Life:
Harmony has two teeth and they are too cute! She got her first one last Sunday (June 13th). She went for a nap, and woke up with a tooth! It was already totally visible under the gums before then, but now there's a little sharp point sticking up! Her second tooth came in this morning (Friday, the 18th)- I didn't notice it before her nap, but she definetely had it after her morning nap! She had been cranky this morning, chewing on everyting, and wouldn't eat her breakfast- she just wanted to chew on the spoon but then cried when she did. But after her nap she woke up in a great mood! The same thing happened on Sunday. Even for like, two weeks previous to getting her tooth, Harmony just wasn't herself. Even the daycare staff at Bethany was noticing that she seemed a little more apathetic towards her toys, and just not as smiley as usual. But ever since she cut that first tooth, it's like I have my sunshiny baby back! :)
Like I was saying last week, Harmony stopped breastfeeding in the middle of the night (well, 4 am). She now just has a bottle because she wasn't really breastfeeding. She would suck for a couple seconds, stop ("This is too hard!") and pull off and cry. This would be repeated several times, and sometimes she would fall asleep from wearing herself out. But the minute she pulled off or I put her down asleep in her crib, she would realize "Hey, I'm still hungry!" This would happen again and again until I gave in and made her a bottle. So now I skip the frustrating attempt to get her to nurse, and just give her the bottle, which seems to be all that she wanted in the first place!!! So I guess she weaned herself of that feeding.
Also, speaking of breastfeeding, I have decided to wean her completely, especially since she was only on 3 nursings out of 5 feedings anyways. I've kind of been considering it for a couple weeks now, especially since Harmony started ocassionaly "boycotted the boob" a couple weeks ago. Then when she weaned herself off of her middle of the night feeding (which is usually the LAST feeding to go!), that was kind of more insentive to stop. And the final deciding factor- those sharp little teeth!!! For some reason, Harmony isn't latched on properly and I can feel those little teeth digging into my breast when she is eating! I think she does have nipple confusion and I just never noticed until I felt those teeth and thought "hey, why isn't her tongue over her teeth?" because it really should be. Anyways, I guess she is taking my nipple the same way she would take a bottle nipple, and while I didn't bother me before, I definetely does now. There are also lots of other reasons I don't mind weaning her now. She does seem to be kind of pushing things that way herself. She eagerly takes her bottles, but now seems kind of apathetic on the breast. This week I starting giving her bottles for her 1:45 pm feeding, and she took to them without any trouble at all, in fact she seemed to enjoy her bottle very much. However, at her 10:45 am feeding, she just kind of sucks apathetically at the first breast, and will only really take milk from the second breast because the milk is already let down for her so it's more like a bottle! Ever since I started the bottle at 1:45, she hasn't seemed to breastfeed at all. :( She'll take a little bit from the second breast, but will get frustrated that the flow is too slow and it's too hard to get the milk out and she will then be hungry for her next meal a lot sooner. So her routine is starting to get a little bit messed up. I think within the next couple days, I'll drop the 5:30 pm nursing and introduce a bottle at that time, and then wait maybe a week or so before weaning her completely. Oddly enough, I haven't felt any engorgement pain, or had much milk leaking or anything. Then again, I've never had a very large milk supply to begin with, so I guess that's pretty natural. It feels so sad to be weaning her now, since I was going to wait until August, but I am happy to have been able to breastfeed this far. Besides, what's another month? I would have had to wean her before going back to school in September anyways. Plus, now she will be weaned by July, which means it will be easy for Chris to take her when he is in town because we wont have to work around my breastfeeding schedule. The same goes for my parents, who will also be in town for the month and may help me out by babysitting once in a while. But despite all the positives to having a bottle fed baby, it is really sad. Harmony has never really been a cuddly baby, and breastfeeding was really the only time I got to hold her that closely. Any other time anyone tries to cuddle her, she will push away and try to look at everything that's going on around her. I guess she's just too independant to need much cuddling! I will really miss having that special bond with her, but I intend to always hold her to give her her bottles, and we definetely don't have any shortage of time to spend together, so I'm sure our bond will remain intact! :)
Harmony's Growth:
Harmony is up to 17 pounds 10 oz! Wow, that's up 4 oz from the previous Tuesday! Her rolling is improving, and she's starting to be more comfortable on her stomach. She is even starting to sort of like being on her stomach, as long as she is the one who put herself there by rolling! If you put her on her stomach, she will still be very upset, and she doesn't seem to roll very much on the floor (carpet, mats, anything), just in her crib.
Harmony had her first taste of pears on Tuesday and really loves them. Unfortunately (and I'm not sure whether or not this is related to starting fruits, or maybe teething or even weaning), but Harmony seems a lot less interested in her other foods, such as cereal and vegetables. She refused to eat her yellow beans for lunch today, but she would eat sweet potatoes, so I'm thinking she may be wanting the sweet taste of the fruits all the time! Hopefully this will correct itself, because this was exactly what I was trying to avoid by starting everything before fruits!