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The
Journal About Meghan
November
27, 2002, Wednesday, 67 days
 The Mobile
Meghan
is much more alert to her surroundings now. We had mounted a mobile, which
is made of four tweety birds, on the crib since the very
beginning. However, Meghan has only been interested in the music come from it, but
ignored the mobile itself for weeks. I tried it on again last Saturday,
this time she was definitely fascinated by this moving freak. Ever since
then, the mobile has become one of her favorite games. Her eyes will follow up one
bird until it moves out of her sight, and then focus on and track the next all
over again. This makes a real good practice to her eyes. In the meantime, she is cooing and
squealing
giving lots of practices on her vocal cords, and her arms are waving and legs
are kicking doing a complete whole body work out. She will do this again
and again without being tired. Since Meghan can fully
involve with the mobile by herself without much assistance (we do need to
rewind it for her though),
it will free us up a little. I do recommend a mobile to every parent-to-be,
because it dose not only provide your baby entertainment,
but also give her/him an opportunity of doing physical exercise.
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November
28, 2002, Tuesday, 68 days
 The Mirror
Meghan
need a lot of attention. She likes being hold, kissed, talked to
or just looked at. If you simply look at her, she rewards you with a
great, big smile. And she does so not only to you or anyone else, but also to herself.
When we bring
her to the mirror, Meghan will look at herself without knowing that's
herself, whose face is right at her own eye level. And she will be so glad
to see herself, who shows interest in her by staring at her, and she will grin from
ear to ear, or even have a quiet belly laugh. Meghan likes to encourage
people to give her attention. Even sometimes when she is tired or sleepy in
front of the mirror, she never leaves out a polite smile to herself. It's
amazing how quickly babies can distinguish things and human beings, but it
will be tough for them to further tell the difference between an image and a
real person.
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December
3, 2002, Tuesday, 73 days
Sucking Satisfaction
I
was very impressed by Meghan's sucking skill right after she was born. I
remember I was holding her in my arms after the cesarean when I was
transported from the operation room on the 4th floor to my ward on the 3rd
floor. Due to the pain relieve drugs, I was very drowsy. Even the thrill
of being a new mother did not guarantee me to be in the mood of examining
my baby closely. My only focus was on keeping myself awake, and, god,
please, not letting me drop her. Then, I heard these very loud noises
coming from her. When I pulled myself together and looked at her, I saw a
tiny delicate body, which was pinkish and covered with the dry remains of
some kind of a white cheesy coating. Her eyes were puffy and tightly
closed. There was a tiny little fist tucking in her mouth, from where the
noises came from. --- Meghan was sucking up her fist very loudly! --- Oh,
my baby, are you hungry? You'd better be. You have waited nine months for
mommy to feed you, haven't you? From
what I saw on the first day, I know Meghan probably have been practicing
the sucking skill for a long time when she was in my uterus. And she does turn
out to be a strong suckler. Her effective suckling has helped stimulating
my breasts to produce milk as early as needed. But ever since Meghan discovered my
breasts, the fist sucking I saw that day has been completely abandoned for the first
two months. Yet it came back last week.
That
was when not long after one feeding, I surprisingly saw Meghan was sucking up
her finger. I had no idea how the finger made it to her month because
right now her hand movements are totally random and also she normally keeps her hands in fists.
That finger was apparently just so lucky to get into her mouth by random
chance and it's never happened again ever since. However, from then on,
Meghan has started to suck on her fist again. Anyway, my first
thought was she was craving for more milk. But the milk was refused
when I offered it to her. Then I realize the suckling is not only for
eating, but also for comfort and amusement.
Usually,
Meghan wants to suck on something when she feels sleepy yet hard to fall
asleep by herself. At such times, she will suck on my neck or shoulder when
I'm holding her, or, suck on her fist when she is laying on her back. And she will become restless
when she loses the fist, which occurs often because her arms move a lot with
no noticeable purpose. Recently, I introduced a pacifier to Meghan when she need to
go to bed and it worked perfectly. It becomes a lifesaver, because it can get Meghan off to sleep in a couple of
minutes. This has saved all the rocking, singing, walking, nursing on dry
breasts and other techniques applied to getting her off to sleep, which will normally
take much longer time.
However,
in the books, you can easily find warnings of using pacifiers, and to my
surprise, baby's own thumb is suggested to replace the pacifier. Among other reasons, the baby has more control of her thumb
than the pacifier, and it makes sense. My
plan is to use the pacifier only for getting Meghan off to sleep, and to
use it until Meghan figures out how to get her fist or thumb or figures to
her mouth whenever she wants to and keep it in the month as long as she
wants to. As a matter of fact, I've tried to teach her putting
her thumb in her mouth today with no success.
December
9, 2002, Monday, 80 days
Weight Control
We
went to see Dr. Yuen this afternoon for a HiB shot. The nurse weighed Meghan
for the record of a monthly routine check up and she turned out to be 15 lbs
even. And today is her 80th day. Meghan's weight had been steadily fallen on
the 95th percentile line on the baby weight chart for the first two months,
however, her weight today fell well above the 95th line. I was a bit worried
that Meghan is gaining weight too fast. Her thighs are so plump that she is
already using number 3 diapers, which are made for the babies weighing from
16 lbs to 28 lbs. But Dr. Yuen said Meghan was long and did not look
extremely chubby, so she would be fine as long as we keep at least 4 hours
between feedings. The
interesting thing is Meghan seemed to have noticed her own chubbiness two
weeks ago and she decided to lose weight by significantly reducing the
amount of milk consumed each day. This change is dramatic. According to my
record, back to her first month (the 3rd and 4th week), Meghan was already
drinking about 25 ozs of milk per day. This daily consumption was increased to 30
ozs in the 7th and 8th week. And then, two weeks ago it suddenly
dropped to 20 ozs per day and it has been kept up to now. From 30 ozs to 20 ozs
is a big change, yet Meghan still looks content after each meal and she is still
thriving quickly. Why? What's happened? I consulted it with Dr. Yuen today. Unfortunately,
he couldn't give me a clear-out and apprehensible answer. Well, my
explanation is simple, that is Meghan always knows exactly what to do to
protect herself. Thank God.
December
10, 2002, Tuesday, 81 days
 Schedule
By
now, Meghan has established a pretty regular daily rhythm. She wakes
between 8 to 9 in the morning, then we play about one hour. During the playtime,
she will enjoy the shoulder-to-toe massage, practice talking, play with the
mobile, and she will be flipped over laying on her stomach to practice
rolling over, which, I know, is the one thing she suffers.
After
being fed at around 10 am, Meghan will take a nap, and wake again at
about 2 pm to play and have a late lunch. And then, it follows with another
nap, playtime, feeding at about 6 pm, playing again, bath and another nap in
the evening. The day is capped off by a meal at about 11 pm. If her evening
nap turns to run past our bedtime, we wake her up to eat. Usually, at this
point she will readily go back to sleep again until early morning. She will grunt for feeding at between 5:30 and 6:00 am without complete
wakefulness. After feeding, she will then sleep to 8 to 9 am in the morning to
complete a 24
hour cycle.
I
used to feel comfortable without any particular schedule. However, Meghan's
demands for feeding and sleeping have regulated the day. After a schedule comes to
light by itself, I do feel grateful. First of all, it helps control feeding
time to prevent from overfeeding. Secondly, I will be able to have a
relatively organized day. Last but not least, it helps diagnose the problem when Meghan
is cranky. Since Meghan is no longer a newborn, she does not fall
asleep as easily as before, and also she does not give out clear hunger signal
anymore. We learned to watch her cues. She is usually fussy when she is
short of sleep, yet too excited to fall asleep spontaneously. Sometimes when
a schedule is not well maintained, she could become the victim to a vicious
cycle of lack of sleep and poor appetite. That is when she does not have enough sleep,
she will lose appetite. And not having enough food in her stomach will make
it harder for her to
fall asleep and so on and so forth. She may thus be cranky all the time.
December
11, 2002, Wednesday, 82 days
 Bottle or Breast or ...
I
enjoyed those early days when Meghan's whole world revolves around my
breasts. Then the bottle was introduced for supplement. It has been
perfectly fine for Meghan to switch from breasts to bottle and vise versa
for weeks until two or three weeks ago when Meghan showed a clear preference of
breasts over bottle. She would push the bottle nipple right out of her mouth by her
little tough. But we could still manage both kinds of feeding as long as we bottle
feed her at
the right times, such as when right after she has had a long sleep
and is very hungry.
Yet,
ever since the pacifier was introduced, Meghan's preference has quickly
switched to the pacifier. And the way Meghan enjoys the pacifier makes you
associate the pacifier with the opium. No matter when do you give it to her, her eyes
would suddenly brighten up and she would suck it in real quickly and begin aggressive
suckling on it. Ironically, the seemingly refreshing pacifier will make her feel
so content and relaxed as to become drowsy right away. It's totally amazing. And yet, it
interferes with the feedings. Meghan will turn down both breasts and
bottles, even though she was very hungry. After identifying the pacifier
was the key to this feeding rejection problem, we have recently developed a strategy
to deal with it. What we do is to use the pacifier as a mediator.
We offer it to Meghan in the beginning of each feeding, and while she is enjoying the suckling
on it, we would quickly pull it out and then quickly plug in either
the bottle or the breast. This method has so far been working wonderfully.
However, I do look forward to the day when Meghan is able to recognize the bottle
or breasts by her own eyes.
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