Six Months

Monday was Lily's half birthday! Six months already. Goodness gracious.

It seems that she has had a big growth spurt this month. She hasn't changed a whole lot personality-wise in the past four weeks, but she has definitely gotten BIGGER. The other day I tried to dress her in an outfit she had worn a week or two earlier and it was way too small. I could barely snap it around her neck. Just last night her daddy tried to put her in a favorite pair of pajamas, and I swear she was an inch or two too long for them. She is growing rapidly, which I'm sure has a lot to do with the changes in her diet this month.
Here's the rundown:

Eating: Lily started rice cereal the day she turned 5 months old. It was slow going that first week as we were practicing and she was learning a new skill. We stuck with only rice cereal once a day for the first two weeks as she got more and more confident about eating from a spoon. I mixed the cereal with breastmilk, thickening the mixture up a bit each time. By the end of the second week she was doing great! The third week I started her on oatmeal as well, and she had 2-3 tablespoons of that in the morning and about 4 tablespoons of rice cereal in the evenings. By week four, we were ready to start fruits and vegetables. Following the four-day wait rule (to watch for allergies), I slowly introduced bananas (mashed with a fork) and pureed carrots over the next couple of weeks. Because I wanted to keep her "regular" with all these changes and the additional iron in her diet, I started giving her pureed prunes as well. This has seemed to help a great deal with her digestion. This week we added barley cereal for the first time, and by the end of the week we will introduce another veggie -- I think sweet potatoes.
I'm so proud of Lily for being such a great little eater. She hasn't refused anything and seems eager to try new foods. She takes a cautious taste of the first spoonful and then eagerly opens her mouth for a bite until her bowl is empty! She especially likes the carrots and bananas at this stage.


Right now a typical day of meals looks like this:
6:30 AM: Breastmilk only
10:30 AM: Breastmilk, 4 Tbsp oatmeal, 1/3 mashed banana OR 1/2 container pureed prunes
3:00 PM: Breastmilk, "snack" of pureed carrots OR mashed banana
6:30 PM: Breastmilk, 4 Tbsp rice cereal OR barley cereal, 1/2 container pureed carrots
9:00 PM: Breastmilk only
(These are approximate times, but she follows this schedule pretty closely on a typical day.)

Lily is still getting most of her nutrition from nursing at this point. I nurse her before every solid food feeding and use expressed breastmilk for mixing up her cereals. This has been fairly easy to keep up with for the first month, but I'm finding it more and more difficult to keep a supply of pumped milk available for mixing with food. Early on I tried mixing her oatmeal with formula once but she didn't eat well for that meal. I gave up on that for a while, but I tried it again for one meal this week and she seemed to not notice a difference. Hopefully I can start doing this more often now to get her used to the taste and to give myself a bit of a break.
Overall, I'm very pleased with how well she is doing with the introduction of new foods. One of her favorite things in the world is when she finishes a meal and I say "All done!" and her daddy and I clap and cheer. She LOVES it and responds with the biggest smiles!

This week I tried my hand at making some homemade baby food. I cooked and pureed sweet potatoes and pears, and pureed some fresh papaya, storing it all in the freezer to try later. It went pretty well and I'm eager to see how she'll like them. I plan on trying to make my own applesauce, and steamed and pureed green beans and peas as well. I probably won't make everything Lily eats (I have no problem giving her store-bought baby foods), but I think it's worth giving it a try. My husband and I were able to work on some of it together, which ended up being kinda fun.

Pureed pears & papaya

Mashed sweet potatoes

Sleeping: There really are no big changes in Lily's sleeping patterns since last month. One thing that I started doing differently, though, is after her early morning feeding, instead of returning her to her bassinet, I've started bringing her into the bed with me and we both sleep until about 9:00. I absolutely love this sweet time for the two of us to snuggle and rest together for an hour or two before starting the day. I consider that her first nap, although it could be more of a continuation of her nighttime sleep. She naps again after lunch (around 12:30) and again in the evening (around 5:00). Those naps last anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours.
Lily is usually ready for bed by 9 PM if not a little bit sooner. She either falls asleep while nursing or I rock her to sleep. It's not uncommon for her to wake up once during the night, but if she does, her daddy rocks her back to sleep and it usually takes only a few minutes.


Milestones: This month Lily is getting better at sitting up on her own. She can do it in the "tripod" position, supported by her hands and arms while leaning forward, for several seconds at a time. I've noticed that her fine motor skills are improving, and she is learning to reach out and grab things that are close by. I have to be careful not to hold her bowl too close when feeding her! She can also reach out and find a toy that she has dropped if it's close enough.
Just this week I can hear her forming some new sounds when she babbles. I've heard a few "ba" and "ma" sounds, and that is definitely something brand new.
Every day I look in her mouth and run my finger along her gums to check for teeth, but there aren't any there. She has been chewing and drooling a lot over the past two months but nothing has happened yet.

Lily will have her six-month checkup and shots in a couple of weeks. I'm dreading it, as always! Those shots still break my heart. I'm always eager to hear a good report, though, and see how much my girl has grown. I think she'll be tipping the scales this time, that little chunk!


Thanks for keeping up with my girl and following along with us as she grows. We had some portraits taken of her at Target last week, and I know we're biased, but we think they are pretty adorable! I'll have to share some of our favorites with you soon.

Expressions

Sometimes I really am speechless. I love this girl so much!

True or False

When you are trying to have a baby, there is no shortage of advice that people want to give you. What many think are helpful and wise suggestions become pretty routine to you when you have been facing infertility for several years. When I finally became pregnant and it looked like this baby was going to be here to stay, I realized that the advice doesn't quit! Ah, and it continues on and on well after your baby is born. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of good advice. Admitting that I need help or that I'm wrong about something has never been a weakness of mine. But I think we can all agree that sometimes unsolicited advice can be pretty annoying.

I'm going to address some of the advice we've gotten and predictions that turned out to be true and some that didn't, but the key words here are "for me." I don't mean for this post to be negative, but simply to show that not everything works out exactly the same way for every person. Something that works for me may very well not work for you, and vice versa. And I had never really understood just how true that was until I went through recurrent pregnancy loss and infertility. It's amazing how hard it is to find someone whose experience is exactly like yours. Sure, a lot are similar, but it's rare to find one exactly the same because everyone is coming from an entirely different place. We have different bodies, different problems, different doctors, and different outcomes. Then I came to understand how truly different and unique babies are. They may grow and develop over a similar timeline, but their personalities are certainly unique.

At the same time, I recognize that we can only speak from our own experiences. A lot can be said and learned from a good suggestion or word of mouth. At any rate, I'll keep this post light and try to share some of the good, the bad, and the silly when it comes to some of the advice and predictions I've heard over the past year or so.

1. You'll never read a book/watch TV/see a movie again once the baby comes. False.
Okay, I'm going to pretty much call this one "true" for me in the first month or so after the baby. It's hard to get into a schedule and figure things out in those first weeks. All you can think about is eating and sleeping (for the baby and for yourself), but after a little while you can begin to enjoy some of those things again. I used to hear this statement all the time. As far as reading goes, in my opinion if you love reading, you will find time to do it. Nursing has provided a great opportunity for me to continue to read (or to watch some TV shows on the DVR). It's at a slower pace, though, and these days I rarely choose it over sleep once I get in bed at night, but I have finished a few books in the past 6 months.
We have been to only one movie since September. Around my birthday in January, my sister-in-law came over to watch Lily for a few hours while my husband and I went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. It was our first (and remains our only) outing without the baby, but we prefer to spend most of our time all together, the three of us. There are some sacrifices that I knew would come which I consider totally worth the trade-off.

2. Your breastfed baby will never sleep through the night. False.
I heard this more than once when I was expecting Lily. I was planning to nurse, and although I didn't really encounter any opposition, some people seemed convinced that my baby was going to be too hungry to sleep unless we gave her formula at night or started cereal at 4 weeks (yes, 4 weeks!). While I know it's true that breastfed babies need to eat a bit more often, I think Lily is doing a great job with sleep. She started giving us 6-7 hour stretches at night months ago and now sleeps for 9-10 hours before waking up to eat.

3. Time will pass by more quickly than ever. True.
I've said before than when you're in the middle of IF/RPL, the days seem to drag on but the years go pretty quickly -- meaning that before you know it, you feel like you've lost nearly a decade of your life. Well, ever since my daughter was born, I truly don't know where the days, weeks, and months have gone. All of the people who told me that the months after the baby came would feel much faster than the months I spent pregnant were totally right. I feel like Lily's first year will be over before we know it. She will be 6 months old in just a few short weeks and that seems impossible.

4. The assumption that our problems with fertility are over now that we've had a baby. False.
The truth is that we are enjoying life as a family of three right now and trying not to spend too much time thinking about what might come next. We aren't guaranteed another pregnancy, and we know that is our reality. Even if we should get that chance in the future, our concerns will be much the same as they were last year. Of course I hope that Lily might have a sibling someday. It does give me some reassurance that it could happen again now that a baby has survived in my body, but my record is still not impressive. Still, I hold on to the same promise that nothing is impossible with God.

5. Your life will be totally different. True.
I think that when people told us that our lives would change drastically, some meant it in a positive way and some in a negative way. And I won't lie to you and tell you that I think waking up every single day and taking care of a baby is easy, but I'm finally doing what I always wanted to do. My love for this baby makes even the hard days worth it. After wishing for her for so many years, I certainly don't take this privilege for granted! My life IS totally different now, and for that, I'm thankful.

Five Months

Where is the time going? My girl is five months old today, and it seems that the time is passing faster than ever.

Lily remains around the 50th percentile for weight and the 75th percentile for height. Lately she is looking so chunky to me, which I find completely adorable.
Here's a quick rundown of what she has been up to:

Eating - We are still breastfeeding. In the beginning when it came to nursing, I really didn't know how it would go, so I tried to set small, reasonable goals for myself along the way. First I just tried to get past those difficult first 3 weeks and then make it to 6 weeks. After that, the goal of 3 months was so much easier but still had its challenges. Now we're a month away from the 6 month mark, which was my "big goal." Anything beyond that to me is great and I'll consider it a bonus!
Lily nurses about every 4 hours during the day and wakes up to eat once during the night. Just today I decided to try feeding her rice cereal with a spoon. She has been giving several cues that she might be ready, so I gave it a shot today just to experiment. I thought she did pretty well with it. I think she may have swallowed a few bites! She certainly was interested, so I'll keep trying her out with it over the next few weeks as we get ready to introduce some other new foods like oatmeal, fruits, and vegetables. It feels like a whole new (kinda scary/intimidating) world.

Sleeping - Lily is doing very well with nighttime sleeping. She goes to bed around 9 PM and usually doesn't wake up until around 7 AM. Most mornings she will even go back to sleep for another hour or two after that first feeding. We are typically up for the day around 8:00, and on rare occasions, 9:00. Nap times aren't as easy, but it's going okay. I've learned to anticipate when she will be ready to nap so she doesn't get overly tired and cranky. Even then, though, sometimes she fights sleep so hard. On a good day, she will take about 3 naps, ranging from 1.5 hours to 2.5 hours at a time. I'm pretty happy with her "schedule" as it is now. It's not super rigid, which I guess is a good thing. One big thing I've learned in the past 5 months is that just when you get used to a baby's routine, they tend to throw you a curve ball or two. It certainly keeps me on my toes.
We are still putting her to bed in her bassinet in our bedroom. Soon we will have to transition her to her crib in her room, a thought which still makes my stomach hurt a little.


Milestones - In the past few weeks Lily has picked up a few new skills. She now grabs her feet just about every time she's on her back. She hasn't put them in her mouth yet, but I'm sure that's coming. She has recently mastered rolling from her back to her tummy. It's cute to watch her practice this new trick, but it has made her play time a bit frustrating for her. She gets tired of being on her tummy and can't always figure out how to roll back over, so I usually have to go rescue her after a while.

Playing - Lily does enjoy her time playing on a blanket on the floor. Her favorite toys right now are her Links, soft blocks, her Baby Einstein piano, and picture books. She continues to love it when I sing to her, and her favorite songs are the ABC song (she smiles every single time), and The Wheels on the Bus, which works pretty well when she is fussy and needs settling down. Some days I am flat out exhausted from singing all day long!


This is what my days are like with this sweet, growing 5 month old. I'm finding that parenting is one of the most challenging yet rewarding things I've ever done. Taking care of a little one every day is more hard work and more of an adjustment that I'd ever imagined, but it fills my days with more smiles and love and joy than I'd ever hoped for.

Love

This baby girl has won my heart.

I'm enamored with her. Besotted. Smitten. I'm totally twitterpated.

I love nursing her during the night/early morning. She is drowsy but very hungry, and after about a half hour of eating she has fallen back into a deep sleep. I lift her swaddled body up to my chest, her head on my shoulder, to try and burp her before putting her back to bed. This is really the only time she lets me hold her this way now that she is older. If she is facing the right way I can feel her breath on my neck while I rock her and pat her back. Even though I'm tired, I usually sit for a few extra minutes because I'm not ready to let go of her.

I love waking up to the sound of her voice and peeking over the side of her bassinet to find her playing happily. When her eyes meet mine, she squeals with delight and, first thing in the morning, before I even get out of bed, it makes my day. I unwrap her and her spring-loaded arms immediately stretch out above her head. After a good stretch, her hands go directly in her mouth. Some mornings I scoop her up and put her next to me in my bed so we can snuggle for a few minutes. She reaches out and touches my face while I talk to her and my heart overflows.

I love taking her into her room for the first diaper change of the day. The sun is particularly bright in there, and it takes her a minute to adjust her eyes to the light streaming in through the window above her changing table. I talk to her about the day: what the weather is like; what we might be doing that day. Sometimes I change her clothes, but some days we stay in our pajamas all day.

I love how she looks toward the door when she hears the sound of her daddy coming home for lunch. Ever since she first learned to smile, her face lights up when she sees him. This baby girl loves her daddy. I love the sounds of laughter coming from her room while he changes her diaper. I love sitting at the table, all three of us, for lunch and dinner. Lily is usually up on the table in her Bumbo seat or sitting in Daddy's lap while we eat. She enjoys watching us put food in our mouths and I wonder what kinds of foods she will like or dislike one day. In a matter of weeks she will try rice cereal for the first time, and fruits and vegetables won't be far behind. I can't believe how quickly she is growing up.

I love our quiet times during the day when it's time for her to eat. We get settled in the big, roomy chair in the living room and she nurses while I read a book or watch TV. My favorite part is her hands, which are never still. She rubs them on my arm, grasps my fingers, tugs at my shirt. They are chubby and dimpled and oh-so-sweet.

I love discovering her ticklish spots. Sometimes when I gently run my finger along the bottom of her chin or lightly touch anywhere around her neck, it cracks her up. She usually hates having her nose cleaned, but it occasionally makes her giggle. Lately her sides and tummy have become ticklish as well. I love blowing raspberries on her soft skin and watching her eyelids flutter. Her laughter is music to my ears.

I love kissing her plump cheeks and her drooly chin. I absolutely adore the smell of her breath. The other day I compared it to a fresh bag of candy corn. It smells like pure sugar, and I can't get enough of it!

I love getting her ready for bed. She has always adored bath time. I let the soapy water out of her tub and fill it up again with clean, warm water just so she can play for a few extra minutes. I love the smell of her nighttime lotion and the way that her hair is all fuzzy after it's been towel-dried. I love wrapping her up and rocking her to sleep at bedtime. I love the way she gazes up at me while I tell her a story and sing songs. I get completely lost in her big, dark eyes that are not quite brown and not quite green.

And I love watching her drift off to sleep, knowing that in about ten hours we'll do it all over again.

A Longing Fulfilled

After much consideration, I've decided to change my blog up a little. My hubby has been helping me create a new header and change the template, but the most important change is the title. I will still be sharing my thoughts about how infertility and miscarriage have affected my life; that's why I started a blog in the first place. My perspective has changed a bit now that my life has changed a great deal. I wanted to rename the blog to reflect that, using a favorite Bible verse:

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life." Proverbs 13:12

Miscarriage brought about a lot of changes in my life -- in who I am and how I relate to others, and in many other ways. It was my "hope deferred." All I ever wanted to do with my life was to be a wife and mother. It became very healing to write about my experience, but I wish that I had started blogging about it much earlier than I did. By the time I started blogging in 2008, I had lost six babies and, while I certainly wasn't alone thanks to my family and a few very supportive friends, I had been through recurrent pregnancy loss without having people around me who could truly understand what it felt like. My heart was sick, to say the least. I didn't know what else to do except to finally open up and write about it. I didn't know if anyone would ever read what I wrote, but it felt great just to get it all out.

The past few years have brought with them great healing for me. Blogging has been part of that. Having the opportunity to have a successful pregnancy was definitely a huge part of it. Bringing home a living, healthy, beautiful baby after so much pain and loss, after so many years of hoping, has been my longing fulfilled. Lily has changed my life and my heart. She is the answer to so many prayers. Every single day that I get to wake up and be her mother is an incredible blessing to me. It's something I don't take for granted. And I know I say this often, but I can't forget about the babies that I lost. I don't want to forget about them. They didn't live or grow for very long inside my body, but they certainly did in my heart. They were loved and they were wanted and we will always feel their absence. I believe that one day we will see them again, although I have no idea what it will look like or feel like when that happens. But it makes me look forward to heaven even more.

So, this is the same book, I guess, but a different chapter. It's still part of my story, and I'm very grateful to those of you who read it.

Four Months

Lily Rae is four months old today!


I used to say that six months was my favorite age for a baby. I always loved that age because they were playful, smiley, and chunky, and they usually could stay put in one spot. I'm sure I'll love it when Lily gets there, but right now it's hard to imagine any age cuter than three to four months. I've been enjoying this stage so much. Besides, all the things I love about the six month stage are true about her now!

Right now my girl weighs just under 13 pounds. Her four-month checkup isn't scheduled until February 1, so I'll know her exact weight and height then. We did have to see her doctor last week because she wasn't feeling well. It's so sad when you do your very best to keep your baby protected and healthy but something manages to creep in. I'd noticed for a day or two that her poopy diapers didn't look quite right. The color was different and I thought I noticed some mucus in them as well. On the third day I called to check with the nurse. Lily hadn't been running a fever (I'd been checking), so they told me to just watch her for another day and save the next diaper if it looked the same. That was the plan, until later that afternoon she refused to nurse. I couldn't get her to eat for the life of me. She would just cry and cry when I tried to feed her. I called the doctor's office back and they said to bring her in. After listening to her symptoms, he said it sounded like she had a little intestinal infection that was causing her pain when she tried to eat. He wanted me to try again to see if she would nurse, and he left the room to give us some privacy. She did eat, poor thing. At that point she had not eaten for about 7 hours (which sounds bad, but I guess she had really missed only one feeding).

The doctor said we did the right thing to call and come in before she got dehydrated. Of course, I would have kept trying to feed her at home too, but I was glad we went because he checked her ears and throat and all of that and said they all looked great. It is always reassuring to know that she's gaining weight, and she weighed 12 lbs, 13.8 oz. He did not give any medicine to treat her, because the virus would just have to run its course. He said the best thing to do was feed her as often as she would eat. This is what we did for the next couple of days. For a sick baby, she did remarkably well. At least once a day, though, she would refuse to eat and we would wait a while and give her a bottle of breastmilk, which she seemed to take a bit better. After two or three days of this she was eating normally again, and after about a week her diapers were looking normal. I'm so glad that now she is feeling better. It's amazing what you can tell just from looking at a baby's poop!

Aside from that little tummy ache, Lily is doing really well. She normally eats about every 3-4 hours. Nursing is going great, which I still consider a blessing each and every day. I remember in the first month, a dear friend of mine told me that one day nursing would be a relaxing and enjoyable time for baby and for me. She said I could just kick back and watch a movie, but I couldn't imagine having a free hand to hold a remote at that time! It seemed like I would never get to a place where breastfeeding wasn't stressful or painful, but now what she said is exactly true. I look forward to taking a break to sit and nurse my baby 4 or 5 times a day (and once during the night). I use the time, usually about 40 minutes total, to catch up on TV shows on my DVR or read a book, which is easier to do on my new Kindle that I got for Christmas! Sometimes, though, I just sit and look at Lily, stroking her sweet head (which has less and less hair on it every day), or holding her busy, constantly-moving hands. Now, nursing is a good time for me to sit quietly and thank the Lord for giving me the desire of my heart.


Lily's sleeping habits are pretty good for this age, I think. During the day she usually wants a nap about 2 hours after she eats. Her naps are usually pretty short, though, between 30 minutes and an hour. Sometimes she will nap for almost 2 hours, but she doesn't do this every day. At night she will sleep for about 7 hours straight, waking up to eat around 5 AM, and then she will sleep for 2 or 3 more hours before getting up for the day. I would love for her to have a slightly earlier bed time and to take longer naps (she usually gets fussy after a couple of those little cat-naps in a row), but this schedule is very livable and such a relief after those tough newborn days! Lily is still sleeping in her bassinet in our bedroom. Pretty soon I know I'll need to move her to her crib in her own room, but I'm just not ready for her to be that far away.


Lately Lily is becoming more and more interested in her toys and books. It's fun to watch her discover new things. Just about everything that she gets her hands on goes straight into her mouth. When I'm bathing her these days, I have to wash her hands and hold them tightly before I hurry up and rinse them so she won't eat soapy fingers. Still her favorite thing to look at or play with is people. All it takes to get her to smile or laugh is just a look in her direction. She absolutely loves it when her daddy and I make her "fly" above our heads. This gets a laugh almost every time. I try to do tummy time with her most days, but she doesn't care for it very much at all. Her head control is really good, though, and she has started enjoying time in her Bumbo seat.


I can't believe that four months have passed already. Suddenly the time seems to be flying by while we try to cherish every moment. Yesterday, January 20th, it was a whole year since we had the positive pregnancy test that brought us our beautiful daughter. What a year it was! She's finally here and we absolutely love being her parents.