17 month updates

So it's been 5 months since I last updated the Tiny Squee blog. That's nearly 1/3 of her life. That's unfortunate. She's doing so many new things. New things every day, in fact.

She talks(ish). She says:
Mama
Dada
Meemoo
Bubble
Ladlladlladl - water
Nanoo - usually means snack, which is mostly composed of cereal and Just Fruit, sometimes it means some other food she really wants.
Dadoo - things related to "manly" activities. Pickup trucks. Tools.
BaBA (the stress is always on the second syllable) - stairs. This is usually said several times over, as in BaBA baBA baBA!
Woof
Hithhhh - the sound a snake makes
Moo
Vroom - the sound a motorcycle or an airplane makes
Wow

She knows baby signs:
Airplane
Apple
Bathtime (although she doesn't use this one much anymore)
Bicycle (which she also uses for motorcycle, but with more vrooming added)
Bread
Dog (often accompanied by woofing)
Grapes
Hairbrush(ing)
Hat (one of her favorites)
Potty
Please
Toothbrush(ing)

Her favorite things are hats, dogs, water, and motorcycles (with bicycles a close second). She will point out every single hat, dog, or motorcycle that she sees. She is very observant and she never lies. She often will point out that people riding motorcycles and bicycles are wearing helmets. Helmets are an integral part of the motor/bicycle riding process. Water can be in bottles, rivers, oceans, pictures, drops. It's amazing how often there are hats, dogs, bikes, and water to be seen.

She has a favorite Portland Magazine that we have gone through countless times. She will point out all of her favorite things on each page. At the beginning of the magazine, there is a picture of a snake on a laptop screen. When we open to this page, it always involves a good hithhhing.

We were making a lot of progress with the potty and had moved into underwear instead of diapers for most of the day when we were at home. However, recently she's decided that she no longer wants to sit on the potty most of the time. She's decided this vehemently and will vigorously shake her head if you ask her if she has to potty. If you take her into the bathroom anyhow, there is screaming and arching of the back. It turns out that it's impossible to put an arching, screaming toddler on the potty. So sometimes, she puts the peepee in the diaper instead of the potty. Oh well, she'll get it eventually.

She's started to act like a tiny little kid instead of a very large baby. She has very specific wants. This morning, she wanted to carry her painting (which is in a frame sitting up on the bookshelf) outside. She wanted to draw on the glass of the frame with her markers. Once she'd accomplished this goal, she was willing to draw on paper, but she wouldn't even consider drawing on the paper until the glass had been suitably decorated.

She likes to carry a bowl of nanoo around with her when she wants a snack. Consequently, there are a lot of bowls that have contained nanoo that she sometimes finds around the house. She will point at them or pick them up and request nanoo, nanoo, nanoo. She wanted nanoo for breakfast this morning. We debated appropriate breakfast foods: "Nanoo." "Eggs." "Nanoo." "Eggs." "Nanoo." "Eggs." Etc.

She's a very good eater, overall. She will try most foods. Current favorites are pasta with cheese, steamed spinach, grapes, blueberries, avocado. Recently discarded favorites are string cheese and peanut butter sandwiches. Sometimes she will only eat food that has been taken off Mama or Dada's plate, even if it is exactly the same as the food on her plate. She sometimes uses a fork or spoon effectively, but mostly still eats with her hands. She drinks water out of a shot glass at most meals. During the rest of the day, she drinks out of a water bottle with a straw.

The end of nursing is at hand

I decided a couple of months ago that when I ran out of this batch of herbal supplements that I wouldn't buy any more. I figured that my milk supply would go down, but she would be almost a year old and so that would be ok.

A couple of weeks ago, I hit the point where almost all the supplements ran out at once. I learned that they really had been helping my milk supply. A lot. Once I stopped them, my supply rapidly went down to almost nothing. I stopped pumping at work because it seemed like way too much effort for very little return. That caused my supply to go down even further.

As it stands now, I'm still nursing with the lact-aid at night when putting S to bed. I nurse her in the morning before I leave for work. I don't think she gets much milk (if I had to guess, I'd say an ounce a session or less), but she still seems to enjoy a brief cuddle and nurse before heading off to do baby things.

Mostly, I feel good about it. I made it to a year (tomorrow!) nursing with very low milk supply. S got exclusively breast milk for several months and has had at least some milk every day for a year. We've done the best we could. I also feel good about it simply because I think about it less. Every time I don't nurse or pump is a time when I don't have to feel like a failure because I don't produce enough milk. Every bite of solid food that she eats is a success because it's less formula she's going to drink. I think with enough time, I'll get over the heartbreak of not being able to fully breastfeed. However, I'm not there yet. When I was pregnant, I just assumed that I'd be able to breastfeed. I mean, after all, isn't that what breasts are designed to do? When I wasn't able to, it was like that dream died. And like any death, it takes a while to fully work through it and complete the mourning process. A big part of me will be glad when we're done with breast- and bottle-feeding entirely. I think in a year, when she's eating solid food full time, I'll probably have put the whole thing to rest. But I'm not there yet.

She's turning into a real person!

Things that Sterling does now that are like a real person:

• She started pointing at things. Today. It's so weird that one day she doesn't do something and the next day, she does.
• She signs "milk" and "potty" and occasionally actually does want what she's signing. 
• She just learned the "bathtime" sign and uses it when she's in the bathtub. Yesterday, she was sitting on the potty and looked at the tub and signed "bathtime".
• She can stand on her own. Not for long, and not very often, but she can do it.
• She can walk down the hall if you hold her hands.
• She gained over a pound in 10 days. Can we say "growth spurt"?
• Mike says she pointed at the dog and said "woo, woo, woo" today.
• She can open and shut the dishwasher, and occasionally does so on command.
• When she was in the bath tub tonight, Mike told her "give the shark to Mama" and she did.
• She helps unload the washer and hands individual diapers to me to put in the dryer.
• She loves to open and shut doors.
• She can drink through a straw.
• She puts things into other things. And takes them out. And puts them in. And takes them out.

Baby's First Illness

Tiny Squee has been sick all weekend. 

It started out as a low fever. I originally thought it was from teething, since her two front teeth are trying to poke through. When I came home from work on Friday, I found Mike in the recliner underneath a cranky, pink baby. Her fever spiked up to 104 (as determined by our somewhat inaccurate ear thermometer) Friday night. We didn't sleep well. She was up every two hours at least, hot and irritable. 

Saturday morning we were supposed to drive down to Corvallis to visit Meemoo. We decided to push our travels back to Sunday due to baby illness. That turned out to be a good decision since her fever went up in the evening and ended up topping 104 again Saturday night. Another unrestful night for everyone involved.

Sunday morning her fever was lower and she seemed to feel somewhat better. She was really cranky, but not screaming in pain so it's unlikely she has an ear infection. After her bath, Mike noticed that she had a rash that had suddenly sprang up in her diaper area and spread up her chest and back. I called the advice nurse, who said that unless her behavior changed substantially, she was probably fine. I decided to hold off on making her a doctor's appointment on the grounds that I think he was going to tell us that it's viral and there's nothing he can do and that we should take her home and make sure she stays hydrated.

Sunday night was not my favorite, though. She took forever to get to sleep, then was up again from 10-11 and refused to be put down so I could get ready for bed (teeth brushing while holding a baby, anyone?). Then, she was up at 1. I gave her to Mike for a couple hours, until she woke me up at 3 screaming bloody murder. He went to bed and I nursed her quiet. We dozed in the recliner for the rest of the night. 

Today, she's very cranky and has only been willing to be put down for a few minutes at a time. Most everything sets her off and she's crying real tears and most affronts, so she's serious about it. The rash is worse and has spread up the back of her neck. It doesn't seem to bother her.

My mother suggested that she has roseola (which I had when I was a baby - apparently I spiked a high fever while my parents were camping and they ended up spending some quality time in the ER). I looked up the symptoms and they seem like a very good match (from here):

The first symptoms include:

• Eye redness
• Irritability
• Runny nose
• Sore throat
• High fever, that comes on quickly and may be as high as 105° Fahrenheit and can last 3 to 7 days

About 2 - 4 days after becoming sick, the child's fever lowers and a rash appears. This rash usually:

• Starts on the middle of the body and spreads to the arms, legs, neck, and face.
• Pink or rose-colored,
• Has small sores that are slightly raised

The rash lasts from a few hours to 2 - 3 days. It usually does not itch.

Hardcore teething

TS is in the process of growing top front teeth. Soon she will look like a beaver. Right now, she's got swollen purplish bumps with small white toothy areas that can be seen through the gums. Of course, she'll only let you look if you're holding her upside down. It's a difficult process for her. She's been very whiny and needy today according to her stay-at-home father. When I got home and took her temperature, it was running between 100 and 101. I gave her a serving of baby tylenol, which she promptly spit out. I remembered that you're supposed to syringe it into their cheek pouches, so I squirted another serving into her cheek, which she ejected even more forcefully. I tried one last time, while holding her and moving her around to distract her. She seemed to swallow most of it. Since all three of them were on the low end of the recommended dosage (about half of it), I'm pretty sure that I haven't OD'ed her on acetaminophen.

Magic Sleep Suit Retired

Sterling has outgrown her magic sleep suit. She's 9.5 months old and it's supposed to fit 6-9 months, so I'd say we're right on the money. It's probably been approaching too small for a couple of weeks now - it's been pretty tight across the top of the shoulders. I realized that she had really, truly outgrown it when she kneed out through the zipper while I was nursing her to sleep.

Was it magic? No, really not. It did restrict her movement, which helped her calm down when I was trying to get her to sleep. She did come to recognize it as a sleep signal, to the point where she'd cry when we tried to put her in it. In fact, if she didn't cry going into the suit, it was usually a signal that she wasn't tired enough to actually go to sleep. It didn't seem to particularly increase the length of her naps. We didn't keep it on her overnight because she sleeps in the bed with us and tends to overheat anyhow.

Her bedtime routine now includes:
-a bath; we just transitioned her out of the infant tub into the "big person" tub
-two or three stories; these are board books, so they're all pretty short
-turn on her sleep music; Kenny Loggins "Return to Pooh Corner"
-nurse
I'm trying again to transition her off of nursing to sleep. It seems to be going better this time than it has in the past. I'm going to chalk it up to her being older and more developmentally mature now. We nurse until she seems to have lost interest in nursing as a food and is just nursing for comfort. I determine this by her sucking rate and strength and whether she's still swallowing. Then, I've started popping her off and laying her down on her front. I know, I know, they're supposed to sleep on their backs, but she doesn't like her back and she rolls over on her own if I put her on her back. If I pat her for a few minutes, she usually starts to breathe more slowly and easily and falls asleep. Tonight, I even got out of the bed before she was completely asleep and she fell asleep the last little bit on her own. I think we're really making progress this time.

Nursing update

9 months later, we're still at it. I feel like that's quite an accomplishment, seeing as I've never made enough milk for her. 

We've basically run out of donor milk at this point. I haven't been able to find anyone new to donate, probably because most people want to donate to younger babies. It makes sense, they need the milk more than a 9 month old who's doing well eating solids. However, she still needs to be taking in quite a bit more milk than I make. 

I'd been saying that I was going to get her on raw goat's milk after we ran out of donor breast milk, but our local farmers are in the process of drying off their herd so they can breed them for the spring. They didn't have any milk available. I did a little research and came up with this recipe for goat's milk formula made from dry goat's milk powder. I ordered a bunch of the ingredients from amazon and while I was waiting for them to show up, I put her back on powdered formula; the expensive organic Earth's Best kind. We had the same congestion issue that we had when she was just a tiny squee (the first time she was on it). I had hoped that she would have grown out of it, but apparently not. She got all snotty after a few days of formula instead of breast milk. We used the formula while we were down in California for Christmas and she did ok (not too snotty), but still more snuffly than I like my tiny squee to be.

Now that we're back home and I have all the ingredients for the goat's milk formula, we're feeding a combination of goat's milk formula and Earth's Best canned formula. I've been making up 16oz of goat's milk formula most days and then we supplement with Earth's Best when we go out (it's much easier to transport) or when we've used up all the goat's milk formula and need a bottle in a hurry (like the middle of the night). We've been doing a good portion of the feeding through the Lact-aid, although both goat's milk formula and powdered formula are a lot more irritating to use with it than breast milk was. The goat's milk formula has a bunch of added oil (coconut and olive), which solidifies when it cools down. If the Lact-aid is too cold, the oils clog the tiny sucking tube and TS can't get any liquid out. The powdered formula has a tiny little strainer that has to be used inside the funnel when the formula is poured into the bags. Otherwise, the undissolved formula gets stuck in the tiny tube as well. 

I'm still planning on changing her over to raw goat's milk once it's available. That'll probably be about the same time she turns one, which is when she's supposed to be able to start drinking plain dairy products as a beverage. Since I've got all the stuff to make the formula, I'll probably keep it up until I use some of it up, but it's nice to know that we've almost made it to the point where she can drink plain cow milk. 

My current plan is to keep nursing with the Lact-aid until she self-weans. However, I keep waffling on that decision. It's sometimes hard to rationalize all the trouble that I go through to produce a few ounces of milk. I have decided that I'm going to stop taking all the herbal supplements when she turns one, though. Then she can nurse whatever milk there is there and have a Lact-aid when she wants more (before naps and at bedtime, possibly). I keep hearing stories of babies who abruptly stop nursing and never go back to it, so maybe that'll happen to us. Or maybe she'll want to keep nursing forever (I hope not). At a minimum, I'm committed to continuing to take my supplements until her birthday, then letting her nurse through the summer. I'm torn about keeping it up through next school year - it'd be nice to not have to worry about pumping while I'm at work. That's a long time away in the life of a tiny squee, though. She'll be a totally different, much larger, person by then.