Girls update

My girls are a joy but also a trial..

Sophie has been refusing to eat and throwing up everything we feed her for some reason..not because she's sick, she actually forces herself to throw up the food. We think she might either be
(1) teething
(2) doing it to get attention
Either case, we do not know how to help her or reassure her. Its been going on for 5 days already. She no longer has a pot belly and instead has a flat stomach.. and she feels so much lighter =(

So now, we have to feed her very slowly and very carefully to try to prevent her from throwing up. Coaxing her to finish up the food is a tortuous process punctuated by much screaming and wriggling (on her part) and distraction methods (on our part). Last night I managed to feed her 1 and a half tofu and that was a great achievement. Funnily, the food she is willing to eat seems to vary from day to day. Some days she will be perfectly happy eating potatoes but other days she will protest it? And same goes for all other food.

Of course, there is also the cleaning up to be managed when she throws up. Sigh!! Clean her, clean whoever is holding her, clean the high chair she was in, repeat in a few hours time for the next meal. She is really going through all her clothes at a very fast rate. Like fashion parade like that.

SO now the strategy with Sophie is to feed her small amounts round the clock. Like 1 spoon of cereal in morning (previously it was 1 bowl), 1 hour later milk, 1 hour later biscuit, 1 hour later more milk, etc. =(

Zoe has developed a habit of yowling her head off in the evenings. She is relatively quiet and peaceful during the day, but after dinner she'll be continuously yelling, crying, drinking for 2-3 hours in a row till she finally falls asleep from exhaustion at about 10 or 11pm. So during those 2-3 hours, we have to carry her constantly and try to find ways to make her more comfortable.. no idea why the whining too!

And she is a real big drinker.. my breasts do not seem to supply fast enough for her liking, so she BITES! Argh! In fact she bit me so hard last night that my nipples are bleeding.. man.. pain!! So to give my poor boobies a break, I've to pump out the milk instead. Which is another time consuming event as I do not really respond well to the pump and takes me 1.5 hours to get out 1 feed worth of milk.. very frustrating as I can still feel there's milk inside but just no letdown. To use a single-side pump I need 2 hands as I've to constantly massage!! Sigh!!

It doesn't help either that my pump motor seems to be failing. For some reason it keeps on auto-offing and I need to break off my massage rhythm to re start up the pump. Its an Avent Isis IQ Uno, anyone has any idea how to solve the problem?? Medela pump does not work as well for me as Avent, strangely enough, so I would want to stick to Avent as much as I can.

So my schedule for the day runs somewhat like this:
6am: Zoe wakes up for first feed and goes back to sleep
7am: Sophie wakes up and needs to have milk and bathe, then cereal
7.30am: I start pumping out the overnight milk
9am: Zoe wakes up for the day and needs to bathe
9.30am: Feed Zoe .. sometimes I pump simultaneously with this feed from the bloodied side of my boobs
10am: Sophie's mid morning milk / snack
11am: Sophie's nap.. IF we can coax her to sleep
12 noon: Lunch for adults
12.30pm: Feed Sophie her lunch (War #1 begins).. may need to continue on to bathe Sophie again
1pm: Feed Zoe
2pm: Feed Sophie snack
2.30pm: Playtime with the 2 sisters together (depends on them though)
3.30pm: Sophie's mid afternoon milk / snack
4pm: Sophie's nap.. IF we can coax her to sleep
4pm: Feed Zoe
6pm: Sophie's dinner
6.30pm: Adults' dinner
7pm: Feed Zoe.. if she gets hungry early then I've to eat dinner later
8pm: Playtime with the 2 sisters together before Zoe starts getting cranky
8.30pm: Sophie's night time milk
9pm: Sophie sleeps
8.30pm-10plus or 11pm: Feed + entertain cranky Zoe till she drops off to sleep
Drop asleep from exhaustion myself.

NB. Insert other random chores in between as Roselyn is away.