Sunday, June 15, 2014

Tales of my gourmet barracuda, and post up on the other blog

The American Association of Pediatrics apparently has cutesy nicknames for different types of  nursing/feeding behaviors: After extrapolating this to bottle feeding, my darling appears to be a "barracuda." She is currently wolfing around 38-40 oz a day! The "gourmet" title is earned because she still turns up her nose at the milk if it gets too cold. But yeah, mostly "barracuda." I'm so proud. And also afraid, because if we delay bringing that bottle to her by even 3 minutes, she opens her mouth to unleash the hounds of hell on us, and sobs so robustly that her breath catches. Then, when we frantically shove that nipple in her mouth...immediate, blessed silence. It is like flipping a magical mute switch.

Overall, two months in, she is doing wonderfully. No spit up, no colic, great growth, focusing and interacting beautifully, utterly sweet smiles of which I am increasingly a recipient, pooping like a breast-fed baby, and sleeping 7-8 hours a night! I kid you not on the last one. For a  painful 4-5 days, she had decided that between 1 am and 6 am was the time to stay up, demand cuddling, poop a couple of times, and drink about 12 ounces of milk spread out over 3 bottles. Sleep deprivation was me...there were nights I was afraid I would literally fall asleep on her. I figured she had day-night confusion, and decided to try to expose her to really bright sunlight during the day and do whatever we could in our very limited capacity to keep her from sleeping too much....it may have worked, or she may have simply "drifted" into a new pattern, because her "cluster feeding" shifted to the period between 9 pm-12 am, and when she goes to sleep after tanking up on about 12-13 ounces of my goat milk formula, she sleeps around 7-8 hours. This pattern has been in play for about ten days now, and I would totally commit murder to keep it from going away. It is really interesting that after consuming 10 oz of formula, she actually gets super excited and frantic while consuming that last bottle: the "tanking up" instinct definitely seems neurological. This cluster feeding occurs only once during the day; the rest of the time, she takes 5 ounces every 3-4 hours.

She also had the first of the "scary" vaccinations, getting the rotavirus drops and the DTP shot on the same day. Unfortunately, when we went in the acellular verison of the DTP vaccine (which is less efficacious but has fewer side effects) was out of stock and we had to get the whole cell version, which causes a more severe reaction, generally. Her response to that was a very mild fever and induration/redness at the site of injection and general crankiness, but thankfully, her appetite never suffered and she was as alert as ever after, so I heaved a giant sigh of relief, and she was entirely back to normal within 36 hours.  In about 30-45 days, we will go in for the Hib and the pneumococcus shots, or I may split those up. As I had first stated, I wanted to delay these shots till she was a little older (till about 3-4 months), but the guilt/pressure (external as well as internal), even when you want to delay vaccinations just a little is immense. Each vaccine decision is a war: I refused to get her the BCG shot at birth, and gave it only after she crossed the one month mark. Ditto the polio drops. In India, the oral polio vaccine is given at birth, and in very, very rare instances, can cause polio in itself. I hence refused the drops and got her the shot instead at 6 weeks. I had to have arguments with so many people, and also myself just to get these small but significant delays; blargh.

Finally, I have the a blogpost up on the the other blog. I had mentioned that there are some easy ways to ensure that your infant/child's immune system is at its fighting best, and I've addressed that in this first blogpost.

6 comments:

  1. Gauri is absolutely beautiful! I'm glad she is doing so well. You're a brave mom to buck the medical establishment. I can imagine it's very tough. I wonder if I could get your goat milk formula here in the U.S. for when my little one arrives,

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    1. Omg Nell do you have a baby on the way?!? If so, how did I miss that?
      And yes you can.. I make this at home, and all the ingredients I actually have to import into India from the US. I have detailed notes in my second goat milk formula.post, and any questions you have I'll be more than happy to answer!

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  2. Gauri looks so happy and healthy! Glad you are getting to sleep through the night - wow!

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  3. So beautiful!! It's a stress relief that she's a good little eater! & yeah for the 7-8 hour sleeps! Rock on!!

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