New baby skills: dancing, clapping, and sitting down from a standing position

Sophie’s new skills that she picked up recently are clapping (she likes to stay up at night and sit and clap instead of sleep!) and dance! How does she dance? She holds my hands or the couch or any other object that will prop her up into standing position and she’ll bounce. Funny girl! It looks like she is dancing!

The other new skill she’s learned is how to get back down to a seated position after she pulled herself up into a standing position. She used to cry out for me until I grabbed her and saved her from standing too long. And she also used to plop down and cry out because she’d sometimes go backwards and bang her head on the side of the crib. But now? She’s learned from those experiences and somehow learned to gracefully lower herself down into a sitting position. Wow! No more crying. No more bangs on her head. Just a gentle lowering and sitting. I’m seriously impressed! What a fast learner she is!

I even managed to play peek-a-boo yesterday with her hands as the cover. After a few times, she learned to move her hands away herself. And when I switched to my hands, she started to move my hands away so she could see me. Hahaha. Oh the joys of parenthood. It’s so much fun watching her gain new skills. These new skills are coming so quickly! Maybe she’ll start signing soon! We’re taking a baby signing class so she can learn to communicate what she wants before she learns to talk. We’ll see if she picks up on the signs! I guess it depends on me, the teacher, if I’m consistent about showing her the signs!

Tags: baby's development

Baby is Standing and Crawling!

My baby just started standing up while holding my hands on the bed one day. About a week and half ago, she brought herself to a standing position and then proceeded to sit down, stand up, sit down, stand up and repeat. It was so cute!!! I was amazed by her new-found skill. She had been kind of crawling and reaching for objects, but after this standing exercise, she’s been a standing and crawling pro!

Back Into My Pre-Pregnancy Jeans!

I’ve been back into my pre-pregnancy jeans for a few weeks now. Woohoo! I thought this day would never arrive, but it did, and with very minimal intervention by me. You see, I actually haven’t exercised formally for a month, since we reduced our nanny’s hours due to finances. But, I have been eating healthier, just to have more energy. Also, with my baby starting to crawl and stand, I don’t have as much time to make myself food. I’m making sure I’m close by so she doesn’t hurt herself since we haven’t baby-proofed the apartment yet.

It’s now 8 months after I gave birth and I’ve dropped 32 pounds! Still 7-8 more pounds to go before I reach my pre-pregnancy weight. It’s amazing to me that I was able to gain this much weight on my petite frame. It was 44% of my original body weight. Doesn’t that sound crazy?

After being so much bigger for so long, it’s hard to imagine what I was like before. I look at some of my old clothes or see how they fit so tightly and wonder how I ever fit in there! It’s amazing. Our bodies are so fascinating. The changes they go through are hard to imagine until you go through them.

I wonder when I will be back to my pre-pregnancy weight? Is it 9 months to gain, 9 months to lose? Most people tell me it’s usually at the 1 year mark. Some people never lose all the weight. And others have said that the last 5-10 pounds hang on until you stop breastfeeding. I wonder what it’s going to be like for me.

In the meantime, maybe I should help the process along by doing some sit-ups. Surely I can fit that into my schedule every day!

Tags: Weight

What do baby’s raspberries mean?

I used to think raspberries were a way for babies to have fun, but I have noticed a new pattern lately. Every time my baby (now 7 months old) misses her nap, she starts making raspberries and they get progressively stronger and more intense until we put her to bed. The same happens if she’s up past her bedtime. Seeing this pattern appear only when she is tired, or over-tired, I now believe that raspberries are an indication of being tired! After some furious raspberry episodes, my baby finally cries out because she wants to be nursed to sleep.

I spoke with a nanny who said that she believes that babies make raspberries when their tooth is about to come out. This may be true too. My baby is definitely teething right now. There was a period of time after her first tooth came up where we didn’t see any more raspberries, but now they are back full force. It looks like this is her new way of communicating that she’s tired. No more yawns, eye rubbing (or very seldom do we see this anymore) and even the pulling hair and ear pulling all seem to have been replaced with raspberries! They are fun to watch, so I’m going to enjoy them while this phase lasts! Of course I’m going to try to avoid making my baby tired first. I would much rather see a sleeping baby than one who is raspberry-ing, no matter how cute it is!

Creating a Healthy Sleep Schedule for the Baby

This has been one of my most challenging tasks. Because our baby had severe day-night confusion, just getting my baby to sleep at night instead of during the day was a HUGE milestone for me. As I’ve been catching up on sleep, it’s been hard start getting up at night for feedings because I wanted to actually be able to do something during the day instead of sleep! The way I was able to make that happen was to breast feed laying down in bed and have the baby sleep in the middle of the bed. This has worked great so far, but now she’s getting more alert and I’m worried that she won’t want to transition to a crib when it’s time.

I was hoping to wait until she stopped the night feedings to transition her to the crib, but our pediatrician encouraged us to start doing it after our 4 month visit. She is now almost 6 months now and with our move, it just wasn’t possible to think about doing that. We decided to try last night and she cried so hard! Wow… people talk about sleep training, but after that experience, I don’t think I can ever do it again. First of all, it’s NOT healthy for the baby to be crying like that. Even for 5 minutes, she was so distressed that there was no way she was going to fall asleep. After two 5 minute sessions of trying, we stopped and decided to feed her instead. After she fed, she fell right asleep. Even though she had fed not to long ago,  I realized that my baby is not just crying out of not wanting to be alone. She is crying because she is really trying to communicate something to us, and this time it was because she was really hungry! So no more sleep training by crying for us. There HAS to be a better way.

The biggest problem we’ve had is her sleep schedule. She goes to bed very late. 10pm, 11pm. Occasionally it will be 9pm. It’s a huge improvement from the midnight, 1am, 2am, or even 5 or 6am bedtimes I used to endure. The 8am ones were the worst, but that’s all behind us now and I would love to get her to bed between 6-8 like other babies her age. That’s why she is protesting. She’s not tired. I don’t know why, but my baby has not slept as much as other babies. If she does take naps one day, she won’t the next. Some days she’ll only get 9.5 hours of sleep total! That’s compared to other babies that get 14 or 15 hours. But, she’s not cranky at all…

I managed to get her to take naps by breastfeeding her in bed just before nap times. But, how can I do it without feeding her that way? Any ideas? We were able to get her to take naps in the Sleeper/Rocker by feeding her by bottle. Are these the only ways for her to go to sleep? She won’t sleep unless she’s fed to sleep, and even then, it’s not all the time. Hopefully we can regulate her sleep schedule and nap schedule. At least she consistently wakes up early in the morning! Small victories!

Tags: baby's development

Getting My Pre-Pregnancy Body Back

I wrote this post a while ago, but I thought I’d post it anyway to show how far I’ve come. It’s 4 months later now, so things have changed since then. Here’s the entry:

It’s been almost 8 weeks since I gave birth and the biggest changes in my body that I’ve noticed is how much my belly has gone down without me doing anything except for using a compression band the first month. It’s still not completely flat yet since there is a big hunk of fat around my belly, but I definitely don’t look pregnant anymore. I still have to wear looser shirts since the tighter shirts accentuate the diminishing bump on my belly.

The good news is that my maternity jeans are slowly getting baggy on me. I had different maternity jeans at different phases of my pregnancy. During the last month or two, I could not wear my maternity skinny jeans anymore since my thighs had grown larger. Luckily I had a bigger pair of maternity jeans that fit me and I wore them religiously during the last two months. Actually, I couldn’t wear them at the very end of my pregnancy because the belly band was too tight. Once I gave birth, because my thighs and butt were still the same size I wore those big jeans during the first month until 6 weeks after giving birth whenever I went outside, but lately I’ve noticed they are baggy, so I’ve switched to wearing my skinny jeans! Yey! The day that I realized that they fit, I was so happy. My body looks no where close to my pre-pregnancy body, but at least I am slowly transitioning into the maternity clothes that I wore during my second trimester.

There is a pair of jeans I wore during my first trimester that I was upset about because i had outgrown them before I got much use out of them. When those fit comfortably, then I know I am almost back to my pre-pregnancy stage. I have yet to try on my regular jeans for fear that they are going to be way too tight, but I will soon. I have 16 pounds to lose to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight. It’s progress! Just 5 days ago it was 17 pounds to go. It could be water weight that fluctuates, but at least I know I’m never going back to the 21 pounds over my pre-pregnancy weight, which was what I was the first time I weighed myself after a couple weeks after giving birth.

I’ve lost 5 pounds so far just by doing light walking every now and then and still eating my ice cream. I’m hoping to see a more dramatic drop during the next couple of months as I eliminate (or reduce) my ice cream and dessert intake and increase my physical activity. I have an exercise bike at home that I bought while pregnant that I can finally use while the baby is sleeping. I thought I could use it during pregnancy, but my belly quickly got in the way so it’s just been sitting in our living room. Hopefully it’ll get much more use this year! And aside from taking walks with the dog and the baby, I hope to also add in some yoga and some pilates. I have a post-cesarian pilates tape that I plan on using first.

I have 2 months until I go back to Chicago to visit family and friends. I really hope to have my body back close to my pre-pregnancy state. If I can fit in my regular jeans by then, I would be ecstatic!

Aside from the weight, my linea nigra (the dark verical line down my belly) is starting to fade. And my belly button is looking much more normal now. I’ve been using some lotion on my belly to help it return back to a nice tight skin. The one thing I did notice that hasn’t changed a whole lot is my bladder. I still pee every time I wake up at night to feed the baby. If I’m awake at night, I sometimes go to the bathroom much more frequently than that. I’m wondering if my bladder shrunk during the pregnancy. Hopefully it will get back to it’s normal size soon. I usually have to leave the baby to go to the bathroom before I feed her at night while my husband tries to soothe her. Once my bladder goes back to normal, I can let my husband sleep through the night so that he can catch up on some sleep!

I also have weights at home that I could use on my arms. Hmmm… holding the baby is like having weights sometimes, but maybe I can motivate myself to use them. I’ll set them up this week so that it’s easy to access and use. Right now they are tucked away, hidden from sight in an area that is difficult to access. Haha. That shows how much we’ve used them since we’ve moved to this apt! Hopefully they’ll get more use soon!

——

Lots of things have changed since I wrote this entry! First of all, we moved to get more space for the baby and for overall convenience, so I had to declutter quite a bit of furniture and other things that I could not take with me. We are in our new place now and the exercise bike is now gone, but instead, we have a little fitness room on our floor! Once we get all settled into our new place, I will start to use it. The good news is that I’ve started doing yoga! 1 class so far, but it’s a huge step in the right direction.

After I moved, since we moved into an elevator building, I was able to take walks with the baby to explore the new neighborhood. The weather has gotten quite hot, so I haven’t been doing much walking lately, but what I did do has already shown some good results! I am now wearing my first trimester pants again! That was a year ago that I wore them, so it’s the same weather for them too! That was the biggest achievement. Not in my pre-pregnancy jeans yet, but I can see my body slowly going back to what it was. It’s almost 6 months since I’ve given birth, so I hope in another 3 months I’ll be back to where I was. 9 months to gain, 9 months to lose, right?

Tags: exercise, weight loss

Cloth Diaper Adventure

It’s been a couple of months now that we’ve been exploring cloth diapers. We first started with the gDiapers for our baby when she was a newborn. They had a newborn diaper package that we purchased for baby’s wee little buns. We used the biodegradable flushable inserts in those and eventually moved onto the size small ones. So far so good! The diapers were cute and they worked great with the flushable inserts. It was a bit of a pain having to go to the bathroom and flush each one down (the bathroom was a bit of a walk from the baby’s changing table) and also having to hand-wash all the ones that were stained. We did it anyway. We were helping to contribute to a greener planet…

Until we clogged up the toilet. Not once. Not twice. Several times. We fixed it ourselves the first time. The second time we had to call in a plumber. The third time my husband bought one of those devices you put down into the toilet to unclog it that he bought from Lowes or Home Depot. But then it happened again, and the device didn’t work. We were willing to deal with the washing and the extra work it took to assemble the diapers after each wash, but we just couldn’t deal with a clogged toilet and having to hire professional help.

Sure, we could just throw away the diapers and they would biodegrade in the trash, but it’s stinky and we didn’t really want to create so much trash in the house. As a newborn, our baby was going through at least 12 diapers a day! So, after some consideration on what to do, we decided to try the cloth diapers. gDiapers had cloth inserts. As much as I was turned off by the idea in the very beginning because of all the extra work it would create and having to deal with gross dirty diapers, after a few months of hand washing her diapers anyway and all the liners that went with it, we were used to dealing with dirty diapers. Maybe cloth wasn’t such a bad idea. We’d be doing good for the environment and hopefully our pocketbook too!

We took the plunge and started using them. The hassle was the 6x we had to wash them to prep the diapers. Once that was over, it was just the same as the flushable inserts, but actually easier because we didn’t have to tear and flush each and every single one down the toilet! We could just dump it in a bin of water or a diaper pail and just scoop them up and put it in the wash. Except for the poopy ones. We had to hand wash those first before dumping them in the bin. But it actually saved clean up time because we could just dump them in without tearing and flushing. So far so good!

But then we moved onto size Medium-Large diapers. Because the diapers are so big because the huge spread in weight that the diapers accommodate, every now and then the diapers would leak a little on the upper part of the thigh area. And the diapers felt damp whenever she peed in them. The vapor travels through the nylon and makes the outer cover slightly damp. That was a little bit annoying because we didn’t know if we should just use the diapers again with new inserts and nylon covers or if we should wash them every time. We didn’t have enough to wash every time! After some research we discovered that it wasn’t urine vapors, but just some moisture that travels through the nylon liners. We started leaving them out to dry out a little bit before the next use and used other already pre-packed ones instead in the meantime.

It was all going well until she really leaked! At night! In bed! When she’s sitting in her bouncer, all is fine, but when she’s laying down the pee can spill out if it isn’t instantly absorbed by the cloth. We discovered that the cloth wasn’t THAT absorbent and would sometimes wick away the water instead of absorbing right away. I tested it with some water and saw water pellets form on the fleece before it eventually soaked through. That delayed timing would surely encourage some of the urine to “run off” and leak! So, I’m sad to say that we are considering other cloth diaper options.

We are still using them right now, but using disposables at night. My friend sent me a cloth diaper that she used for her 2 kids. We’ll see if they work better! There should be no rash, no leaks, and better fit! The gDiapers we have unfortunately created some diaper rash in the beginning because the urine isn’t wicked away enough. We ended up having to change the diaper every hour just to make sure she wasn’t sitting in pee. And sure enough, it was wet every time! That’s how we started going through 12-16 diapers a day! Now that she’s bigger, she doesn’t need as many diaper changes, but we would love it if we could find an easy cloth diaper solution that would help us save money and be all around easy and good for the environment.

We moved to a new apartment with a washer/dryer inside just so we could wash the diapers easily, so hopefully we can use it for that purpose!

Tags: baby, diapers