Week 21 - Firsts and Seconds

Happy Thanksgiving! We obviously have so much to be thankful for this year and Week 21 was a week of firsts (and seconds) for our Little Turkey.

Ellie’s first Thanksgiving went incredibly well. She did great on the car trip to my Aunt and Uncles house in Maryland, slept during the meal so her Mommy and Daddy got to eat without distraction, and did as well as could be expected around all of the new people and strange atmosphere. She also did well at her second Thanksgiving on Saturday with Marty’s side of the family. Again, she did well in the car, slept during the meal and was a champ around all the new faces. She even got to enjoy some quality time with her cousins.

With the weekend focused on food, we thought we’d get Ellie into the action by introducing her first solid food! We have been preparing her for this moment for several weeks now. We set up her high chair about a month ago and have been “practicing” having her sit there while we’re eating dinner so she can watch us and get used to the chair. We have been going back and forth about whether to start her with solids now or hold off until she is six months since she has a tendency to have allergy problems. All of the hemming and hawing was starting to get annoying, so on Friday, we sat Elise in the high chair, mixed up 3 teaspoons breast milk and rice cereal and just went for it. Perhaps all of that practicing paid off! Our little baby acted like she has been eating off of a spoon for her entire life! She opened her mouth every time the spoon came toward her, moved her mouth like she was chewing the cereal (even though it was so runny it wasn’t really chewable) and she even leaned in with her mouth open, asking for more! She barely spilled a drop. (we have an eater on our hands!) You would’ve thought she’d just gotten into Harvard with the way Marty and I were beaming with pride. Who knew that a child eating off of a spoon could be so exciting?!

Unfortunately the week was not full of strictly positive firsts and seconds. This week also brought a negative first – her first illness. She started with a little runny nose on Thursday and it progressed into a full-fledged cold by the end of the weekend, complete with cough, runny nose and horrible congestion. She is having trouble nursing because she can't breathe through her nose well, so it's been pretty frustrating for her, especially considering her love of eating . So for the past few nights, we have been doing a lot of nose wiping and nasal aspiration – as well as a lot of hoping that this will end quickly. I am not sure if she made me sick or vice versa, but I am suffering from a similar ailment, and it’s no fun. As you may know breastfed babies supposedly never get sick so this is yet another debunking of the myths of breastfeeding!

Another negative second – for the second time in five months, the prospect of having a nanny was once again dangled in front of us by our neighbors and then rudely yanked away. As we discussed last week, our neighbors broached the subject of sharing a nanny and after weighing all of the options and assessing our current situation, we decided to go for it. Unfortunately, they had a friend who volunteered to watch their baby and they chose to go with that option instead. We are mostly disappointed because the assessment made us realize we weren’t crazy about daycare and we probably wouldn’t have even realized that we weren’t crazy about it had we not over analyzed it in trying to decide if we wanted to get a nanny. So basically nothing has changed, we're just slightly less happy with the situation.

At the time of this writing, at 8:30 on a Monday evening, Meredith and I are struggling, as we always do, to get Ellie to sleep. Meredith has been upstairs on the computer writing this post after feeding Ellie and making the first attempt to get her to sleep. Through much of this writing, Ellie has been crying since we are sticking with the pick-up/put-down/10 minute cry method. (this is a hybrid of several methods that we've had the most success with.) Anyway, my point is, with as tough as it can be sometimes raising a child - struggling with the worry and the frustration- there is nothing in this world as wonderful as your little girl falling asleep in your arms, listening to her breathe through a stuffy nose and realizing there is no place on this Earth that you would rather be - with her little hand on your arm... falling gently, deeply asleep. So, this Thanksgiving, we are most thankful for the little moments, appreciated, but lost as she grows bigger each day.

Week 20 - Finding Balance

This week, Ellie has been trying to find her balance with sitting up on her own. Currently, she will struggle and sit up for a few seconds, then tip over. With each day though, the seconds she spends up on her own grow longer and longer. It’s quite an achievement for her and fun to watch and encourage. Ellie’s parents are also trying to find the right balance – but for them, it’s between nurturing and independence. Whether it’s getting Ellie to sit up on her own or soothe herself to sleep, each day is a push and pull of wanting to help her and letting her struggle a little bit so that she learns to do it on her own. It can be agonizing sometimes for everyone involved.

Like all parents, we want the best for our child. Knowing that we want her to be the happiest, healthiest, strongest, smartest baby she can be – that’s the easy part. Figuring out how to do that for her is the hard part. When we put Ellie in daycare two months ago, it was based out of financial necessity. However, times have changed (that was quick) and we reignited a conversation with our neighbors around sharing a nanny. Their little boy, Miles, was born two weeks after Elise and starting in January will also need childcare three days a week. The timing is perfect, as we need to decide by December 1st if we want to enroll Ellie in daycare through August 2007.

There are pros and cons to both daycare and a nanny that we’ve explored in this blog before when we were agonizing about this decision a few months ago. But now that Ellie has been in daycare for a few months, it’s not as simple a decision as we once thought.

Wednesday night went over to have dinner with Miles and his parents, John and Karen. We set to work through the decision-making process and to see if the four of us were all on the same page with the needs of our respective families. It was a very interesting evening as we compared our two children who are similar in age but so different in personality and development. While Miles weighs in as a heavyweight at 16 lbs, Elise is a mere featherweight at 12. Ellie is much more agile, active and coordinated then her buddy too. For example, Ellie stands in our laps, can sit up (with our help) and remains quiet and engaged for long stretches. Ellie grasps and holds onto toys, often putting them to her mouth to suck on them. Miles in comparison is more laid back, literally and prefers to cuddle with his mom. Miles was having a fussy evening and has not reached milestones like reaching for and holding onto toys yet. Two weeks is a long time in their short lives, but Ellie has been doing her things for many weeks now.

Since the dinner, Meredith and I have talked a great deal about why there was such a difference between our two bundles of joy. While some of our questions lead us down a nature path like, is it that Ellie is a girl and females simply mature and develop faster than boys? Are some babies just born with different abilities? I mean, Ellie has been standing on our laps since day one and freakishly strong in her grip. On the other hand and for purposes on our daycare decision, we have questions of a nurturing quality. Can Ellie play more independently because of her time at daycare? Is she learning by observing the older children at daycare? Is daycare helping her advance? It’s probably a small combination of many things including items we are leaving out.

Our conundrum is that we don’t want to hinder our child’s growth and independence, nor do we want to miss an opportunity to give Ellie a more personalized and nurturing setting. After weighing the pros and cons, we’ve settled on sharing the nanny with our friends – we decided to speak again on Monday to finalize things for sure. It’s an emotional decision either way since she’s gotten used to the providers at daycare and we are stepping into the unknown with a nanny. After all, it is easier to stick with the devil you know. We just figure that Ellie is naturally an independent little girl and she will continue to be so, as Miles, (we expect) will be the higher maintenance baby for now. The allure of having one person to hold and teach and nurture Ellie is just too much to pass on. Our daycare stated that they provide a 3 to 1 ratio for the infants, but the reality is different in practice, as we have observed. The ratio is 4 and even 5 to 1 sometimes. With a nanny, we can be certain that it will always be 2 to 1.


Our hope is that a nanny will be more of an extension of the type of care that we would provide and we would have more control over the parameters of care. It won’t be perfect. There will be times when we have to compromise and we end up tipping over like Ellie trying to sit up. In the end, there is always going to be adjustments and compromises that have to be made so that we can all find our balance.

Week 19 - Ellie Finds Her Voice...and Her Feet

You wouldn’t know it from the way we’ve been whining, but Elise has been doing more than just refusing to sleep over the past few weeks. In fact, it might be from all that extra awake time that she has become quite the little Magellan - making new discoveries every day! In the grand scheme of the world, I suppose it is nothing earth shattering. Our baby has not discovered the cure for cancer or an economical, plentiful and environmentally responsible way to power vehicles. She has, however, made many discoveries that are exciting for a little baby!


First up: Ellie has discovered her voice. Not only did she come to vote with us last week, but she also discovered a new way to communicate. Now, while she has been cooing for months, these coos have been soft and gentle, through a peaceful half smile. It was very sweet and quiet and beautiful. Those days are over. A little over a week ago, we were at a friend’s house and Ellie was sitting quietly on my lap, when she suddenly screamed. Then she did it again. And again. It was hard for us to figure out what the heck she was doing – at first we thought she was crying, but she didn’t seem upset at all. Then we thought maybe she was trying to clear her throat – perhaps she was getting sick? Nope. Turns out that in that moment, she discovered her vocal chords. And the days of taking her to quiet places are officially over. Boy does that child love her newfound scream-talking! She loves scream-talking so much that this weekend she became hoarse. Though I feel bad that she’s worn out her little voice already, that little hoarse-squeek-scream is possibly the cutest thing on the planet.

Next, did you know Ellie has feet?! It did not even occur to us that Elise didn’t know that her feet existed until about two weeks ago. One day, while she was sitting on the changing table, she brought her legs up and grabbed onto her feet with both hands. Somewhere between shock and excitement, I believe that was the moment she realized “Hey these fun toys are attached to me!” And thus the love affair began. Every time she is lying on her back, she brings her legs up and cuddles her precious feet. When she is sitting up, she looks down, sees her little friends, and takes a nosedive straight for them. She has become a baby obsessed. In fact, her latest trick is to munch on her feet, as though proudly proclaiming to the world “My parents never feed me! I have to eat my feet for nourishment!”
Speaking of eating things that don’t taste good, Ellie has also discovered a love for sucking or chewing on pretty much everything that comes within 50 feet. From toys to fingers to the clothes she is wearing, she promptly soaks things within seconds, leaving a trail of wet everywhere she goes.

The most exciting discovery for us as her parents has been that she has discovered that she doesn’t hate books. For the first few months, every time we put a book in front of her, even when she was in a great mood, she started screaming. It made her parents, who are avid readers, worried that she was destined to be a math person (if she inherited our math genes, she is destined for failure that endeavor). But it turns out that her hatred for books was short lived. Maybe it’s just that she has developed the ability to sit still for more than 5 seconds (although still not more than 5 minutes) but she now devours books. Figuratively and literally (see above paragraph)!

And finally, while Ellie began rolling over from her back to her stomach at 12 weeks, she just started rolling over from her stomach to her back last week. She hates being on her stomach so much that she doesn’t usually get the opportunity to roll over because she is too busy crying. Now I guess she’s discovered that she needs be proactive - instead of waiting for her parents to get her off her tummy, she just does it herself. Hopefully she’ll be that proactive about getting out of diapers!

Mid-Week Bonus Halloween Bonanza Picture Post

We've yapped on enough, so we thought we'd do a picture only post of some pics from our little pumpkin's first Halloween. Enjoy!

Week 18 - The Great Sleep Battle Rages On

Now that we have come to terms with the fact that our daughter has become a horrible sleeper (and in turn we are sleeping horribly) we decided to stop whining and do something about it. So, we dug our heels in and began to research. Why isn't she sleeping through the night anymore, after sleeping beautifully for over a month? And more importantly, how do we fix it?

In the first few months of life, all the books and experts profess that you can't spoil an infant. Pick her up when she's crying - she just wants comfort! Let her sleep whenever she's tired - babies need a lot of sleep! Let her eat when she acts hungry - she has a tiny tummy; she's acting hungry for a reason! When you ignore these things and don't respond to her needs, your child feels as though she can't depend on you. But through our recent research we have discovered that all of this touchy-feely "you can't spoil a baby" stuff is now over. Just like that! They become 3-4 months old and suddenly it's a whole new ballgame. Don't pick her up when she's crying - it encourages her to cry! Don't let her sleep whenever she's tired - put her on a schedule! Don't let her eat whenever she acts hungry - she is just nursing for comfort! WHAT?! How do things change that quickly?

According to many experts, Marty and I are pretty much doing everything wrong when it comes to Ellie's sleep. We're encouraging poor sleeping habits and are practically begging for her to have sleep issues for life! Experts advise that you should not nurse, rock or do anything to get your baby to fall asleep because they won't develop the ability to soothe themselves and put themselves to sleep. Therefore when they wake up, they can’t put themselves BACK to sleep. We have nursed or rocked Ellie to sleep every night since birth! How on earth do we stop doing that?!

There are tons of theories about how to "teach your child to sleep". Put your baby to bed when she's drowsy but awake. Stand over her, rub her belly and "shoosh" her. Leave her room and come in and check on her every ten minutes until she falls asleep. Pick her up, soothe her then put her back down (PI/PD) then repeat until she's asleep. Let her 'cry it out'(CIO) until she passes out with exhaustion. Seriously there are hundreds of books professing hundreds of sure-fire ways to get your baby to be able to soothe herself to sleep, which will in turn make her sleep through the night. All the methods are different but they agree on one thing: don’t soothe your child to sleep, let her soothe herself. Perhaps the reason Ellie is not sleeping through the night anymore is because we have not allowed her to develop the ability to soothe herself.

However, I think that all of these methods of teaching your child to sleep are designed for babies who are "less intense" than Ellie. If we lay Ellie down in the crib and stand over her, she practically turns blue from all the crying and you can pretty much hear her screaming through those eyes pleading "PICK ME UP! WHY ARE YOU STANDING THERE STARRING AT ME AND NOT PICKING ME UP?! DON'T YOU LOVE ME ANYMORE?!?". I can't even hear myself shoosh over her screaming. It's just too heartbreaking for her and us.

The pick up/put down method doesn't really work because when she's put down she works herself up so much that by the time you pick her up she won't calm down. But leaving the room to just let her cry it out makes her so mad - the way she screams you'd think that someone was trying to saw her arm off and it makes Marty and me feel awful.

Now I realize that you're meant to do these things several nights, even weeks, in a row before they work. I just don't know that have the heart to listen to my baby wail for 2-3 hours straight night after night until she finally learns how to soothe herself. It's emotionally and physically draining and after two weeks of sleep deprivation, too much stress!

We tried a combo of all of these methods on Monday night and it took over two hours to get her to fall asleep. Then she woke up three hours later and using all these methods, it took her two hours to fall back asleep. The frustrating thing is that if I fed her, she'd probably have fallen back asleep in 20 minutes. But if I feed her to sleep, I am enforcing horrible sleep habits that will ruin her life! (Am I being extreme? Just read the books.) On Tuesday, she was tired, but not overly so, and I just put her down in the crib gave her a kiss and left. And a funny thing happened. She didn’t cry! She just fell asleep – and slept through the night! Ok, maybe those experts are on to something. For the next three nights, we put her down when she was tired but awake. Some nights she cried for a few minutes, others she didn’t. But every night she fell asleep within 10 minutes and slept through the night.

Inevitably, of course, this bliss did not last. For the past two nights she’s woken up in the middle of the night. But now that her parents are a little more rested, it doesn’t seem like as big of a deal to get up. And she is going down for the night SO much easier, we feel as though we have won at least half of the battle. For this week anyway! The lesson here is, with sleep, anything is manageable. Without it, we are doomed.