My tell all of my parenting experiences thus far...

Playing in her exersaucer her papa and nana bought her for Christmas! This has been a lifesaver to help me get things done around the house while she plays in it!

Ok.....so if any of you reading this are somewhat close to me and talk to me occasionally you will know that I was blessed with a BEAUTIFUL baby girl but not an easy baby girl! Harper is almost 5 months old now and I will admit that this parenting gig has been more difficult than I was hoping, but not expecting, for. Things started off strong after she was born. She quickly slept pretty well during the nights and when she would feed at night she would go immediately back to sleep with no problems. I read many books and decided that between BabyWise and The Baby Whisperer were my two favorites. So of course I thought that as long as I followed these books ideas and suggestions that I would end up with an "easy" child. Things were going pretty well and I thought I was on the right path to easy parenting when all of a sudden she was crying nonstop! I would lay her down for her naps during the scheduled time and she would SCREAM! I thought that she was just testing me but it just would not stop. If you are a mom and you have read these books then it will tell you that yes it is difficult to allow your child to "Cry It Out" but things will get better with time. This was not the case for me. I recall one day Josh was working and Harper and I were at the house. I tried all day to lay her down for naps and it was unsuccessful. The poor little girl was crying so hard and so loud and I was doing everything in my power to make it stop. I would rock her, walk with her, bounce her, feed her, whatever came to mind I tried but none of it helped. I will tell you that I ended up in the closet with the door closed in the dark holding her as close to me as possible and we were both crying. At this point I knew that this could not be a normal thing. I understand that babies cry, but not to this extent.

I, for some reason, did not want to be perceived as the mom that freaks out about everything. I didn't want to take her to the doctor and be the crazy lady that thinks everything is a bigger issue than it was. However, I recorded her meltdown that day with my iPhone and showed it to Josh when he came home so he could understand what was going on and why I was so incredibly stressed out. We decided to go ahead and make a doctors appt for the following day (she was around 5 or 6 weeks old). When went to our pedi's office the next day he said that her symptoms were most likely from having acid reflux. Are you kidding? A tiny little thing like this can have acid reflux?? Well, apparently so. Along with her prescription of Zantac that she takes two times a day, I have had to change my diet since I am breast feeding. NO dairy, NO caffeine, NO spicy foods. The caffeine & spicy foods were no big deal to grasp. Dairy though, that has been a struggle! I absolutely love milk, cereal, cheese, ice cream, yogurt, cottage cheese....you name it and I love everything else that falls in to the dairy category. But to choose between continuing to breast feed my daughter or giving up a food group, I decided to sacrifice the food. I mean I had already given up some of my favorite things, i.e. alcohol, sunny side up eggs and processed meats while I was pregnant it was just a new adjustment.

With the medicine she is on it is very weight sensitive. As she gains weight her dosage needs to be increased. Unfortunately, I have to find this out the difficult way when she needs her bump in medicine by going through a few hard days of her throwing up, being very fussy and not napping much at all. The nice things is that the pediatrician I was seeing in Norman has triage nurses on call 24 hours a day. I would simply call the nurses & tell them what her symptoms were, they would contact our doctor and then they would write me a new prescription with her increased dosage. We have not yet gone to meet our new pediatrician in Duncan but I am hoping things are as easy with him/her!

My next biggest battle that is correlated with the acid reflux is our daytime napping. I have talked to so many of my other mom friends and their kiddos nap like a dream! Three to four times a day for 1.5 hours to 2 at EACH NAP! I am quite lucky if Harper naps for 2 total hours throughout the day. I am so extremely lucky that I get to stay at home and take care of my little one, but I feel like a failure a lot because it is very hard to get all the chores done around the house, have the errands run, dinner on the table when she does not sleep much. Fortunately she is beginning to get to the point where she can entertain herself for a little bit of time so I am able to get things done. Again, since my friends little ones were napping so well I figured it was something wrong I was doing so I gathered all the information and decided to try the Cry It Out Method again. You see Harper will go down for a nap just fine but she wakes up after 30-45 minutes and will not go back down. Like I said, I decided to try the CIO method and that lasted only 4 days. She was a wreck, I was a wreck, and my poor husband was wondering what in the world was wrong with us! She would cry until the time she was "supposed" to be getting up and it never improved. Because she was crying it would make her spit up and the back of her hair was wet & again, I knew that this was not right for us.

With some additional research online I have found out that it is very common for babies with acid reflux to only want to nap for 30-45 minutes. Their reflux will wake them up and if you try to let them CIO it only aggravates the reflux and makes it worse. So I just have to come to terms that I do not have the "easy" child. She will probably not nap as well as I would like her to until she gets over her reflux issues (they can start disappearing around 5-7 months and typically do not last past 1 year).

What I can say is that although being a mom has not been a walk in the park with my little cutie Harper I have found that when I relax, stop stressing over what a book tells me to do, and just take her for what she is I realize that I am the most blessed person. Harper smiles ALL THE TIME, she giggles, she loves music and dancing, hearing herself talk and is a very happy little girl. Being a first time mom is hard but at the same time it is the coolest thing to be. To see the day to day progress of her learning and developing is simply amazing.

I know this is an long blog post, it is just something I wanted to get out there. I want to end this post by stating that I truly have the most amazing husband that I could ask for. He has never made me feel bad for not getting something done around the house when we are having a bad day and he does such a great job of helping out when he is home with us. I hope Harper understands that she has a dad that loves her more than she will ever be able to imagine. She has already has him wrapped around her little finger and he will do absolutely anything for her. I just wanted to say....Thank you Josh!! Thank you for cooking me breakfast on your days off or going to the store to get me a Sierra Mist Natural. Thank you for playing with Harper in her room so I can try and get in a nap. Thank you for understanding when you come home and we have had a bad day. Thank you for being you and for honestly being the perfect husband, best friend and dad Harper and I could ever ask for. I love you so much and I love our perfectly imperfect family!