Back on the road...

Harder than breastfeeding, traveling while pregnant, morning sickness, the last few weeks of pregnancy and childbirth, was leaving Delaney for the first time.  I have been getting back to work more and more in the last few weeks and the time had come for me to get back on the road to see my most important client, Safeway Canada in Calgary.  It had been 4 glorious months since my last trip and I admit I was a bit rusty on packing.  Mostly because I had to pack a ridiculous amount of equipment in order for me to pump, store and bring back breastmilk.  Despite a healthy freezer stash, I was not prepared to just throw away this "liquid gold."  In preparation I bought a polar cooler which keeps ice for 26 hours.  I had to pack the breast pump including a cigarette lighter adaptor in case I have to pump on the plane or car, cleaning wipes, bottles, storage bags, ziploc bags for ice, hands free pumping bra , nursing cover and a print out of the TSA rule stating I can carry on breastmilk.  I pumped for the first time standing up in the terminal 2 airport.  A few moms smiled at me sympathetically.  American Express saved the day on the way home and got me into a lounge where I could pump in the private handicapped bathroom.   I only missed 1 pumping session in the 2 day trip which won't effect my supply.

I dreaded the trip since the day I booked it and got increasingly upset as the day drew nearer.  I knew that Delaney would be fine.  She is happy, has settled into a routine and gives cues of which both my mom and Brice are absolutely capable of responding to and enjoy handling.  I knew that Brice and my mom would be fine.  In fact Brice was excited to have a night alone with Delaney.  And I knew that I could handle the annoyance and inconvenience of pumping on the road.  But the bond between mother and child is so emotional and physical, so intense, that I was in physical pain from missing her so much.  I cried for the 2 hours before I had to leave, the whole way to the airport and in bursts throughout the trip.  I looked at her pictures over and over again.  I made Brice send me frequent pictures and updates on every detail.  I imagined what she might be doing at any given second. 

Guess what? We all did just fine.  Despite a major spit up right before bedtime, some fussiness and an unusually early wake up, Delaney and Brice had a great night.  She finished every bottle from my mom, had great burps, naps and tummy time.  I had a very successful trip that made me feel less terrible about having to go. In fact telling the buyer that this was my first time away from my 11 week old was good for at least one sympathy order.   I brought back over 20 oz of breastmilk with no issues in security.  And when I got home I got a huge smile from Delaney as if to say, Its ok that you had to go but I'm so happy you are home.  I even made it home to do the whole bedtime routine.  And she slept through the night! 

Like many things we have learned in the last few months, we sometimes just need to rip off the bandaid and push our comfort zone.   That isn't to say I won't miss her terribly any time I have to leave her, but next time I might only cry for 1.5 hours instead of 2.   

Bath Graduation

Delaney graduated from the sink to her whale tub!  I have such mixed emotions about it-- I'm so proud of her growth but also so sad that she's growing up so quickly!  I would be sadder had the whale tub not been 10 times easier than the sink.  And she seemed to enjoy it more too since she could just sit back and relax for her spa time! 

Here was her first bath at 4 days old:

And then last night at almost 10 weeks:

Happy Baby

I feel like we must be doing SOMETHING right because Delaney appears to be a very happy baby.  She is smiling all the time now, and not just little grins, but mouth-wide-open smiles.  She is also "talking" all the time.  We don't know where she got her blue eyes from, but the babbling is no surprise!  We respond to her sounds with similar sounds in an effort to boost her self-confidence.  She is especially chatty in the afternoons. 

2 months

Delaney is 2 months old and we got a cupcake to celebrate, which I ate for her of course.  It’s what she wanted! 

She is 11lbs 7 oz (60^th percentile) and 22 inches (50^th percentile).   She has such a small head (25% percentile) that none of her sunhats fit her!  She held our hands through her 3 shots on Tuesday while all three of us cried.   There is nothing worse than seeing your child in pain.  The good news is that the doctor is very happy with her health and progress. 

Her features and personality develop more and more every day.  She definitely recognizes our faces now and smiles when she sees us.  Her smiles are so enthusiastic that she now has an open-mouth smile, and she laughed for the first time yesterday!   One of her favorite faces to look at is her own;  we sat her in front of the mirror and she was absolutely amused.   She lifts higher and holds it longer every day during tummy time and we are working on her tracking skills. 

In the past two weeks, Delaney has slept through the night five times (not that we’ve counted)!   The other nights have been only one wake to feed, and she has nursed for anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes and gone right back to sleep, so we are feeling very fortunate.   I spent the second half of my pregnancy reading nearly every book and theory on baby sleep, and there were a few important lessons, reinforced by Kim, that we adopted since her birth:

-          We always put Delaney down tired but awake.  She has learned to put herself to sleep from the beginning.   Of course, it is difficult to pry her out of loving arms, but we’ve tried to stick to our guns and she’s only fallen asleep in someone’s arm or on the breast/bottle a few times.  We wait for her tired cues (yawning, glazed look in her eyes, etc.) and then put her down.  She spends a few minutes having “me time” and then slips off to dreamland.   If we wait too long and she gets overtired, she often has a fussy sleep. 

-          We’ve followed the Eat-Activity-Sleep routine for every cycle except during the night when we put her back down to sleep right after eating. 

-          We’ve concentrated equally on getting quality daytime naps, daytime wakefulness and nighttime sleep, each with a different purpose, each day with varying degrees of success. 

-          We keep her wakeful hours to no more than 2 hours, but mostly she does not make it past 1.5 hours at this point.   Her wakeful hours will increase over time of course.  The current goal is 1.5 hours awake followed by 1.5 hours asleep.  Many naps she wakes up after 45 minutes (apparently when going from 1 sleep cycle to the next) and we are sometimes able to get her to go back to sleep.   The goal is day time naps averaging 1 hour. 

-          Especially recently, we’ve implemented a consistent wake up time (7am), even if we have to commit the cardinal sin of “never waking a sleeping baby.”   In fact, we commit that sin pretty often to keep her on a consistent schedule. 

-          We also started a bedtime routine in the first few weeks, but the activities have evolved and the timing has become more consistent lately.  Starting right after her last nap of the day (which we cut short after no more than an hour) and 1.5-2 hours before her bedtime, we give her half a feed, hold her/play with her lightly, give her a bath with her Comfort Calming Bath and then use the Comfort Calming Lotion, dim the lights, finish the feed, read a book (Goodnight Moon), turn on her Sleep Sheep, swaddle her, put her down, give her her lovey/transitional object, sing Twinkle Twinkle, kiss her and tell her how much we love her, and then turn out the lights and leave the room. 

-          She has slept in her crib from Day 1.   We’ve made a few exceptions (when traveling and the first couple of nights that we were on our own without Kim), and day time naps are anywhere from her crib to her rocker to her carseat.   We do have a video monitor and her room is right next to ours.  

We are trying to get into a schedule that looks something like this:

7am Wake-Up and Bottle feed (4.75 oz currently, but she frequently does not finish.  We try to increase by ¼ oz every week)

Activity (activities include tummy time, bumbo sitting, touring the house, activity mat, going for a walk/run, etc.)

8:30am Nap in crib

10:00am Breastfeed

Activity

11:30am Nap in crib, stroller or rocker

1:00pm  Breastfeed

2:30pm Nap in crib, stroller or rocker

4:00 Breastfeed

4:00-7:00pm  During this time we play and let her take a brief nap or no more than an hour

6:30/7:00pm night time routine—breastfeed, bath, book, bed

8/8:30pm bedtime

10:00pm dreamfeed

We are going to try this for a week and see how it goes.   Obviously the above times are approximates—we have not had 1 day where we’ve fallen exactly in this timing.  All of this varies +/- 30 minutes.   We always want to meet Delaney’s needs, but especially since we both work from home, it’s important for our family (and our neurotic personalities) to have some predictability and structure. 

All of the above paints a very pretty picture, but that is not to say that we have not had our share of challenges.  Our biggest challenge is that Delaney still struggles with the bottle sometimes.  Due to this, we have not yet felt comfortable leaving her with even family, since her hysterics during a difficult bottle feed would rattle even the most patient and loving grandparent.