Dear Chaya // Nine Months

Dear Chaya,

Hello my little choochala! My happy, smiley, friendly, snuggly girl.

What a month! Since we put you on the bottle we’ve noticed you have more energy and “life” about you. You’ve also gained a ton of weight, and started making some big progress towards your milestones. It’s been a funny thing – putting you on the bottle – it’s been so emotional and hard, and we’ve just had to fumble out way through it, but I can’t deny that there have been benefits – like you suddenly growing more! I wish things were different for us, so badly, but it’s not the way of it .

We saw the allergist this month and it turns out that the allergies you had when you were younger are just intolerances. You were so brave for the skin prick test – you watched the doctor do it without any tears! He said you can be having all food to a certain degree, but my gut instinct is no. Even so, I started giving you more and more gluten because it’s easy and he said it would be fine. But guess what, it wasn’t fine. I realised now that he didn’t even actually test gluten on your skin prick test for some reason, which is unfortunate. You were sleeping horribly. Like seriously, SO horribly. We were just at a total loss as to what to do with you or how to make it better. Nurofen wasn’t helping, teething gel wasn’t helping… it didn’t matter if I fed you just before you went to sleep, or an hour before. Tummy presses kinda helped, and you did get some farts out that way, so I had a realisation that the thing I’d changed recently was adding in gluten! So we took that out again completely and within a few days you had dramatically improved! It’s probably not an allergy, but your gut is obviously sensitive, and it isn’t handling gluten well. Things aren’t perfect, but they are better!

I had a second light bulb moment to realise that the only other big change I’d made to your diet recently was removing all the breastmilk. Previously this was about 75% of your diet, and I just weaned you off that in less than a week. So I’ve started using some of the stored donated breastmilk to each bottle just to try and start the digestion process (apparently that’s a thing with breastmilk and formula mixes. Who knew?!). It’s going well so far, though I have to give you a little break because you might remember that there are things this mama ate that you don’t like so much (probably gluten!), so it’s good for a few days, then we need to take a break. I need a bit of a better plan!

You are crawling everywhere! At first it was getting up on those hands and knees, but it quickly turned into proper crawling. Mazel Tov! How exciting for you! And I am not in the least bit sad about it, because I feel like this probably should have happened ages ago, and that you WANTED it to happen ages ago, and were ready for it, but your low muscle tone just got in the way. So after all that effort and exercise and whatnot you can do it! It’s almost as much of a congratulations to me for the work I put in as it is for you! What a great team we make Chaya. 🙂

We moved house this month. Away from your house and city of birth and back to, well, mine. Ha! It’s been a super emotional time for all of us, and sad to say goodbye to our home of 3 years, but we’re moving forward and following the green man.

At nine months you are smiley, friendly, inquisitive, and cuddly. I love getting your cuddles each night and for naps in the day. You are a precious soul Chaya Sefira, and I love you.

Mama

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