Cute videos of the girls (5 m.o)

Here are a few videos we took recently of the girls, 5 months old.

 

Anjali can sit up!

I was talking to Prosanta about our friend's twins (who are a bit younger than ours), and one of their babies can already sit up.. then I tried with Anjali and she did it! She sat up for only a few seconds before falling back or to the side, but still, it was a BIG improvement since the last times I had practiced sitting her up! I then tried it with Chaya, but she didn't want to do it. We've been practicing with both girls every day, also putting them on their bellies to see if they'll start to crawl.. no crawling or even trying to crawl yet. Here are a few photos of Anjali!

Five month old photos

Here are some recent photos of the girls.

Anjali (left), Chaya (right)

"How do you like my hair?"

Little old ladies telling each other stories

Chaya rolls over onto her stomach ALL THE TIME lately!

Mommy and Chaya

Anjali

Chaya

Chaya

Anjali wants to chew on Chaya's ear just a little..

Chaya (left) and Anjali (right)

Anjali

Chaya (left) and Anjali (right)

Anjali (left) and Chaya (right)

Eating solids on 6 month old "birthday"!

The girls turned 6 months old today, and we decided to celebrate this with banana puree! We had tried brown rice puree a few weeks ago, but then decided to wait until they were at least 6 months old. They have been REALLY looking at what we eat lately, staring at us. We've cheated and let them suck on a banana from time to time, they seemed to like it, we even gave them tiny little pieces a few times. So I thought bananas would be a good start since they had consumed a little already and seemed to be ok with it. We want to avoid grains for now because of all the allergy and food sensitivities issues. Here are videos of each girl trying banana puree for the first time. As you can see, Chaya was a lot more receptive to the whole idea than Anjali! ;)

No more breastfeeding.. for now

Which makes mommy very very sad. Babies still had blood in their stool, after I was off dairy for about 3 months, and soy for 3 weeks. So the pediatric gastroenterologist wanted me to start them on this special formula called Elecare (it contains pre-digested proteins, the amino acids are easier to digest) for 6 weeks, and then we can try breastfeeding again. If the blood is still there, they will have to stay on the formula. I've cried a lot over this whole thing, I REALLY wanted to exclusively breastfeed the girls for about a year. It makes me sad that they can't digest my milk properly, and it was damaging their intestines. I've decided to eliminate the top 8 food allergens from my diet (dairy, soy, wheat, fish, shellfish, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts), to see if it helps them digest my milk later on when we try breastfeeding again. This makes eating VERY difficult and tricky. It's not like I have tons of free time to go shopping for special ingredients, plan my meals and then cook them! But breastfeeding is very important to me, and I want to try everything I can to make it possible again.

So the formula adventure started a few days ago.. the babies HATE this new formula. I first tried giving it to them on its own, but they refused to drink it, they screamed and cried and wanted nothing to do with it. So then I mixed in a little breastmilk, didn't work. I basically had to give them a full bottle of breastmilk with a dash of formula in it to make them drink it. I kept trying to increase the amount of formula, but they really hated it. I tasted it myself to see if it really was that horrible, and I have to admit it tastes pretty bad, it has a bitter taste to it. So after reading about experiences with this formula online, we decided to try adding a little maple syrup to it, and VOILA, they took right to it! We've already reduced the amount of syrup by almost half, and it's only been a few days, so I'm pretty sure we will be able to wean them off the syrup until they are drinking only the pure formula.

I thought I was busy before... but now I have to make bottles, we have to constantly clean a whole bunch of bottles, not to mention finding the time to pump regularly everyday, if I want to keep my milk supply up. It's definitely been a big pain in the butt, but now that they are at least drinking the stuff pretty easily, it makes feeding them a little less stressful. Ok, a LOT less stressful. At one point, I'm not sure who was crying more, the babies, or me! Boy do I miss the ease of just lifting up my shirt to feed them, not to mention the poops! Compared to these formula poops, their breastmilk poops smelled like roses! They made mustard before, now we've moved on to pesto! YUCK!

Four months and a half

Here are some recent pictures of the girls.

Chaya passed out after a meal

Anjali on her tummy

Chaya (brown) and Anjali (beige)

Chaya and Anjali

Smiling Chaya and Anjali

I guess the tuques I knitted them won't actually fit them anymore by the time winter comes around!

The girls showing off their cute onesies ("I'm a little bit country" and "I'm a little bit rock and roll")

Chaya in her pretty dress, and Anjali in her adorable onesie

Family picture!

Anjali and the mirror

Chaya lifting her head

Chaya (left) and Anjali (right) showing off their beautiful shorts knitted by our friend

Anjali (left) and Chaya (right) in their cute New York City onesies

Chaya

Anjali

Anjali (left) and Chaya (right)

Mommy and Anjali, and her cute onesie given by a friend ("Made with love and science")

Trip to the E.R

It was a monday evening.. I was getting ready to feed Anjali around 8:30pm, she seemed quite hungry. First, I gave her a small bottle of pumped milk with the vitamin drops (they taste horrible, so I give it to them with a small bottle to wash it down). She would not drink the bottle, she kept crying, coughing, and being very fussy. I tried breastfeeding after, but she was so upset by this time that she wouldn't eat at all. She started coughing really weird, it made a loud raspy noise, and then I was worrying that she was having trouble breathing. I tried feeding her for maybe 15 minutes, she would eat for a minute, then start crying again, coughing, and would go hysterical. And then, very suddenly, she just fell asleep. I was scared that she was passing out, she slept very deeply. We got scared, Prosanta would try to wake her up, but she just kept sleeping. We didn't know what to do, so we called 911. An ambulance came, they checked her out, they said everything sounded and looked normal, good pulse, good breathing sounds, good oxygen level.. but if we wanted he could take her to the hospital. We said yes. So I rode with her in the ambulance while Prosanta drove with Chaya (who cried the whole time apparently). By the way, once we were in the ambulance, she was wide awake and happy, looking around at everything. Didn't seem sick at all of course!

We got there, doctor checked her out, he suspected it was croup. They put in an IV to draw blood, and took a chest x-ray. She LOVED the nurse who came in to hold her during the x-ray. He was talking to her in a high pitched voice, smiling at her, she kept smiling back at him. What a little cutie. The doctor concluded that it was definitely croup, an upper airway viral infection, quite common in small children. It's not really dangerous, you don't always need treatment for it, but when it interferes with feeding, then they recommend getting it checked out. She also had a little fever. They gave her a breathing treatment, and then a steroid syrup. It seemed to make her feel better, because she breastfed really well after that, and then fell asleep. I also fed Chaya while we were there, to hopefully not have to feed them again when we got home.

She wouldn't need any more meds, it would go away on its own, and she would start feeling better right away. We got home around 12am. Anjali went to bed very easily, Chaya woke up when we got home, but fell asleep pretty fast. Phew! Glad it was nothing too serious!!! It was quite scary to see her like that and not know what was going on.

UPDATE: We saw our pediatrician 4 days later, and she isn't convinced it was croup after all. Anjali didn't cough again after, never had a runny nose, and never seemed congested at all. If it was croup, it wouldn't have lasted only one night like that. Might have been her choking on the milk or vitamin drops, causing a spasm in her throat, or some sort of allergic reaction (but not as likely since she didn't have anything out of the ordinary). She said to let her know if it ever happens again, but it was most likely just a one time occurrence.