The Good, the Bad, and the Painful
January 29, 2004 - 5:47 p.m.
Marlee's 19 weeks old already! It seems like such a long time, she's so different from when we first brought her home from the hospital. Last night she started grabbing her feet. She's known that they were there for a while, but she just found them with her hands. She's been holding on to them ever since! She's this_close to rolling over from her back to her tummy. She also has these sharp, red little bumps on her top gums....teeth! Incisors at that! I am in such teething denial...especially since I thought I-teeth didn't come in until 9 months or so. It doesn't make any sense, she's still so young.
Marlee had her 4 month appointment last Wednesday - she's 14lbs. Her thrush has come back, though her tongue is clear, it's now a film on the inside of her cheeks. The doctor didn't want to treat it, she thinks it will just come and go until we are done breastfeeding. It's going to be super-hard to get it to go away now, because the first time she had it she was strictly breastfed. Now she has bottles, sippy cups, pacifiers. I have consistently sterilized all her pacifiers and nipples but it looks like I might have to toss them all and start over. I called after the appointment and requested that we get a prescription for Nystatin, which we'll be starting next week.
We also modified her Zantac, she's now getting a higher dose in the morning and we eliminated her nighttime dose. Other than that, everything went well at the check up except for the vaccinations. She screamed so hard when she got her shots that she broke a blood vessel and blood shot out her nose! It was chaos.... I nursed her afterwards and she was fine...but then she screamed for four hours later that night at home.
The doc said we could think about solids, but I really don't think she's ready for them. I am, I can't wait, I think it will be so fun. But she isn't developed enough in my opinion, and I'd like to wait until at least 6 months. I did give her a spoon one day to play with, and she shoved it right in her mouth. I put a little bit of cereal on it once and she just let the cereal sit on the tip of her tongue. She didn't spit it out, but she didn't swallow it either, at least not until she put her fist in her mouth to suck on it.
Sleeping really hasn't improved, as a matter of fact, this week, she's been waking every half hour from 2:30am on. She definitely sleeps well on the weekends, she maybe gets up once a night, if that, and generally sleeps in until 9:30am. This week has been hell, both Tim and I had the stomach flu and fevers. It's the same virus that Sheila had, she closed her daycare for over a week because of it. My grandma came to watch her during that week, and now she has the virus too! Luckily Marlee hasn't gotten it so far and I don't think she will. That is the magic of breastfeeding. Which is still touch and go, I don't think we'll ever have an easy time of it, as much as I wish we could just "get it". It's so much easier than it used to be, at least we know what we are doing, there just isn't as much milk as there should be and that's a shame.
We had Marlee's baptism this past weekend, it was so nice. The pastor is probably the nicest guy in the world, and Marlee was enthralled with everything he said. She looked so beautiful in her little white dress too!