Before Freya was born, I didn’t register for a baby monitor because I was all, oh, we won’t need one of those, she’ll nap in the room with us, or, I’ll be able to hear her just fine.

Ha ha ha ha haha haha.

Finally got one last week. It has allowed me to slip out of bed in the morning and go downstairs to actually make breakfast for myself while she sleeps. And right now she is napping in our bed and I am listening in. This thing is great, what did I have against them?

And yet I got bottles, which still sit unused.

Lessons learned.

Freya is sleeping. When she wakes up I will go hold her and feed her, so this could be short…

I am lonely today. Maybe it’s the rain or something. Or just never seeing my friends and having an empty inbox as usual. I feel forgotten sometimes. I try to reach out to my friends, it doesn’t seem to mean much.

Or maybe none of that is true and I just wish I could physically be with my friends, who are largely very far away. I miss them all, believe me. I think of you, often.

I’m going to try to go to a playdate Friday, and connect with more mamas here.

Anyway.

Freya still loves being held much of the time. I love holding her, too, but it would be great to have extra arms so I could hold her while also making food or cleaning up a little. We should get a couple of servants. Ha ha. It’s nice to be needed. It seems like she saves her biggest smiles for Daddy. Ok I am not going to project my stupid insecurity onto my baby, am I?

I know my dog loves me. Good dog.

I hate that I still need to wear my maternity pants. And those are loose on me, so everything is too loose or too tight. I should just buy some dresses and skirts and wear that all summer, or until I get these last ten pounds off. Which let’s face it could never happen, who knows.

I really really look forward to my baby being able to sit up, and being able to really play with her. Play a game, do an activity, feel like I am teaching her something, or getting through to her. But she DOES progress daily. She can prop herself up on her hands while on her tummy, and scoot backward on the floor. She reaches for objects she wants, and knows how to pet Kona. She laughs and laughs (with Brian). She is becoming more engaged. Maybe I just want to know that she knows I am her mother and that I love her more than anything. I don’t know. She’s getting there.

She has been talking in her sleep lately. It’s cute. I rub her back and she quiets down again. Cutie boo.

I could have sworn I had a lot more to write about. I guess not, not right now. Going to go check on her, see if she wants to wake up and nurse. She has started to figure that out, too — that grabbing and squeezing the breast while drinking makes the milk come out faster. Smart baby.

We’ve been trying to take a picture of Freya in the front room armchair each month on the 27th (she was born 10/27), starting when she was three months old. She is five months old today.

Three months

Four months

Five months

Another growth comparison:

Napping with daddy at ten days old, and today at 5 months old:

Dreamed this morning that Freya was talking. I was holding her and she said “Mommy.” It was sweet. Woke up and looked at the clock, six am, though of course felt like five am. Freya nursed, then back to sleep. We stayed in bed another couple of hours. She snuggles up next to me on her side, and throws her little arm over my chest. Nothing compares to that.

We to through about five bibs of drool every day. This reminds me — there are quite a few things I prepared for or didn’t prepare for, and got to figure out through experience.

For example, some of you may recall the long process of selecting a crib I went through last summer. It took a while and I actually bought one then canceled, and picked a different one — made of solid maple, crafted in Oregon, just beautiful. I love this crib. It’s gorgeous. Freya has never slept in it.

I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me… I knew we wanted to co-sleep, but I figured oh, we’ll co-sleep a few months or something. I guess I didn’t think that far out at all. My mind was still wrapped up in pregnancy and birth.

So the crib is lovely, and she plays in it. Someday, I know she will sleep there. Maybe by next winter after she turns one. It will be a good toddler bed, and finally will be converted into a bench.

Here’s a picture of it with the changing pad tray Brian built last weekend. He did an amazing job. Spent thirty bucks on the materials at Home Depot. You can buy changing trays online for over two hundred dollars. It’s a wooden box. Don’t know how it’s worth that much.

Here’s a short video of her enjoying her mobile while on her changing pad.

The other thing I was unprepared for was pre-teething, which is the mass of drool that babies generate all day. I figured bibs were just for when they started eating food. No. It’s to keep their clothing dry. Also I think Freya’s gums are getting a little sore already — she chews on her teething toys at night and sometimes sucks her lower lip into her mouth.

Something else, and this goes back to yesterday’s topic: why on earth did I register for bottles? I guess I just thought I might need them… I’ve never used one though. So I have this box of Born Free bottles. Don’t worry, I will bust them out when Freya starts drinking water (she is not going to get juice or cow’s milk for a long while, just not necessary and juice is just sugar). Though I might teach her to drink from a sippy cup instead of a silicone nipple.

Ok gotta run, baby really needs to be put down for her morning nap.

Haven’t updated in so long! Well, taking care of a baby does swallow up 95% of one’s time, if you’re doing it properly, that is. Which I hope I am.

Freya is asleep right now but could awaken at any minute. How about some recent pics?

She weighs between 13 and 14 pounds now, and is a big chubby girl. She’ll be 5 months old on the 27th. I love her more than words can describe.

I desperately want and need to blog more, or even just write in my notebook. It’s such a cliche, but being a parent truly is the most difficult and most wonderful thing. I want to document what this is like. For the time being, I am lucky enough to be a full-time mother. I officially quit my job a few weeks ago.

Breastfeeding is going great, I am so glad I stuck with it. Freya has never tasted a drop of formula and hopefully she never will. That stuff is, well, kinda nasty. When she is six or maybe seven months old, we’ll let her try some mashed fruit and vegetables. I think she deserves fresh food as her introduction to a solid diet, so I want to avoid processed baby food as well. It will end up being less expensive, too.

But she will have mama’s milk as her main meal until she’s a year old at least, then we’ll probably start transitioning to more solid foods. I’m not putting an end date on nursing though. It will happen when it happens. By the time she is two we might just be doing one nurse at bedtime, which is pretty typical for those who do “extended” nursing (I don’t know why two years is considered extended when the World Health Organization recommends two years for all babies, but w/e. Breastfeeding is so inconvenient, which is of course the worst thing in the whole world to the typical American).

Anyhoo. Waiting for my hair to grow out… I super regret cutting it so short. Feh. Every day it grows a bit more. Right now I hate it so much.

Freya is hitting all her little milestones. She can prop herself up on her hands briefly, and rest on her elbows for long periods during tummy time. She vocalizes and laughs and smiles constantly. Getting good at using her hands, lately when I’m carrying her around she reaches out to try to touch things — yesterday she pet Kona! She found this very amusing, as did I. She’s just doing so great. Sleep is going well, too, maybe because she shares our bed. I loooove snuggling with her, especially in the morning after Brian gets up. I don’t plan to “sleep train” our baby; she’s not a puppy. Her little brain works differently than an adult’s, and her sleep patterns are very different. She still lives so much on instinct, so I trust that she’s waking to eat (or whatever) when she needs to. Fortunately she doesn’t keep me up long — I just pop her on my boob and we both doze off again.

I know that in time, as she matures, she will be ready to sleep on her own. But we do not buy into the misguided belief that babies should become independent of their parents as soon as humanly possible. Whoever heard of an independent baby? I don’t mind at all that my baby needs me — she’s a baby. Of course she needs her mother. I don’t want to separate her from me when she is so little and vulnerable. If we lived in the wild, I wouldn’t stick her in a different corner of the cave, either. Mama bears sleep with their cubs, and she is surely my little cub.

So if it wasn’t obvious yet, we are attached parents. But I knew these were the things I wanted to do before we even got pregnant and before I knew what Attachment Parenting was. It just feels natural, it just feels right. It just feels like what my mothering instincts tell me, and they would not steer me wrong.

Ok on that note, time to wake that little boo and give her some milk. Bye!