Introducing Solids

We celebrated Lorelai's 6 month birthday and then introduced her to her first solid food the next day: mashed hard cooked egg yolk.

If you ask her pediatrician, egg yolks are not a good choice to introduce at her age, due to the fact that eggs are a common allergen. While I appreciated his perspective and acknowledge that fact, neither Kurt nor I (nor Ben or Abby) have any known allergies and since egg yolks have a lot to offer nutritionally, we went for it.

I cannot say how much of the yolk actually went into her mouth, as the novelty of the spoon was more interesting to her. She mostly played around with the bowl and spoon. As expected, it was pretty messy. Day 2 on egg yolks has come and gone and so far no reactions.

Next week, we will probably try sweet potatoes and then bananas.

Six Month Old Lorelai

The first half of Lorelai's first year has flown by! I can still recall my impatience waiting for this little miracle to happen (in mid to late 2008) and the thrill of discovering we were pregnant with her in January of 2009....Then the fear of losing her. And finally the joy of meeting her face to face for the first time in October of 2009.

Here we are, six months later, and she has almost doubled in size. On our home scale, she weighed 15.5 pounds on her six month birthday. Her 6 month well-check appointment is not for another week and a half because I was not on the ball with scheduling it. I did not try to measure her length, so we will get her stats at the 6.5 month mark.

Sleepwise, this past month was not the best... Lorelai falls asleep nursing and does not want to part with her latch on Mommy. She does not take a pacifier but essentially Mom is her favorite pacifier. So we are working on finding a different comfort measure for her. She sleeps well on her own for several hours after retiring in her crib around 7 PM. She will nurse around 2 PM and sometimes does not make it back to her crib. Her Mom and Dad could do better with this; we have been pretty lax. Lorelai naps 2-3 times per day, with one of those naps being a good one, for about 2-3 hours. The transition from the swaddle to sleep sack has been a struggle.

Lorelai is a happy baby. She rarely cries. When she does, it is because she is in her crib and does not want to be. Lorelai laughs a lot, especially when watching her big brother and sister. She is completely engaged when she has their attention.

For her first six months, she has been exclusively breastfed. She loves to nurse. We began to introduce her first solid food this week.

Developmentally, she is on track. She sits well independently and she enjoys her view from the sitting position the best. She rolls both ways, but being on her tummy is still not a position she enjoys being in very long. She does a strong push up. Lorelai manages to move around to reach a desired object, but does not actually crawl yet. She babbles and screeches. Everything she reaches for and grabs goes in her mouth.

Still no visible tooth. She has been teething since the beginning of January, yet no tooth to be seen. Her outfits are continually soaked with drool, as her Mama is too lazy to keep her in a bib. She's had a rash from the drool for the past month.

Healthwise, we continue to be blessed. She had the one day fever over a month ago, mentioned earlier, and nothing since.

In this picture, Lorelai is six months to the day.