Miss Stella can be a diva! She's so adorable, but over the past week, she has had a couple nights where I thought I was going to lose my sanity. Last night, I even went so far as to sit her on our bed, get up, and walk over and bang my head against our door. I felt like I was singing that song from The Wedding Singer where he says, "Somebody kill me please..."
Well, anyway... There's my confession of being a terrible mother. I literally was at the end of my rope around 6am this morning when she finally went to sleep and stopped screaming. Derek and I have determined that it's this damned nipple shield. We're kinda worried she's not getting enough to eat through it. Nearly every time she eats with it, I end up having milk all over me and all over our bed. The other night she had dumped so much milk all over me and our bed that I couldn't even sleep in our sheets. It was sickening. I think she has a hard time with the sucking thing.
Well, we had her tongue tie fixed - that was traumatic for me. And fast update: we've switched to Dr. DeMauro since Dr. Kreh is a big supporter of formula feeding and seems like a fuddy-duddy. Anyway, Dr. DeMauro nipped the tongue tie right in front of me, and I was more shaken up than she was. Derek was like, "Are you okay?" Anyway, I think she hasn't quite mastered the use of her tongue, but the repeat nursing during the day doesn't bother me. At night, it's torture. I don't sleep at all and she's a total grinch.
So, I've been waking her up to eat a lot today, and I've decided that starting in the evenings, I'm going to pump. She seems much more satisfied. I love the little booger more than anything in this world but she's killing me. I figure we'll try the pumping thing again because when I was pumping, she was an angel at night. I know it's not her fault and she wouldn't be a grinch if she didn't have a reason. I hope this works!
In other news, I'm down 23 lbs from my delivery weight - blaow! - and I think I'm feeling much more like myself every day. The whole cabin fever thing sucks, and I miss interacting with adults. However, I love the time I get to spend with Stella. We read books - even though she's not interested but I figure it's good practice - and we sing and dance around the house. We nap together, and I swear, she LOVES to sleep on me. One of my favorite things to do is just lay and look at how pretty she is and snuggle her. She's so stinking cute!
Every day, we try to figure out who she looks like. We've recently determined that she has some of Derek's grandmother, Sarah, in her. She has these mega long eyelashes, and that's definitely a grandma Sarah trait. I think she's looking more like Derek every day, too. Well, she's getting grumpy again, so I better run. Here are some fun pictures of her:
