Cate is on her fifth outfit in less than 24 hours. Two she’s spit up on, and two she’s peed on. I’m hoping that five is our lucky number, at least for a few hours.
The spit-up thing is kind of funny. Yesterday afternoon, Cate had this enormous projectile barf; she got me, herself, and the chair I was sitting on. It was one of those barfs that was so huge that I just froze in shock. I didn’t know how to move without making the situation worse, so instead I yelled for Dave. He took the baby off of me and helped clean me up. It was quite gross, although we laughed about it, because really, what else can you do?
Then when I was feeding her in our bed at 4:00 this morning, I thought to myself that I was really lucky that she’d never spit up in bed, so I haven’t had to change the sheets in the middle of the night. Of course, a mere moment after that thought went through my stupid little head, she did indeed spit up. But I managed to catch it all with the burp cloth, so none of it got on either me or the bed. I was very proud of myself for my lightning-fast reflexes (and at 4 a.m., no less!). I had to change Cate’s pajamas and give her a little washcloth sponge bath, but no big deal, right?
So perhaps I was a little smug, and the Puke Gods decided that I needed to be brought down a notch. Because that’s the only explanation I have as to why, a few hours later, Teenie barfed the largest hairball I’ve ever seen, right smack in the middle of our bed. Alas, I dodged the baby barf, but I could not escape the cat barf. So it’s yet another unplanned Laundry Day for me. Fun!
As for the gas/colic situation, thank you for the suggestions. It seems to be a little better now. I’ve tried the leg-pumping thing, although I’m not sure if it helps or if it just distracts her for a minute because she can’t figure out what the hell I’m doing to her. The anti-gas drops mixed with her formula seem to help more than anything. And sometimes I walk around with her lying tummy-down on my forearm (sort of holding her like a football, I guess), and as long as I keep moving and keep the constant pat-pat-pat on her back, that seems to be ok too.
Another question for the moms out there: do/did your babies scream when they poop? The pediatrician said it’s normal, but it freaks me out. I know she’s not constipated, but whenever she goes, it sounds like she’s in pain. What the heck is that about?
Oh, and the last few nights, she’s slept for four hours before she woke up hungry. Ok, it isn’t exactly a huge leap over the three hour sleep segments that we were getting before, but I’ll take whatever I can get.
Gaby didn’t do that, but I know plenty of babies who did. Gaby just sort of got all red in the face and grunted a lot.
And four hours is one more hour than you used to get! Baby steps.
I stumbled on your website quite by accident, I gotta tell ya that American Assoc of Peds recommends that you not sleep with your baby…you make think “oh I would never roll over on my baby…” but it does happen, ON ACCIDENT. Nobody intentionally does it… The first thing I would suggest is start w/ getting the baby out of your bed… she and you might just get a better nights sleep… and if she slept 4 hours, well then be happy!! She might just be getting on track with the sleep thing.
Thanks Jojo, but Cate doesn’t actually sleep in the bed with us. We have a Pack ‘n’ Play set up in our bedroom, and she sleeps in that. When she wakes up in the middle of the night and needs to eat, I pull her into our bed to feed her, then put her back in the Pack ‘n’ Play after she falls asleep. We tried putting her in her crib in the nursery for a couple of nights, but she woke up even more frequently then, so it’s back to the Pack ‘n’ Play for now.
So you’re entering that phase of baby-hood when Cate will be wearing a bib at all times unless she’s asleep. 🙂 All outfits have a coordinating bib! I’ve managed to justify to myself that orangey-pink and lavender-y pink can, sort of, look OK together. We keep a pile of bibs and a pile of burb cloths upstairs and downstairs for easy access.
Elizabeth sometimes cries when she poops, and there’s always some kinds of theatrics: grunting or lalalalala—-POOP! We would probably all do the same if our mommas hadn’t taught us that we should keep poopy-noises to ourselves.
Four hours sounds kinds of like progress to me: she’s stretching that sleep-time.