So yes, I brought her back to the pediatrician again - I felt like I was being a stereotypical "first-time mom" since it was just for a little cough that Josie does once maybe every day or two, but they still wanted me to bring her in just in case it was something more serious, since she's so young. She sounded pretty good, though, so they think she might just have a slight cold. However, first they tested her for RSV (which is a common - and contagious - respiratory virus), which involved sticking a cotton swab up her nose, which was not Josie's favorite. I nursed her to try to calm her down, which worked beautifully, since she fell asleep within a couple of minutes and then I got to enjoy one of my favorite parts of having a baby so far - a warm baby sleeping on my chest :)
Also, Josie now weighs 17lbs! She definitely has been working on her baby fat lately, with her legs that just keep getting chubbier, her rolls that are getting ever-deeper creases on them, and her expanding, bib-holding chins :) It is wonderful to see that she's clearly thriving, and gratifying too - even with all the inconveniences of having to eat a ton and then also having to watch what I eat, it's my body that is nourishing her so well. I also think I'm becoming more enamored with her - I think she's innocence and sweetness personified, and spend probably odd amounts of time just staring at her like a lovesick puppy. Ah well. I know despite the proclamations at daycare almost every day that "Josie is the best!", she will eventually hit the terrible twos and not be quite so sweet and innocent :) But until then, I will enjoy it while I can.
We're still trying to adapt to our new routines with both Ryan and I working and Josie at daycare. She's still coming home practically delirious each day from all of the activity (and not enough sleep), but especially now that I've seen her at daycare earlier in the day, I'm even more convinced that she's doing really well there. She just really seems to love all the commotion, and she even has her "throne" now: the swing that sits in the hallway by the front door. So now she's right in the thick of the action as the kids play in the room right there or the parents come pick up their kids.
Ryan and I have our own special Josie times now. Ryan gets to hold her so I can eat dinner before I start nursing her down to sleep, while her mood becomes more erratic, switching from everything being hilarious, to sleeping, to crying, to being dazed out. Or attacking his hand like a shark:
And then my times with her are picking her up at daycare (when she was ridiculously happy a few days this week when I went to pick her up - huge cheesy grin, wriggling, kicking, and flinging herself around with glee, and making adorable noises. Love it.), and in the morning, when I'm attempting to nurse her before she goes off to daycare. I normally encourage her to sleep if she wants to after nursing, but since this is the one nursing that she needs to be awake after, we're still figuring out the right balance of keeping her awake vs. distracting her so much she doesn't eat. So she's getting a bit better about settling down enough to eat (although I have to nurse her in bed since nursing her in the nursery was apparently too much for her to handle), and now I'm enjoying our morning nursing sessions more, since she's awake and quiet and I can curl my legs up to create a nice little cocoon for her, and she curls her legs up and rests them on mine or my belly, while her hands are patting and grabbing onto me.
Speaking of Josie's hands, that was the big development area for the week. She has started trying to hold onto her bottles at daycare, and her burp cloths are still a favorite thing to grab at.
Her hands have become ever more fascinating to her (as Ryan noted, she looks like she's trying to solve a Rubik's cube, just minus the Rubik's cube).
Last weekend, Josie narrowed it down to just sucking on her thumb (rather than her whole fist) while she was at Ryan's parents' house, and she's gotten better at just sucking her thumb as the week went on, at least with her left hand (she still sucks on her entire right hand, for now at least). And while I am glad that she's able to self-soothe better now with her thumb, I was a bit sad the first night she put herself to sleep sucking her thumb, since that's one instance of her becoming more independent and not needing me as much :(
But I'm not complaining too much, because after having a pretty inconsistent week of sleep (either sleeping so deeply she barely moves during the night, to waking up - or at least fussing enough in her sleep that it wakes me up - every half hour), Friday night she slept from 7:30pm to 8:00am, just waking up once at 5:45am to eat. And that was sketchy at best, since she was fussing but her eyes were still closed, and I just grabbed her since I figured if she wasn't hungry yet, she would be soon enough. But her sleeping for that long was a surprise, since she had been fussing a few other times over the course of the night, and kept me awake for almost the entire 1 o'clock hour - during which time she had almost woken up a couple of times, but then settled back down after getting her thumb in her mouth. So this was her first full week of sleeping with one arm unswaddled for the first stretch of sleep each night. Next up in our attempts to wean her from being swaddled is leaving her one arm unswaddled for the whole night, since she tends to not sleep as well after the first stretch. I had been more worried about that, but after seeing the benefit of her having her hand (i.e., thumb) free, maybe it won't be as bad. We'll see!
To wrap this up, here's a couple pictures of Josie holding herself up better than ever, and not crying during tummy time! She's not rolling over yet, although she's started rolling over to her sides at least.
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