Merritt Moore! You are six months old!
How has half a year already flown by??
You bring so much joy to this family. While we were waiting for the hopes of being pregnant many years, my heart constantly sought joy in the midst of heartache. All those many months, my heart was waiting for you. My joyful little girl. Your sweet chuckles and big grins bring insurmountable joy to us. Even when we have rough days of teething or coughing, screaming through breathing treatments, and just plain exhaustion (from all of us!), you brighten up the room with your joyful disposition.
You are incredible loved by all, but your sister is your biggest fan. The two of you are sidekicks already! I'm worried about the mischief you two will get into and the frustrations y'all will cause your parents. :)
You giggle the most for Hartley! Everyone else has to work hard at getting you to chuckle, but Hartley barely does anything and you think it's so funny. I love the bond you two have!
You are very attached to your bottles. If you're hungry and you see it, you will fuss for it! Even if I'm nursing you and you get a glimpse of it.. you would rather have it. I enjoy the moments you actually nurse and pray that one day you'll choose me for comfort over a bottle or pacifier. :(
While I wish you nursed more, it's also nice being free to pump and have bottles prepared for friends and family to have the opportunity to feed you too. Hartley rarely took a bottle!
Your feeding schedule is pretty consistent, but somewhat flexible. Because you take short naps (still!), you're happy eating every 3 hours. However, you can go 4 hours too! You tend to hover between 3-3.5 hours taking 5oz of precious, pumped milk. We've started supplementing you with an extra few ounces of formula. This was a pride issue for me, wanting to be able to feed you with my own milk. But you need the extra help. We were also blessed with some donated milk from a sweet friend!
You prefer to cluster feed from 5/6-9pm. We administer your vitamins, salt, and human milk fortifier in the evening bottles. The first time you eat you take 2, maybe 3oz. Then hopefully less than an hour later, you might take 2 more ounces. Enzymes are only effective for an hour, so we have to squeeze in as many ounces as we can during that time, otherwise you get another dose of enzymes. We plan on talking to your dietician about this, maybe we need to do half a dose with these smaller, spread out feedings. But with cluster feedings come sleeping longer during the night!
For a few nights you were sleeping past 6am. We thought you finally got into a routine, but that was short-lived. Four and 5am wake up calls started again. However, sometimes you'll surprise us and sleep past 7am. We never know. But we appreciate the hours of sleep! After you nurse during the early mornings, I keep you in bed between me and Daddy.
We do breathing treatments twice a day still. And you do great! If you fuss, it's during the nebulizer part. If you're asleep during percussions it goes smoothly.. if you're awake I'm trying to keep you contained on the bed. You are the wiggliest baby!
You are rolling every where and even trying to crawl! Your legs know what to do, but you're still trying to figure out how those arms need to work. You're supporting yourself much better with your arms. You'll get everything worked out before we know it and we'll be chasing you around the house soon!
You love playing with your feet, too! Not only does your forehead taste salty, but your feet also. I wonder if that's why you like sucking on your toes so much! By the way, Hartley was the one that realized your feet are salty...
No
mama yet but we hear a lot of
mmming and I think I hear some
bbbing recently. I looked back at Hartley's 6-month post and y'all are surprisingly similar. Imagine that! Your hair is growing in like hers, only yours is strawberry blonde! Eyes are still bright blue! You wear a few 0-3month clothes but we slowly getting into 3-6months. You wear size 1 diapers. We haven't started cloth yet! I'm so scared that your poops are going to ruin them. :(
We go for a CF appointment tomorrow, so I will update this with your new weight and length.
Oh, Merritt. We can't believe how quickly the past half year has flown by. I feel like we still baby you so much- like rocking you to sleep, rushing in every time you cry, holding you, and holding you some more. I think because you're so tiny makes me feel like you're still a newborn, too. We haven't let you cry it out any either!
And ya know, we wouldn't have it any other way. Except for a cure for CF. That would be nice. :)
