6 Months with C

We’ve had a baby for half a year! It’s still the best. C is fantastic.

C at 6 Months

I said this the last couple months, but I absolutely stand by it: Oh, my gosh. She is SO FUN. She is so silly, so happy, and so chill. Pretty much everything about her personality from the last couple months still applies. Her smiles are big and genuine, and often accented by sweet giggles.

She started popping up on her hands and knees on soft surfaces a couple weeks ago. Now she spends a big chunk of her day on all fours, moving her legs toward her hands as if crawling, and then falling onto her chest when her knees get too close to her hands. And repeat until she gets tired or hungry. Hasn’t quite gotten the hang of moving her hands yet, but she’s starting to get there. Until she nails crawling, C has rolling, inchworming, and turning to get her where she wants to go – and those get her pretty far.

She can sit up for a minute or two at a time before she tumbles sideways. We haven’t introduced food yet but I think we’re close and, if she knew that, I think she’d be pretty excited. She loves watching people eat.

C now has two teeth and they are razors. Her top teeth are giving her trouble and working their way down, but I don’t think they’re too close to cutting through just yet.

We went the the Outer Banks a few weeks ago and it was an adventure that she handled like a champ. Our 10.5-hour car ride took about 12.5 hours on the way there (honestly, not really longer than if it had just been me and Jack in the car), and she only started getting antsy around the 12-hour mark. We stayed in a beach house with 11 other people, and she loved it and charmed everyone. (I will note that no way would we have embarked on this journey if we didn’t have backup. It was was so fun and I am so glad we did it, but I do not think I’d feel that way if it had just been me, Jack, and C. Having family to help with the baby made all the difference in letting Jack and I feel like we were on vacation.)

C did not love the actual beach so much because it was too bright. Fortunately, there was always someone to hang back at the house with her when Jack and I headed out. The car ride home was not wonderful. It took about 14 hours, and she hardly slept and cried quite a bit. I am fairly sure she’d call it the worst day of her life. But who doesn’t have a hard time coming home from vacation?

Sleep

Bedtime is so much better than it used to be. Putting C down for the first time usually takes 20-45 minutes, including story time. If she needs anything after that, it’s typically only once and takes around 5-15 minutes.

Usually, she lets me nurse her to sleep. Occasionally, she decides she wants to put herself to sleep after she’s full of milk. Sometimes, she decides that and then realizes sleep is actually kind of tricky, and wants me to come back and provide more milk. We play it by ear and make it work.

About half the time, she gets up once during the night and once during the 5:30-6:30am hour right now. Most of the rest of the time, it’s just during the 5:30-6:30am hour. This works pretty well for me, since she usually needs her diaper changed once to avoid leaks, and I’m usually up at or before 6. Most of the time, she just needs nursed and goes right back to sleep, either in my arms or shortly after I set her in her crib.

Naps are pretty rough, and often only about 30 minutes. I hope for at least one longer nap a day, but she doesn’t really let me nurse her back to sleep for naps these days. But I’ll take decent night sleep over great naps.

She gets tired pretty early. I usually start getting her ready for bed between 6:30 and 7, and put her down for the first time around 7:15-7:30. Some nights, she’s up at 11:30 and then sleeps the rest of the night till she needs a little milk around 6. Other nights, she sleeps till 4:30 and then gets up for a little more milk at 6. Others, she just gets up at 5:45 for some milk and goes back to sleep.

I’m sleeping okay most nights, but it could be better. I try to go up to bed around 9pm-10pm, read for a few minutes, and then pass out. And then I usually wake up once in anticipation of C waking up and once if she wakes up. Depending on when I went to bed and how tired I am, I get up between 5:30 and 6:30. C is usually up for the day between 7 and 8. If she gets up any earlier, I try to nurse her back to sleep.

Feeding

C eats very well, but she’s decided to throw a curveball recently. She is now extremely distractible when eating. If she hears a voice from the other room or we’re in a non-home environment, she will often decide she can’t eat because the world is too interesting. She also does not appreciate being covered up while she’s eating, so I can’t just throw a blanket on us to block out the world. This means that most nights we need to give her at least a couple ounces of pumped milk before bed because she realizes she’s starving after not eating enough during the day.

Schedule

Right now, C eats every 3ish hours. I don’t offer as many just-in-case feedings since she is looking for something to bite right now, and I’d prefer it’s not me. I offer a nap about 2-3 hours after she wakes from her last one. If she doesn’t take the nap, depending on how much sleep she’s had and what the day looks like, I usually wait a half hour and try again.

It is incredibly nice to have the flexibility to follow her lead, even if it makes planning a little tricky.

Things I Don’t Want to Forget

• How peaceful she looks when she falls asleep on me.
• Her morning smiles – and her smiles any time I turn the light on in her room and she realizes she gets to play more.
• How proud of herself she looks when she gets up on her hands and knees.
• She sucks her lips over her sore teething upper gums and her little mouth becomes a line.
• How much she loves just playing in her crib even when she doesn’t want to nap.
• She alternates between grabbing her hair and holding the bottle and putting her hands in my mouth when she’s eating from a bottle.
• She blows the most earnest raspberries, like she’s trying to tell us something very important.
• The way she anticipates what’s coming when we start “This Little Piggy” or any of the books we read a lot.
• She thinks it’s absolutely hilarious when we yawn or sneeze.
• After she’s done eating, sometimes she’ll rest her head on my shoulder and cuddle in close. It doesn’t last because she doesn’t want to rest ever, but it’s very sweet. And then she pushes away from me and stands on her knees or dives toward the floor.
• She loves to touch Ben. This usually means essentially laying her tummy on his back and grabbing some hair from his scruff. (We monitor to make sure he’s not annoyed or startled, and we let him decide when he’s done.)

Things We Use and Love

• Pretty much everything from her 2-month post. She doesn’t love the pacifiers as much right now, but occasionally they work. She no longer has patience for the Podster and is probably too big for it, but it served us well when she was teeny.
• Pretty much everything from her 3-month post.
• Pretty much everything from her 4-month post.
• Pretty much everything from her 5-month post.
• Millie Moon diapers. I’ve said it before: C is long and skinny. This always meant that Huggies and Honest diapers fit her pretty well when she was on the small end of a size and Pampers fit her better when she got a little more toward the upper end of the weight limit for a size. And then I found that stopped being true. She was leaking all over the place and having blowouts a lot, and it kinda sucked. In my search for a solution, I used this diaper review and landed on trying Millie Moon. I freaking love them. They still sometimes leak overnight if I don’t change her. But they fit her beautifully, are super soft, and leaks and blowouts are a lot rarer. They can be a little tricky to find, but if I check Target.com regularly, I can keep us stocked.
• Sophie the Giraffe. I don’t know what’s so great about this, but C mostly doesn’t care about teething toys, and she loves this. My aunt got it for her and said that every kid she’s seen with a Sophie is happy. It tracks for C.
• Copper Pearl sleep sacks. Like everything else from Copper Pearl, I’m obsessed with these because they are crazy soft. It took me a while to try out the one I have because it looked huge in comparison to the Nested Bean ones. Especially the arm holes. I was certain she’d just pull her arms in and get lost in the sleep sack. But one day I put her in it, and it went just fine. As is usually the case. And now since she’s almost too long for all her sleep sacks, I ordered several 6-12 month ones. I still use all the ones we have, weighted and not, but I’ve established that there is pretty much no difference in her sleep either way.