Colic... Super Awesome! (Week 6)

Well, this week brought us our 1 month pediatrician appointment. She weighed in at 9 lbs 2 oz (up from 7 lbs 10 oz and in the 25-50%) and measured 21 1/4 inches (up from 18 inches at birth and in the 25%). She basically average just like her mommy and daddy.

I love, love, love our pediatrician! She is so positive and encouraging. She is always so good at putting my mind at ease. We talked about Lily's fussiness issues and she started asking me questions.

"Is she fine in the morning and then it gets worse as the day goes on?"... "About the time Daddy comes home from work?"... "Nothing consoles her and she pulls her legs up?" Mom came with me to the appointment. She looked at me and said, "Sounds like she lives at your house!" The Doctor said, "Yep! That sounds like Colic." Awesome!

We discussed the possibility of it being reflux or a milk sensitivity but she said that if it were one of those, and we needed to change her formula, then she would be crying after every feeding and not just ones in the evening. She would even being crying during feedings and pushing away the bottle like it hurt her to drink it. I was so thankful for her reassurance. She said at most Lily would grow out of this after a few months.

She also put my mind to rest about our feeding. I had been very hesitant to feed on a schedule, but felt like we had ended up feeding on a schedule after all. The pediatrician said that formula feeding is different. And feeding on a schedule is fine. Formula fed babies don't cluster feed like they do if they are breast fed and since you know how much they are getting at every feeding if she is crying after an hour then it's not because she's hungry. The doc even said that feeding her more often then every 2-3 hours could cause her to be over stuffed and cause her to have reflux. It actually becomes a vicious cycle. So, I keep an eye on the clock and any time she gets fussy within the 2-3 hour time frame I feed her. I feel that's a good compromise.

She also recommended that we make sure we are waking her up at least every 3 hours during the day to eat which will help Lily keep track of day and night. And since we know she's getting plenty of food during the day and she's continuing to gain weight, we were given the green light to let her sleep as long as she wants at night.

So that night we fed her the last bottle at around 10pm and she slept through the night until around 5am. It was glorious! And the even better part is that she has kept it up. She usually gets her last bottle some where between 9 and 11 in the evening and then sleeps through until sometime between 4 and 6 am. I'm really hoping she'll keep this up since it'll be a nice routine once I go back to work.

Ms. Lily also got her second round of the Hep B vaccine. Mom was holding her when the nurse came in and they let her stay there. I had fixed a bottle while we waited for the nurse so that as soon as she got her shot I could feed her which would hopefully be comforting. It was so hard to watch her get the shot because it obviously hurt her. But the bottle worked really well. By the time she finished eating she was good as new.  She'll get her next round at her 2 month appointment.

I'm learning more and more that sometimes Little Bit has to cry. I've been so ingrained by the Attachment Parenting concept that I do everything I can to keep Lily from crying. Don't get me wrong, I still believe that you can't spoil a newborn and I'm not a fan of the cry it out method of sleep training but I've come to terms with the fact that she's not going to become a serial killer if I let her cry long enough for me to make her a bottle. The importance of this became very apparent the other day when I fell down the stairs. Thankfully I didn't have the baby with me. She was buckled into the swing in the living room and I was running up and down the stairs trying to wash bottles so I could fix her one. She kept screaming so I was running up and down the stairs trying to put her binki back in her mouth. Well, one time I lost my footing on the top stair and bounced about 3/4 of the way down on my butt. You know how time goes really slowly when you are in a situation like that, well, I kept thinking, "PLEASE just don't let me brake anything!" I had no idea how I would take care of a baby with a broken arm! Well, thankfully, I didn't brake anything and just bruised my tail and left hip. It shook me up pretty badly though. I kept thinking about what would have happened if I'd had the baby with me. When my mom came over later that day she showed me that I wouldn't have been running up and down the stairs if I'd had her.

Well, this week's update feels a bit disjointed, but at least it's finished. Now for your moment of cuteness. Have a great week!