technically" happen. But no matter how much you know about the machanics of things and whether the pregnancy is fitting perfectly in your schedule and plans, when it does happen, you will still experience an overwhelming sense of amazement and disbelief, and asking yourself, "how did it happen?" Maybe it's like what my accountant said, "daddy took a trip and fell on mummy". I remember the day I found out about the pregnancy, I had this feeling for a couple of weeks that I should test, but just couldn't find the guts to do so. When I did, actually at work, in the bathroom, how very romatic, I was in shock. I laughed and cried all at the same time, and just stood there staring at the second line on the pregnancy test in totaly disbelief. All of a sudden the world just changed and priorities rearranged themselves. I had an uni exam that night, and as usual, I hadn't studied. After I got the pregnancy test results, I actually just couldn't be bothered to study (lucky I did good enough during the semester to still get through the subject with a Credit even though I only completed half of the exam paper).


* Your body is NEVER the same again

It's just one of those things, nature allows your body to "create", nurture and grow a human being from a single cell to over 6,000 billion cells in a short 10 months, something has to give. Most likely it is your body that is doing most of the giving. It doesn't matter how little weight you put on, how fit you keep yourself throughout the pregnancy or if you gave birth the 'old fashion way" or c-section, your body will NOT be the same again after the pregnancy and birth. It may not be all bad. You just may find yourself needing to buy new clothes even when you've gotten rid off all the pregnancy weight.


* You have NO control

For a control freak like me, this is one of the hardest thing to come to terms with about the pregnancy. From very early on in the pregnancy, you just have to learn, you have NO control.

• You have NO control over your bodily functions (when you pee, how often you pee, when you sleep, how much you sleep, when or where you may throw up etc.),
• you have NO control over what you eat and drink (what you used to love to eat may all of sudden become disgusting to you and things you never ate before may all of sudden become very appealing),
• you have NO control over your mental faculties (you will have temporary memories losses, lapses of time, and simply spend hours perhaps staring out the window and not knowing you've been doing it)
• you have NO control over how much weight you'd put on (you can eat healthy, but as you have no control over what you eat or drink this gets a bit difficult. And you should NEVER try to go on a diet while pregnant as it is harmful to the fetus)
  

The earlier you accept that you have no control, and allow your body to do what it's been designed and destined to do, the easier the pregnancy will be and the better you will feel about it.


* On sleeping

• You will sleep A LOT during the first trimester as you will be constantly tired and drowsy. Sleep as much as you can while you can.
• You won't get much sleep during the last trimester because your tummy's gotten so big you can't get comfortable, and your baby kicks and moves a lot as soon as you do get comfortable and drift off.
• Get lots of pillows of different sizes and shapes. Mix and match till you are comfortable. I was surrounded by 6 pillows of various sizes and shape when I was pregnant. I love the smalle wedge (bought at Kmart for 9 dollars), and the vshape pillow (also at Kmart for about 20 dollars).
• Invest in a good comfortable rocking chair with high back, arm rests and foot stool. You may find towards the end of your pregnancy, you could only sleep if you are sitting in your rocking chair.

* On maternity clothes

Maternity clothes are expensive, so here are some tips to minimise the need for them

• buy a belly belt. It's pretty much a wide cotton belt that you can put over the top of your normal pants/jeans/skirts and holds them up without you having to button/zip up the pants. An example of this is the BellaBand (http://www.ingridandisabel.com/bellaband.html). I actually bought mine from Target for 15 dollars each. It'd help you get more wears out of your maternity clothes (if you bought any) after the birth too.
• If you must buy maternity clothes, buy dresses. Buying pants means you are likely to have to buy a few different sizes. buying dresses means you can wear it for the entire pregnancy.

* On the ever expanding busts

Not sure if this is a blessing or curse of pregnancy, but your boobs will expand.

• They will be sore, very sore, especially at the beginning of the pregnancy
• Get good comfortable bras WITHOUGH underwires.
• Until the last trimester, your good comfortable sports bras would work just as well as a maternity bra
• Best to get your maternity bras fitted during the last few weeks of the pregnancy, so you don't have to get new ones when your milk comes in
• put whatever stretchmark creams you are using on your boobs as well, you just may get stretchmarks there too

* The much dreaded stretchmarks

Well, the brutal truth is, unless you are the 10% of all female population that is genetically immuned to stretchmarks, AND you are young (I am saying under 20/25?) AND you have exceptionally good skin to begin with, you WILL get stretchmarks. Maybe not till the last few weeks, maybe not very many of them, but you WILL get them. If you are unsure of your genes on stretchmarks, ask your mother, or a sister that has given birth. If they had them, most likely you WILL get them. I didn't get any till the week 35! /sighs


So, now the doom and gloom is out of the way, does that mean you won't use any creams and potions? Heck no. You still use them, even if it's just for the placebo effect or to help you sleep a bit better at night because it reduces the itchness of your tummy. As to which ones to use, it's totally up to you.


I have been told by Been There Done That mothers to wear mine proud as badges of honour to having carried a child from single cell to full term. It's a lot easier said than done. You will get depressed over the ruining of your pre-pregnancy body. But in the end, you get a healthy baby, it's not THAT bad a deal really.


* Thump-Thump (the controversy)

I unashamedly admit that I used "The BabyPlus Education System" throughout the pregnancy. See:http://www.babyplus.com/ It's a plastic box that you wear on your belly, which has 16 different "lessons" you play to your baby for 1 hour in the morning and 1 hour at night from 18 weeks to full term. The lessons are rythmic beats, starting simple and slow, to quite fast and complex toward the end. We call it the Thump-thump as it does make rather loud thumping sounds. I even wore it on the train a few times to work, it's funny to see people looking around to trying to figure out where the thumping is coming from.


So, is it worth my time and did it help the baby?


During the pregnancy, baby reacts to the thumping quite consistently. She will move around more when thump-thump was on, sometimes even tapping with the beats. It's a good excuse for me to spend some quiet quality time with my belly/baby. Some people read to their belly, some people play music, I guess I just chose to use thump-thump. Baby had a very predictable schedule while in my belly of wake and sleeping.


Kaitlyn was born at 38.5 weeks (full term is 40 weeks). At birth, Kaitlyn was alert, with eyes wide open and a very loud cry that didn't sound like a new born cry (you know the ones that sounds like a injured kitten meowing). She scored 9/10 and 9/10 for her APGAR (score based on 1 minute and 5 minutes after birth, on skin colour, Heartrate, reflex, muscle tone and breathing). She was alert when she was awake. She nursed like a champ the first time we put her to breast. Personally I believe if not for the tongue-tie, we would've had a much easier time with breastfeeding from the start.


Developmentally (keep in mind I am biased as I am her mother), she was socially smiling from week 3, able to hold her head up from about week 6, started to grab/reach for things around week 9, held her own bottle at feeding at week 10. I believe she's at least a bit ahead of the normal developmental curve, and I can only hope this trend continues.


So, how much of it do i contribute to using thump-thump? I don't know exactly. But I know enough that I will use it for my second baby if I have one. I bought my BabyPlus from eBay for 1/3 the original price. Would I buy it at full price? I will tell you when Kaitlyn's a couple of years old :D


That's all I can think of right now. Stay tuned for Part II -- Birth, coming soon to the LiveBlog near you.