Evidence of her strong “pinches” and grabs

Week 37:

• June 4: Now that we’re approaching the week of when she was born, I feel a little pressure and some FOMO if I don’t do one of those “in and out” comparison photos of when I was pregnant with her versus her being out… I’ll see if I end up doing one but it can also be a casual photo too. It doesn’t need to be a full side by side exact replica. 🤷‍♀️
• I’m sad that my breastfeeding journey will eventually end. I’m not pumping as much milk as I used to. I’m at 610ml average per day now. I know I spend a lot of time each day (4 hrs) to pump and it takes away from my own time, but I feel empowered and proud that I can give her my milk. I also haven’t had the second COVID-19 vaccine yet and I absolutely need to make it to that point before I can wean and stop for real.
• We started bathing her in the big tub now. To be precise, she still is in the infant/toddler tub but we put the tub inside our master bedroom tub to prevent her from splashing water onto the floor. We actually need a bigger tub for her.
• These days when taking her out on a walk, she starts crying after about 10 mins. Then DH has to take her out and hold her during the rest of the walk…. 😒 #spoiled.
• It’s hard to get her to eat well. She is either spoon fed or given some chunks of food. She’s recently added mushrooms, pasta, watermelon to her repertoire of first foods.
• I’m so okay in my little bubble of parenting. I don’t know how it is to have mommy groups or other baby group friends. #pandemicbabies
• She continues to growl sometimes. She grunts and says “eh” to get attention. I always say, “No, call me ‘mama’, not ‘eh'”.
• How many toys does a child need? Barely any except books. How many toys does a baby need? I know they need to be stimulated per their unique development stages, but I also don’t believe that babies need particular toys either. How did babies in the olden day and caveman days develop? Just by listening and observing and touching anything around them as toys. I really don’t think I need to buy a lot for her.. We don’t have many toys for her at home. It’s a great thing. She’s not overstimulated. I read her books and talk to her all the time.
• June 10: We have a tooth!!! Two days ago, DH noticed that he felt a tooth coming in. Bb was probably sucking on his hand or something and that’s how he noticed it. And then yesterday, we saw a little white part in her bottom gums! The teeth are coming! 😀 😀
• My mom noticed that her bottom gum area seemed a little red a few days ago. The tooth sign 🙂
• She didn’t fall asleep easily last night (but that might have been because she had a later nap at 4:45pm ish rather than it being a cause of her growing teeth). We’ve been giving her some cold watermelon or cold black soymilk/almond milk straight from the fridge to help with her gums but she’s not too vocal about it (so far) *crosses fingers*.
• She chews on a lot of her toys now.
• Have I ever mentioned how pretty and lifted and fanned out her lashes are? They’re so lifted which is unusual for Asian eyelashes –they tend to slant downwards. But then again, she’s still a baby and things could change.
• Despite me joking the other week about getting a clog in my breasts, I actually haven’t had any clogs since switching to the Bellababy pump about 3 weeks ago. I really use it exclusively now. Its suction is super powerful and I feel so emptied after every session. I think I know why my supply is apparently decreasing. It’s partly due to the way I measure the milk. I used to use the medela bottles or haakaa but now when I pour the breastmilk straight into the Dr Brown bottles, that’s where I get my measurements sometimes. And I have a feeling those bottles tend to show a decrease of about 10ml. So that’s why numerically I only have an average of 600ml daily. Possibly. But gradually it makes sense that my body is producing less breastmilk than before. I’m almost 9 months postpartum!! (Can’t believe she will be 9 months old next week; she still seems like a 6 month old to us lol.) I’m also intaking less calories. I realize I overrate right after I gave birth. I couldn’t eat many carbs during the latter part of my pregnancy due to my gestational diabetes diagnosis, so once the baby was out and I didn’t have GD anymore, I went at all the carbs and ate without limit. The lack of exercise and overeating really added to my waistline. (Despite the fact that breastfeeding aids in losing baby weight, I went the opposite way lol.)
• Will attempt to measure my output based on the medela and haakaa bottles/lines again to see if my output numbers go back up.
• Sometimes I have to press the power button a few times in order for it to turn on. A bit annoying and it gives me a semi heart attack each time for thinking the machine is broken.
• We do a combination of breastmilk and formula. She probably takes 80% breastmilk and 20% formula.
• Bb can turn on her stomach so quickly these days. She can turn each way. She’s still doing the airplane thing and scooting backwards and not moving forward yet. (No rush, baby.)
• When sitting upstairs on the play mat, whenever one of us walks up the stairs, she can hear it and looks to the stairs to see who it is. 😀
• Speaking of play mat, I got a second play mat for her! Gently used and excellent condition from my favourite Facebook marketplace 😀 Only $20!!!! We got the new one from Costco for $50 ish not including tax. $20 is a steal. Also for some reason, the seller picked me to sell it to. She sent a screenshot of all the other interested buyers to ensure I confirmed the pickup time and etransfer. Why me? I asked her but she left me on read. Still very grateful. The play mat is super thick and padded and even larger than the one we got from Costco! Love FBM :D.
• We haven’t put her on the potty in a while. The last couple of times my mom did, bb stood up from the potty and wouldn’t sit down. She does this so often — the standing up and forcing her legs to become so stiff you can’t even place her into the exersaucer.. Also today, I was holding her during dinner time. She was sitting on my thigh and actually pushed up on her legs and stood on the chair. 😳 She’s going to be standing pretty soon. She has really strong legs.
• These days, we bathe her around 7:45 to 8pm (super fussy at the dinner table) and she sleeps around 8:30 / 9pm. She wakes up at midnight for about 30ml of milk and sleeps until 4am for another bit of milk. Then she’s awake by 5:30am or 6am (sometimes 7am). She wakes up looking so tired but can’t fall asleep. Her next nap is either 9am or 12pm and she might nap for 2 hours. She also can sleep for 4 to 5 hours straight now in the first chunk. She still isn’t the best sleeper considering she’s almost 9 months old soon, but every baby is different. She’s getting close to 1 year old too!!
• She is smarter than we give credit for.. She’s a baby but she understands a lot.
• When reading to her these days, she’ll grab the board book and yank it to the cover page or yank it to the back page. I think she wants to turn the page but doesn’t know how yet. The board books are new so the pages are stuck together. Even I have to use two hands to separate the pages. When I’m reading to her, she pays attention. Then once I’m done reading the words on the page, she immediately yanks it. So she does know what’s going on.
• Speaking of yanking, my hair.. She yanks it so hard and holds onto it without letting go. I have to tie my hair up these days when I’m holding her. #mombobs
• She also pinches or holds skin really tight. She doesn’t understand that it hurts us.
• We switched to putting her bath tub in the big bathtub in the master bathroom now. She splashes water intensely with her hands that we had to move her tub to the big tub. (We used to bathe her on the countertop.) She loves splashing water and making big waves. I’m going to look into getting a water table for her to play with. 😀
• When we ask her to stop splashing, she doesn’t listen. She continues as if mesmerized. She also kicks both her legs and the water just goes everywhere. She is a fish.
• She enjoys Cheerios. She eats up the soggy Cheerios completely.
• During dinner time, when we pass her a piece of choy, she immediately knows to put it into her mouth. She’s good at it. Broccoli too.
• Either she eats the item from her hand or I cut it up into bite sized pieces for her. We haven’t done purees since the first two weeks of solids eating. Love that. No extra work required. Thank goodness we never bought a baby brezza machine for purees.
• We still put her in onesies. They’re so easy to put on and off. We also don’t go anywhere since there is a pandemic so why dress her up? I’m not one of those moms who dress their baby girl up for fun. No time, no interest at all. Clothes are just clothes. As long as she’s clothed properly, we’ve done our job.