Our First Mother's Day

When I first realized that Mother's Day was coming up, I was super excited to think that for the first time in my life, I would be honored among all the other mothers all over the country. There really is a sweet connection among mothers. I find myself far more excited to see other newborns now than before we had Sophia. It brings back the memories of the struggles and the exciting moments you have walked through before. On Monday, Sophie made a big messy poop all over her clothes and car seat while we were in the doctor's waiting room, and all the ladies smiled a knowing glance at me. I could tell they were reminiscing about those days.

But Mother's Day ended up being a bit stressful because it was the day that Jensen and I decided we were going to persevere and get Sophia to drink from the bottle. We had trained her on the bottle starting at 6 weeks old, and she took it without much of a fight, so then we didn't worry too much about it after that. Big Mistake! After a month of exclusively breastfeeding, Sophie had developed a very strong preference for the breast, and refused the bottle all last week. On Saturday, we tried 2 feedings in a row to get her to drink from the bottle before her kicking and screaming did us in, and I called our doula for advice. She told us you just have to be persistent, and that there really isn't an easier way. So Sunday came, and Jensen made me a Mother's Day breakfast, and then it was time to get to work. Jensen tried to feed her with the bottle, and Sophie kicked and screamed and spit out any milk that went into her mouth. Her bib and onesie were soaked, and she finally exhausted herself and fell asleep. Repeat 3 times. Finally, about 8 hours later during the fourth attempt, she was hungry enough to drink from the bottle, and she chugged it down!! Praise God! What a relief! We wanted to dance and jump up and down, we were so happy. Two hours later, we gave her the bottle again, and she still drank even though she wasn't desperately hungry. We ended up running out of expressed breast milk, so then I went ahead and took her to feed from the breast. She was so excited the minute I took her into my arms and put her into that familiar cradle position and opened her mouth with eager expectancy. haha...it was so cute.

So now, she feeds on the bottle once a day when her daddy gets home from work without putting up a fight. This has been our first big power struggle with our baby (we didn't have to do much sleep training...she just started sleeping through the night regularly on her own!), and it feels great to have gotten past it.

In other news, Sophie is growing like crazy. She is over the 90th percentile in both length and weight for her age, which is pretty surprising considering she is only fed breast milk and doesn't exactly have big-person genes! She's pretty much the size of a 5 month old. I keep telling her to stop growing so fast. It makes me sort of sad because I like her all nice and tiny, but at the same time, there are certain benefits to her fast growth. Not only is she growing more quickly than normal in size, I think she is also developing in other ways earlier (i.e. already sleeping through the night without any night feedings, able to laugh and squeal with delight).