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Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Night terrors

OMG. Baby having a night terror is NO FUN!!!!!

For the last two days PS has refused an afternoon nap. From what I've read this usually doesn't happen til 18 months or so? So she has been going to bed super early, like 6:30. Monday night she slept 6:30pm-5am silently, then woke up and slept in with Daddy til 7:30. Last night she went down at 6:30 and was SCREAMING at 8. It took 15 mins of us doing everything we could possibly think of before she stopped. She looked so scared. I checked her temp (97.8) and gave Tylenol just in case something was hurting but my gut says she was scared.

Evidently achieving new milestones (verbally here - like 5 new words this last week) can bring on nightmares/terrors. And DH tells me he had them as a kid. Yuck!

Anyone have any experience with this?

Thursday, February 14, 2013

14 months today

14 months old on Valentine's Day!  So sweet.

Quick update for posterity - at 14 months Pipsqueak can:

-say 9 words consistently and with the correct meanings- Dada, Mama, Kitty-Cat, Again, Water, Ball Ball, Cheese, Pop-Pop, and Bye-Bye.  Says oh so many words that I cannot understand for the life of me.

-RUN.   Literally runs away and faster than me.  She is a speedster.

-put herself to sleep at night and even for most naps.

-Sleeping 10-11 hours straight at night in her crib - usually from 7:30pm-6am.  SO GLAD the 4:30am wakeups seems to be fading away.  6am seems a simply luxurious sleeping in at this point!!!!

-napping one huge nap midday (2-3 hours, usually 11am-2pm), and usually another 30-60 min nap late afternoon although sometimes she skips this.

-feeds herself for many meals - LOVES finger foods - especially shredded cheese, iron kids bread, deli meats, green beans, hummus.  Still is loving pouches of baby veggies and fruits, and allows me to spoon feed her yogurt and gerber baby purees.

She is still breast feeding 3-4 times a day.  I really don't know how I am going to wean her, the kid loves it.  DH and I are going on an 11 day vacation to Hawaii in June while my parents stay with the baby so we have to wean by then.  I guess I won't worry about it until May :-)

Every Tuesday morning we go to story time at the local library and she loves it.  We are starting swimming lessons in April and I have begun researching gymanstics classes.  It is so nice having the freedom to schedule so many activities and play dates...I am really starting to see the upside of only having one child.

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

Thursday, January 24, 2013

13+ months

Life is good here.  Little update for myself more than anything:

-Pipsqueak is sleeping 7pm-5am straight almost every night (I'd love to have her sleep later but I can't argue with 10 hours straight!).

- Still nursing - 2-6 times a day depending on what's going on.  Some days I love that I am still breast-feeding and other days I feel done.  So far so good, I don't see us completely stopping anytime soon.

-She is eating solid food 4-5 times a day.  She LOVES squeezable pouches of fruits and veggies, not such a big fan of fresh produce.  I bought some reusable pouches to make some homemade purees - I hope she likes them!  She also loves yogurt, hummus, cheerios, deli ham, teddy grahams, cheese, shredded beef, sweet potatoes, puffs and bites of whatever Mommy and Daddy are having.

- She is taking her iron like a champ.  We make sure to brush her teeth right after (it can stain teeth brown) and she can't have milk 30 mis before and after.

-She says the following words consistently - kitty, mama, dada, again, and her first sentence - "BYE BYE DADA!" accompanied with waving both hands.  She says it all day long LOL.

-She RUNS - started walking at 9.5 months and seems to be very ahead with physical development.  This makes me inordinately proud.  I know I have nothing to do with it.

-I have debated swimming or gymnastics lessons but haven't started either.  We have become regulars at the weekly baby (9-18 month) read-in at the local library.  Just recently she has started sitting through entire books and bringing me books to read.  I am so excited - I love reading and really want her to love it as well.

Having a toddler is much more fun than having a baby I think.  Easier and harder in different ways but just more FUN!

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Anemic

Has anyone else dealt with their 1 year old testing low on iron? Hgb of 9.6 and we started her on iron supplementation today. Just wondering what dose and when you had to follow up? Thanks!

Monday, January 14, 2013

It worked again

One night of sleep training and she is back! The night in question involved a 12:45am wake-up - I went in twice to calm her down but didn't pick her up, and she cried for 15-20 minutes before lying down and going back to sleep. Every night since she's slept 9-12 hours straight. This morning until 5:40 even! I'm so proud :-)

Thursday, January 10, 2013

I hate coming up with blog titles.  Anyone else?

Hubby is taking Fertilaid - who knows if it really helps at all or not but it can't hurt.  We still need to make an appt with the urologist but haven't gotten around to it.  Seeing as I am still breastfeeding quite a bit I'd be surprised if I am even ovulating so we are not in a super big hurry.

Holidays were good - we travelled for 2 weeks to see DH's family, then my family came to us for a week.  Truthfully the holidays are just stressful with all the travel required.  I LOVE seeing family but I would love to just celebrate Christmas in my own house.  Unfortunately both of our families are in different states so that is not feasible.

Pipsqueak got a bad cold/cough which is still lingering - the snot is finally clear though, yipee!  A few days there she was up for hours overnight hacking.  Her ped said it was viral and went ahead with all of her 12 month immunizations including the 2nd flu shot.  Her stats were good - weight was 21 lbs 7 oz I think, 2 months ago it was 20 lbs 14 oz.  I was concerned at first but I guess it is normal for weight to slow down or even decrease at age one.  She is still 50th percentile in weight and head and her height has gone to 70th percentile (30 in.).  Tall girl!

Her sleep habits SUCK right now.  When we stayed at my in-laws in December she was in a crib in our guest room - she is a light sleeper so every time we coughed or snored she would wake up crying and end up in bed with us - where she would sleep fitfully hooked to my nipple.  When we got home her cold and cough started and she was waking up covered in snot and coughing MULTIPLE times a night.  Now as her cold is wearing off she is waking 1-3 times a night crying - and nursing much to my chagrin.  Not that I mind the nursing I just know that feeding her in the night may make it harder to break the bad sleep habits.  SO I've decided tonight is the night.  My plan (devised from me and Pipsqueak's history and frantic middle of the night google searches of 'my toddler keeps waking up at night what do I do?') to retrain the princess is:

1. Naps aplenty today.  Well rested baby = better sleeping baby at night. A few days ago I tried out a one nap day and it backfired for 48 hours of fussiness.  I've learned my baby still needs 2-3 naps a day even if the afternoon one is quite short.  So far today she woke at 4:50am, napped 7-7:30am, and napped from 11:20am-still asleep now (an hour and 45 minutes in).

2. Bedtime as early as she wants it.  Usually she is ready to go down between 6-7.  Sometimes though she gives us the cues that she is ready for bed around 5 and we usually push her through until at least 6.  Again, overtired baby is not good.

3. Bedtime ritual can include nursing, rocking etc. but put baby into crib not fully asleep.  We usually do good with this one.

4. If when she wakes up in the middle of the night go comfort her by patting her butt, inserting the paci, making 'shhh' noises, but no light, no eye contact, no talking.  Leave the room when she settles (or at least partially settles) and close the door.  If when she begins wailing again wait 5 minutes to re-enter and attempt to calm her again.  Wait 10 minutes the next time, then 15 (GOD help me if it takes this many tries).  Continue until baby asleep/calm or baby reaches freak out/apocalypse mode.  Then rock baby but DO not offer breast (BE STRONG WOMAN!).

Oh I hope this works and that it only takes a night or two to get back my sleeps 11-12 hours a night child!!  Last night she went to bed at 6:30 (cried herself to sleep after I rocked her, nursed her and did everything in my power to soothe her - she kept screaming as soon as I put her in the crib.  I think she was over tired because she napped like shit yesterday- it only took like 8 minutes of light crying but it killed me).  She then was screaming at 11:30 and DH rocked her back to sleep, she woke at 3:30 and I nursed her back to sleep, then she was awake at 4:50 for the day.  NOT OKAY!!!!!  I really am used to getting up early so I can live with a 4:30/5am wake up but that's got to be after some straight sleep.

Man I didn't mean to have a post dedicated to sleep AGAIN but isn't funny how when you're exhausted that is all that matters?


Saturday, December 22, 2012

Gonna try naturally (any bets?)

So we got the results of DH's new semen analysis. The voicemail from the RE's office was actually really annoying. "So things have improved but you will still need ICSI...yada yada yada...things are a little better but IVF is still necessary..." Like don't forget you still need us! I'm so grateful for their help in Pipsqueak's conception, and I appreciate that giving out false hope is potentially devastating but it jut felt like a hard sell. BUT good news is things have improved (albeit slightly):
6 million per ml
Motility 36%
6.5 total motile count
Viscosity high
Morphology 0

His best ever count was like 5.2 mil/ml (but usually around 4 mil/ml) and best motility ever was like 20% (but usually lower - around 10%).

I know low end normal count is 15 million / mil. I also know that it is supposed to take a minimum of 20 million motile sperm to get at least a few to the egg. But I also know he has swimmers and I have eggs. And since we can't do IVF until we wean anyway (which may take longer than I realize) we figure we may as well try naturally for 6-9 months. I'm ordering DH fertile aid vitamins (after all my research it does seem like that is the best overall vitamin/supplement for sperm health - any other thoughts?), I'm ordering myself some ovulation sticks (not going to be obsessive - but I am curious about my ovulation since I'm still breast feeding) and we are gonna get DH back to the urologist to discuss possible clomid for him. We were hesitant to try it before - mostly because I didn't want to delay treatment while my eggs got older and older - but now since we already have been blessed we figure why not?

Here we go....