I'm back!

I haven't updated this for awhile! I didn't mean to not write, but I think I didn't because after my last post I wrote out Elsa's birth story but was waiting to add in the photos and then post it, and somehow I felt like I had to finish that before posting anything new. But today I decided to get back to regular posts anyway and I'll post that whenever I can.

7 weeks old

Elsa is almost 8 weeks old! Wow, I didn't even think that tomorrow is Thursday so we're so close to 8 weeks (Fridays are the start of new weeks)! And a week from today she'll be 2 months old! I see her changing all the time now, learning new things and I think also growing a little bigger. She smiles very often now and even laughs, too!!! That's one of the coolest things ever, to get my little girl to give me so many little baby smiles! And it's so funny to see her playing in her little gym and looking at all the hanging toys (Mr. Parrot is her favorite right now) and smiling and laughing away at them!

7 weeks old, smiling at her little lambs going around!

She is also looking at people much more now. She looks at me when I talk and looks at Jody when he's talking, and will turn her head to look toward our voices if we're not holding her. And she looks at other people who are holding her, too. She also holds her head up better every single day! I love that I can put her on my shoulder now and walk around with her that way, and she can look out over my shoulder or off to the side - I still have my hand on her head if she's wobbly or just behind to catch it, but she's so much more sturdy than when she was brand new. And her legs are so strong!! She even ROLLED OVER yesterday!!! From her tummy to her back. The first time I'm sure it was an accident, she tipped to the side, then tipped further and was on her side, then tipped backward and was on her back. But then she did it again right after that, and then three hours later she did it for Jody when he came home! So she's doing well with her large motor skills!

The fine motor skills are coming a little slower. She grasps onto my shirt or bra when I'm feeding her, and grasps my hair or shirt when I hold her upright, and she'll sometimes grasp something if I put it in her hand (usually by prying apart her little fists), but she rarely will hold something for long and often won't grasp it at all. She's also not studying her hands yet or even batting at things. I feel fine though, she's just a little slower in getting that part but I know some babies get that early, some right on time and some late. And she's doing other things (like the rolling over) early, and most things she's right on schedule with so I'm so happy with all she's learning and how she's progressing!

7 weeks old

7 weeks old - I love those little legs!!

So a brief update of the last couple weeks:

"Extreme fussiness/colic" - that's the term used in the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby. The author/doctor gave the standard definition of a colicky baby but for the first time I saw that it didn't have to be 3 consecutive hours, just 3 hours a day (of trying to soothe a very fussy baby), 3 days a week, for 3 weeks. I had been wondering if Elsa was a little bit colicky. From I think about Week 3 to Week 6 or so, she was really fussy especially in the evenings - usually we'd have at least 2 hours of her being overly tired and really fussy. I wasn't sure though if I could call it colic because usually you hear about screaming babies being colicky, and granted we had a few meltdowns and often would have a short one just before she finally fell asleep, but most of the time it was just really fussy (and she would start crying if we didn't work to soothe her or change things up for her). But as I read his discussion of colicky babies, and read some accounts of other parents in his book, I knew that Elsa had a mild case of being an extremely fussy/colicky baby.

What I like about this author is that he talks about how, for most babies, the fussiness is more the problem and not constant crying, because they can be partially soothed by their parents. And he also terms it a sleep disorder more than anything else. And that so fits Elsa - sometimes, especially in the evenings, she just can't go to sleep. She'll be so tired, her eyes will try to close many times but she always pops back awake. She's often awake for 5 hours at a time, and usually that is in the evenings.

The biggest thing that this book gave me was a sense of relief. Yes that sounds crazy, but I finally knew that it wasn't my fault, it wasn't something I was doing wrong, it wasn't anything wrong with my milk (sometimes (before we learned about this and also started using the pacifier) she would keep telling me she wanted to eat but then not really eat or seem to fight with the boob and end up crying, or just soothe on the boob instead of eating much), and it also wasn't anything wrong with her ultimate personality. It's just something she has now. And this book also gave me a kind of game plan. Not too different from what we were doing, but I know now that at the first sign of her getting sleepy, or if she's been awake for an hour and a half or two hours, I start soothing her and getting her in a calm state to try to get her to sleep. Often she won't fall asleep for a very long time, but I get her still regardless and have her sucking on her soother and let her have her "quiet awake" time until she eventually falls asleep. When she starts fighting it and getting fussy, I just hold the soother in her mouth, gently hold her little hands against her, and talk quietly or do the "shhh, shhh, shhh" to her until she calms back down. It doesn't always go perfectly but I feel like I'm generally more in control now and know what's going on and what to do, so knowledge is power and confidence here!

The author also said that all babies' fussiness peeks at 6 weeks from their due date. That was so good to know! And really, Elsa is so much better already. Or else we're less affected by her fussiness and more used to it. Or we're better at controlling it - thanks to the wonderful pacifier! Or all three! I actually don't think she's even that fussy anymore now - well she still has some fussy times during each awake period, but they are minimal now and only occasionally do we have some serious fussiness or weeping.

We still go mostly by her schedule of when she wakes up and when she naps, but now I have a little more control of the awake times. I feed her and change her, then we play at the beginning cause she's usually pretty happy and loves laying in her little gym or on the floor with me showing her toys, or I walk her around showing her things. Then I'll start more soothing things, so sometimes she's happy to sit in her swing and watch her little lambs go around, or I'll hold her and read her books or sing to her, or just hold her and let her look at things and have her quiet awake time. And then by the end I'm just holding her and being quiet and keeping the pacifier in her mouth and letting her get sleepy. Sometimes she'll go in her swing or bouncer when she's like that and I stay by her and she'll sometimes eventually fall asleep - other times she'll nod off and pop back awake. But having the progression from fun to calm is good and I know she needs to just stay as calm as possible and eventually sleep will come.

The book says that the biggest risk of parents with overly fussy babies is that when she's fully past it, we don't start teaching her good sleeping habits. So by 4 months, we should be doing normal things. For example, right now we can't put her down when she's drowsy or she'll pop back awake and just get upset - that's normal for colicky babies. But by 4 months, we'll have to be having a schedule and getting her drowsy and then putting her down to bed so she learns then to put herself to sleep and to have a schedule. But it wouldn't work now, which really made me feel so good cause we'd heard other sleep experts say (on audiobooks or podcasts) that you need to be putting your baby down with it's drowsy so the baby learns to put itself to sleep - but whenever we tried that it so didn't work and we were slightly worried that we were already making mistakes and training her wrong!

So anyway, she's doing much better now, we're able to deal with it better and control it better, and we'll watch for when we can start teaching her more. I've even noticed a change in the past week - she will sometimes now sit or lay quietly by herself when she's awake, and that's amazing because before she always needed to be held! And over the past few days she's fallen asleep in her bouncer or swing more and they were deep and long sleeps. Oh - and she's generally sleeping about 5 hours at the start of the night! That's great if I go to sleep right when she does, but often I don't (and the last few days she's fallen asleep really early in the evening so the 5 hours starts then). Twice she's slept 6 and 7 hours which was fabulous and amazing (although at first I worried that a) something was wrong with her or b) I didn't wake up when she was fussing). But then the second half of the night is not so good. Then she's waking up every 2-2.5 hours, or sometimes even less. So the early mornings often suck. I think often she wakes up because of gas, not because she's hungry. We have a constant battle with gas.

Okay I'm going to end this, this is really long. I should have just been posting all along and then I'd have a bunch of short posts and not this super long one. Anyway today Elsa was really pretty good. She was awake a lot but generally calm, just a few slightly fussy periods. She took a number of short naps during the day which was nice (that doesn't always happen), and tonight she had a bath and hated it but we cuddled a lot afterward and I LOVE that! And then she fell asleep around 8, which is so early for her norm (although the last couple days she's fallen asleep early - I think she's going through a growth spurt). It's 11:30 now so she'll probably wake up anytime in the next hour and a half, and then I just hope that she'll have a quick feed and change and go back to sleep nicely.

And one final thing for this post - she is so cute and sweet!!!!!!! I love this little girl so so so much!!!!! :) And now I'll get back to posting regularly! :)