11 months old update!

This month AJ has been pulling himself up and cruising along furniture much more often and with a lot more confidence!
At 11.5 months he's finally been able to stack the IKEA wood rings toy we bought him when he was 7 months old. It's amazing watching him grow.

He's trying to walk but still needs that bit more practice. I feel like by his first birthday he'd take his first steps!

He's much more responsive leading up to his first birthday, we hear him babbling and trying to say his own name these days. Sometimes he laughs when we laugh and he tries to imitate our words (simple ones of course). He adores his papa and is always so happy when he's home. Every time a tune comes on (could be from anywhere - TV commercial, music from my laptop or daddy belting out a tune etc) he stops everything and starts dancing and shaking his bum to the beat. You can tell, he will love music.  :-)

There's this particular soprano/opera-sounding commercial that he just LOVES. When that ad comes on, he literally stops doing anything he's busy at, and stares at the TV until the commercial ends.

In terms of his diet, breastfeeding is still his main source of food and comfort.
His solids are mainly veggies and fruits, with the occasional meat and tofu. He hates pureed chicken, we figure it's because it's not sweet like the veggies and fruits he love! His all - time favourite foods are banana, blueberries, apples, carrots, zucchini and sweet potato.

In terms of sleep, he's still waking up 2-3 times at night ever since we moved here to brissy almost 5 months ago. Both his parents are exhausted but at the same time, have kind of gotten used to the exhaustion. We are going to move him to his room soon (once we get an armchair for me) and hopefully the sleep situation improves. 

We can't wait till he sleeps through the night - but john thinks that we will have to wait 18 years for that to happen!

10 months old! (& sleeping habits)

So AJ turned 10 months old 2 days ago. 

Ever since we made the move to Brisbane in July 2016 he's been a terrible sleeper.  Waking up every 2-3 hours at night to feed. I thought he wasn't getting enough during the day hence the night feeds, but when I tried giving him more food (milk & solids) in the day, he refused.

So.. My body was exhausted from it and then it slowly kinda, "got used" to the routine a month or so ago but I swear, ever since he turned 10 months old (i.e. from the night of 17th October 2016, he's been only waking up twice at night. I put him to bed at 830pm (the usual) and he wakes at ~1230am and ~415am, quickly falls back to sleep each time with a quick feed, and is fully awake by about 6am - amazing news! I ***hope*** it is a sign that he's ready to be sleeping for 4 hour stretches now. And that slowly but surely he will go back to sleeping through the night.

I even bought the book by Ferber from amazon which came in the mail 4 days ago but haven't gotten round to reading it yet.

A teething (read: screaming & clingy) baby does keep your hands full!

So yeah, here's the quick 10 month update. Time is flying past too fast - this little guy is turning a year old in 2 months?! Goodness! I still distinctly remember when he was just born!

Anyway, with the progression of age he's also becoming more responsive to john and I.  He actually "responds" when we ask questions directed at him with loud mumbo jumbo noises as if he's talking! And when he's upset, you can definitely see it cos he chucks a tantrum. Which is cute but at the same time not cute - the cuteness melts ny heart & makes me want to give in.. but my brain tells me no! Give in and he'll be a spoilt kiddo. And so I resist. And it seem to be working - when I say a firm "NO", AJ definitely understands that I don't want him to do a certain thing.

He's so smart though - he then pretends to do something else and when I look away he quickly crawls back to whatever he was prohibited to do originally. And then I catch him and go to him and say "No!" And he quickly scrambles away all the while making disgruntled noises. It's sooooooooooooooo sickeningly cute.  My heart has mini explosions sometimes.

Anywho I'm out for now. It's 4.36am and I need to go back to sleep before he wakes in 1.5 hours!

Quick Update : 7.5 month

Wow. Time flies past really fast! It still feels like yesterday when I was at Pantai, getting all wired/tubed up and waiting for my spinal block..

Anyway, some exciting news. We've finally  moved our little family to Brisbane and couldn't be happier being closer to family and enjoying the "summerised winter" here. Seriously though, up until this stage I've never been in a country where it's people were out and about in singlet and shorts in a cold winter season. 

In the day it's about 23 to 25 degrees and falls to about 10 to 15 degrees at night.

This would be paradise in Melbourne where I know is freezing right now cos we recently went on a 4 day trip to see family and catch up with friends and for the first time in 7.5 months, AJ fell sick with a high grade fever and we had to rush him to the ER twice (and let's not talk about the less-than-desirable experience we had a Monash medical centre).

Anyway, I also finally purchased the Haakaa breast pump today from sleepstore.com.au. Why I say "finally" is because they were so bloody expensive to purchase in Malaysia (plus the shipping cost from NZ/Australia) when you're on a local salary and there were many Haakaa fakes claiming they were genuine. It was hard to trust that so I made it one of my top priorities to purchase one when I arrive in Brissy.

When it arrives I shall post a review on it. I've seen sooooo many positive reviews of it online and in the mum FB groups I'm a part of - I feel like I've been missing out!

Another exciting piece of news - we get the keys to our house tomorrow and I cannot wait to settle in already.  This 1 bedroom apartment we are now in (paid for by John's company) is way too small for us 3. There's stuff everywhere on the floor and the balcony is oddly placed.

Plus we get to go to the Ikea logan store tomorrow to shop up a storm! I love furniture shopping - especially for a new place!

Can't wait for tomorrow! :-)

6 Months Postpartum : The Magical Month

6 months postpartum and things are really starting to fall back into place. Why? You may ask. Well here's why..

1. My postpartum hair loss comes to a halt.

Seriously, I struggled with this from month 3 onwards and was so worried that the bald patch at the side of my head going backwards from my hairline would be permanent. 6 months on.. It is miraculously growing back at an incredibly fast rate.

2. I've finally lost the stubborn 2.5 kgs.

This happened literally overnight. I woke up one morning, weight myself and found that I was 2.5kgs lighter. This could have coincidentally been a result of the stress I've been experiencing organising the move to Brisbane. Nonetheless, once I'd hit 6 months PP, the last stubborn 2.5kgs dropped off just like that *snap fingers*

3. I now have a flat  (relatively) tummy.

What they said is true - your body will never be the same again once you've carried a baby. And don't get me wrong. I think the female body is an amazing apparatus in many aspects and one of them is the ability to carry and grow a whole human for 9 months. Imagine the amount of work your body has to put in to sustain not just 1 but 2 lives and still keep on functioning on a daily basis.

After I gave birth, it took at least 10 weeks for me to feel even slightly normal again. I plateau-ed at 3 months (despite exercising from week 6 onwards) and only managed to lose the remainder of the weight from 4.5 months onwards.  At 6 months,  like I mentioned above I lost the remaining 2.5kgs and that came with a flatter stomach. I know I'll never get the same super flat tummy I was so proud of pre-pregnancy, but ill never be more proud of the fact that I gave birth to nothing short of a miracle.

So if you haven't hit the 6 month postpartum yet and are thinking of giving up altogether, don't lose faith.
What helped me the most was keeping a positive mindset, focusing on looking after my baby and at the same time eating healthy and taking time out every week to maintain an exercise regime.

Trust me, keep this up and you WILL eventually feel like a million bucks again. 

:-)

Starting on Solids

We started AJ on mashed avocado mixed with breastmilk when he turned 6 months old. He hated it.
The next week we went to brisbane and came back with 2 pouches of commercial pureed food with no added sugars or preservatives of course!
He loves the banana and apple rice porridge as well as the mango and blueberries puree.

Once we settle into our permanent home and get a high chair, I can't wait to start him in pureed vegetables! 

The move was nothing short of a fun headache. How ironic, right? It was fun interacting with all sorts of people during the selling process & also during the time when the movers came to help pack our belongings into 2m3 boxes - that efficiency was something else!

To say that we were stressed out in the last week before the big move would be an understatement. I'm glad that part is over.. now our biggest headache is getting a house and a car. We are looking at small SUV options since we have a kiddo now. I miss driving a jazz though and can't wait to get my own little car once I get back into the work/office grind. 

For now I could do without it.

Crawling Milestone Reached @ 5 months 3 weeks old

So last week, for a period of 3-4 days, AJ went through an extremely fussy phase. Up until this stage he would sleep from 9pm to 3am, wake to feed and back to sleep immediately till about 7am.

In this fussy period, he would only finally fall asleep at around 11pm to 12 am (after 2 hours of non stop fussing) only to wake up screaming bloody murder one hour later; needing to be rocked back to sleep; then waking up again within the hour screaming bloody murder again. This went on for 4 days and at a time when John and I both fell sick. So by the end of it, we were so exhausted.

I didn't realise we were actually experience his 6 month growth spurt at the time.  All I wanted was for it to end!  Miraculously by the 5th day, things went back to normal and at the same time he started crawling! Army crawling to be precise.

So, at 5 months and 3 weeks old, our dearest baby boy has started to crawl :)

"6 month Sleep Regression"

AJ's 6 month old Sleep Regression came when he was just 5.5 months old - and it reared it's ugly little head at the most inappropriate time (I mean, when it is ever an appropriate time for a sleep regression anyway?!)

By that I mean, it came the very day I fell sick with a high fever, tonsilitis and had to manage an inflamed tendon (tendonitis).
It will still lurking around as an evil entity when John fell equally sick with a very high fever. Just when you thought things couldnt get ANY worse, my period decided to make its appearance, coupled with the sickness & the immense stress ive been feeling the last week or so, my milk supply took a huge dip.

So by day 3 of the regression, it was us 2 extremely exhausted, wearied and broken bodies with a fussy, screaming baby who simply won't settle down (even with boob!) or go to bed.

And then, magically, by day 4 he was sleeping well again (by about 4 months old he'd been sleeping from 8-9pm to 2-4am feed then back to sleep for another 3-4 hours).

My milk supply is slowly creeping back up but it is during this time that I've finally properly appreciated my freezer milk stash. Before this, the bags were sitting untouched and I actually thought I would've to throw them all away because we are moving to brissy in a month's time (permanent move) & will not ship them over because of the amount of trouble it will take plus I have already established a good milk supply and AJ will be starting solids by the time we are in brissy anyway.

So as I'm typing this it's day 5, 1020pm and he's sound asleep in his cot. I'd better use this time to catch up on some sleep!