6 months.

this kid.

Luka's six month well visit was yesterday, and he's still doing great. He didn't gain as much weight this time (he's 12 lb 14oz) but he has grown 2 inches in length since his four month checkup! All of his developmental milestones have been met, except for sitting up unassisted. He can for a second or two, but topples over quickly. We aren't worried about it though, he'll get there.

Lu's still eating one bottle in the middle of the night, and his doctor thinks we can wean him off once he's up to eating two meals of solid foods a day. His calories are still a concern, so he can't spare the one bottle without making up for it somewhere. We tried him on two solid meals today, and he didn't know what to think about it.


what I wake up to in the morning- a cranky faced monkey butt.

Solids are still going well. In addition to his usual, we've added pears and carrots to the list. And I finally made up a batch of organic peas for him! I need to make more homemade baby food. It's way cheaper than the little jars.


cute!

Luka has still been drooling like crazy, but no teeth have popped up yet. I follow a PPHN group on Facebook, and I recently read some parents talking about the new teeth on their little PPHN survivors. Apparently, tooth decay is really common in babies who had PPHN due to the sedatives and the ventilator they were on during treatment. When Lu's teeth start coming in we will be watching out for that. Hopefully it won't be a lifelong problem, but only with the baby teeth. I hate to think of him having any kind of residual problems from his treatment, but I guess it's better than the alternative.



I can't believe it's been six months already!

feeding the baby.

He loved the sweet potatoes so much, the spoon was yanked from my hand.

Solid food sure is a fun time. Not that Luka's eating all that much of it, but it's still fun to explore "real" food with him. We have been introducing about one food per week, and so far his menu includes:

Organic rice cereal
Organic sweet potatoes
Organic Bananas
Organic peas
Avocado

He HATED avocado, which kind of breaks my heart! We will try it again later, of course. Lu eats a variety of solids once a day right now, in between bottles.

Yeah, bottles. I've been avoiding writing about Luka's food because it's a touchy subject with me. But, since this is one of the few vegan baby blogs out there, I feel like I should tell our food story in case it may help others. So, as most vegan parents know, the ONLY way to feed an infant completely vegan is to breast feed. breast milk is the perfect balance of nutrition for a baby. If for some reason you cannot breast feed, a commercially prepared baby formula is the only safe alternative. Sadly, there is no completely vegan formula on the market. The dairy-free formulas all have non vegan vitamin D3 in them, and the dairy formulas are of course made of dairy.
If you have followed this blog since Luka's birth, then you probably remember my trouble with milk production in the beginning. The cards were stacked against me from the start. I never went into labor, so my body was not ready to make milk yet. Then my baby was isolated from me in the NICU with a serious heart/lung disease, and I wasn't even allowed to touch him for almost a week. I began pumping milk right away, and even at his bedside when I could (since contact with your baby helps stimulate milk production). Once I could hold him, we did skin-to-skin. I had two lactation appointments per week, where we got Luka to latch, despite his feeding tube. I was pumping every 2-3 hours, and producing maybe one ounce per day. Every drop I made went through his feeding tube, and that was awesome. He was tiny, so he didn't need much at first. I would bring all my pumped milk to the NICU for them to make bottles out of,and we began feeding him by mouth once his occupational therapy was done and he could eat by mouth. I remember one day I showed up, and the label on his bottle was marked "formula". I cried. When I asked why, they said he already ate all the stored breastmilk I had made. He was growing, and needing more than I could make. my lactation consultant told me to think of the formula as "medicine" until we could get my stores up.

I pumped. I took heaps of lactation supplements for months. I nursed him in between bottles, to help with my production. I fed him breastmilk in bottles so the slow flow of my breast wouldn't frustrate him. I even used the most fucked-up thing I called "the inadequacy contraption", seen here. I did my best. Eventually, Lu needed to eat way more than I could make, and my supply began to dwindle. I am very glad that he got breast milk for the first four months of his life, even though it couldn't be exclusively. Now his bottles are filled with organic soy formula, which he has to have until the age of one. I hate that it's not my milk, and I hate that the formula isn't completely vegan, but that's the facts, y'all. Luka is being raised vegan, and will only have vegan solid foods. We are really excited to see him enjoy solids, too.

He's such a happy little boy. We can't wait to get him started on all the good vegan foods that mommy and daddy eats!

five months.

Wow, time flies! I can't believe our little Luka Lu is 20 weeks old already.



He's still right on track developmentally. There's lots of babbling, cooing, and flipping from back to belly. In fact, we put him to bed on his back, but he always ends up like this:



It was kind of scary at first, but he lifts his head up really well, so we know he won't suffocate himself. Still, that's quite a face plant.

A week or so ago, we decided to try and transition Luka to his crib for sleeping at night. He had been sleeping in a bassinet in our room (mostly) and co-sleeping in our bed for a few hours each night, so I expected him to have a rough time with the nursery. But it's actually been great. He sleeps much more soundly in his own room, up to six hours at a time before waking. That's with no sleep training at all! we just rock him to sleep as usual, turn on the monitor, and occasionally he will fuss around in his sleep for a few seconds. But he goes right back to sleep most of the time. If he does cry, we go tend to him either by rocking him, changing him, or whatever. He still eats once in the night, because he's not quite 12 pounds yet. Eventually we will wean him off of that last feeding in the night.

He's drooling like crazy, and chewing on everything. I wonder when we will see a tooth?





He lost the pushing tongue reflex about a month ago, so we tried him on some solid food for the first time. It seems soon for that, but between 4-6 months is pretty standard. He wasn't thrilled with the organic whole grain rice cereal we gave him. We will just take it slow and try it another time.




He's still so teeny for his age!


Every day he surprises us. And exhausts us. Ha.

growing!

Luka had his four month well visit, and everything seems to be coming along fine. While he is still pretty small for his age, (1% for weight, .52% for height, and .4% for head circumference) the rate that he's growing is good. Check this out as a comparison. Here's the kid at 2 1/2 months with a size small diaper:



And here he is at 4 months wearing the same size diaper:



What a difference! As of Friday, he weighs 10 lb 14 oz.

diapering the baby.

:l


:D

When I was pregnant, we decided to use cloth diapers when Lu came around. The initial investment is a bit spendy, sure, but purchasing $20 worth of diapers each week ends up costing WAY more in the long run. Not to mention the huge amount of waste disposables add to the landfills. There are so many different cloth diapering options available, it was making my head spin. We still had not made a final decision on what diapers to go with when Luka arrived early in February. Once we found out how teeny tiny he was, it made the decision even harder! Originally I wanted to go with the "one size" variety, that are adjustable up through potty training. But I worried that these would be way big on our preemie. I was right.


Lu and the giant diaper

The diaper above isn't even a "one size". It's a FuzziBunz Perfect Size in size small, which is supposed to fit 0-8 months. That picture was when Luka was almost three months. We have two of those diapers that a friend purchased from our registry. So now that Luka has had an obvious growth spurt, I tried that same diaper shown above. And on the smallest setting, it fits like a glove! That's some growth spurt. So we are thinking that since he is four months this weekend and is able to wear the small "perfect size" on the lowest setting, it's likely that he can stay in that size (with adjustments) up to maybe 10 months or more. We test drove the two we have, and really like them, so now we have eight more of the FuzziBunz Perfect Size smalls on order. Once he gets a bit bigger, we want to set him up with a stash of the more cost effective Kawaii one size diapers to hopefully carry him through to potty training. I haven't decided if we will do disposables at night yet or not. The disposables keep him from feeling as wet over a longer period of time, which would certainly help right now with us trying to get him to sleep longer than three hours at a time. But we will experiment with the cloth, adding a second insert to see if that helps.

Of course this means that we have been using disposables up to this point. So if a vegan needs to use disposables, what kind do you use? I was talking to Miss Jill about this very thing yesterday. Most major disposable diaper brands are owned by companies that animal test. Huggies is Kimberly-Clark, Pampers is Proctor & Gamble, Luvs is also Proctor & Gamble (this confused me, and I ended up using Pampers for a while, thinking they were okay). Then there are the generic store brands that are available, like Target, Babies R Us, Kroger, Publix, Etc. From what I understand, generic brands don't typically test, they just use research that has already been done by the giants P&G and others. Then there are the more costly cruelty-free brands such as Earth's Best and Seventh Generation. We mostly use Earth's Best and generic now, with Earth's Best being the less leaky option. Since we won't have to buy very many disposables anymore, I think we will stick with Earth's Best.

I'm so excited to be starting with cloth diapers! Even the extra laundry hasn't dampened my spirits yet. So do tell- what kind of cloth do you like best?

friday.

milestones and 3 months postpartum.

Ah, developmental milestones. More stuff for parents to stress out about. While Luka does seem "normal" as far as I know, there is always a risk of issues down the road because of his rough beginning. They just kept telling us, "make sure he meets his milestones" whenever I would ask how likely it will be for him to be delayed or challenged in some way. But the thing about milestones is that every baby is different, and they are just basic guidelines for development. Still, it's hard not to take it seriously when Lu went for his two month well visit and the nurse asked if he was smiling at us yet. He wasn't really then, but at three months he's been smiling up a storm!



And several times now we have put him to sleep on his back (per usual), only to find him on his side a little later. Little boy doing big boy things!



He's holding his neck up really strong now, and occasionally popping me in the mouth with his forehead. Overall, we are happy with his milestones so far. A little slow with some, faster with others. I'm sure it will all even out.

Since this started out as a pregnancy blog, I should probably mention how things are now at three months postpartum. For the most part, it's like nothing even happened. The c-section pain has been completely gone since about 6-8 weeks after the surgery. The hip pain and carpal tunnel pain I had while pregnant went away almost immediately after giving birth. My blood sugar went back to normal within only a few days after the birth, too. The lochia lasted almost a full six weeks, gross. But I haven't had a normal cycle yet, interestingly. I'm still about nine pounds heavier than I was before the pregnancy, which isn't too bad I guess. But my abdomen muscles are loose and flabbier than before, so that's unsightly and annoying. and I didn't really get any stretch marks until a few weeks after giving birth. No fair! I'm sure they happened because of the loose belly all flopping around when walking. I should have bought one of those abdominal support bands way sooner than I did. Not only did it help the c-section pain tremendously, I bet it would have cut down on the stretch marks, too. I didn't get one until about four weeks after the surgery. If you ever have a c-section or any other abdominal surgery, get yourself one of these! It really helped so much.

My self esteem isn't at it's highest right now, like many new moms, I guess. I don't have many pictures of me and the boy yet because I just feel like I look like shit. Still kind of heavy, barely showered with spit up stains on all my shirts. And I'm in desperate need of a haircut! With all the medical bills piling up, I can't even afford a haircut or color. Not that hair maintenance is important in the grand scheme of things, but yeah, BLAH.
My friend Malia took a picture of me and General Fussypants that I don't totally hate: