Sunday, January 1, 2012

16 months

We've had Christmas and New Year in the last month, so it's been busy.

At this moment, Rachael's alseep on my bed. She's had a very busy morning with Grandma. It's rare at the moment for her to sleep without being attached to someone, but she was so tired she fell to sleep there right after her feed when I put her down so I could go to the toilet. She's just been sleeping very lightly during the day at the moment, so putting her into the cot wakes her up, and she won't go back to sleep. She's also refusing to go back to sleep in her own bed after feeds overnight, so we give up eventually, and bring her back to our bed so we can get some sleep ourselves.

No particular news eating-wise. Most of the time she still likes to eat very little. Sometimes it stresses me out, othertimes I'm more happy to let her decide. At the moment, Rachael has a thing for anything potato, as well as biscuits. Anything green veg is way off the radar. It does concern me that she may not be getting enough iron from solids, I have to take a iron suppliment on top of my pregnancy/feeding multivitamin or I feel like I've been run over my a truck, and we tend to have iron issues in the family, but she just plain old won't eat them. She's oven gone off her meat obsession, which is odd. And of course, she can't live on biscuits (even though she'd like to give it a shot I'm sure), not a good thing. It does help my mind somewhat though that she's still breastfeeding. Don't tell her it's nutritious, she's blissfully unaware of the fact. I know through this that she's still getting some amount of nutrients. There has been suggestion that if I weaned her, she'd eat better. There's no way to know, but I sort of get the feeling she'd eat larger quantities, but I don't think it'd affect her variety. I don't see her suddenly accepting broccoli just because she doesn't get milk.

Rachael didn't really get the point of Christmas gifts. She wasn't even particually keen on the wrapping paper. She did get some lovely gifts though, her favourite at the moment is probably her broom.


Rachael is really starting to get into toddler mode. Things she's not allowed to do or have fustrate her, so she gets angry. On the other hand, she can be incredible cute at times. We have been reminded that she watches everything we do; A few days ago I decided to take her to the swimming pool, so put my bathers on. Since I had just had my shower, Rachael knows part of my routine is to put on my underwear (shocking, I know ;). She seems to have decided that I forgot to do it, so got a clean pair of underwear out of my drawer, and tried to put them over my feet. I obligingly put them on, and had to take them off again when she wasn't looking.  

Getting into the Christmas Spirit, givng the Santa Claus look a go

15 months

The 15 month blog never got posted. Why? Because I wrote it, was going to find a picture, but she woke up instead, so that was the end of that. I went back to post it a few days later, but it all had changed, so I re-wrote most of it, but it never quite got posted. Sure enough, it changed again. That's life with a mini-toddler; it keeps changing, particually on the sleep front.

In the begining, we were having a particually diffucult time with lack of sleep.
We had a few nights where Rachael was feeding every 2 hours or less. After a few day, I was over it. I was tired, I wanted to do anything to get a night's sleep. I was going to night wean (immediately). I was going to hire a babysitter for a night's sleep. Then Rachael and I went to see a friend, had a chat and then came back to a more rational truth. Our truth, at that time is that either would most probably be damaging to Rachael. Yes, I would love to get a full night's sleep, but there's no harm in waiting a little longer to see if she'll be ready to do this on her own. I may have to night wean her at some time in the future, and I have read up on some gentle stratergies for if they are required, but I don't want to do it before 18 months. She isn't ready to comprehend the communication side that these stratergies use. And these nights are really handy to point out another truth to me- Rachael will remain an only child for a while longer. There is absolutely no way I am ready to go back to the newborn no sleep stage yet.

Then shse started to sleep better. Her solids intake increased (it was becoming almost non-existant when she was at home with me), she increased her water intake a lot, and went back to sleeping. She went from her 3 hourly feeds that she's had since birth, to feeding 4 hourly overnight, for a few days. Which is absolutely lovely. It means  I was still getting disturbed sleep, but more likely to get more complete sleep cycles in (woo hoo). And for a 9:30pm to 4:30am sleep on a work day, we've only had one feed instead of two. But it only lasted a few days, and we're back to fairly regular feeding again.
When Rachael is with either grandmother, or Jai, the increased cosumption of other food and drink mean daytime feeds are reduced to a feed before her nap, an afternoon feed and then bedtime feed. This is much more like what I expected extended feeding to be when I researched it, rather than the around the clock that we'd been doing. But if it's just the two of us, it's still regular feeding.

Since then, she's settled back into her old habits.

I can't rememver what else was happening, so I'll just start my 16 month post