There She Goes!

One day, I decided to show Ava how soft things can feel nice. I think she was playing with a scarf of mine and I took one end of the scarf and gently brushed her face with a clump of strings that run along the ends of the scarf. She sat completely still and closed her eyes as I lightly traced her cheeks, nose, forehead, ears. What surprises me is that since then, she'll find something stringy - usually on a scarf but sometimes even a shoelace - and trace her own face. It seems to be soothing for her. Just the other day, she woke up from a nap and began crying and continued to cry after I picked her up from the crib. I sat down with her and a scarf and started tracing her face lightly with it. She immediately calmed down, shut her eyes, and became so relaxed that she was nearly falling over. At other times, I've put her to sleep tracing her face with something light and soft.

Well, I'm in the progress of weaning Ava to cow's milk. Sometimes she accepts it, sometimes she doesn't. I've tried almond milk and yogurt drinks. As with the cow's milk, sometimes she accepts them, sometimes not. Last night, she guzzled down both almond milk and a yogurt drink. I think I have her down from 3-4 nursings a day to 2 nursings a day so some progress is being made. I'm not frustrated or worried about it - I know eventually she will learn to enjoy cow's milk and be weaned.

I must admit that I'm looking forward to her being totally weaned by her first birthday, just a few weeks away. I wish I could say that I have nursed her a whole year happily all on my own but in all honesty, it was mostly because I had to. Ava would never take a bottle and I suppose that if I had really wanted to wean her, I would've made her learn to eat from a bottle. A lot of you probably know that I've made several attempts to get Ava to take a bottle and you probably saw how Ava would barely eat from it. Well, when Ava was 6 months old, I was nearly at the end of my tether with nursing Ava full-time without a bottle. That was my last attempt to get Ava on the bottle. It was almost traumatic and had both Ava and myself in tears that I decided it wasn't worth it. I just dug deep and found perseverance somewhere and kept on nursing. After a while, it got easier. Now, it's hardly a blip on my radar. I don't really have a sense of pride or accomplishment at having nursing Ava a year - just a relief that it's not so hard anymore. 

I need to explain, though, that I don't want to leave you with the impression that I was thoroughly miserable nursing Ava. It was a choice that I made before she was born and I'd committed to nursing a whole year....with the expectation that she would also be able to take a bottle with my milk when necessary so I could leave her with someone and get my hair cut, buy groceries, etc. 

Anyway, you grandparents are probably rubbing your hands together gleefully at the thought of having Ava all to yourselves without her mama close by to feed her and I'm just as gleeful about handing her over from time to time :-)