4 months

April is 4 months...I can't believe it. She is changing so much everyday. Some mornings I look at her and I swear she is growing overnight.

In terms of her development, I think she is right on track. She can roll from her tummy to her back and from her back to her tummy (she almost rolled off her bed doing this). She is sitting well with support. She sat once without support for a few minutes but has refused to do it since then. She can grasp and hold things and is beginning to pass items between her hands. She can sort of scoot, though at the moment she is more into doing the army crawl. She is still working on laughing; so close but not a true laugh.

Sleep is still something she is trying to figure out. We had about a week or so when she sleep for 6-8 hours at night and took a 2-3 hour nap in the afternoons. It was really nice. But now we are back to cat naps, waking in the night to nurse and she doesn't sleep for more than 5 hours in a row at night (last night she woke every 3 hours). It's tough because she just doesn't understand how tired she is so she will melt down and cry until she finally falls asleep. I've started letting her sleep in our big bed even for naps and that seems to help.

EC for us is hit a bit of a wall. April has started fighting hard against sitting on the potty or being held over the sink so she is having more wet diapers than before. My solution to this is to just lay her on the floor or on the change table over a pad or open diaper and then cue her or wait until she starts to go and make the cue noise. I feel like this is a good middle ground. Yes I'm doing more laundry but I'm still communicating with her. I think if I continue this way, eventually she will be ready to sit on the potty again.

Four months later and her favorite things are still books, music and baths. She is also enjoying finger play and rhymes more. She also really likes looking around at nature (she likes trees and flowers) when we go for walks. I'm so enjoying her right now. She's has the most kissable cheeks and for the moment she's ok with the overload of mommy kisses.

Elimination Communication

Elimination communication (EC) is something that I started looking into long before April was born. I had seen it work for friends of ours and I wanted to know more. EC is the idea that infants can recognize when they need to eliminate and can will cue you. Elimination communication is just that, communication. You learn what your baby's signals are and then you teach them your own signals for when it's time to eliminate.
Starting the EC process actually seemed overwhelming in the first couple weeks. I was barely keeping my head above water so I wasn't ready to take on the extra step. But once I felt comfortable taking on the challenge, I started slowly. At first it was just times during the day that we would take off her diaper and just keep her over a pad. This time helped with her diaper rash and helped me to observe what she did right before she peed or pooped. Then I started teaching her the cues over the open diaper or waterproof pad. Whenever she peed or pooped I would make the "pssss" sound. Then finally we started putting her on the potty and cuing her. It worked so well. April hates diapers in general and is especially unhappy with a wet one so EC has been awesome for us both (yeah, fewer dirty diapers is always fine by me).
The first full day of doing EC, we caught almost all her poops and most of her pees (I think we missed one little poop at night and two pees). The next couple days we had more misses but in general we still did quite well. Now I know almost all her signals and even if she doesn`t signal I know that she generally needs to pee every 20 minutes so I take her to the potty anyways. Misses don`t really bother me because for me EC is about the communication not the number of catches.
I`ve decided we are just going to do EC part-time. I don`t usually potty her when we are out and about. First because she tends to be fussy in general when we go out so it`s really hard to read her signals and second because I can`t always get to a bathroom and I don`t really like just doing it in someones bushes. I do have a little container with a lid that I keep in the car and sometimes before I put her in the car seat I will potty her. So I`ll do it when I can but usually when we go out I just stick to diapers.
Also, we don`t do much of the EC at night. April sleeps with me in our bed at night and although I have her close and I can recognize her signals better, getting her up and taking her to the potty at night is a little to stimulating and it`s often hard to get her to go back to sleep. Instead, I keep extra diapers in the bedroom and just change them right there.
We have a couple potties around the house. I prefer to use the potties rather than squatting over the toilet with her or holding her over the sink. We use the infant potty and the Beco potty. We have a Bjorn potty but it is a little big so we will use it more when she is bigger. If you use the infant potty I recommend getting the cover because April hated the cold plastic so would often refuse to go on the potty. Things are much better with the cover.
Ok, so there is my EC story. Wondering if it would work for you? I can almost guarantee that it would. You can start EC at any age and do it casually, part-time or full-time. My recommendation is to read The Diaper Free Baby and visit Diaper Free Baby for resources and support. The best thing is just to be open to the other level of communication you can have with your baby. Even if you choose not to follow through with EC, just the knowledge is beneficial. You will be amazed at all the little hints your baby is giving you.

Where We Stand

Everyone has their own views on how to raise children. It seems logical that many of us raise our own children the way we were raised. Not that my parents did anything wrong in raising me, in fact I think I turned out pretty good. The journey to adulthood however was a rocky one and I'm hoping by recognizing what I felt I needed in my childhood (and ultimately didn't really get) that I can give my own child a better journey towards the grown up they choose to be. Here are my thoughts on how we plan on raising our child (these are just thoughts, I want to be totally flexible so that I can adjust to my child's needs as well as my own).

Birth: Seems like the logical place to start. We are planning a peaceful homebirth. I have a great husband, doula and midwife so my confidence in our choice to birth at home is really high. I feel like I can be relaxed here and that things are more likely to go the way nature intended it if we are away from the medical world. Plus I can't tell you how wonderful it sounds to give birth in your home, have a shower in your own bathroom and crawl into your own bed with your new little baby and sleep uninterrupted by nurses and hospital going-ons.

Breastfeeding: The benefits of breastfeeding are impossible to ignore. Formula is not an option for us. We have a postpartum doula who will help me get the hang of breastfeeding if needed. I am also hoping to breastfeed for an extended period of time. It would be great if we could breastfeed until age 4 or 5 but we will just have to go with the flow on that one.

Sleeping: I was "taught" to sleep using the Faber method of crying it out. I don't think this method taught me to self soothe but rather taught me anxiety. We plan to co-sleep to the best of our abilities. We have a very small bedroom so we don't really have room for a family bed. We have a side-car co-sleeper for the early days but once the baby is older we are going to have find a different solution to the bed issue. The other problem that could affect our ability to co-sleep is that I am a light sleeper and Jon snores. If our baby is a light sleeper Jon may have to sleep elsewhere or if the baby makes noises all night I may not be able to handle so little sleep between the two of them. Again, we will just have to see how it goes.

Diapering/Pottying: I think I've mentioned before that we are going to try to practice Elimination Communication with our child. Jon and I both find it really strange to teach your child to eliminate into a diaper only to tell them a few years later that they should actually eliminate into the toilet. Baby's have the ability to recognize when they need to potty and if you recognize those cues of when they need to go and take them to the potty they will learn from the beginning to communicate with you about their elimination needs. Being that this is our first child I'm not putting a lot of pressure on myself to catch every pee or poop but I do hope that we can communicate regularly enough that eventually we don't really have to work at it, it will just be as natural as nursing. I do recognize that we will need to use diapers and when it comes to diapers I'm going to try to be strictly cloth diapering. We do have some disposables but I'm hoping to only use those when we are traveling and can't wash diapers or if we run out of clean diapers (which really should never happen but hey, it's good to be prepared).

Parenting: I believe in attachment parenting. I believe that children are to be respected as individuals from infancy. I'm not here to lord over my children, I'm here to love them and guide them. Creating a strong bond between mother and child is not about coddling them but about establishing love and trust. I want my child to be free to express themselves from an early age and be allowed to make their own decisions. However, I don't want to be disrespected in the process (for example, I don't want my needs for quiet or rest to be ignore because my child wants to run around yelling whenever he/she feels like it). We've been looking into the Montessori philosophy and reading books like Montessori from the Start and How to Raise an Amazing Child The Montessori Way. While I don't plan on using everything outlined in those books, I do really appreciate the emphasis on responsibility and respect. I feel that manners are an important social attribute and I like the way Montessori goes about teaching manners. We also plan on using the philosophy of consensual living in our home. Consensual living means that the needs of everyone are not only acknowledged but are included in the decision making process and solutions are mutually agreed upon. And finally I hope that in my communications with my family that I can continue to practice non-violent communication. I will admit that it can be real challenge, especially when I'm tired or stressed, but I do notice people respond well to it and I think it will be an effective method of communication with my child.

Schooling: Our plan regarding school is up in the air. I know that I do not want to send my child through the public school system however I'm not overly comfortable with homeschooling. I've been thinking of either a Montessori school (though many in the area don't go past grade 3) or a bio-regional school. I'm thinking that I will just put our child on the waiting lists and decide later. I've got more research to do.

Woolly Goodness

The other day I received a package of woolly goodness in the mail. Since we are planning to do EC (elimination communication) with our child we would like to have some wool clothing on hand. Wool is naturally water repellent so having your baby in wool pants during outings or wool diaper covers at night makes it easier on you and your baby when misses occur. I had ordered some beautiful gender-neutral purewool for some wool longies and the wonderful Jennifer Wilson-Parkes knit them up for me. She has a great little shop on Etsy called Dragon's Treasure. She also does amazing custom work.

 These are the two that I custom ordered. I love the orange and blue colorway, I think it is a great gender neutral pair of pants. The burgundy pair are the newborn size and I love them. They are both so soft!

 Jennifer is just so awesome. Her son had outgrown his newborn woollies so she sent them along for me. I love the little cargo pants!

She also included these awesome diaper covers made from up-cycled sweaters. Isn't she just so talented and cool? Seriously check her out if you are looking for woolly stuff for your baby or if you knit since she sells patterns on her Etsy site. Thank you Jennifer!!