Has it really been 7 1/2 months since baby girl entered our world?!!
I love my little girl like crazy. We're still trying to figure out a schedule and most days I feel like I'm winging everything, but we get through it. A quick update on baby - she's still growing like crazy. Best guess is she's about 18lbs right now. She's wearing 9-12 month clothing. She has her bottom two teeth and I think she's starting to work on the top ones. She crawls like a champ and pulls herself up to stand on anything that's at least four inches off the floor. I've decided this is the give mom a heart attack phase as every time I turn around she's pulling up on something. She's taken some pretty good tumbles and I've just accepted the fact most days she'll be sporting a bruise or two on her forehead. She desperately wants to walk and has started moving herself along furniture and has even transferred from one piece of furniture to another. She will frequently use just one hand to hold herself up and occasionally has balanced for a moment or two without holding on to anything. I really wish she wouldn't walk until a year old, but I doubt that will be the case! Her core muscles are crazy strong - she's done several sit-ups from laying flat on her back. I never would have guessed I would have such a strong baby! Several weeks ago we switched to baby-led weaning and it's going awesome. She does so well and I'm no longer wasting time making baby food. It is definitely a messier form of eating. I bought the antilop high chair from ikea and it makes cleaning up after a meal so much easier! (And it was ridiculously cheap!)
Sleep is one giant shit-show around here. Naps are good and she goes down easy for them. Her morning nap is 30-45min, afternoon nap is 1 1/2-2 1/2 hours which usually includes a wake up in the middle for a quick snack, and her evening nap is 20-30min or not at all. Night time is another story. She will go down fairly easy around 8, but then wakes up 45 minutes later to eat again (It makes no difference how much or how little I feed her before she goes to sleep at 8) and it's anyone guess if she'll just go back to sleep or spend the next two hours fighting it. She still nurses every 2-3 hours at night. I refuse to let her cry it out. No one is ever going to convince me an infant cries just to be an asshole. It's their only form of communication and if they're crying it's because they need something. I'm not going to leave her alone and let her think her needs aren't important or that mom doesn't care. I also refuse to let her cry because she's had one thing after another going on for the past couple months and has legitimate reasons for waking up at night. When she does nurse at night she often will eat off both sides, so I know she's hungry. And no, feeding her before bed doesn't make a bit of difference and if my mother-in-law says it will one more time I may completely lose it. She also nurses 2-3 hours during the day. I think we have a combination of having a high needs baby and having a baby that keeps racing ahead of the curve on so many developmental milestones she just needs to eat all the time. And really, this time is going by so fast and it won't be long before I miss the middle of the night snuggles. The way I see it, it means I get more time with her while she's little. Of course I would love more sleep, but a vast majority of the time it really doesn't bother me. But it sure seems to be a big issue for relatives that don't ever take care of her at night...
I started working out a couple weeks ago. I may have lost the baby weight, but I sure didn't keep any strength! I'm so out of shape and core muscles are basically non-existent right now. My husband got me several sessions with a personal trainer for Christmas (my request!). I go twice a week and use the drop-in daycare at the gym for baby. First day I could hear her screaming before I got back to the room. Second time she was napping. I'm hoping it gets better. I know it's good for her to be around other babies - for social interaction and to boost her immune system! It's also good for me to spend a little time focusing on myself. As much as I hate working out, I always feel so good afterwards. Here's hoping I can get fit again relatively quickly!
We have tentatively decided on a plan for baby number 2. Six years ago when we started trying to have a baby we had talked about having 3-4. Well, now we're happy with the one we have and if we can give her a sibling, even better! I'm 35 already and with that comes the label of 'advanced maternal age'. I've been in a bit of a panic thinking about how quickly we needed to get moving on frozen embryo transfers. We have 6 embryos left on ice, but only one is of good quality. Two are okay quality and the last three are such poor quality they probably won't make the thaw - and my clinic uses vitrification so that tells you how poor quality they are. We transferred 7 embryos over four transfers to get our daughter. So my fear is that it is going to take multiple transfers for our next baby, too. I'm still nursing and I haven't yet checked with my IVF doctor if I can be nursing and do embryo transfers. My daughter's pediatrician said she is fine with me nursing and doing embryo transfers - she said during pregnancy my body makes more progesterone and estrogen anyways, so the added amounts from a transfer wouldn't have any effect on baby. She just said to check with my IVF doctor because some do want you to be done nursing. Which is a hard balance - I want to give baby girl until at least 18 months to nurse, maybe even up to age 2. If I cut her off early for an embryo transfer and we never get pregnant again, I'll regret cutting that time short. If I give her as long as she wants, then we may not be able to get pregnant again. So the tentative solution I came up with is to do a couple of egg retrievals later this summer/fall. They will either be natural or mini. I have to check to see if I can be on clomid while nursing. If not, then they will have to be natural cycles. This should hopefully give us a couple more embryos and would then let me be a little more relaxed about waiting a bit longer before doing transfers. I would hope to do embryo transfers around baby girl's second birthday. As exhausting as babies and toddlers are, I really don't want two close together! Hopefully baby girl would be starting preschool around the time we had another baby - which would give me more one on one time with baby.
This is all hard and I don't think there is ever going to be a perfect answer. For now, we're planning on egg retrievals this year and transfers next summer. Hopefully all goes well and we do end up lucky enough to have a second. If not, we can at least know we gave it our best.
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