Six months already?!
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
No way![/caption]
She is such a big girl!
Such a happy girl!
Such a chubby girl!
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Look at my knee dimples![/caption]
This girl lights up our life. She is now 6.5 months old, because I have again been working on this update for two weeks. But I have to say that six months is my favorite so far! I was so nervous that I wasn't savoring the newborn stage enough, or even the four month stage which was supposed to be so awesome. Those stages were awesome, because she is awesome, but they were also hard. Newborns are overwhelming, with all the breastfeeding and intense postpartum emotions. And four months brought rough transitions out of the swaddle and rock-n-play and a heavy dose sleep regression. It's still hard at times, but she is SO MUCH fun now. She smiles all the time and grabs at our faces and kicks her legs in excitement, and I just can't get enough of this baby
Weight: As of Tuesday, she is 17.8 pounds! She's been steady in the 70-80th percentiles. She is in some 6 month clothes and some 9 month clothes, depending on the brand.
She's in size three diapers. And I might have a problem with diaper stockpiling. You can't have too many diapers, right? I think I've got all the size threes we'll need, and I'm adding to our size four pile. It seems like at least every other week, CVS has diapers on sale with an extrabucks reward. And then they send me a $5 coupon, which when combined with printable coupons and extrabucks ends up making the diapers $2-3 per pack, so how do I not buy them?! I just stop after church on Sundays, do a quick transaction, and keep rolling the extrabucks into the next sale. I guess as long as there is still space in the closet, I will keep adding! Look at my pretty stockpile!
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400"]
All the diapers[/caption]
Eating:
Still mostly breastfed. Breastfeeding is finally going great, and I'm so thankful we were able to make it work for us. I know it could just have easily have gone poorly. We've started a bit of solids, settling upon baby led weaning with a bit of rice cereal for the iron. But I'm not sure she is all that into spoon feeding, unless she can chew on the spoon, so I will probably incorporate fortified cereals into finger foods like pancakes and muffins for her. Right now she just gnaws on her veggies, but thankfully Riley loves a nice well-gnawed on piece of squash or cucumber or carrot! He is loving this solids thing already. Gracie thinks it's ok, too (but she is a much more selective eater than Riley).
[caption id="attachment_2026" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
For me?![/caption]
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
The spoon is the best part![/caption]
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
squash![/caption]
Sleeping:
Oh, I could write paragraphs on her sleeping. She still only really cries when she is tired or fighting sleep, so sleep is still my obession. And I wouldn't say she is a bad sleeper. She still naps for 4-5 hours a day and sleeps 12 hours a night, minus the 5 minute feeds during the night. I've spaced most of her day feedings to be about 4 hours apart, and that seemed to help her sleep for slightly longer stretches at night, but then we hit the six month sleep regression (if there is a sleep regression to be found, this girl finds it) and we were back to waking once every hour or two. This ended up being the push I needed to move her back to the nursery at night. I was very weepy about this, as it felt awful to spend all night away from my baby, but I knew she needed to fuss it out a bit, and it's hard to let that happen when she's sleeping next to us. So I moved her into the nursery on Sunday. And it's gone really well! Still up every 3 hours or so the first couple nights, but Tuesday night/Wednesday morning I woke up to her crying and wondered why I felt so great and realized it was 4:30! That was 6.5 hours since the last feed! Last night, she was up and needed some settling during the 11 pm and midnight hours, but then I woke up at 4:55 and realized she was still asleep! I ended up feeding her, because I wanted to get two good feedings in before I left for work, so I'm not sure how long she would have slept if I hadn't fed her.
So, despite all my obsessing, she's a pretty good sleeper. I don't have a baby that sleeps through the night without a fight, but we stay on her sleep needs and she gets enough sleep and is rarely over-tired, and that's most important.
[caption id="attachment_2043" align="aligncenter" width="225"]
Errands make a girl tired![/caption]
[caption id="attachment_2044" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Let's just hang for a bit before I go back to sleep, ok?[/caption]
Likes:
Daddy! She adores her daddy so much. It is the most adorable thing ever.
[caption id="attachment_2036" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Lunch with daddy?!?[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_2033" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Just loungin' with my dad![/caption]
Toys! She is grabbing at everything now, and I love watching the new things she can do every day.
[caption id="attachment_2027" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Just playing a little piano on the farm.[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_2029" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
An owl with tags! I love tags![/caption]
She loves the dogs, and Riley loves her back. Gracie still thinks she's quite boring, but she will love her once they can play with their toys together. She loves being tickled, she loves to eat, she loves lounging in her swing and bouncing in her jumperoo. Lots of things are fun these days!
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="360"]
Life is good![/caption]
****
This whole thing is starting to feel more real. It's taken about 15 months, but it's finally sinking in that we finally had an IUI that WORKED and gave us a real life BABY. That baby is ours and she is amazing and we are on the other side of infertility (for now, at least). Sometimes after I get into bed, I scroll through my instagram photos from the last year and try to grasp it all, the fact that I really was pregnant, I really did give birth to a baby and I really do now have a daughter. It all feels like a blur, but I want to savor it, remember it, own it. It has been a gift, the redemption of our pain, and I don't want to just drive on past it.
She is really here. She is really ours. And she was undoubtedly worth the wait.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
No way![/caption]She is such a big girl!
Such a happy girl!
Such a chubby girl!
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Look at my knee dimples![/caption]This girl lights up our life. She is now 6.5 months old, because I have again been working on this update for two weeks. But I have to say that six months is my favorite so far! I was so nervous that I wasn't savoring the newborn stage enough, or even the four month stage which was supposed to be so awesome. Those stages were awesome, because she is awesome, but they were also hard. Newborns are overwhelming, with all the breastfeeding and intense postpartum emotions. And four months brought rough transitions out of the swaddle and rock-n-play and a heavy dose sleep regression. It's still hard at times, but she is SO MUCH fun now. She smiles all the time and grabs at our faces and kicks her legs in excitement, and I just can't get enough of this baby
Weight: As of Tuesday, she is 17.8 pounds! She's been steady in the 70-80th percentiles. She is in some 6 month clothes and some 9 month clothes, depending on the brand.
She's in size three diapers. And I might have a problem with diaper stockpiling. You can't have too many diapers, right? I think I've got all the size threes we'll need, and I'm adding to our size four pile. It seems like at least every other week, CVS has diapers on sale with an extrabucks reward. And then they send me a $5 coupon, which when combined with printable coupons and extrabucks ends up making the diapers $2-3 per pack, so how do I not buy them?! I just stop after church on Sundays, do a quick transaction, and keep rolling the extrabucks into the next sale. I guess as long as there is still space in the closet, I will keep adding! Look at my pretty stockpile!
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400"]
All the diapers[/caption]Eating:
Still mostly breastfed. Breastfeeding is finally going great, and I'm so thankful we were able to make it work for us. I know it could just have easily have gone poorly. We've started a bit of solids, settling upon baby led weaning with a bit of rice cereal for the iron. But I'm not sure she is all that into spoon feeding, unless she can chew on the spoon, so I will probably incorporate fortified cereals into finger foods like pancakes and muffins for her. Right now she just gnaws on her veggies, but thankfully Riley loves a nice well-gnawed on piece of squash or cucumber or carrot! He is loving this solids thing already. Gracie thinks it's ok, too (but she is a much more selective eater than Riley).
[caption id="attachment_2026" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
For me?![/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
The spoon is the best part![/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
squash![/caption]Sleeping:
Oh, I could write paragraphs on her sleeping. She still only really cries when she is tired or fighting sleep, so sleep is still my obession. And I wouldn't say she is a bad sleeper. She still naps for 4-5 hours a day and sleeps 12 hours a night, minus the 5 minute feeds during the night. I've spaced most of her day feedings to be about 4 hours apart, and that seemed to help her sleep for slightly longer stretches at night, but then we hit the six month sleep regression (if there is a sleep regression to be found, this girl finds it) and we were back to waking once every hour or two. This ended up being the push I needed to move her back to the nursery at night. I was very weepy about this, as it felt awful to spend all night away from my baby, but I knew she needed to fuss it out a bit, and it's hard to let that happen when she's sleeping next to us. So I moved her into the nursery on Sunday. And it's gone really well! Still up every 3 hours or so the first couple nights, but Tuesday night/Wednesday morning I woke up to her crying and wondered why I felt so great and realized it was 4:30! That was 6.5 hours since the last feed! Last night, she was up and needed some settling during the 11 pm and midnight hours, but then I woke up at 4:55 and realized she was still asleep! I ended up feeding her, because I wanted to get two good feedings in before I left for work, so I'm not sure how long she would have slept if I hadn't fed her.
So, despite all my obsessing, she's a pretty good sleeper. I don't have a baby that sleeps through the night without a fight, but we stay on her sleep needs and she gets enough sleep and is rarely over-tired, and that's most important.
[caption id="attachment_2043" align="aligncenter" width="225"]
Errands make a girl tired![/caption][caption id="attachment_2044" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Let's just hang for a bit before I go back to sleep, ok?[/caption]Likes:
Daddy! She adores her daddy so much. It is the most adorable thing ever.
[caption id="attachment_2036" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Lunch with daddy?!?[/caption][caption id="attachment_2033" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Just loungin' with my dad![/caption]Toys! She is grabbing at everything now, and I love watching the new things she can do every day.
[caption id="attachment_2027" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
Just playing a little piano on the farm.[/caption][caption id="attachment_2029" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
An owl with tags! I love tags![/caption]She loves the dogs, and Riley loves her back. Gracie still thinks she's quite boring, but she will love her once they can play with their toys together. She loves being tickled, she loves to eat, she loves lounging in her swing and bouncing in her jumperoo. Lots of things are fun these days!
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="360"]
Life is good![/caption]****
This whole thing is starting to feel more real. It's taken about 15 months, but it's finally sinking in that we finally had an IUI that WORKED and gave us a real life BABY. That baby is ours and she is amazing and we are on the other side of infertility (for now, at least). Sometimes after I get into bed, I scroll through my instagram photos from the last year and try to grasp it all, the fact that I really was pregnant, I really did give birth to a baby and I really do now have a daughter. It all feels like a blur, but I want to savor it, remember it, own it. It has been a gift, the redemption of our pain, and I don't want to just drive on past it.
She is really here. She is really ours. And she was undoubtedly worth the wait.
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