Wow!
Our lives have a constant commentary now. Ella is always looking to see if we’re watching her, and exclaiming, Oooh-ohhh! [Whoa.] Oooh-ow! [Wow!]
Dee-da, dee-da, dee-da, da-dee, da-dee, daddy, daddy!
Ella’s allergies…or lack thereof.
Ella is mostly doing much better. We are still not giving her any dairy, nuts or coffee. (Well, we probably wouldn’t give her coffee anyway! But she’s not getting any of those things through my diet either.) In May, we gave her yogurt one morning. She loved it! And I was delighted to see no severe allergic reaction—no diarrhea, rash, or fussiness… for about 10 hours. And then the crying started. That night, she woke up three times crying. And the next night. For two days, she was very clingy. Even the nursery worker at church asked me why she was so fussy. In her words, “Ella would reach for things, whining and crying, but then when I gave it to her she would throw it down and cry for something else.” That’s a good description of Ella in her fussy-stage. We never saw any other indication of an allergy, so in my opinion, she’s not really allergic. And I’m reassured that if she accidently eats dairy, at least she won’t react severely. But I’m not planning to give her any more anytime soon!
Which leaves us with the question, to what do we wean? So far, we’ve been weaning to … nothing. Well, just food and some juice. In fact, we’ve cut our daytime feedings from 6 to 4 in the last month. If she’s very whiny when she used to get a ‘snack’ she’ll usually take a cup of juice. But, our pediatrician recommended finding some replacement for the calcium and fat that she should get from milk. But when I tried drinking goat’s milk, she reacted just like when I ate dairy. Yesterday, we tried some ‘hypoallergenic’ infant formula, where most of the milk proteins are at least partially broken down. But within a few hours she was extremely clingy and crying. That day I ended up giving her two extra feedings, just because she was so fussy. Connection? Who knows. My neighbor says it could have been the hot weather, too. True. Should I toss the $12 can of formula, or wait and try again? But when is another good day to try, knowing that I might have to carry her and listen to her scream all day? (Any volunteers for babysitting that day?)
Despite all this daytime fussiness, she is finally sleeping well at night. Five of the last six nights, she hasn’t cried at all during the night! Before, she would always wake for a late evening feeding around 11, and then sometimes another after midnight. If I didn’t feed her, she would cry as long as we could take it. So we were expecting to soon let her cry it out, to teach her to go back to sleep without being fed. But then suddenly she stopped waking up. Amazing. (What’s more amazing is for me to realize that we expected this to happen a full year ago—if she’d followed the boys’ example, and our favorite baby-sleep-philosophy. But, no, she’s on her own timetable.) Even the day when we gave her formula, she still slept well at night. Her daytime sleep is also been great. She usually sleeps an hour and a half for her morning nap, and two hours in the afternoon. She would sleep longer in the morning, but I wake her up so that her afternoon nap is longer. If she’s slept too long in the morning, when I come in with Tima during the afternoon nap, she pops right up and wants to play. She and Tima will babble-talk and laugh for an hour before going to sleep. They do usually go to sleep without my intervention, but then they’re both ornery in the evening. (And I am, too.) For now, though, I'm very grateful that she's still taking two good naps!
