4months

Four Months

Aubrietta went to the doctor for her 4 month check up and weighed in at 14 pounds 11 ounces, and measured 27 inches. She's off the charts for height and a little under 50th percetile for weight.

Aubrietta doesn’t babble and sing as often as she used to. Now she growls, squeals, and laughs uproariously. She spends a lot more energy taking in sights and sounds, craning her neck to find and follow what interests her, namely me. If I put her on a quilt on the floor while I move about the room, she twists around to keep sight of me. She isn’t rolling over yet, but she’s close. When placed on her back she now lifts her legs and hips high off the floor, and she grabs her feet with her hands and tries to pull them to her mouth for inspection. Invariably, she ends up rolling to one side or the other, and would keep going if it we’re for her arms being extended.

First Non-Mommy Food

We fed Etta her first "solid" food this week. I hand-expressed half an ounce of breast milk into a small cup, mixed in just enough rice cereal flakes to create a thin gruel, and excitedly offered Etta a small spoonful. She’d been sitting at the table in her highchair during our meals for two weeks, watching with interest as our utensils traveled from plate to mouth. Sometimes she’d even smack her lips and grunt like a begging dog.

I’m not sure if it was the cold of the metal spoon, the starchy taste, or the goopy texture, but her response was less than enthusiastic. She squinted her eyes and stuck out her tongue as if she’d just sucked a lemon. I patiently offered her a few more slurps from the spoon, her interest clearly peaked, and she concentrated on coordinating this new method of ingestion. Learning to move food back on her tongue and swallow without need of sucking would take practice. In the end Etta probably only ingested an eighth of an ounce, but that was plenty for a first meal.

The next evening I fed Etta rice cereal again at the dinner hour and she was much better coordinated with swallowing it. I’m not saying it wasn’t messy, and that her bib and hands didn’t get soaked in the process, but she actually consumed about an ounce this time. She seems to enjoy this new experience.

Digestive Changes

The baby that used to poop every twenty minutes suddenly hadn’t pooped in two days. At about three months she stopped pooping in the night, but still did six or seven loads during the day. Now that she’d been eating cereal with a thicker consistency, she’d been pooping two or three times a day. I never thought I’d miss Etta’s poopy diapers, but when her health is of concern, I do. Etta had been quite gassy, and her emissions grew increasingly foul. There was poop in there, and was fermenting.

As we passed 80 hours without a poop (I was counting, really!), my husband and step-daughter sat with Etta on the couch and made pooping noises to encourage her to let loose. My stepdaughter, being a teenager, had quite the array of disgusting pooping noises in her repertoire. Etta responded with laughter at first, but as the noises got louder and more disgusting she looked over at me with concern as if to say, "Please tell me I’m not really related to these two!"

On the fourth day, after false alarms of potent flatulence, she finally produced a huge foul load. The consistancy was of soft clay, and the odor -- imagine the worst smelling dog poop you've ever stepped in! I was "relieved" that Etta had finally relieved herself, but I was startled that such stink could come from my sweet baby.

Rest and Relaxation

There is a definite difference in Etta’s temperament on the weekends when I am not preoccupied with work. At the office her naps are almost nonexistent, as though she is afraid that by succumbing to sleep she will miss out on some exciting event. When she falls asleep while nursing at the office, I’m usually in a hurry to put her down so that I can continue on with my work. At home I’m more likely to sit with her for awhile after she drifts off, which allows her to fall deeply enough into sleep that she doesn’t wake as easily when eventually laid down.

For the first time I noticed Etta dreaming. She slept fitfully while we were at the office one day, crying out suddenly, then continuing to sleep. Several times she started to cry, but never opened her eyes, and she sighed back to silence when I patted her tummy or rubbed her head. She was experiencing REM, her eyes darting wildly beneath closed lids. I wondered what she could be dreaming about…