Thank goodness.

Big brother helps
Originally uploaded by knights_writes

Here's a photo from this weekend, when Mae got some bottle practice. This was Arlo's first time helping to feed the baby, and he felt very proud and grown up indeed.

I thought it seemed like a pretty good photo to accompany the news that Mae is now letting Tata feed her at day care! Yesterday Mae took a bottle from Tata for the first time, with only minimal hesitation reportedly, and by the end of the day she had consumed 13 ounces of expressed milk, all told.

Whew!

Bottles, Bullets

• Mae drank expressed breast milk from a bottle multiple times over the weekend--mostly from Ted but also a couple of times from me. All day on Saturday, I pumped instead of nursing, and she willingly (with some initial coaxing) bottle-fed until I offered her the breast again at 5:00. We figured this approach would mimic what she needs to be doing at day care, while not completely robbing us both of our precious mom-n-baby nursing time. I hope that our success with bottle feeding bodes well for her return to day care tomorrow.
• Tomorrow? Why tomorrow, you ask? Macy had a temperature of 100.5 degrees at 4:30 this morning. We dosed her with Tylenol, and her fever was completely gone at 9:00 (the reading was 98.2 by then), but now we have to wait out the required 24 hours fever-free before she can return to Tata's.
• On Saturday night (perhaps worn out from a full day of remedial bottle feeding, or perhaps finally satiated by a full day of regular feedings after a five-day hunger strike), Macy slept "through the night." By which I mean that she slept for almost eight hours straight, going down for the night around 9 p.m. and not awaking to feed again until nearly 5 a.m.!
• Another milestone: this morning, just after Ted got home to relieve me from baby duty and send me off to work, Macy rolled from her back to her side. She may have pushed off Ted's legs with her feet (he was sitting on the floor at her feet), but she did not have any active assistance to accomplish this feat.
• Today I'm wearing pants that fit me before my pregnancy, and they are not Fat Pants. They do fit a little more snugly than they did last year, but I am pulling it off and feeling very encouraged about the baby pooch that still juts out over the pants. As I told Ted, "my ass is back!"

Air Guitar

IMG_0861
Originally uploaded by knights_writes

My baby is a rock star.