2nd Month

2nd month was no fun at all. Mommy took over the full-time job of caring for baby Valerie, and boy.. was that hard work. The constant back and shoulder pain due to carrying the baby most of the time, coupled with sleepless nights make me slimmed down 3kg in a month. There was also no time to eat or even go to toilet. It was just the monotonous job of nursing, changing diapers, bathing, then more nursing and more changing diapers and washing her daily clothes. Gosh, makes me wonder how did my mom survive in her days? There was certainly no free time to cook. So Ivan just tapao lunch for me and night time, we went over to MIL place for dinner.

The first week we took over (her 5th week), we couldn't get Valerie to sleep at all throughout the day. I read babies are supposed to sleep for 20 hrs, my Valerie was barely sleeping 12. Because of her lack of sleep in the daytime, she was very very tired by evening and that became even worse. She would startle at every single sound. She would fall asleep like 15 mins and then wake up again. Later we learned a 'sarong wrap' which swaddled her very well and that helped her to sleep through the night.

But that lasted for a week. By the time she was 6th week old, she was getting smarter. Her arm would wriggle her way out of the sarong wrap and minutes later you would find both her arms released. So our sarong routine ended. She then adopted a new routine where she slept throughout the day and woke up around midnight instead. From midnight to 7am, she would sleep for a while, wake up and wants to chat with you (Oh yes, she's very chatty, saying anggugu already this young). But the daytime was great, I had so much free time to do house chores, read a book and even went online.

We tried a new strategy on the 7th week. Since Valerie loves to explore and look around, we brought her out shopping in the afternoon instead. This didn't allow her to sleep during the daytime and thus she learned to fall asleep in the evening instead. Slowly Valerie started sleeping by midnight and woke up noon the next day. It was an achievement for us but then, the daytime was tough for me as I now have no free time to do anything. She just want to be held ALL the time. But still, this was better than her getting her days and nights mixed up.

During the 2nd month, I went into exclusive breastfeeding (except for 1 bottle of expressed milk a day during dinner time at MIL). This helped me to cope as I find this approach very workable. I didn't have to run around preparing milk and washing bottles when she cry for hunger. Plus, no need to be fully awake for the night feeds. I just need to held her close and she would get her milk while both of us continue to sleep with her in my arms. Cool eh..

The poo-poo was still pretty frequent, about 4 rounds in the day and 3 at night. Her feeding was about 2 oz every 2 hours. She would smile a lot and very chatty with her non-stop ang-goo-goos... Grandpa simply adores chatting with her; him with his 'Ni yao pao pao arr?' and hers with her 'Anggoo... Anggoo...'.