Little House in the Vermont Woods: November 2010

Thanksgiving

This year, I am so thankful for my beautiful baby Susannah, my wonderful and hardworking partner Charles, my support network of friends and extended family, and of course my ever supportive first baby, Samadhi the cat. I am also thankful that we live in beautiful Vermont, such a wholesome and healthy place to raise a child.

Standing in our new house!

With some of the friends we've made at our baby group at the nearby Waldorf school.

View from the window of our new home.

Sleeping and Eating Issues

So as I mentioned, Susannah's sleep fell apart when she was around 3 months old. Before that, she was regularly sleeping 8-9 hours through the night. After her sleep fell apart, she was waking up 6-8 times a night to eat. At first I thought she had developed sleep issues, but then I realized she was actually hungry most of those times. She is pretty big for her age and super active, spends the day rolling all over the place. Plus I am away at work 3 days a week and haven't been able to pump enough to allow her to have much extra breast milk during the day. I was barely keeping up with pumping (despite drinking Mothers Milk tea and trying More Milk herbal supplement) and breastfeeding on demand 4 days a week. I was struggling with what to do, given the recommendations to exclusively breastfeed for 6 months. Theoretically I could do this, but she would be up all night eating and I would need to spend all my spare time pumping on the days I am home. I was going crazy from lack of sleep and this is just not a solution I could sustain. In fact, I feel like my stress and exhaustion were contributing to lower my milk supply.

I began researching formula and had the Vermont Organics cows milk brand recommended both by my naturopathic doctor and several friends. It is sold at Hannafords and I believe on Diapers.com. I was then lucky to find a local mom who was willing to share her extra frozen breastmilk. I also hemmed and hawed about starting her on solids. We started bananas this week and she loves them, ate half a banana yesterday. Now I am able to nurse her in the evenings, then give her a bottle of my friend's breast milk and some banana to top her off. She is sleeping so much better already and is only waking up 2 or 3 times a night rather than every hour.

It was really hard for me to admit that she wasn't getting enough from my breast milk alone, not to mention get over my guilt for not wanting to breastfeed her all night long or pump around the clock. But I was a shell of myself and barely able to function at home or work, bursting into tears from lack of sleep. Now we are all happier and sleeping better despite not following LLL recommendations to the letter.

See, Susannah is having fun with bananas!

Highlight Reel

I can't resist posting some highlights of Susannah's cuteness. Her smiles are infectious and we spend lots of time trying to capture them on film.

Framing the House

This really deserves more than one post, but Charles has been doing an amazing amount of work framing up the house since I last blogged about it. It's really exciting to watch it start to look like a real house. Scroll down fast - it's like a flip book!

New Skills

Susannah has really had an explosion of new skills in the past month. She is rolling over both ways, holding her hands and feet, looking in the mirror, and grasping things.

I took a video of her rolling over - click on the picture and it will take you to a new site to watch:

From October 2010

Falling Behind (at blog and life)

I have fallen woefully behind at updating this blog. I have a good excuse though. I went back to work on October 11th, and life got significantly more hectic. Also, Susannah's sleep regressed a lot right around the same time, when she was about 3 months old, so we've been operating on VERY little sleep for the past couple of months.

Still, we managed to have a lot of fun adventures in October. Susannah met her cousin Rowan: