Growth Spurt

Poor Lola, somewhere between me dragging her across the continental US, her being held by a million different family members and friends, and taking her on three different germ-filled plane rides, she caught her first cold. A quick note about this - I first heard a bit of congestion on Saturday night but she didn't yet have a runny nose or cough. We had her two month doctor visit the following Monday where I explained this. The physician's assistant in training said that she did indeed hear some congestion in her nasal passageway but when the doctor checked he said he didn't hear any at all and that she did not have a cold...I suspected he suspected that I was a bit of a hysterical mother. Well, Monday night came along and boy did the runny nose start! And the cough. And the irritability that comes with being stuffy and trying to get some sleep. So all this to say - mommy always knows best. Even if she didn't go to med school.

Anyway, yesterday morning I woke up at 8:30am to discover that for the first time in a very very very long time, I had woken up on my own and not because of a crying baby. Lola was still fast asleep! I hardly knew what to do with myself! I chalked this up to her cold and we went about our day (feeling very well rested).

Around 8:00pm Lola seemed ready for bed (aka she was wailing inconsolably) so up we went to get her settled. I did everything I normally do but when it came time to put Lola in her bassinet, she was NOT having it. And every time I picked her up again, she acted as if she was starving. I was getting frustrated, to me it seemed that she was irritable from her cold and just trying to use me to soothe herself. I'm all for cuddling my baby girl and soothing her with some rocking and soft talking but I really do not like to be used as a human pacifier. Maybe thats not very motherly of me to say, but its how I feel. I'd probably feel differently if Lola wasn't so great at pacifying herself - she is skilled at using her hands to calm herself down - something we've worked on with her since day one when we noticed her natural inclination to do so. Since she has successful alternate strategies, I'd like to keep my boobs to nourishment only. Especially because (with the exception of her first few weeks of life when she was often too exhausted to stay awake for any long period of time, regardless of what activity she was engaged in) Lola is not one to fall asleep feeding and continue sleeping. If she falls asleep feeding you can bet your bottom dollar that she will be waking up within minutes and she will be pissed that you tricked her into finishing a meal early. All of the combined (mostly that last point) made me highly resistant to wanting to try feeding her again to soothe what I thought was her cold-related discomfort.

But Lola was insistent and so I gave in. And then it happened again. And then again. It was around 9:30pm when Sean came up to see what was going on and found me STILL feeding. I told him my concerns about feeding to soothe and he understood but pointed out that right that second, she seemed to actually be eating, not just comfort feeding. He was right. Lola had changed from suckling to guzzling. It was probably another half hour before she was satisfied enough to go to sleep.

Sean wondered aloud if possibly this was a growth spurt. I doubted it but thought maybe I had remembered something about that happening at 10 weeks so I did something I usually advise myself - and any other new mother - not to do... I googled it. Normally googling things leads to nasty discussion boards where mothers take out all of their ugly mommy frustrations in the worst way (i.e. by being incredibly judgmental and mean to other similarly tired, frustrated, vulnerable mommies). But, this time was very different.

This time, we got confirmation that what we were experiencing was indeed a growth spurt. One mother  wrote "my son slept like a log the night before" - I literally had said those exact words that morning! Another mother wrote "she suddenly looked so much bigger" - not one hour earlier both Sean and I gasped at how large Lola suddenly looked on her change table. Another: "your baby may act like she can't possibly get enough to eat even though she just had a full feeding." In almost every article or discussion board we read, it was nearly word-for-word what we were going through. This was the second time this happened to us - just the day before others wrote online about their experiences with their babies after they got their immunizations. One mother wrote "my baby would be sleeping and then suddenly start screaming" and another wrote about how even when she was feeding her baby, it would suddenly pull away and start crying like she had never heard before. Every word was spot-on.

I think that's kind of amazing - the universality of the experience of parenthood.

I'm sure we would have figured it out eventually on our own but it was so nice to have an explanation and confirmation right in the moment. It allowed me to relax and just go with the flow. I didn't second guess whether what I was doing was right or if it would screw up all the work Lola had done in sleeping through the night. Instead, it made me commit to the work needed. I fed her until she was completely and utterly satisfied and I prepared my bedside table for a sleepless night. And instead of feeling frustrated about being a human cafeteria for 2 hours straight followed by similar feedings in the very early morning, I got to just enjoy the fact that my little girl was growing into a bigger girl.

This morning she again slept like a log until 9:00am then fed like a ravaged feral animal. I thought about three months ago when we still had yet to meet Lola and we worried about her lack of growth. I thought about all of the ultrasounds where I watched the technician consult growth charts with worried expressions. I thought about hearing that she had dropped from the 25th percentile to the 10th percentile in weight. I thought about having to be induced because she wasn't getting big enough in my belly. Then Lola finished feeding and smiled so big, with her whole face. My arm felt sore from supporting the weight of her body for an extended feeding, her 3-month outfit was fitting tightly, and her cheeks were round and full.

It was wonderful.