I wanted to add a little to the last post about the feeding routine. A while ago, a friend of mine said that at about 6 weeks everything started to really click with the breastfeeding. Well, Alli is 6-1/2 weeks old now, and I have to say, my friend was right. One thing that has changed sometime in the last week, besides the long nights of sleep, is that Alli is all business now when it comes to feeding. Instead of latching on for 20 minutes, with mom having to tickle, pinch, whatever to keep her awake and sucking, she now latches on and goes about her business and then (typically) unlatches herself when she's done. Now feeding is only about 10 minutes per side. The extra time for mom is SOOO wonderful!
I also found that burping her is over-rated. I was trying really hard to be "a good mom" and burp her in between sides. Sometimes I would get a burp. Most of the time, I would get an awful lot of food, all over me, her, and whatever else might be in the general area. It was very frustrating, but I thought that this was just what had to happen. Then it dawned on me that we don't have this problem in the middle of the night, when mom is selfish and turns into a "bad mom" and doesn't take the time to burp her daughter. Typically in the middle of the night, she unlatches and then lays there mostly asleep. I quietly lift her up and take her to the cradle without changing her body position. We rarely get spitup. So I decided that maybe Alli just wasn't the burping type. Maybe it would be better just to not jostle her all over the place and let her kinda lay horizontal for 10 minutes after feedings to let everything settle. We seem to be losing less milk these days when doing it this way, so I'm gonna keep to this method until something changes.
Alli is really growing. She's coming up on 2 months of age and it looks like she'll be growing out of the newborn diapers by then. haha - 2 months to grow out of newborn diapers! She still doesn't fit in half of the newborn clothes that we got. Apparently, the sizing for newborn clothing is like that for women - they make the clothes bigger and then just label them a smaller size so that her ego isn't hurt and she can brag that she's in newborn clothes instead of 3 month old clothes. :) But that also brings me to my next dilemna. We got so many nice gifts, and I was not going to let that go unnoticed. I planned to have her wear everything she was given if even only once. So all gifts from the shower promptly had their tags taken off and thrown into the washer and put away in her drawers. Now I'm realizing that because of her peanut stature, she may not be able to wear some of the bigger clothes she received in the correct season. Not that I would want to return a gift, but I would think that anyone that was so thoughtful as to give us something would like to see *something* be worn by her, regardless of whether it was exactly what they got or whether we had to exchange it for something that fit and was seasonal. So, for all new moms, here is my advice:
Keep tags on most clothes until you are actually ready to wear them, and then wash them. Also, keep all the clothes with the receipts. I piled all the receipts together thinking I was doing good by keeping them. But now I can't match anything up, and I'm surely not going to take the time to try to match numbers. So tape the receipt to the clothes and wait. If you need to exchange them, everything is there for you.
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