Six Month Growth Spurt?

Wiggle Bean (ok, not her real name but that is what I will call her on this blog) has been eating like a champ these past couple nights. Yeah!!!

For some reason she only eats about 8 ounces of milk a day at daycare, sometimes only 4 ounces. This is for an entire day, 6:45 AM to 4:45 PM. I usually nurse her before taking her to daycare but I still think that only 4-8 ounces a day seems a little low. I assume she would let our daycare provider know if she was hungry. She does get distracted really easily so that might be the problem.

It is the same way with naps, she goes all day with out napping at daycare but on weekends she naps great for mommy and daddy (more mommy than daddy!). She probably thinks if she naps at daycare she will miss something fun.

When she comes home it seems like she eats non stop. We usually nurse when we get home around 5:00. Around 6:00, I attempt to give her cereal or another one of the foods I have made for her. I say attempt because usually we (yes, both of us and sometimes the walls and floor!) usually end up wearing more than she eats. We have play time after dinner and she might nurse again around 7:00. About 8:00 or 8:15 we start our bedtime routine and she takes an 8 ounce bottle before going to bed. Then she usually woke up around 2:00 for a night feeding and would sleep till 6:00.

I am thinking that she must be going through a growth spurt because these past two nights she has ramped up her eating. Wednesday we received our organic produce delivery and there were fresh green beans in the box. So far we have tried sweet potatoes, carrots and apples (all with limited success). We try adding one new food a week so that we can monitor for allergies. It was time to add a new one so I whipped up a small batch of green beans just to try it out. Holy cow, that girl loves green beans. She was like a little bird chirping for bite after bite. She ate two servings of beans, then two servings of cereal and followed it up with chugging a bottle of milk.

I thought it might be a fluke so we tried again Thursday night. She went through a serving of green beans, apples, cereal and a bottle again. All with out fussing or spitting food at me. She must have been super tired last night (no nap at daycare) because she fell asleep during her 7:00 nursing session. I put her in bed assuming that she would just take a little nap and be up again before her regular bed time. She slept until about 9:00 when she wanted a little snack and then back to sleep she went. The problem is now she is getting up twice in the night for food. Once around 12:30 and again around 3:30. Unfortunately, supply levels are dropping so at the 3:30 feeding I do not have enough to satisfy her and have to make a bottle before she will go back to sleep.

I think that it is time for daycare to start solids. Hopefully, it will help balance out her appetite and she will spread her food intake out over the entire day rather than the 3 hours we are home before bed time.

It would be great if she would also start sleeping through the night! Shouldn't that start soon?