This week's milestones

This week's milestones:
Emilia is able to sit in the Bumbo seat for a good 10 minutes (maybe up to 15 minutes) without bobbing her head. Now my husband and I can have a peaceful dinner while Emilia is sitting in the Bumbo chair ON OUR DINING TABLE, looking down on us eating. :)

She also plays with her two hands a lot. Sometimes it looks like she is playing with an imanginary Rubik's cube in her hands. She sucks on her thumbs a lot and today I saw her "chewing" on her index and middle fingers too. (it sounded rather like she was munching on a beef jerky.)

Napping in the stroller

I have been putting Emilia down for naps in her stroller because she refuses to go to sleep for some reason and I thought the stroller might help. I have walked hours and hours in an infinite loop around my living room, and well, it worked maybe for 3-4 times but she is now crying as soon as I put her in the stroller and she doesn't want the canopy to cover the stroller. She wants to see my face and the light! So now I am back to nursing her to sleep and then sneaking her into her playpen or crib. I at at a loss for solutions to her sleep problems that have been on-going since she turned 3 months old.

*** Actually the best way to help her sleep without tears is to wear her in a baby sling called "maman kangarou" (a Canadian product). Normally she will fall asleep in 10-15 minutes. However undoing the sling and taking her out of it is very very tricky and 90% of the time I end up waking her up while taking off the sling and putting her in the crib (since I am only 5'3" and the crib is too high for me to hurdle with the sleeping baby in my both hands).

Why is Emilia not rolling over

Ever since the neonatal follow up clinic, I have been obsessed with "why" Emilia is not rolling over yet. I know babies develop and grow at their own individual pace and not all babies will roll at the same age but the follow up clinic left me feeling like Emilia is supposed to be able to roll over by now. She's 4 months but she's not rolling on her own yet. I need to hold her wrist and give it a gentle shake (a bit of a nudge) then she will lift her two legs and pelvis to cross over and roll. Her physiotherapist tells me that lots of babies these days don't seem to roll... some of them just skip the whole rolling and jump to sitting and crawling. She thinks it's because of the Back-to-Sleep campaign. Well, whatever the reason, I feel it's my fault that Emilia is not rolling over yet. I have been doing lots of exercises and tummy time with her since the follow up clinic. I dearly hope she can roll by the end of this month. She has a checkup appointment with her pediatrician at the end of January and I would hate to say "no" again when he asks me if she has started rolling yet.

NICU 4 months follow up clinic

Yesterday we went back to Mount Sinai Hospital for Emilia's 4 month follow up clinic. They were checking to see if she was behaving like other 4 month old babies. As I was concerned, the PT said she needs to use her left thumb more. Overall conclusion was that her gross motor skills are okay but she could benefit from doing more tummy time and she needs to strengthen her trunk muscles.

After the follow up clinic, we stopped by the NICU to say hello to the nurses. It didn't matter who was on or off yesterday because during the 142 days in the NICU, almost every nurse had a turn to take care of our Emilia and even if they didn't, they still knew me and Emilia, the oldest baby in the Levle 3 Unit. We said hello to some doctors as well as the dietician who knew Emilia quite well.

At the entrance of the NICU, I saw a mom who was bringing in breastmilk in the familiar pink top bottle the Unit provides. She looked really sad and quite frail. I knew that feeling. The guilt, the desperateness, and the uncertainty. The uncertainty about what the future holds for your baby. I was there not too long ago, ringing in the Unit to ask them if I could come in to drop off milk and have a peek at my baby. Those feeling all came back and made me feel infinitely happy and fortunate that Emilia is where she is today, healthy and growing well. I could not have imagined that she would one day become this big... too heavy for me to carry.