Baby Sophia, 5 Months!!

This is the first month where I think “WOW! Five months!!” I think time will start to go faster now!

Sophia now weighs 13 pounds, 11 ounces, and doubled her birth weight a couple weeks ago. It's amazing to watch her perfectly follow the 50 percentile curve for length and head circumference, and the 25th percentile for weight. Guess our baby will be tall, skinny, and smart...?? I never thought I'd have a "small" baby, but my back and arms are grateful!

 Sophia often has her fists in her mouth, babbling away! We could listen to her all day long!

Daddy is still pretty much her favorite person in the world, although she brightens up with any of her family members!

Over the course of this month I packed up all her newborn size clothes…then 3 months…and now she’s wearing all her 3-6 month clothes plus most of the 6 month size. My Mom is still shocked, I think, by a baby who wears the "right" size! She's more like a Bolivian baby in this regard. 

 

Each month that I continue to be able to breastfeed, I am grateful. The first few months were so rough - reaching a proper supply, and realizing that my baby doesn't thrive on a schedule - that I never want to take for granted the ability to provide enough for my baby. I only had one hard week a few back when I took only one drop, two days in a row, of an oil blend containing peppermint. It's true folks, peppermint really does dry up a milk supply!! I was sooo frustrated, and poor Sophia had some screamy days there. I took the last of my fenugreek to get back up to where I was and am staying away from anything mint!!

 Love the hot days when we can see some skin! :)

 

Particularly on the days when she actually gets enough sleep, and doesn’t try to go all day with just one nap, we have a VERY HAPPY BABY!! Every month of her life she has improved on her happy awake times. She brings us so much joy! The boys adore her and say “We like her like this!” Me, too! A couple mornings, she’s even started to coo and sing to herself in bed instead of screaming. Of course, feeding every two hours throughout the night quite positively affects her attitude...if not mine! :)
 

Jake says "Mommy's sunshine...daddy's moonshine?!" He has had some special bonding, ah-hem, time with our baby this past month while mommy tries to sleep

 

The latest greatest is that she began rolling from back to front a few days ago!!! Jake said he’s surprised by how exciting it is for him, and I’d say her brothers are almost more excited than us. They think she’s just the greatest thing ever. (And I think, wait till she’s crawling or walking!!) She now ends up suddenly on her stomach a couple times a day now, much to her chagrin. The boys ask her, “Why do you do it baby, if you don’t like it and it makes you cry?!” Yep, still not a fan of tummy time.

 

 

The boys also think she’s an absolute genius when she plucks her pacifier out of her mouth… And then manages to get it back in again!

 

 

We’ve had all different version of night/sleeping/napping difficulties this past month. I’d say that’s still the number one hardest thing with Sophia, getting her the proper sleep she needs! She really needs an environment as quiet and non-stimulating as possible to go to sleep, and of course to be firmly swaddled, with pacifier in the mouth. Sometimes she has to be super super tired to finally give up and go to sleep, and other times it’s good to catch her early, as all the books advise. She keeps me guessing!!

 

So hard to keep her wiggly little self in the swaddle blanket these days, but naps are very brief if we don't use it. 

 

 

We decided a while back that all of the “tried-and-true” methods for getting a baby to sleep only make it worse for ours: baths, neighborhood walks, car rides, soft music, pacing, rocking... One item that HAS left that list (if we are 110% sure that ALL of her other needs have been met) is “crying it out” (whatever “it” is?). That FINALLY began to be more helpful that counterproductive this month!!! Realizing just how overstimulated and overly tired she gets, I worked hard at this a few days after she turned 4 months. If I catch her at just the right point, she can put herself to sleep in the crib (swaddled and with the pacifier, of course) without screaming herself into a rage! She zones out there and peacefully drifts off to sleep. At worst, we have to go back to her several times to re-insert the pacifier. 

 

Ah. Our lives have CHANGED!!

 

 

This is what we deal with ALL DAY LONG when she decides naps are just for babies!!

 

 

Over the course of this month, we went from every other night being very difficult…to maybe 1 out of 3…to now just one a week! We have happy, peaceful evenings again, yeah!!! Ironically, the nights she goes to bed the easiest are usually the most up-and-down for me, as she wakes hourly needing a little pat, or the pacifier again, or arms to be re-swaddled, or a feed... For all but one of the past ten or so nights, she nurses every 2 - 2 1/2 hours!! I have been more sleep-deprived this last month than the past several.

I guess it's my own fault, because this began after a period of trying to teach her to give up the 3am feeding, because at that point, she was sticking pretty well to a schedule of 6am, 9am, noon, and so on. I thought it would be pretty great to go back to something she's already done consistently, eating around midnight and around 5 or 6am. But after 6 nights, each worse than the one before, we abandoned this mission and she decided to eat all throughout the night, just in case! Sigh. I tell myself that someday I’ll miss this quiet time with her, and how she needs me, and how I can so easily give her what she needs, and that makes the constant tiredness easier. One more month of this though, and I'll be thinking about solids!! Otherwise, my goal is 7 months of exclusive nursing.

 

 

 

This dress from my mom was a little big for her on Valentine's Day, but fits great now!

A few pictures of my bathing beauty! I was experimenting with different settings on Jake's camera.

How she LOVES to splash, splash, splash in her bath tub! I've started to leave the tub inside our shower because she gets the entire bathroom floor and walls so wet! She kicks like crazy. However, as soon as she hits the cool air getting out, she screams as vigorously as she played! Recently, after three times in a row of a rough hour (or more) after a bath, I hesitated to ever bath her again! Sigh. I just have to pick the right time of day, preferably not at night, when she's not already tired. If everything goes just right, some times I can even work in a little lotion or oil massage with background piano music playing - a special time for both of us! 

I've used more and more cloth diapers this past month, as more fit her. Some days I use them all day. I love these that a friend gave me/the Baby Home when she left Bolivia! There are several pretty pastel colors and white. I like using them with Sophia's sun dresses, too.

Modeling the hat friends in jail knitted for my baby:

We love all her HAIR! Not sure if I've ever seen a gringa baby with so much light hair. (And isn't it turning more blonde?!)

Here our hair looks the exact same color, but in certain lighting a bronze/red comes out (definitely from her daddy!)

And speaking of hair, this is her new look these days, YIKES! Her dad loves it, I don't know what to do with it. :)

And one last picture:

Wonderful to have a happy baby at least a couple hours of the day now, and even self-entertaining! :)