Wednesday, January 23, 2008

through and through

It's been a tough couple of weeks with Emma suddenly waking at night again, wanting to eat at all hours and me trying to cope with some emotional stress (just a little more!) that seemed to be affecting my milk supply....

Thanks to a very helpful friend (a Mom of course!) and the (slightly) less helpful pediatrician, who pointed out that at nearly 6 months Emma perhaps needed something a little more filling and slightly more solid than breast milk, Emma tasted powdered milk from a bottle a week ago.

Thankfully, it went pretty well and the fact that she also happily tasted some home pureed organic carrots lead me to believe she was really famished! (Not that she looks anything like hungry!)
The next day we also introduced cereals in the evening (dinner) bottle of milk and she downed what seemed to be quite an impressive quantity of that too.

Despite this intensive feeding of solids- as well as breast milk at every meal (currently 7am, 11am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm) she still woke me at nearly 2am, 3am, 4am... crying for food ("Ne! Ne!") and the pacifier just didn't cut it. I was desperate at the thought that we were going back to feeding her at night!
Note: much harder being repeatedly woken up again once you've started sleeping through the night again.

Anyway, yesterday we tried potatoes instead of carrots at lunch hoping that the extra calories would help her sleep through the night. No cigar. Better, but still not right.
She woke me at 4am, then at 5am, and I finally gave up at 6am. Still, this time I managed to avoid feeding her during the night, so I figured we were at least moving in the right direction.

But now I've really got my hopes up.
Hurray! Yipee! Today Emma's first tooth came through! You can not only feel it but also see a little white sliver in the middle of her lower gum! That explains it surely? Here's looking to a good night's sleep!