Oatmeal and bananas

Oh, how spoiled we've been! Or we had been. The last week has been a bit trying, and I'm documenting as much as possible, so I can look at this next time around and not make the same mistakes twice!!

In the last post, I mentioned day 3 of a growth spurt. Now I'm not sure I was reading her queues correctly. After 3 days, the routine went from every 2 hours and up all night to a more normal routine with a full night's sleep. Then the next day her routine extended to 3.5 to 4 hours between feedings (pretty normal for a 4 month old), but she was up again in the night and went right back to every two hours on Monday.

By Tuesday, I was pretty tuckered out and figured I was missing something, so I call the doctor's office and chatted with the nurse. She suggested trying cereal - that this might be Morgen's way of saying she was ready for "solids." Well, I didn't make it out of the house on Tuesday, so I didn't start the cereal until Wednesday afternoon. It was a hit! She ate cereal in the afternoon (2ish) and made it until 5pm until she was ready to eat again. Hooray! Then she ate more cereal and some bananas. One more normal feed and then a dream feed and off to bed.

Sadly, it didn't impact the nighttime situation last night. She got up at 1am, and I got her back to sleep. Then she was back up at 1:30am, so I figured she must be hungry - full feeding. Okay, back to sleep. Back up at 4:30am. Back to sleep without nursing. I was trying to determine if she was waking up because of gas or hunger. Usually she won't take a pacifier if she's hungry, but I think the game has changed. She woke back up a half hour later and nursed for a full feeding (e.g., 15ish minutes). Back to sleep until almost 7am. This time I just nursed (and she didn't feed long, so in retrospect, I should have put her back down until 8am (at least 3 hours from the last feeding). She was back up at 8am anyway. I nursed and gave her some oatmeal and bananas, and we played until 9:15am, when she started to fuss. I swaddled her, and read her a story (She does actually follow my finger as I point to the pictures - it's really cool!). Then I put her down, and she put herself to sleep by 9:30am. She woke up once, but it's 10:30am, and she's still asleep...which means we may be back to our 3 hours routine during the day. That should allow me to make enough milk to fill her up, especially if we throw in some oatmeal and bananas.

Fingers crossed! (And glad we still have a doc appt this afternoon.)
asl