9 months and planning ahead

So C turned 9 months old last week. He's amazing. Super mobile - pulls himself up to standing with ease all day long (and sits down so carefully, it cracks me up). We suspect he'll be walking pretty soon - he barely has to hold on when he stands up now so his balance is getting pretty good.

He has 8 teeth. We had a dentist appointment in mid-August and now brush his teeth daily. One of the reasons to see the dentist was that I wanted a second opinion on C's lip tie. I'd gone to a pediatric ENT and she confirmed he has one (level 3) but didn't recommend correcting it. However, this was after she told me she'd never corrected a lip tie, despite being the ENT who does all the tongue ties at our health center. Weird. So the dentist agreed - he does do (laser) corrections, but since C's doesn't go between his teeth, he thinks he may not need it.

He weighs 18.5 pounds, and is 29.5" long. This puts him at about the 25th percentile for weight and the 90th percentile for length. Long and lean! He's in 12-18 month one pieces and tops (and is close to growing out of the one-pieces) and still in some 3-6 month bottoms (but also some 12-18 month ones if they have all elastic waists).

He's a really happy baby. He's vocal (and sings to music) and grins and laughs easily. We just started a Music Together class - he's usually observant for the first half of class, and then gets into the instruments and singing and dancing. He enjoys food: we've done Baby Led Weaning the whole time - took about 2 months for him to switch from "food is interesting and fun" to "food helps when I'm hungry", and now he eats quite a bit at each meal.

I don't know that I ever really blogged about it, but we do cloth diapers during the day (itti bitti tutto's) and disposables at night. Around 8 months I read the book Diaper Free Before 3 and started putting C on the potty before and after naps, and any time I noticed him holding his breath or grunting like he needed to poo. We have about a 50-60% hit rate, and often he'll pee a little bit even if his diaper was wet, suggesting he knows what the potty is for (e.g. he doesn't just use the potty when his bladder is full). We're generally quite good at getting poops in the potty. My mom is totally into this early potty training thing and is triumphant when he successfully uses the potty for her. Hee!

I started introducing formula when he turned 8 months as I planned to fully wean by 9 months so I could start prepping for a FET to give C a sister (our embryos were fully tested so we know the genders). (I wouldn't have weaned except for wanting to start the sibling journey quickly given how long it took us to have C.) I dropped a nursing session every 4-7 days until early September, when I tried to drop the morning one and he got really angry. So I ended up doing a little nursing and some bottle for morning and evening sessions, and then having my husband do the bottle every morning (and evenings when he was home in time) which worked really well. My last nursing session was September 11 (though I didn't realize it at the time, *sniff*), and my last pumping session was September 12 (2 oz). That last week I was only doing one nursing session and one or two small pumping sessions a day. I thought that would make it easier to stop altogether, but fully weaning was actually really uncomfortable. The first couple of days weren't terrible, but then I had 3-4 days of really swollen breasts with hard lumps - made it hard to sleep, or do anything (like bathing C) that required leaning on something. Ice and ibuprofen helped. And finally today, for the first time, I'm wearing a regular underwire bra in my pre-pregnancy size. 32DD's have never looked so small.

It was hard to wean. I loved breastfeeding C - it went smoothly after we got him a good latch early on, and I loved being able to calm him down. And it was so convenient compared to prepping bottles with formula. But it's also nice to be able to wear normal clothes without worrying about nursing access, and now that C is only on bottles, we've been able to get into a really good routine:

Wake up (typically 6-7am)
7oz bottle
Breakfast 60-90 minutes later
Nap 1 (3 hours after he wakes up)
7 oz bottle after nap
Lunch 60-90 minutes later
Nap 2 (3-3.5 hours after he woke up from Nap 1)
7 oz bottle after nap
Dinner 60-90 minutes later
7 oz bottle at bedtime (usually 60ish minutes later)

That last bottle we hope to downsize gradually so he's processing less liquid overnight. :) But right now we don't want to mess with anything as he's been consistently sleeping through the night. When we first got on bottles, we were doing 5 oz, then tried 6 oz, and now 7 oz often gets finished. Per day he's usually drinking about 25 oz and he's eating pretty good meals for solids. I'm curious if his weight percentile will shift at his 12 month appointment.

I know I teased you up there about planning a FET... I've been on birth control pills for almost 2 weeks now, and my last one will be on Saturday. Next week I have bloodwork to check hormone levels, and will have a period (which I fear will be epic since my period didn't come back while I was breastfeeding). And my FET is scheduled for 10/19! We re-ran my immunology bloodwork earlier this month and it's really good - barely abnormal, which is great for me. So we'll do two Intralipid infusions, and then two more if I get pregnant, but no Humira this time around.

It's funny, both DH and I had forgotten about the estradiol valerate shots. That there were shots, that they're IM shots, and that they're twice a week. In all our IF journey, we only did two FETs, both in 2012, and the second one resulted in C. So the routine wasn't imprinted on our brains like all the stimulation protocols were...

I'm mostly eager about the FET. I'm not anxious at the moment, and C keeps me so busy that the time will fly by (hoping that's true for the 2WW!) It took 3 transfers of perfect embryos to have C, so it's very likely the first transfer won't be the one. The only anxiety I (we) have is that of our 8 frozen embryos, only 3 are girls, and we really want our next child to be a girl. But we're lucky to have those 3 (not to mention the 8 total) and we're crossing our fingers it all works out. So glad we did the second donor cycle so we'd have all these genetically related embryos stored up...

I'm still on twitter, and I still read blogs, though often a month or so behind. With Google Reader gone, I'm using Feedly, which is great for reading, and not so great for commenting, so I've become a lurker on almost every site. Do know that I'm rooting for all of you, and I'm following your journeys as best I can.