camila: month six.

Physical

You give us a million funny expressions every day. We recognize a lot of them as faces that your Mama also makes, but you are beginning to look a lot like your Daddy. Whoever you take after, you’re absolutely adorable.

You still have hazel eyes, very greyish blue, sometimes greenish or brown. No signs of teeth yet, although we know they’re right around the corner! And your hair… we can’t tame that sweet mess. We try, but it keeps growing up and outward! I can’t bring myself to consider cutting it before a year, so you’re going to have to live with barrettes and ponytails and hair in your eyes.

Big news: you’re growing! 1.25in in the last two months to put you at 26in tall (not the 75th anymore, but over the 50th percentile still)… and for weight, you’re at 12lb 14oz! A gain of 14oz this month, so 3oz each week! You’re now between the 3-5th percentiles, and if you stay there, that’s fine with us. Just no more dropping off the chart!

It’s no surprise that you’re still wearing all your 3-6month clothing. Some of it is even too big, which makes me wonder if you’ll be able to fit into your summer clothes before fall. And we’ve yet to find a pair of shoes that would even remotely fit, even 0-3mo sizes. What’s with your tiny and narrow feet??

Developmental

You still roll over like crazy, day and night, but you’ve learned to safely settle yourself on your tummy to fall asleep. You also can wiggle and squirm yourself around in a circle or maybe a foot or two forward. We’ve found you in all kinds of weird positions in your crib (sadly, usually squished up in the corner).

You don’t really love being made to sit. We have “sit practice” each day, and you’re making progress, but you much prefer standing. You love, love, love to stand up, and can do so with just one of our fingers for support, or with us holding you at your hips. You can support yourself by grabbing onto your crib bars and holding on, although the “holding on” part needs improvement! So strong.

You still love grabbing and playing with all your toys, no discrimination. Your little newborn crinkle bug, your plush owl with a lovey, your activity mat that you only got last month, your big girl walker (in which you need a pillow to “touch” the floor in), you just love to play.

You vocalize quite a bit at times. When you start, it usually goes on (loudly) for a few minutes straight. You especially enjoy talking to your toys. You also started blowing raspberryish sounds. Your feet are generally always a second away from being in your mouth- you really love chewing your toes!

Personality

You’re still a silly sweetheart. Very goofy, very smiley. You’re back to making huge, open mouthed grins at us all day long, especially when we grin or make crazy faces at you. When something excites you (a cat, a toy dangled in your face), you kind of freak out. It’s outrageously cute- your eyes pop, your jaw drops, and your arms fly out and shake.

You clearly love me very much, but a Daddy’s girl you may very well be. You only laugh for him (he knows all the stupid things that make you squeal)! And you love taking naps on him, still. Although you’re cuddly with both of us!

I feel like you’ve been much less fussy this month (I’m guessing your hunger affected your mood last month). You’ve gone back to being able to chill on my lap for an hour or two after waking up, or on the floor or bed with toys for a while. You’re even cool with just chilling in your car seat, totally awake. I love seeing (and hearing) you so content in your environment!

Eating

I’ll start with your first week. You were bumped up to 1oz of formula after every nursing session, plus a 4oz bottle at bedtime, so a total of about 12oz supplement a day. There would have been no way for you to get a good nursing in at bedtime. We got down to just 10oz or so of my frozen breast milk, and I was only able to pump about .25-1oz all day for you.

Despite being supplemented, you still only gained less than 2oz all week, so again the pediatrician and LCs asked me to consider more supplement. Instead, we got you donor milk through a milk share program! Long story short, five very wonderful mamas donated their little one’s milk to help you grow. For the rest of the month, you were given about 18oz of breast milk supplement a day- no formula at all!

Your nursing patterns are very steady throughout the day. You have never been a baby that gives hunger cues at all (except for maybe in your early newborn days), so I feed you by the clock, every two hours. The nighttime and morning feedings are good- you’ll nurse with minimal fussing for a few minutes at a time, without me having to stop and hand express milk. As the day goes on, it gets more and more and more difficult. By the evening, you never nurse for longer than a minute without getting super frustrated (it’s obvious my supply by the end of the day isn’t nearly enough). I forcefully hand express milk, then let you latch back on, over and over every few seconds. It’s obvious nursing is of no comfort to you later in the day.

You still love your bottles. When you get them, I have to practice paced feeding with you, to mimic breastfeeding. We also got a supplemental nursing system, with tubes that I tape on my breast to allow you to get supplement while nursing. You did fairly well with it, although it’s very messy and the device has started to leak.

One awesome, unexpected thing? You totally weaned from nipple shields. We started taking it away here and there, only using it at night to coax you into staying latched longer. But a few days into the month, I noticed your latch was strong enough to not ever need it. Yay!

Sleeping

The first week, when you were still being supplemented with formula, was normal and predictable. You even got a 10 hour stretch in there! But upon word that you still weren’t gaining weight, and an LC asking us to not let you go so long without eating overnight, things changed.

If you don’t wake up before I go to bed, I will sometimes “dream feed” you around 2 or 3am (I know, your Mama is the worst at bedtime). You usually do wake up, though, mostly because you’ve started having wet diapers overnight again. For a long time, you’d go the whole 12 hours with a dry diaper! Not great.

With the easily digested donor breast milk, you do wake up twice a night again, so this month has been very different overall. You’ve always gone to bed very easily, but this month you’ve been entirely unpredictable even downright difficult. Sometimes you still fall asleep immediately, but one night it took us two hours to get you to fall asleep! Yikes. Whether I wake you or you wake on your own, you still start fussing again around 3/4am, then again at 7/8am. Up for the day at about 11am.

You aren’t a strict nap schedule, nor will you likely ever be, but you do take three (sometimes four) naps a day. Most of them are very short, between 25-45 minutes. Most often I have to work to get you to sleep. Dad has his own tricks, which generally work better. The stroller also puts you to sleep if you’re tired, and car rides will if we’re driving long enough.

Baby loves

This month you discovered the cats, and you really freak out about them. You’re learning “gentle” but prefer grabbing tiny fistfuls of fur.

You still love: when we smile at you, mirrors, toys, when I make “sparkle jazz hands”, stroller rides, standing, the walker, your feet, Daddy’s funny voices, and reading books. You’ve also become very fond of peeing the very second we take off your diaper to get you a new one.

Mama loves

Baby, I love your personality. You’re so wonderfully goofy to watch and listen to (it’s almost as if you’re entertaining us instead of the other way around), but oh so sweet. You’re gotten very cuddly this month, and I adore carrying you around when you’re so chill and snuggly.

Dada loves

Dada loves changing your smelly formula poop diapers. (Jeremy! Please edit this or all the poop diapers are belong to you.)

Month One

Month Two

Month Three

Month Four

Month Five

happy 6 months, camila rose!

May 19, 2013, 11:28pm. Half a year old already!

lately.

Lately life has been sprinkled with really nice little things, things that make me a little happier to be right where I’m at. 

Thursday night NBC’s The Office aired the series finale, bringing to close a nine year run, of which I have watched in real time for nine years. I’ve never stuck with another series for that long (although, Grey’s Anatomy will surpass that next year), so the ending was emotional for me. And hilarious. And emotional again.

That same night, when Jeremy came home, he scooped up the baby (as he always does) and presented me with tickets to the ballet and said he’d arranged childcare for Mila. As you can guess, the man is not a fan of “going to the ballet”, but he knows I was really wanting to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream, my favorite Shakespeare play, performed by a local ballet school on Friday at my absolute favorite building in Indianapolis.

The dancing wasn’t of the same caliber as a professional company, but it was really enjoyable to watch. Indianapolis just cannot sustain a professional ballet company- we’ve tried and sadly failed. It really makes me long to go see the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago (or, of course, the New York City Ballet or American Ballet Theater, among others). Overall, it was a surprisingly very clean performance with solid technique and interesting choreography, which I do prefer to sloppy execution of more difficult technique.

And today has been the laziest day I’ve had since I was pregnant, and it was exactly what I wanted. Camila went to bed easily enough, though a little later, at 11:30pm. I dream fed Mila at 3am when I went to bed and let Jeremy handle the 8am feeding. She didn’t even wake up until after noon, which isn’t too rare but always majorly appreciated. And that meant I didn’t get out of bed until nearly 1pm. Awesome. And lazy, but mostly awesome. The rest of the day went like this: brunch in bed, movie on the couch, lunch, going on a walk, taking a nap, watching another movie while Jeremy and Camila went on another walk, eating cookies… yeah. Mom needed a break. Thank you, husband.

And tomorrow my baby will be half a year old. WHAT?!?