The fourth month hell

I thought the 6 month growth spurt was crazy, but its a distant blurry memory now... in fact if i didnt have the post saying it was tough, i'd say.. it was ok! jeez talk about the amnesiatic properties of oxytocin.

now the fourth month regression. ha! thats the one from hell. its the day you stopped sleeping and woke up every hour. i think it was my own fault. it started so gradually and then i made it worse by picking you up everytime you woke up.. and nursing you. and then my mom rocked you to sleep so nicely everyday and then she left. and so you got used to waking up every sleep cycle and being nursed to sleep or rocked to sleep. darn suddenly one day you just woundt sleep more than 35 minutes. but you really did go through a growth spurt at 3 months and then it led to the wonder weeks and i really had no idea what was going on with you.... cut me some slack will ya ?

that's when i started sleep training. not the CIO, Dont think i have the stomach for it. but the PuPd. and it was tough. tough on my nerves, tough on poor back. tough on K. tough with sleep deprivation. sure it would have been easier to continue nursing you to sleep, but then one day you nursed and nursed and still couldnt fall asleep.. so then i thought , the heck with all this. you are learning to fall asleep on your own.

 i was literally driving myself nuts calculating your awake times and sleep durations and no matter how i changed your routine/schedule you still would not sleep. and then one day it hit me.. you needed almost 8-9 hours awake time and that meant you actually sleep very little dring the day. unlike other babies, you only sleep 3-4 hours not 4-5! it was like a light bulb went off in my head and i had my aha moment. yaay i finally figured something out and atleast got you on the right schedule which then helped the pupd work better.

so the pupd wasnt super easy like the books make it seem.. there were days of regression on both our parts. my fault mostly. on the 5th day i'd be so exhausted i'd let you sleep with me nursing through the night. and bam! the next day you resisted pupd all over again. thankfully i never had to do more than 15 min of it. since that would have just broken my back like a dry twig snapped between our fingers. you caught on pretty quick i have to give you all the credit. what with my muddling on missing your sleep cues and me feeding you too often so that you got used to snacking. dear baby, the fault is all mine while you were perfect. you followed where i led. and once i realized the path back to sanity, you dutifully followed me there too. albeit a little reluctantly coz it involved more work on your part and less on mine.. but you did not resist too much. not like a kicking horse would.
2 weeks. thats what it took to see a major improvement and only because we took it in stages. with a little more crying we could have done it in one week, but we took it a bit slowly. hopefully that was the right choice and it made things easier for both of us.

some day i'll write all about it. so that i remember what to do correctly the next time , if you have another regression due to those awful amazing wonder week. 

The dreaded six week growth spurt from hell

Dear Bunny

i have to tell you. this growth spurt is a doozy and taking a major toll on my sanity. it looks like you want to be permanently attached to my boob ! and i have to carry you ALL the FRICKIN time. man, its tough and i sometimes wonder what i have signed up for. but then you smile when you see me and while i cannot forget that i'm completely sleep deprived , i still feel i could do a couple more hours of this.
when you refuse to go to anyone else and i'm clearly exhausted, i also feel a slight smug sense of satisfaction. yes your my daughter and i will be number one (ha take that world)... well atleast till your weaned i'm number one.

i do hope though you get out of this growth spurt quickly and all the milk i'm pumping into you helps you grow. i want you to grow big and strong and smart so that when ppl discourage you or try to make you doubt yourself , you'll know enough to trust your instincts and be courageous and brave and try things anyway.
some day you might have a baby of your own who will also go through a six week growth spurt. hopefully i will be a good grangran and encourage the heck out of you.

dearest turtle, you took a full 2 weeks to complete this growth spurt.  i love you, but can we not do this again ?

love
mama

Eight Week wonder

Dear Turtle

today you completed eight whole weeks ! woohoo... we made it ! let me be the first to congratulate you... know that your grangran will be making some sort of weird sweet tomorrow and force all of us to eat it. you are doing much better at night (knock on wood!) and today you slept for 2 consecutive hours during the day !! i could almost weep with joy :)

i have to admit the 45 min naps were kind of wearing me down , along with the fact that you had to be held for all your naps. but not all of it was difficult to endure.. you were kind of cute when fast asleep in my arms. now i'm not the overly sentimental kind (no really) and yet sometimes i'd spend a good 15 minutes (or maybe 30) staring at your sleeping face. come on i made you, cell by cell, muscle by muscle, atom by atom. i was the petri dish in which you cooked and came out all perfect ! aaah brings another tear to my eye...

today your great grangran said your not as cute as me (when i was a baby). i was surprised how quickly and how much i was offended. how dare anyone say that about you. after all i made you, and your perfect. dear turtle don't worry. your much cuter than anyone and perfect in every single way. your just bald as a cueball right now and once you grow hair even ur great grangran will admit your the best cutiepie there is.

love
mama

Day Zero

Dear FuzzyBuns

do you like your cutezy name? thats not what i really call you, and it took me all of 3 seconds to dream it up, so its not that bad really. could be worse.

the day you arrived was a perfect day, but you hardly gave me any notice. 7:00 AM i was like ow that hurts and 9:48 you were in my arms. why were you in such a hurry? really there was nothing interesting happening in the world right that moment.
do you really want to hear how you arrived?

you were supposed to arrive calmly and peacefully in a water tub. i had done all this research suggesting that was the best way for you to make your grand entrance. but actually you barely avoided arriving in the back of an ambulance in the hospital parking lot. and not the hospital i was registered at. i was screaming like a banshee from 8:15 till the moment you arrived and yes i lost all sense of dignity as the fire brigade, paramedics and police force examined your entrance along with everyone who happened to be around as i was being wheeled to the labor room in the hospital.

but you finally did come out, safe and sound and i was sooo exhausted and sooo glad it was over. little did i know i'd still hurt like hell for atleast 2 months after.

by the way i was 100% sure you were a boy.

love
mama

The beginning of something new

I was very sure, when pregnant that i would have a son. somehow thats the one thing i was sure of. So sure that when my Dr delivered my baby and told me it was a girl, i was in shock and asked her, "Are you sure?"

hee

a few months later and i'm glad i have a girl. sure I probably would have been glad if it was a boy too... but i'm glad my first is a girl.

K& I always thought our kid would be brash, bold, curious and reckless... my daughter could be all of those or none of those. she is curious... at her six week appt she kept scowling all around her like she was pissed that she was at the Drs and not in her cosy home bassinet. (she was just sleep deprived). everyone commented on how alert she was, how strong her neck muscles were and the way she kept looking around like as if she was trying to absorb everything. Some of her personality is starting to shine through and she is a bit timid i think. new experiences frighten her unless she's safely in my arms. does it make me feel important, needed and loved. YES! do i wish she was a bit more brave, maybe yes. perhaps time will change that. perhaps its just her 4 month stranger anxiety. but i feel something... something that i did not expect to feel. i feel that if anyone commented negatively on her, i'd give them a swift kick or probably hit them with a saucepan or probably scowl and walk away from them. No one is allowed to say anything about her, not even K. its strange this feeling where you think they must be protected at all costs even yourself if need be. Even protected from well meaning grandparents and husbands ... i mean husband :D and friends.

having a baby makes you realize how much you deplore the stupidity of other ppl who just dont have enough common sense to know whats best for your and all babies. everyone loves to give advice... start solids, start formula, sleep train, dont sleep train, let her play by herself, try a pacifier,... ALL RIGHT ppl. CALM the eff DOWN. sometimes i just want to vent on how hard it is without all the advice . and it IS hard. but i dont need BS advice that makes it easy for me and hard for her. Me and her, we'll figure it out. she'll learn on how to deal with an imperfect mum and i'll learn on how to deal with a brand new baby.

whatever you say, i get to make the choice on whats best for her. and if that means i dont teach her how to take bottle until she's six months old or how to use a pacifier , well then great. its MY problem that i dont get enough sleep or its hard. i should know its hard, but that doesnt mean i want to take shortcuts. i knew it was bloody hard when i signed up for this. she's being perfect when she wants to feed every 3 hours or be held or doing anything even if its simply staring at the wall and pooping all day. so i dont want to introduce any random imperfections that i need to correct for later on.. but nuf said.

having a daughter makes you look at the world a bit differently. maybe its the same for a son... i dont know. i'm more sensitive to sexist BS. don't get me wrong... i was a born feminist. when i got my ..you know monthtly stuff i was majorly pissed that my brother would not have to deal with it. and insisted that he do too.. i was a feminist when i was in primary school and insisted that the world was majorly skewed and unfair against girls and women. why the heck should i learn dancing while he got piano lessons. darn it i was more interested in piano than him anyways... but now some of the things i've made peace with or accepted are no longer good enough. who the heck is Dora and why should i buy Dora crib bumpers. why only pink even if its my favorite shade. why.. why... so many why's and i'm sure it gets worse as she gets older.
you would think we are in the 21st century , but i was doubtful when my mom asked me why my daughter was not fairer and to apply something or eat something to make her fair. what the... she is fair enough thank you very much. she is chubby enough thank you very much and she does not need external intervention to make her ....anything else than what she is. i would respectfully ( or not ), ask you to change yourself and your entire belief system before you come in front of her.

I dont care that you asked me to follow arcane and silly customs. i would do it, since it does not inconvenience me too much. But if you expect that i will wait for an entire year to pass before i give her rice, just because her naming ceremony is not completed and that naming ceremony can only be done by one person in one place in one country of the world.... then i'll call you out and say you are nuts. Do i care if you are my elder, my in law, my parent, my husband? i don't think so. she gets her food when she needs it period. she gets her nutrition when she needs it period.

SO , having a daughter.... a baby changes us. hopefully for the better. hopefully makes us re-look at everything we do and say and think about our lives. and i wonder where this road is leading and where i'll find myself in a couple of years from now.

until the next nap ....

toodles.