whew

the mil is gone home. the hub brought her back today so it's just me & pumpkin (new nickname since she is way too chub for peanut these days!) until maybe tomorrow afternoon. which is fine with me.

i am trying to start some sort of routine to our days. i am slowly stretching her feedings out, since she's most likely 80-90th %tile or weight i have no qualms about getting her to 3-4 hours between feedings as opposed to 2-3. she's gotten herself there for nighttime feedings, mostly. we get up out of bed around 9-10, which i am also slowly working on as i will be leaving for work around 8 soon. then it's some awake time talking in the bouncy chair followed by a morning nap (hopefully!- it's now 3 & no naps more than 20 minutes long today!) then a bottle & some more awake time & afternoon nap. bottle only took 50 minutes to finish today... we're getting there slowly. this week is one bottle midday. next week i'll add the afternoon bottle & then the last week before i leave will be morning bottle. wish us luck!

she's found her hands & will very noisily suck the life out of them when she manages to get them to her mouth. it's adorable, but difficult to get a video of as it only lasts 30 seconds before she forgets that the hands actually belong to her! this leads to frustration & a search for the paci. once she's asleep she pops the paci out herself, but she really likes it for naps. not so much at bedtime. we're still kind of working out her routines & cues.

the hardest part of being on my own with her these two days is pumping. she takes so long with the bottle that it's an hour after i feed her by the time i get to pump. it's just too hard to pump while trying to coerce her to eat from a bottle. usually the hub will feed her while i pump which is much better. i've also been feeding her from one side only at a meal since she has gotten my supply in to the point where she's full from the first side. she rarely gets to side 2 & when she does she spits up milk after finishing after 4-5 minutes since she's really overeating at that point! so i've only been pumping the one side and maybe an ounce at most from side 2 just to keep it more comfy, not enough to encourage more supply since she's not eating from both sides every time anymore. i doubt i have any supply problems since i have been averaging 3-4.5 ounces from the first side. she's only taking 2.5 oz bottles and the last ounce is a struggle. i have a pretty good frozen stockpile so we are switching to refrigerating for the next few days bottles. even so i am freezing extra that won't get drunk within 3 days.

i just hope that pumping an hour or more after she eats won't mess up volume for the next feeding- since she'll go 3 hours, but for my boobs its only 2!

now that all family visits are over i am hoping we get into a nice little routine. we almost had one going last month, but then with guests everything gets disrupted!

here's the little chunker rocking out in her bouncer today. note how she is trying to get both fists in her mouth with the paci already there... you may need some imagination, but i swear that's exactly what she's doing!