Brie and Me

For the past week, we've been having a hard time getting Brie to nap because of a couple of reasons: (1) She wants to sleep longer on her third nap, which is usually 1:30PM to 3PM, and can't seem to settle down for the fourth (cat) nap usually at 4:30PM to 5PM. For a couple of days we'd try to settle down for the cat nap because she'll be rubbing her eyes and pulling on her ears, but all she'll do is nurse for a while and after 15 minutes of lying down, when I finally turn off the white noise she'd brighten up and she's ready to go out of the room again and play! But instead of being really tired by her usual bedtime 7:30PM, she's overtired by 7PM. What I read is that at around 5 months, the baby will start to lose one nap. But they don't actually sleep less, because what they do is consolidate the lost nap with either bedtime or the earlier nap. I was waiting for that to happen and already doubted we'll be losing a nap until this happen

TIME Activity 6:00 AM FEED Still asleep. 6:30 AM Mommy gets up to take shower and fix breakfast for Daddy. Baby WAKES UP. Sometimes she'll wake up earlier or a bit later but we make sure she's up by 7am to keep with the schedule. She also usually wakes up babbling and gearing herself up to POOP. 7:00 AM Daddy gives Baby a bath. This is daddy's quality time with Baby. He gives her a bath, dresses her up, plays with her, and talks to her while he eats his breakfast. We started to introduce solids so Baby gets a taste of whatever she has for the week. Only about 1/4 teaspoon, which she doesn't always finish. After eating Mommy cleans her tongue (we've been doing this daily since she was 2 months old, and then she takes her daily dose of 1ml Vitamin D) 8:00 AM Baby is terribly tired by now. So it's time to FEED and SLEEP. NAP #1 Daddy gets ready for work and leaves while Baby is asleep. 9:00 AM Baby WAKES UP. FEED if she wants to, I always offer when s

Brie is almost 5 months old. When she was 3 months old, she displayed some level of preference on the right breast. She didn't reject the left boob out right, but there would be instances when I try to nurse her but she would turn away unless I give her the right breast instead of the left one. I read about it and online articles said that's normal. What I don't understand (yet?) is why it only happens sometimes ? And why is it worse for the past couple few days? Today is the worst yet, it came to the point where I thought I'd have to pump just to make sure I don't get too engorged. I've already suffered plugged ducts and mastitis so I'm careful with giving each breast equal opportunity and making sure we don't miss feedings. Luckily I found a window of opportunity! I tricked Brie to taking the left boob when she woke up too early from her nap. I rocked her to get her drowsy and when I laid her on the bed I offered it to her and she took it! I did ha

Schedule at 3 months? Non-existent based on my experience. I actually tried to write it down once but on the very next day, only morning wake up time and night sleep time was consistent and that's because at 3 months, she practically established it for us. I was feeding her non-stop then. I made it a point to feed her every 1.5 hours when we're at home where she has unlimited access to the boobies. That means I might end up feeding her half an hour after previous feeding if it looks like she wants to nurse. When we're out, usually during the weekends, 1.5 hour was my normal guide. I couldn't understand how mommies ended up waiting for 2 hours before the baby's next feed when Brie seemed to want to/need to nurse way before the 2 hour mark. The only time she'd stretch to 2 hours is during night sleep.

Brie will be 5 months in a week and from our last pedia visit, she gave us the green light to start solids. We are so excited! We got this OXO Tot Feeding Set from Amazon but we'll only be using the spoons and the bib for the first week. I want to introduce bananas first. And only a little at a time. Just a taste. She doesn't really need to eat solids for nutrition since we're still breastfeeding.

Finally got to fixing Brie's clothes! We got a shower curtain from the hardware store and took out one shelf to get the desired height. Put both together and there you have it! Her very own space for her pretty, tiny clothes! These are for the "nice" clothes and dresses so it's easy to choose which one she'll wear for the weekend. The onesies stay in the drawers :) When the dresses get longer (as she grows taller), we'll probably have to take out the bottom shelf as well. I'm still figuring out the best way to organize her leggings and shoes... I don't want to just put them on the bottom shelf because the dog would surely snoop there.

It has been a few days now, if not more than a week, that Brie refuses to feed to sleep. I have always preferred to nurse my baby to sleep because it was the least stressful and also the fastest way for her to sleep - especially since she still feeds every 2 hours, spending a long time helping her to sleep often makes her wake up too early because she's hungry (again). However, lately she's been changing the routine herself. Maybe because she's getting more efficient in feeding, and she doesn't want to keep nursing when she's already full (so much for comfort nursing!). So what she does when sleepy (and hungry) is feed for a few minutes then unlatch and wriggle and eventually look at me and chat - more like whine. That's when I pick her up and rock her to sleep. If she's tired enough but not overly, painfully tired, it will take 5-15 minutes before she sleeps. This is very timely because I've been wondering if I should gradually stop nursing her to

Final product Step 1: Get old onesie and pair of scissors. I already made a mistake on Step 1 when I chose a onesie with fabric that stretched too much. Step 2: Cut off the bottom part of the onesie if you want it to turn into a tee. I did that because this onese is now to small for Brie. Step 3: Cut lines across the back of the onesie like shown above. Step 4: Stretch the "strips" of cloth that you cut. Step 5: Loop! Loop the first strip below the second strip. Then loop the second strip below the third... Until you're all done. Step 6: Cut the last strip in the middle. Step 7: Use the cut/last strip to knot the end of the loop. This is also a good time to fix the loops so they look better. Step 8: Cut the sleeves. Step 9: Cut off 2 strips from discarded parts of the onesie. Step 10: Use a strip from Step 9 to tie the sleeves. This is part of Step 10. This is also part of Step 10.

We still have Brie wearing mittens 24/7. Her fingers are long and her pretty nails even when cut short go past the skin. It's so easy for her to hurt herself especially because she scratches her face a lot. To give her practice feeling things with her hands, we take the mittens off during supervised play times. Today she successfully reached for and touched her favorite dangling toy, the bright giraffe, in the play gym. It's so exciting to witness!

We're definitely back at feeding every 2 hours at night. I'm not so bad off because co-sleeping is working for us really well. I only have to flip our positions to change from boob to boob every feeding. Brie's a pretty angel at night, she'd wiggle to wake me up when she's hungry but we'd both fall right back to sleep while she feeds. I don't think we're in a growth spurt, that's normally on 12th week. I hope we can go back to getting 3 hours of sleep after that. No hurry though, I know I have it much easier than other moms :)

On our pedia visit today Brie was given a total of 5 vaccines: polio DTaP Pneumococcal Conjugate Hib Rotavirus The first four were shots, the last one was oral. 30 minutes before giving the shots, Brie was given 2.4mL of Tylenol (Infant). We had to buy our own bottle afterwards because we're supposed to give her Tylenol if she's fussy or if she gets a fever.