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What a week!

I’m so proud to announce that from sleeping through 5-6 hours at night on our bed, Elena has progressed to sleeping through the night in her own cot! I’m so amazed as we didn’t think we would ever be able to get to this stage so soon. Her sleeping pattern has progressed from:

1. …sleeping in her cot but waking up every 2 hours to feed when we first brought her back…
2. …to completely refusing to go to sleep in her cot at all. That’s also when I started to breastfeed her directly again at night with both of us lying down, so that’s how she ended up sleeping in between us. This went on for quite awhile and she had to be breastfed first else she won’t go to sleep.
3. Then, she started falling asleep on our bed without needing to be breastfed first. However, she could only last 5 hours between feed, hence if her last feed was around 11+pm, she would wake up at 4am and again at 6am to be breastfed. If her last feed was at 12+am, she would only wake up once at around 5am to be breastfed.
4. Then on Monday night, we put her in her cot after her last feed and she promptly fell asleep. Hubby said…”Let’s leave her there and see if she can sleep through the night”…and she almost did, waking up only at 5am for a feed (I carried her to our bed and let her sleep there till morning).
5. The next night, she fell asleep in her cot again after ‘talking’ to her cot mobile for some time, and this time, she slept all the way till 7am! And she did so again for another 2 nights in a row!

I’m keeping my fingers and toes tightly crossed that this will be her sleeping pattern from now onwards. My main concerns when she started sleeping with us was:

1. How to get her to stop needing to be breastfed before going to sleep (as it wasn’t coz she was hungry, she just wanted to suckle)…
2. How to teach her to fall asleep by herself
3. How to get her to sleep in her own cot

Noooo grandma, I don’t wanna go to sleep!

…and amazingly enough, all of the above was resolved without any ‘drastic’ actions on our part! I have to admit that although I’m deliriously happy that she’s sleeping in her cot by herself, I really do miss having her next to me at night! I may complain about the lack of space and achy-breaky joints the next morning, but I’ve really gotten used to having my little princess sleeping next to me with her arms and legs all spread out taking up half the bed! I miss seeing her face when she’s sleeping peacefully next to me when I wake up in the middle of the night (although I don’t miss waking up in the middle of the night one bit as contrary as it may sound!). And I miss sharing my blanket with her… Really felt ‘empty’ the past few nights!

Psstt…wanna know a secret? I left the fridge door open…

On the flipside, the horrible thing that happened this week was that one night, the fridge door wasn’t shut properly, leaving a little gap…and because of that, the next morning, horrors of horrors, I had to throw away 20oz of EBM. The milk was still quite cold when I touched it, but there was no way I was going to risk feeding it to Elena. Still, imagine how heartsick and nauseated I felt pouring it all away…

Elena’s rash was still not getting any better (thanks for the tip, Giddy Tigress…if only I read it before I threw away the 20oz of EBM!), so I decided to see if there was any cream I could apply. I found this cream: Sebamed Baby Facial Cream at Guardian and decided to try it as I’m currently using the children’s shampoo from the same range on Elena. The first time, I just applied a little bit on her chin at night before she fell asleep, and guess what? The rash subsided somewhat the next morning! I’ve been applying it on the problem areas twice to three times a day since and I’m glad to say we’ve finally seen some improvement – the affected areas are not as red and dry.

On Sunday, we brought her over to a friend’s place for the first time…a trial run, I called it! She cried a little bit when we got there, probably due to the unfamiliar surroundings and faces. However, she settled down after awhile and even managed a little nap…which meant I actually got to play mahjong for the first time since I gave birth to her, woohoo!!

A short post this time so I’ll fill up the blanks with photos instead…

So many exciting things happened this week:

“Ouch, getting a crick in the neck from posing for all these photos…”

1. Elena finally fell asleep by herself without needing to suckle on my breast! And not only that, she slept through the whole night till 5.30am…five nights in a row! I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this will continue…

“Hmmm…shall I sleep through the night tonight or should I wake up to kacau mummy & daddy??”

2. Her rash has not subsided…in fact, it’s getting worse. She has little red patches on her chin, cheeks, beside her eyes and behind her ears…

But on the bright side, Elena’s getting fairer…

3. She’s such a complain queen! She’s not satisfied with just crying, even after we pacify her, she’ll still moan and groan for a few minutes before settling down. And she does it even with the bottle in her mouth!

My lil’ laughing Buddha!

4. Gave in to popping a pacifier into her mouth…for less than 1 minute! I just couldn’t stand the sight of it in her mouth, it reminded me of a muzzle…sigh…so I pulled it out. She was happily sucking on it the minute it went in and boy, did she give a big howl of protest when I pulled it out. Took me ages to pacify (pun unintended!) her after that…

“Hmmppphhh, since Mommy won’t give me the pacifier, I’ll settle for my fist instead…”

5. She getting more and more talkative! It’s so fun to say ‘Hiiiii’ to her coz she’ll respond with a shy smile followed by ‘Aiiiiiii…..’. And our ‘Helllloooo’ gets a response in the form of ‘eeehhhoooo’. Oh, and once, she actually got angry when the toys on her rocker didn’t respond to all her babbling…she actually ‘scolded’ them (her babbling got increasingly agitated and louder)… And she has definitely smiled her ‘social’ smile at us (but I haven’t yet had the opportunity to take a photo of her when she smiles like that).

“Anyone wanna cubit my cheeks?”

Another remarkably uneventful week IF you exclude all her poo-ing episodes!! LOL…how my life has changed! The highlight of my day is whether Elena poos or not… *faints* She usually goes once a day, and each time, it’s a little drama by itself. The amount of poo is amazing; it saturates her diapers and actually overflows. Once, I was carrying her and accidentally….urm…pressed the bottom part of her diaper right after she poo-ed. The poo actually got squeezed out of the top of her diaper like toothpaste…ugh!! Yes, exciting days indeed…

She has started babbling a lot, and there are new sounds everyday! It’s so fun to ‘talk’ to her when she’s in her talkative mode…within one to two days, her ‘vocabulary’ suddenly expanded to include all sorts of sounds. Even her cries have taken on new intonations! And boy…her cries and coos are soooooo manja…just think of a little kitten mewing, that’s what she sounds like sometimes!

She has recently developed this bad habit of biting her mittens and rubbing it all over her face. She has little patches of small rashes on her chin, behind her ear and on her eyes…I think it’s caused by all the rubbing as her mittens are wet with her saliva and milk residue. I really need to buy more mittens so that I can change it more frequently as we are still hesitating about removing her mittens permanently in case she scratches her face.

Hugs anyone?

Lately, she decreed that mommy shall now become her all-day pacifier - not only does she suckle at my breast at night, she now sucks my arm/shoulder/neck whenever she gets the chance while I’m carrying her! She sucked so hard that I actually got a little hickey! And this mischievous girl does it covertly…she’ll first angle her head so that her mouth is just touching my arm, and then all of a sudden…slurp slurp slurp…

We noticed that she’s now very fascinated with moving objects. Her vision must have gotten a whole lot clearer now as she can very clearly focus on her cot mobile when she’s lying down. She ‘visits’ her friends, Mr. Frog, Mr. Bird and Mr. Hippo a couple of times a day whenever she has her diaper changed, and each time, she’ll talk to them excitedly. She really likes her cot mobile and actually protests when I carry her away!

She also loves looking at the pendulum of the clock in the hall, her pink Disney rattle, the movement of my hair when it’s not tied up, the curtains, or any reflective surface…as long as there is some movement in the object. However, she doesn’t have a very long attention span and she gets bored pretty quickly. Hence, we have a ‘tour’ of all her favourite objects where we start off from my mom’s room to my room, to the hall and finally the kitchen… …enough to keep her entertained for a good 10-15 minutes!

We’ve also increased her feeding amount and I’m glad to say that she is now able to take 3.5-4.0oz! This means that the time in between feedings can now be stretched to 2.5 to 3 hours…yay! I’m still expressing milk daily, but I’ve now decreased the number of times to 3 times a day, and am able to express about 4-5 oz each time. Elena is doing pretty well on Enfalac A+ as she hasn’t had any problems with her bowel movements. I hope she won’t have any constipation problems once we wean her completely off breastmilk! Yes, we do plan to wean her off breastmilk gradually, although I still hope I’m able to continue to include some EBM feedings till she starts on solids. Am glad to say that although I haven’t been able to exclusively breastfeed her, her daily intake still consists of at least 50% breastmilk vs. formula.

Her movements are extremely quick and we have to be really careful when carrying her as she squirms a lot. She has also developed this new tactic of moving from a burping position to a snuggling position when I carry her (and she only does it to me, never to my mom). I usually carry her upright on my right when I burp her. At first, she used to use her head and bang it against my neck, then my chest and finally come to rest on the opposite side in the crook of my arm. I then started to use my chin to block her from moving downwards. When she realized that she could no longer bulldoze her way down, you know what she did??? She bent her body backwards from the waist, and swung herself in an arc to land on the opposite side of my body on my left arm! Future stuntwoman for hire, anyone?

As for mommy…well, mommy is now facing a dilemma of whether or not to continue on as a stay-at-home-mom…or go back to work? More on that on another day, in another post…

Elena was a little angel this week! Urm…other than poo-ing and being hungry at the same time which got us all flustered coz we didn’t know whether to feed her first or clean her bum first…and throwing up three times (once coz we fed her paracetamol for her slight fever post-injection and she didn’t like it so she coughed it up together with the milk from her earlier feed, once coz she was a greedy lil’ girl who insisted on breastfeeding 30mins after a 3oz formula feed, and once coz she kept moving and kicking so much during a feed that she ended up choking and coughing)… yup…she was a good lil’ girl!

She’s getting a whole lot more vocal now…when she’s in her talkative mood, she’ll talk to her wai poh and wai kong, the flowers on the pillowcase, the little figurines and pictures on the wall and the fan! Most of what she says consists of little coos, but my mum has been the recipient of not one, not two, but FIVE ‘ah-goos’! She knows when we’re playing with her and laughs and smiles and coos in response…it’s so fun to say something to her and hear a ‘ahhh’ or ‘ohhh’ or ‘oooo’ as if she understands!

Her nails are still so sharp despite me trimming them that we still dare not remove her mittens. Once, I removed one mitten to let her play with a rattle and she accidentally scratched herself on her thigh while waving her hand about and immediately burst out into tears! I’m so worried that she’ll scratch her face when she’s in one of her crying fits, yet I if I don’t remove her mittens, how is she going to be able to start feeling textures and shapes and building up her fine motor skills?

I’m still expressing milk and breastfeeding her at night, and she has gotten so used to being breastfed at night that she refuses to go to sleep unless she gets to suckle first. It may only be 30 mins from her last feed, but she’ll just want to suckle (and I know she’s not hungry coz she’ll happily suck on my knuckle if I offer it to her!). I’m really thinking of giving her a pacifier but feel quite conflicted as I don’t know how easy it’ll be to wean her off it. Plus, it’s not easy to find BPA free pacis here as many shops don’t carry the brands that produce BPA-free pacis. Trying my best to hold out…sigh. And speaking of night-time feeds, she now wakes up about twice a night, once at around 3am, another time at around 6am, so at least I get a more decent amount of sleep nowadays…

Lately, she has become very proficient at dribbling milk from the side of her mouth and at times, she actually stores some milk in her mouth after the last sip and when I think the coast is clear, she suddenly dribbles it out from both sides of her mouth! And this week, if I try feeding her when she doesn’t want to drink, she’ll spit out whatever milk that went into her mouth in a nice little arc. It would be amusing if not for the amount of tissues we go through each week!

She’s also growing into the bigger clothes that I bought before she was born and it’s such a delight to dress her up and take photos! When I look at her, I marvel at how much she has grown from the time we brought her home from the hospital. She was so teeny tiny then…her head could fit in the palm of my hand and when I breastfed her, her body was just the length of my arm! Now, she has filled out all that loose wrinkly skin… …her thighs are little delectable drumlets (thanks, Tsu Lin, for that cute observation!) and we’ll soon have to let her sleep on the cot lengthwise as she’s getting longer than the width of the cot now. The cot mobile may have to go soon too as she now can reach the lowest hanging toy! How fast she has grown…I’m torn between wanting her to remain so small and cute vs. seeing her grow to a little cheeky and mischievous (looking at her now, I have no doubt she’ll be both cheeky and mischievous) toddler!

Oh, and if you’re wondering how mommy is doing…well, it has taken some time, but I’ve almost reached my pre-pregnancy weight, only 2kgs more to go! I can now fit into all my pre-pregnancy shorts and pants (yay!), but all the nice dresses that I bought when I was pregnant are too loose now (boo!). Don’t actually plan to lose anymore weight though as some people have commented that I actually look thinner than before I was preggers plus my doctor recently reminded me again that I need to maintain my weight at 45kgs. Anyways, being the vainpot that I am, I just had to take a photo to commemorate the occasion of being able to zippity-zip up my jeans… *grin* As much I love being preggers (and believe it or not, I actually miss being pregnant!), I equally love being able to see my toes and actually having a waist again…