I’m not positive, but I’m 99 percent sure we’re in a really magical stage of Skylar’s beautiful life. She “talks” a lot, sings herself awake in the mornings, sleeps through the night (well, it’s happened twice), is generous with her contagious smiles, and is showing no signs of wanting to be mobile (totally fine by me).
She drinks in the world around her (often instead of drinking in milk!) and is making us appreciate our surroundings more. I wish I could bottle up our evening walks– to avoid any overtired crankiness before bedtime, we walk around the ‘hood. The weather has been heavenly. Skylar looks up at me and gives me smiles. She’s also learned that her voice does a neat thing as we walk on Tucson’s bumpity roads. I’m probably a hazard to all as I walk because I stare at Skylar mostly, often zig-zagging my way down the road. Beware of the reckless evening mom walker.
After four months of paranoia, something clicked at the beginning of March. Maybe it was the pediatrician reassuring me that Skylar was growing as she should, the lactation consultant explaining the up and down nature of a breastfed-baby’s growth curve or my comforting trip to visit my folks in Texas. My mom looked at Skylar and in a somehow-not-condescending tone said, “How can you think there’s anything wrong with her? She’s thriving!” Perhaps there’s a little milk magic in San Antone, because Skylar looked a little pudgy after this second trip home as well!
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| Happy place! |
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| Morning chats with Mimi! |
As soon as I gave myself permission to think, “I’m making the perfect amount of milk for Skylar. She’s not fat and that’s OK,” the storm of new motherhood insecurities subsided. I stopped pumping for two weeks and it was good for my brain. Sometimes putting a number on things is unnecessary. All lactation consultants say it– “What you pump is not indicative of what baby extracts.” Easy to say, but not easy to believe. I was staring at the bottles as I pumped, which is like standing above your stove, waiting for water to come to a boil…
Our generation is blessed and cursed by the abundance of information spoon-fed to us by a simple Google search. Just as you can freak yourself out by seeing your symptoms align with some deadly illness on WebMD, you can spook yourself into thinking something is seriously wrong with your baby. With so much information, there’s bound to be misinformation and opinions written as fact.
I believe the Four-Month Mom Calm that kicked in was also do to my lack of research. I stopped reading about everything and gleaning information from the far corners of the internet. Babies have lived for millenia without first-time parents knowing much of anything about child-rearing. They used the people around them for advice (I assume), but I’m sure they didn’t stress nearly as much as we Millennials do. There was no Dr. Spock in Ancient Rome. And with less stress, they probably produced more milk and their babies didn’t feel the contagious tension when held in mama’s arms. Just Annie’s theories. Don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely pleased to be raising a baby with modern medicine and knowledgable doctors…point is, civilization marched on, without Google.
I didn’t stop reading everything, I simply stopped reading about everything. One book I recently Amazoned is “Raising A Healthy Happy Eater” by Fernando & Potock. I’m only in the introduction, but I already love the tone of the book. It’s sciencey, without being incomprehensible. A resource for parents and doctors alike. Skylar will be starting solid food in the next couple months and I have no idea what I’m doing, so I’m relying on these feeding experts to guide me. The authors bring up the huge amount of energy devoted to proprioception (our ability to know where we are in space/where our limbs/fingers/toes are going) when baby is learning to eat. And balance. Imagine sitting on a bar stool, with your elbows off the table and your feet off of the foot rest and trying to eat. It would take a lot of core strength to successfully grab a bite of food…then there’s the whole issue of proprioception/actually getting the food in your mouth. That’s the example the authors give to help us empathize with our babies.
So interesting to think I was once that helpless…I can’t imagine how frustrated little chunker me would have been, attempting to grab and place food in my mouth without finely-tuned motor skills…the thought frustrates me now as I precisely place a spoonful of peanut butter on my tongue. 😉
5-Month-Old Skylar Milestones
– She reaches for toys and grabs them/shakes them.
– She grabs her feet and resumes “happy baby” pose.
– She is teething. Gnawing on her pacifier more often than sucking on it. Drooling up a storm. I see some lumpy gums in that sweet mouth!
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| Plastic waffles….yum yum yum. |
– She SLEPT NINE HOURS…one night. haha. I’m not forcing sleeping through the night because she’s SO distracted during her daytime feeds. So I think she still needs some nighttime milky sometimes (which is no big, because I usually sleep while she eats).
*Never in my wildest pre-Skylar dreams would I have thought that 4 a.m. feeds were “no big”. Sure, it will be cool when they don’t exist, but they really aren’t much of an intrusion into my night’s sleep.
Honestly, I didn’t love motherhood for the first 8 weeks. It was hard, hard, hard. But I have complete amnesia about much of that chapter and am so in love with this little girl. My dad said, “You guys need to have another baby, so Skylar doesn’t think the world revolves around her.” #Truth #ButNotForAWhile
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| Someday, maybe you’ll have Daddy’s gorgeous tan, baby. |
