Dear Chaya // 4 Months

Dear Chaya,

Here we are, four months old. I love you so much. SO SO SO much. Your smile is absolutely amazing, and it makes my heart flutter.

This month your brothers and sister went back to school and kindy so three days a week it’s just us for a few hours. It’s nice to spend this time with you, even if it does go super quickly!

You started Chiro this month, and it has dramatically improved your situation. The Chiro has been working on your low muscle tone, overbite, and overall mouth shape, as well as a lot of the tension and knots around your jaw. You were only able to open your mouth 60% of the way, but now that you’ve been doing Chiro twice a week for 3 weeks you’re doing so much better. We are graduated from continually releasing knots, to strengthening the muscles that weren’t able to move properly before, hooray! We went back to see the lactation consultant and she is over the moon with how you’ve progressed!

The Lactation consultant did mention that now she can see your tongue tie clearly (before it wasn’t visible due to all the knotting and muscle tension in your abnormally small mouth), and next month we will have to get it revised…

We saw an improvement in your ability to drink from the SNS, but then as your tongue tie protruded things went a bit backwards. You’re mostly getting milk from the bottle, but I manage to give you about ⅓ of your intake as breastmilk. It’s pretty good all things considered. Please G-D, when your tongue tie is revised, and we go through the re-hab for that we won’t have anything stopping us from succeeding in normal breastfeeding! This makes me think that I really need to make sure I am in the best health I can be (sleep, food etc…) for your recovery so I have the determination I need to help you through this and really make it worthwhile.

You love to chomp, chomp, chomp down on anything you can get your hands on. Fingers, chew toys, dummies… anything you can chew on, you do! It’s a great therapy for you to do, so we encourage it! You should see (I have photos, lol) the fat and muscle in your cheeks now that you’ve been working on your muscle tone so much!

On the 9th of February you did your first laugh! You were 3 ½ months old. You haven’t done many since, but it was definitely there – that whole weekend in fact you laughed many times. Maybe things aren’t so funny this last week!? Or maybe you’ve just moved onto your new skill – rolling over! You did this on the 21st of Feb – just a few days shy of 4 months old. We can’t stop you now – it’s definitely your favourite thing to do.

You still sleep wonderfully at night. You get a good solid 8 hours. You don’t even stir. I wish I could say that same for myself, but the medication I am on to increase my milk supplies keeps me up till all hours of the early morning! Your day sleeping has regressed a little, unless you’re in the ergo, then you sleep wonderfully, for hours and hours. It’s still so incredibly hot and humid though that it’s not always practical. I have to admit, we use the air conditioner daily – I just can’t cope with the heat under normal circumstances let alone with a baby on my chest! So we use it, and we both enjoy the snuggles!

Chaya, you are still the most happy and joyful baby ever. You love to give strangers smiles, and everyone is so grateful. Ahava loves to show you off at Kindy, and the boys love to carry you around the school when we pick them up. Actually, all three big kids have really taken to you in an extra special way this month. I suppose it’s because you’re starting to interact with them more – pulling at their hair and faces! You did make Eli cry the other day though when you scratched at his face! I told him you didn’t mean to hurt him, but he said you did it over and over and over again, and so he thinks you did! Oh dear.

I want to make a special note of how happy you wake up in the mornings, and what a blessing this is. I was scared about bottle feeding a baby, because I didn’t want to wake up to an inconsolable crying baby who wanted to be fed IMMEDIATELY, but you aren’t like that! You are just so happy when you wake up, and you are happy to wait for half an hour or more for your bottle or SNS feed. Thank you!

If I could sum up your fourth month, I would say that we made a LOT of improvements. We hit a lot of milestones, including reaching the 15th percentile for weight, and we made a lot of progress health and feeding wise. You and I are a great team. I told you over and over during the pregnancy, and even during the birth, and here we are still being a great team and working together to get stuff done.

I love you my CC. I am so grateful for you, and for your place in this family. I am so grateful for the love and joy you bring to each of us. Though she be little, she be fierce (in a good way!).

Love you to the moon and back Chaya, my life.

Love Mama.

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