Mabel's Sixth Month

Mabel's sixth month was characterized by huge leaps in mobility and activeness along with hurdles with feeding (at least for me).

Stats: Mabel is continuing to grow well.  She weighs 15 pounds 4.6 ounces (33%), is 26 inches long (54%), and has a head circumference of 16.54 inches (42%).  She'll probably need to move into 12 month clothes by the end of the year.

No teeth yet, but continuing to bite on everything, drool, and clench her jaws.  I think she's teething, but who knows.  Cold teethers seem to help.

Sleep: She usually goes down between 6-7:30 pm and wakes about 12 hours later.  Sometimes she sleeps through the night, but sometimes she wakes up one or two times to eat.

She's a roly-poly in bed.  Usually she sleeps on her side, but sometimes she is now rolling to her stomach.

Naps are still fairly inconsistent, but usually she's napping three times a day.  We hope at least one of those is a decent long nap.

Eat: Feeding issue are giving me grey hairs this month.  Just after turning 5 months old, I noticed a slip in my milk supply.  I think it was caused by a combination of things: her sleeping through the night, stress from Harvey, and a busy work schedule that caused me to miss a few pump sessions.  I worked hard to get my supply back up and I thought we were good.

Over the next couple of weeks we introduced a few more solids (applesauce and pureed butternut squash) and she was continuing to nurse/ bottle feed fine.  Her normal feeding schedule was to nurse in morning, have 2-3 bottles when I was at work, nurse when I got home, and then maybe wake once or twice a night to nurse.  Whenever I'm around, we nurse (no bottles).  Jason even went out of town and I stayed home with the girls and she nursed fine for four days straight.

Then, nine days ago, completely out of the blue, she started to refuse to nurse. I've consulted with two lactation consultants, and so far, none of the suggestions they had have worked to get her interested in nursing.  She is completely refusing to even consider to nurse, but is more than happy to eat from the bottle.  So, for now, I'm pumping full-time and we are feeding her breastmilk from the bottle.

This is definitely not an ideal situation for me.  Pumping is such hard work.  I feel like I have to pump twice as much as nursing to maintain my supply.  I absolutely hate cleaning pump supplies and bottles.  Plus, she only drinks room temperature or warm milk, so we have to reheat frozen and refrigerated milk. 

I'll continue to try to keep this up for awhile, but am highly doubtful I'll keep this up through her first birthday.  I think we'll be lucky to make it to nine months.  We bought some formula just to test if she'll eat it, and she ate it fine.  So, at least we don't have to stress about that transition.



My heart is kinda broken.  I'm a huge proponent of breastfeeding and would have liked to make it past a year followed by a natural weaning process, so quitting cold turkey after six months has definitely thrown me for a loop.  I'm just hoping that maybe it's a phase caused my teething or something and that she'll return, but I'm not keeping my hopes up too high.

We stopped solids this past week to entice her back to nursing, but will probably start them again either way.  She is sooooo interested in real food, so I think we might start finger foods soon.

Play/ Milestones: I also think some of the feeding issues have been caused by developmental gains this month.  At about 5.5 months old, she went from a baby who would just roll over occasionally to one that would roll across the room in a matter of minutes.  She can rotate in circles both on her belly and on her back.  She likes to kick toys and the wall, sometimes with surprising force.  She's sitting unassisted by herself and likes to stand up holding on to the couch or your hands.

She'll actively seek out her toys, even if they are out of reach.  Just last night, she rolled to the shelves in Matilda's room to pull a basket of cars off  to play with, and then proceeded to roll to the other side of the room to play with some books. 

She likes her rattles and teething toys.  She likes playing the dropping game where you constantly have to pick her toys back up for her. 

One of her favorite activities is pulling Matilda's hair and Jason's beard.  She gets true enjoyment out of that.  We keep warning Matilda to keep her hair out of reach because she's going to be bald soon considering how many handfuls of hair Mabel has pulled out.

She's not an overly chatty baby.  She can blow raspberries, but is generally pretty quiet unless she's fussing.  I do think she's a bit more fussy now that she's somewhat mobile because she gets mad if she can't reach or do something she wants. 

Overall, she's still an incredibly sweet baby who loves to smile at friendly faces and watch the world around her (although now she likes to be part of the action too).  She absolutely adores her sister and is up for most anything.