Meredith still seems to really enjoy Fiona, though for this past week or so she’s been quite clingy to me. I feel like she’s going through a bit of a mourning period for the relationship we had (where she basically had me all to herself), and it makes me sad sometimes to think that we never will have quite that same relationship again. The last day or two though she seems to be back to more normal and she hasn’t ever seemed to hold any resentment towards Fiona at all, thankfully. She loves to tandem nurse, still likes to hold her, and will come and stroke Fiona’s head or hold her hand while Fiona is nursing or just lying and looking around. She likes to hold her hand in the car seat too. Luckily Fiona seems to be a pretty relaxed baby for the most part, and I’ve been trying to give Meredith lots of time with me to herself. We cuddle and nurse and play games while Fiona sleeps on Kris, and when Fiona wakes up she is quite happy to sit on the potty for a few minutes and then just relax and look around before she starts rooting. So we can give Meredith lots of warning that Fiona will need to nurse soon, and except for once or twice she’s been quite happy to stop whatever she’s doing with me when Fiona needs me. She often will stop and tell me “baby’s turn now, Mama” or “Mimi wait for baby to nurse”.

EC is going amazingly well. I don’t know if it’s because we started earlier (we started with Meredith at 3 weeks old), because Fiona has more clear signals, or because we’ve done it once before (or likely, a combination of all of the above), but we definitely have more “catches” than misses. She’s often in the same diaper all night long and there have been quite a few days where we’ve had her diaperless/coverless most of the day or she’s in the same diaper all day. Actually, the only thing really keeping us from having her diaperless more often are the little tiny squirts that babies do. We put a little piece of terry in her diapers so we don’t have to change the whole diaper each time, but that doesn’t work so well when diaperless. Those are getting less and less already though. She definitely seems to have some control already, and will often go as soon as we hold her over her little potty or the sink and signal.

She is still a great nurser, and was able to nurse side-lying from day one. Kris’ mom, who was out visiting for four days, told me she has one of the strongest sucks of any baby she’s ever known. (And she’s a foster parent, so she’s had a lot of babies in and out of her house.) I have to say though, that I love having a toddler around to nurse. It’s made things so much easier, since I have an overactive let down and oversupply. Meredith was constantly spitting up as a newborn (literally after every nurse in the beginning) and would choke and gag frequently while nursing. Now if I’m overly engorged or feel like my let down is too much, I can have Meredith nurse and take some pressure off. For an idea of how strong my letdown can be though, there have been times that Meredith has had to stop nursing or the letdown has caused her to choke a bit. Most of the time I am still really enjoying nursing Meredith too, though I have to be honest that there are times I wish I could sit down and relax for a minute without having someone attached to my breasts lol.

One unexpected thing is that Meredith seems to have night weaned, literally over night. The night I went into labour she didn’t wake up wanting to nurse even once. Not entirely unheard of, but definitely unusual. Since then, she’s been quite happy to fall asleep in Kris’ bed and normally if she wakes up in the night Kris will cuddle her into him and she’ll fall right back to sleep. Some nights she has asked to nurse, though so far if Fiona is nursing at the time she hasn’t had any problem waiting for Fiona to be done before having a turn herself. We haven’t ever told her she has to sleep on Kris’ side, or that she can’t nurse at night, or anything like that. I’m very careful that I don’t want her to feel like she’s been replaced by Fiona. I have been nursing her to sleep on Kris’ side, or if she falls asleep downstairs I’ll put her to bed on his side, but if she asked to come on my side I would certainly not tell her no. She is pretty flaily in her sleep so I wouldn’t want her next to Fiona, but prior to Fiona her and I often slept back to back anyway since I was so big and pregnant, so I would have no problem doing that. She’s only come into my side with me once since Fiona was born though. Maybe she likes having someone to really cuddle with, rather than being back to back? When I nurse her to sleep at night, if she comes off awake and wants to cuddle to sleep I have been lying with her longer than I did prior to Fiona being born and really trying to get lots of snuggling in before I sneak away.

The other night she asked to nurse to sleep in her bed in her room. It’s the second time she’s asked that. The first time was a few months ago and she still woke frequently in the night to nurse. If she had actually fallen asleep that time, I would have moved her into our bedroom once she was asleep. This time, I’m not entirely sure what I would have done. I think, considering she asked to lie there to nurse with no coercion on our part, that I would probably have left her there, with the monitor on, and if she had woken up in the night gone to her and brought her back to our room. It’s a bit bittersweet to think about though, she’s never not slept with one of us. She didn’t end up actually falling asleep in there either time though. There are no drapes in the room right now and a street light right outside the window so it’s very light in there even when it’s dark out. Not sure if that has something to do with it or not but I do need to get drapes in there.

Anyway, this has gotten long but I wanted to post somewhat of an update. I’ll try and post some pictures sometime in the next few days. Bed time for me now, both kids are sleeping and I should take advantage.

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Pregnancy is still going so smoothly, I often forget I’m pregnant. I can’t believe I’m in the third trimester already. It’s night and day from last time, when I spent most of the pregnancy nauseous, puking, or with terrible heartburn. I have gotten a little bit of heartburn, but so far nothing major. I also spent a lot more time thinking about being pregnant last time, whereas this time I have a two year old to distract me and life goes on as normal. The baby does move a lot now though, and I definitely love that part. Meredith loves when the baby kicks her while she’s nursing, and will often pop off and talk about how the baby is going to nurse too on whichever breast she’s not on. (I find this really cute, because I’d never mentioned that the baby would need to nurse too. She figured it out on her own.) She’s also started bringing me little bits of food and putting it on my belly and telling me it’s for the baby. I’m really curious how much she’s really internalizing about me being pregnant. Obviously she at least partly gets it, if she’s figuring out things like that the baby will need to nurse. She loves to look at and hold other people’s babies and nurses/potties her own dolls. I guess we’ll see in a few months!

Her room is mostly finished now. She chose blue, and was pretty insistent from the first day I asked her what colour she wanted that it would be blue. Occasionally she would mention purple, but that was rare. I got some blue paint and some purple paint to try out in the room, and was doing the purple paint first and she said “No Mama! No purple. Blue room.” So, blue it was. I’m quite happy with the colours. There’s a little more that needs to be done in there, but it’s coming along. I want to either paint all the trim white, or replace the baseboards with white ones, but the white paint I have is oil-based which isn’t recommended for pregnancy. I have a good friend who’s offered to paint them as a Christmas present, but she’s really busy too so not sure if it will end up happening.

Meredith adores the room. She talks about it all the time and likes to go in and touch the walls. A couple of weeks ago she wanted to nurse in her bed and I wondered if she was going to fall asleep there. She didn’t, but I wonder what I would have done if she had. Likely brought her back into our bed with me. She still rarely sleeps through the night so I prefer her to be with me where it’s easy to just nurse or cuddle her back to sleep. Plus she still wakes up and looks for me, even if it’s just to wake up briefly to put her hand on me. If I’m not there she will wake up the whole way and call for me. I think I may start putting her down in her room for naps though if she seems interested.

Speaking of sleep, I’m pretty comfortable where we are at as far as night nursing. In the beginning of the pregnancy she always had to nurse back to sleep; sometimes it would take her 45 minutes or longer each time. I worried that with a newborn who would likely wake her up each time he/she woke up, both would want to be nursed back to sleep every single time. I really didn’t want to night wean her though. I opted to try for plain old honesty. When she is settling in for a long nursing session in the night and I am really tired or the nursing is uncomfortable or painful (which luckily for me hasn’t happened often), I will ask her to please keep it short this time and then we can cuddle instead. Most of the time, she’s quite happy to just have a quick nurse and then roll over and we’ll cuddle until she’s asleep. The times she nurses longer there’s almost always a reason, such as illness. Prior to pregnancy, she really had never fallen asleep on her own without nursing, now she does quite often. In fact there were a couple of nights where she didn’t ask to nurse at all, and just cuddled into me when she woke up. I think that was the few days my milk dried up and she wasn’t nursing much during the day either. Then my colostrum came in and she’s loving that lol. Back to nursing frequently during the day and usually at least two to three times overnight too.

Anyway, so much for this being a short update post. I do have more to post in the next little while, if I get a chance. I’m still reading lots of blogs. They’re in my RSS feed on my e-mail though and I haven’t commented much lately. But I’m really enjoying reading all the posts and seeing the Christmas baking and crafts being done, and hope to share some of our own holiday activities too.

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This has been something that has been on my mind quite a bit the past couple of weeks, since I found out I am pregnant. She still nurses a lot, more than she eats. I’m okay with that. I trust that she will eat when she needs to eat, and that she is getting the nutrition she needs from my breastmilk. She’s growing well, healthy, and happy. She’s not a picky eater, she just doesn’t eat much. I’ve noticed she is starting to eat a lot more recently too. So far, nursing and being pregnant hasn’t bothered me at all. I’m hoping I’ll be one of those people who it never does. I’ve always had problems with oversupply, not undersupply, and last pregnancy I started having to wear breast pads around 22 weeks or I’d leak. (Apparently that’s really early for a first pregnancy.) So I don’t think my milk will dry up, or if it does hopefully it will only be for a short time. One of the reasons we waited to get pregnant (besides my cycles not coming back, ha!) was that I didn’t want her to be forced to wean if I am one of those women whose milk does dry up in pregnancy, especially since she still relies on it so much.

My concern (and even that is far too strong a word at this point; I’m not concerned, just thoughtful) is the night nursing. Meredith is a very light sleeper. When I’m in late pregnancy and tossing and turning, am I going to be waking her up each time? And if so, will I have to nurse her back to sleep every time, making it harder for me to get back to sleep? Trouble sleeping was one of my most annoying symptoms last time and has already started this time. What about after the baby comes? Will the baby wake Meredith up each time he or she wakes up in the night? I can’t side lie and nurse two kids, so that means I’d either have to sit up and nurse them both, or make one wait while I nurse the other. Meredith will be over two and a half, so I’m sure she would be okay waiting while I nurse the baby, but I don’t want to nurse them both every single time the baby wakes up.

Really it’s all conjecture at this point. In 8 months, it’s quite possible Meredith will be falling back to sleep on her own without nursing, or that she will be a heavier sleeper and wouldn’t wake up. But again, I don’t want to count on that, and I don’t want to night wean her. If she sticks to her current sleeping pattern of sleeping until 5 or 6 in the morning, or even waking more when she’s sick/teething, I’d be fine with that with a baby. My concern is having to nurse them both every time the baby wakes up.

Thinking about it, and talking it over with Kris, I think we may try and have her start the night on Kris’ side. We have two queen beds in our bedroom pushed up against each other. (Which is heaven by the way, I love having so much space!) Meredith and I sleep on one, and Kris sleeps in the other. But really it’s like one huge bed because obviously we can move around from one to the other at will. Occasionally Meredith does crawl over to his side for a cuddle. Our thought was that I could nurse her to sleep for the night on Kris’ mattress, and the first time she wakes up at night I’ll bring her back over to my side and she’ll stay there the rest of the night. Which means on the nights she sleeps until 5 or 6 I have space the whole night, and the nights that she is waking up more frequently I would bring her over earlier and be right there for when she needs to nurse. That gives me space to toss and turn when heavily pregnant without risk of waking her up, and when there’s a baby in the equation he or she would be less likely to wake her up too. And of course, if we try it and for some reason she is really unhappy about it, we’d drop it for now. I can’t see that happening though, she does love to snuggle with daddy.

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 VANCOUVER — It’s time to pack up the pea purée and toss the baby rice. No more blending beans, mashing bananas or whipping sweet potatoes.

Fed up with rigid timetables for the introduction of first foods, a growing number of parents are giving up on spoon feeding and letting the kids set the pace.

The “baby-led weaning” movement, a term coined by a British former health visitor and midwife Gill Rapley, is mushrooming over the Internet. In the new book she has co-authored, Baby-led Weaning: Helping Your Baby to Love Good Food, Ms. Rapley argues that once a baby is six months old, parents should just cook up some vegetables, cut up some fruits and let the kid go crazy.

“Now that feeding guidelines are to start solids at six months, there is no reason to use purées or cereals,” Ms. Rapley explains by phone from Britain. “A developmental milestone at that age is for the baby to pick up an object and bring it to his mouth, so it’s a natural time for him to start feeding.”

There is no need to introduce foods in a particular order, or individually, she says. “Those guidelines were created because a four-month-old baby’s stomach is not ready to cope with food, and care needed to be taken.” Soft foods had previously been recommended for four- to six-month-olds to bridge the gap.

Her theory is that children will regulate their own intake, setting them up for future portion control and taking the pressure out of family mealtimes. In the process, children are less likely to use food as a control mechanism or become fussy eaters, Ms. Rapley says.

Common sense is advised: Don’t let your child eat unattended (though a baby’s natural gag reflex may be enough to prevent choking, you need to watch them) and be aware of family allergy issues.

“I don’t think this is revolutionary,” says Ms. Rapley, who adds that many hundreds of parents have been using baby-led weaning without realizing it. “It’s just never been written about before.”

Nevertheless, the movement is turning into an industry. Though part of its appeal has been the rejection of rules, the new feeding regimen is developing its own guidelines: In addition to Ms. Rapley’s book, a recipe database has sprung up on the Internet, and moms try to outdo each other in chat rooms with fancy recipes to tempt their little ones.

On Vancouver Island, Lindsay Wilson started looking into baby-led weaning when she saw her sister-in-law lose patience with baby food. “Her baby refused to eat it, so she just started with regular food.”

Ms. Wilson was preparing to introduce solids to her daughter, Meredith, when she turned six months. “I read all about baby-led weaning on the Internet and decided to try it.”

In the beginning, Meredith simply played with the food. “By 10 months, Meredith was fully feeding herself with finger foods and with a spoon.”

Now 15 months, Meredith eats a wide range of foods without fuss – while still nursing. “It makes it very easy to trust her and let her make her own decisions about what to eat and when, because any nutrients she’s not getting in solids are made up for in breast milk,” Ms. Wilson explains.

A Health Canada spokesman said that parents should refer to the guidelines for weaning and child nutrition posted on the department’s website.

Danielle Donders turned to baby-led weaning with her third son, Lucas, after having been through two different sets of guidelines with sons Tristan and Simon, now 6 and 4.

“With Tristan, it was cereals at four months, then vegetable purées introduced one at a time, wait a week, then try a new one,” she says. “With Simon, the guidelines had changed to starting solids at six months – and nothing but rice cereal for a while.”

By the time Lucas came along, Ms. Donders, an Ottawa-based communications officer, says she was just more relaxed about everything. “At 5½ months he was starving,” she says. “My mom was nagging me to feed him – so I put some Cheerios in front of him, not really thinking about what you’re supposed to do.”

Then someone posted about baby-led weaning on her blog, Postcards from the Mothership. “And I found out I was part of a whole movement.”

For Ms. Donders, though, letting Lucas, now 10 months old, feed himself was more about the demands of a large family and less about a new orthodoxy. “I realized that it just isn’t that easy to break him,” she laughs. “Although it is great to be able to feed him without feeling guilty that I’m not doing it the right way.”

Source: Globe & Mail

There’s an enormous picture of Meredith and I in the print version too. There are a couple really nitpicky things I could say, but I won’t bother. Overall I’m really happy with how it turned out. Hopefully it will get some awareness out there about how unnecessary jarred baby foods and spoon-feeding are!

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So I agreed to the interview, and I think it went well. I’m a little nervous about the article, as there is often a lot of misunderstanding or misconceptions about baby-led weaning and I worry that I’ll be misquoted or something I said will be taken out of context. I don’t want to come across as this crazy mother who’s endangering her baby’s life to rebel against the baby food industry! When in reality I believe baby-led weaning is safer than spoon feeding and allows Meredith to control her own intake of food and decide for herself when she’s full or hungry. Overall though, the reporter was really friendly and nice, and seemed very open. I’m really looking forward to how it turns out.

Today a photographer came to take Meredith’s picture for the article. She was really nice and great with Meredith. Very understanding of the fact that she is fifteen months old and sometimes has her own agenda. Actually, Meredith has been eating a lot more solids all of a sudden the last couple of days, so it worked out well as she was more than willing to sit and eat while having her picture taken. (She’s been nursing a lot more too, as can be evidenced by that fact I’ve gained a cup size or two in the last week lol! She must be going through a growth spurt.)

At one point while watching Meredith eating yogurt with a spoon, the photographer said: “Parents don’t give their kids enough credit”, which I think is so true. We have video of Meredith feeding herself with a spoon at ten months old. It was a little messier than it is now, but no more messier than any spoon feeding I’ve witnessed. Especially when the kid is being tricked into opening his or her mouth so the parent can shovel more food in, while the kid tries to spit it out. I have video of her first time eating soup too, around 11 months, though that was messy haha. She seems to find it a lot easier now that the spoon fits in her mouth a little easier. We never “taught” her to use a spoon. We just gave her a spoon (or a fork depending on what we were eating) and let her experiment on her own. Below is the soup video.

The photographer also commented I was brave giving her glasses and ceramic dishes to eat out of, but she’s probably broken less dishes since she started using them than Kris or I have. We did use some plastic that had been given to us for a brief time when she was enjoying throwing it on the floor, but by the time she actually started eating she was well past that phase and is quite careful with any dishes we give her.

Anyway, I’ll definitely post the article here when it comes out. I’m looking forward to it! I don’t think I’ve ever been in the newspaper before.

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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – The exercise that babies get while suckling at the breast may be an essential component of the respiratory benefits associated with breastfeeding, new research shows.

Dr. Ikechukwu U. Ogbuano of the University of South Carolina in Columbia and colleagues found that by 10 years old children who were breastfed for 4 months or longer had larger lung capacities than their counterparts who had been nursed for a shorter amount of time or not at all. The breastfed children were also able to expel air from their lungs more quickly.

While the children’s speedier exhalations could have been related to the beneficial components of breast milk, “the lung capacity cannot be really explained by the immune factors in the breast milk,” Ogbuano told Reuters Health. Instead, Ogbuano and his colleagues argue, the harder work required of babies who drink from the breast rather than a bottle is a more likely explanation.

Breastfeeding is known to help protect babies from developing respiratory infections, but studies of whether it may reduce their risk of asthma risk later in life have had mixed results, the researchers write in the journal Thorax. To investigate, they looked at lung function in 1,033 children who were 10 years old, born on the Isle of Wight, and were followed since birth.

The average lung capacity, as measured by the volume of air a child could exhale forcibly, was 54 milliliters greater in those who were breastfed for at least 4 months than in those who were not been breastfed at all. Peak expiratory flow, or the maximum speed at which the air can blown out of the lungs, was 180.8 milliliters per second faster in these children.

The lung function in children who had been breastfed for a shorter amount of time wasn’t significantly different from the lung function of children who weren’t breastfed at all.

Ogbuano and his team note that the pressure nursing babies exert on the breast before milk begins to flow is triple that required when drinking from a bottle; nursing sessions also last 8 minutes, on average, compared with 4.4 minutes for bottle feeding. Nursing four to eight times a day “may also help to prepare these children for a lifetime of physical fitness,” Ogbuano said in an interview.

The findings suggest that babies who are bottle-fed with pumped breast milk may be missing out, Dr. Wilfried Karmaus, another researcher on the study, told Reuters Health. “We may go just in the wrong direction with the pumping and bottle feeding. That’s why it’s so important to really clearly consider what’s going on there.”

Karmaus noted that in Canada and Europe, generous maternity leave policies make it possible for women to directly breastfeed their infants for several months if they choose, while in the U.S. many women must return to work after only a few weeks. Giving U.S. women longer maternity leave might pay for itself in terms of health benefits, such as reductions in obesity, he suggested, calling for an economic analysis to address the issue.

Source: Reuters

My note: I would love to see longer maternity leaves in the US. It is so hard to raise a family on one income these days, but having to go back to work at 6 weeks sure doesn’t support long-term breastfeeding. I’d heard rumours that Canada was looking at the benefits of extending mat leave to 18 months, but I’m not sure if it ever went further than rumour.

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Kris’ sister got a very bad burn on her face when she was around Meredith’s age. The doctors told his mom that she would have permanent scars because of it. Kris’ mom used vitamin E oil on it every day and it healed faster than the doctors expected and with no scarring. Maybe it wasn’t the vitamin E oil, maybe his sister just has really great skin (and if so I hope Meredith got her skin), but regardless I think I’m going to pick some up today.

Last night:

This morning:

You can see in the picture how red her nose is. She obviously hit that too though luckily it wasn’t bleeding at all. That picture doesn’t really show how puffy her lip is. The area inside where she bit it is very white. It looks like the world’s worst canker sore.

Things like this make me so glad I still nurse her though. She was sobbing last night, and I quickly cleaned it up a little bit to see how bad it was, gave her Arnica, then started nursing. The nursing calmed her down enough that we could clean it up better while she nursed and get a better picture of whether we should be heading to ER. A lot of people don’t know this, but the act of nursing produces hormones in the baby that act as pain relief. Breast milk has antibiotic properties, so was probably great to help clean the cuts inside and out of her mouth.

Once she was calmer and had nursed her fill, we gave her some frozen blueberries to try and help with the swelling (she wouldn’t let us near it with ice). We ended up giving her some Motrin too, as it was obvious she was still in pain and it was extremely swollen. She slept snuggled into the crook of my arm all night.

Today it doesn’t seem to be bothering her, though it’s still pretty swollen. I wish things like this didn’t happen to our babies.

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I’ve always planned on nursing to at least two years. After that, we’ll see. I can’t see myself ever forcefully weaning for any reason. Though thinking of nursing a four year old seems odd to me too, but I think that’s more because of the society I grew up in and not because I think there’s anything wrong with it. Most people know that the WHO recommends breastfeeding to at least age two. I’ve heard various arguments against that, the most common being that other countries don’t have clean water, but here in North America we don’t have to worry about that. Health Canada and Breastfeeding Committee for Canada both recommend breastfeeding to two years or longer though, so that argument doesn’t make sense. (Both Canada and the US should have longer maternity leaves if they want mothers to realistically meet these recommendations though, and should also make information about delaying solids and baby-led introduction to solids much more available. I think even making it to a year in the US is something to be proud of these days.) If you read the article I linked above, she discusses studies that have shown clear benefits to breastfeeding for two years or longer.

Meredith is still nursing as much as ever (if not more, as she gets bigger). Considering that when she was younger she seemed so interested in solids that I was worried she would wean early, now she barely touches anything besides breast milk some days.

Speaking of animals and weaning, my mom has a cat who had kittens last year. Two of the kittens lived at their house for over six months. (One is still there.) Both of those kittens would still nurse occasionally at 5 months old (when they were bigger than their mom), which is the equivalent of a 6 year old human child.

Aristotle at 5 months with his mom Kat

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I just stumbled on this beautiful video today, a PSA from Puerto Rica. I wish things like this would be shown in North America, to show breastfeeding as something normal and natural and to show breasts as something other than sexual.

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Meredith has two teeth. The first one cut through on Father’s Day and the second one last week some time. Teething was a pretty horrible experience for her, poor girl. I am glad we cosleep, as she woke up a few times screaming in the middle of the night and I was glad to be right there for her and able to comfort her. We bought a teething necklace online which arrived shortly after the first tooth came in, and it seems to definitely help. Or maybe it’s coincidence, but the second tooth was much less dramatic than the first. She still had a few tough days/nights, but nothing like the first time.

With the first tooth came a sudden interest in solids. I’ve written before that we allow her to taste off our plates and she likes to sample small bits. Now she actually eats. Her poop’s even starting to change, though it’s still mostly breastfed baby poop. She loves meat, fruit, veggies… pretty much anything we offer her. We’re trying to mostly avoid dairy, but I found a brand of yogurt that’s non-homogenized and organic and it’s very tasty. I’ve read yogurt is normally okay, and she loves it, so in the mornings I will often give her about a tablespoon in a bowl and hand her a spoon. She has figured out how to eat with a spoon already, just by watching us. We’ve never spoon-fed her or tried to teach her to use it. With this increase in solids, she actually started breastfeeding more, instead of less, so there is no danger of her weaning anytime soon. I’d like to make it to at least two years. My husband’s family is prone to ear infections and my family has allergies and asthma, so anything I can do to give her a boost I will do. The last couple of days her eating has slowed down again, so I think she was going through a growth spurt. She’s back to mostly nursing. I love that we just trust her to know what she needs and when she needs it.

Also exciting is that she started taking steps. She actually took her first step at the end of June, but still mostly crawls. I think crawling is faster and easier for her. The chiropractor told me that crawling has been shown to be really good for baby’s development and babies who crawl for longer periods before walking seem to have less spinal and back problems later in life. I’d love to see studies or read more about that, but it seems to make some sense. Plus it means she’ll be more balanced. We have laminate floors so the less she falls over the better!

I really can’t believe that she is almost one. I honestly get teary sometimes about it. That probably sounds so sentimental, but I think it’s something I never really understood until becoming a parent. She is such a joy and I am so glad to have her in my life. And while I sometimes wish time could freeze, like right now she’s snuggled into me in the mei tei sleeping while I write, I also can’t wait to watch her grow and learn and witness all life has to offer for the first time, and then many times over after that.

In my news, I’m wondering if my period might finally be returning. I’m really enjoying not having one, so I hope not, but I’ve been craving chocolate for the last week or so, and definitely showing other signs of ovulation. I charted before we got pregnant, so I think I’m pretty good about knowing my body’s signs. Though I know that all goes out of whack after having a baby so it’s hard to know for sure.

I’ve also been gardening and decluttering quite a bit. I’ll post some of my progress in those regards in future updates. I think this one has been long enough!

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