Sucking Fists (video)

Julia recently learned how to suck her hands. She would suck her hands, her fingers and sometimes she shoves her entire fist into her mouth. It looks cute, especially when there is drool all over her mouth and down her chin. Take a peek:





(IR camera)
In a way it is great, as she can soothe herself to sleep at night. But it's kinda bothersome too though because when she sucks her hands, I can't tell if she is doing it for fun or if she is hungry. Let's hope this is a habit that she'll break in the future.

Skipping Feeds and Waking at Night

For the past week, Julia has been fussy during her feeds and popping on and off the breast like a yoyo. She'd scream and push me away, then stick her hand or fingers in her mouth. What's going on?

I can't figure out why she is doing this. Maybe she's too tired to eat or maybe it's something that I ate or she's not hungry (even though its been 4 hours since she last ate? She won't take a bottle of milk either so she's missing complete feeds. Then of course, she hasn't taken enough calories during the day and wakes in the middle of the night to feed. Julia used to sleep a solid 8 hours at night (from 8-4am or 9-5am) but she's waking at 2am to eat and then again at 5 or 6am. Mind you, during those night feeds, she eats beautifully, takes in the entire breast and empties them.

I'm really concerned about Julia's weight although she has about 5 wet diapers during the day and poos once every 2 or 3 days. Because of her non-feeding, it's killing my milk supply. First, my breasts become super engorged (because she misses a feeding) and then because the next time the breast is emptied, my body thinks I don't need much milk and makes less of it. What a battle!

To keep my milk supply up, I'm pumping alot (after every feeding), eating oatmeal, drinking barley water, beer and taking fenugreek. It seems to be working with all of these things but so tiring. Hopefully Julia will eat normally again so we can get to other fun things during the day.

3 Month - Julia

Julia turned 3 months this week (our baby is growing up so fast). There is no check up this month so not sure what she weighs exactly but she is around 14lbs, according to our scale at home. Here are a few pics of Julia we took this month:

Camera Hog (video)

Here's a couple of funny videos that we captured via Richard's laptop webcam. We were fooling around with the webcam and Jasmine took notice, jumped right into action. She loves electronics, just like her Daddy.

Anyways in one video, you can hear Jasmine trying to say "camera hog" but doesn't quite say it correctly. This brings to mind something that happened the other day.

After Jasmine finished her bath, she ran out of the bathroom half naked with her towel falling off and I blurted out "what the hell!" And immediately right after, Jasmine repeated "what the hell!" So lucky that I wasn't saying something worse. I don't think she understood what that meant and since I have not repeated it, she probably won't remember that phrase.

Note to self: DO NOT SAY OR DO ANYTHING THAT I DON'T WANT KIDS TO REPEAT.

Lotto Max - Run (video)

It's been a while since I've last converted some videos so I just spent some time doing a couple.

Here's a video clip of Jasmine doing some exercise, running to a commercial on TV. For those of you who watch TV, you may recognize this commercial. It's for Lotto Max.

Clap Clap Clap Dance (video)

Before going on maternity leave, we found a dusty old box full of these clapping hand thingys in the office so I took one home as a toy for Jasmine to play with.

Here's a quick demo of what she likes to do with it. She makes us "clap" with it and Jasmine jumps around in circles with her favorite blankie... (I had to cut the video short because I couldn't stand that clapping sound much longer)

Keeps Waking Up

Julia is 10.5 weeks and is still not on any daily schedule. She wakes whenever, sleeps whenever, eats whenever. Not quite sure how to train her to be on a schedule, because her naps are so short. She just can't seem to stay asleep for more than an hour. I've read some books that say that babies have a hard time falling back to sleep after they wake from a sleep cycle so they end up crying every 45 minutes to an hour.

This is what Julia's day looks like:

6am - wake/eat
6:20am - sleep
7:45am - wake/play
8:30am - eat
8:45am - sleep
9:45am - wake/play
10:45am - sleep
11:30am - wake/eat
12:30pm - sleep
2:30pm - wake/eat
3pm - sleep
3:30pm - wake/play
....and so on til she konks out around 9:30-10pm.

Terrible, terrible, terrible. As you can see, there is no structure to our day at all, besides the nap in the early afternoon. Even then, Julia keeps waking up and I have to go in and soothe her back to sleep. Sigh.

Dear sleep gods...please help me with this task. If anyone has suggestions, please pass any tips along. Thanks.

Bottle Resistance

After 5 weeks of using the bottle with Julia once a day, I thought that we've got things down pat. But suddenly, she's decided that she does not want to use a bottle anymore. She prefers breastfeeding.

Every night now, when Julia sees the bottle, she starts fussing. If we put the bottle into her mouth, she would use her tongue and push the bottle out. She definitely does not like it when Richard feeds her, but is willing to take in 2oz when I feed her. Weird. But that kind of defeats the purpose of the bottle if she will only take it when I am around...because it's easier for me to breastfeed!

Currently trying different things (changing positions, location of the feed, time of the feed...) to see if Julia will take the bottle willingly again. We'll see how it goes.