As Jojo entered his fourth month, he was morphing into a chubby smiley baby. Babies are supposed to double their birth weight by the fourth month, which means Jojo should reach 7kg. But this month he already weighed a whooping 8kg, above average but still fell within WHO standards. Jojo’s body was compact and firm, his eyes shone brightly, he had high energy and laughed a lot. I really believe that the Lotusbirth method we have chosen, combined with exclusive breastfeeding, are responsible for his robustness and health.
The breastfeeding routine has been established – every time he made the gaspy “agh-agh” sound, which was about every 60-90 minutes, I offered my breast. Seemed like he was always hungry, and he could nurse with the strength of a hoover. I’ve read that a normal breastfeeding session should be around twenty minutes at each breast, but with Jojo it only took less than ten minutes to completely deflate one breast and often he refused when I offered the other breast because he was already very full. So I became a nursing mom with one breast almost always larger than the other.
At first I was concerned that he’s not drinking enough but the energy, the soiled diapers, and the weight gain all proved otherwise. His latching-on was also perfect, and he obviously had developed a vacuum-like sucking ability because he hardly ever burped after feeding. Because he slept almost through the night, I had to express the breastmilk at 1AM and sometimes at 4AM to keep the production rate up. I produced even more compared to last month, 240ml every session and around 6 litres in the freezer. This much stock means I could go away for a few days now and leave Jojo to be fed breastmilk from a bottle. But really, where would I go? My whole life was here tied up to my baby. One weekend hubby offered to babysit Jojo so I went away for a four-hour spa treatment, but by the end of the third hour my breasts were so full, it was getting uncomfortable to lay on my stomach to enjoy the massage on my back. And I was thinking of Jojo on my way home, I arrived with wet bras from my leaky breasts (note to self: bring breastpad at all times). Sometimes I felt like a cow, and my breasts were udders. I was no longer a person, just a source of food.
Around the fourth month a mothers’s hormones went back to normal, and to my dismay this meant massive hairloss. Maybe I had the same hairloss before I became pregnant, but after 9 + 4 months of glowing skin and hair it felt like a lot of hair departing my head. Old Wives Tales Mom told me that when the baby starts to spit and dribble then the mother loses hair, which was of course a total myth. A baby starts to dribble and spit at around four months old, a mother’s hormones go back to normal at around four months after delivery and hence the hair loss, people just put those two things together. Regardless of the reason, this hairloss really did nothing to boost a new mother’s appreciation of her body. The extra weight was still pretty much there, I desperately wanted to exercise but there’s simply no chance to leave the house without the baby. What we chose to do was to take a walk around the neighborhood early in the morning, me with Jojo in a baby carrier and hubby with two dogs in tow.
As for Jojo, he was really a happy baby. He smiled and laughed a lot. He didn’t cry when receiving his vaccination shots. He’s getting more mobile, starting to turn left and right by himself but not quite rolling yet. He grew more agile with his hands, grabbing things and putting them in his mouth. He cooed happily when carried and cried when left alone. Oh, how he hated to be left on his own. So much that I couldn’t even pee without his howling for me three minutes after I left him in his crib to the bathroom next door. He hated tummy time. It’s really amazing to watch his growth and see his transformation, thinking from a tiny cell he’s grown into this little person.
As I was a stay-at-home mom, we didn’t see the necessity to hire a live-in nanny for Jojo like most Indonesians do. I was still nursing, Jojo was still taking 3-4 naps during the day, we have a maid living with us, so everything’s under control. Also, we both want to be involved in taking care of him, I did it most of the time and hubby whenever he’s not at work or away on business trips. Hubby’s actually pretty great at nursing Jojo and rocking him to sleep, and he also didn’t mind washing dirty diapers. But I was responsible for Jojo most of the time, and I quickly realized that this meant very little me-time. The whole day consisted of Jojo – carrying him, bathing him, nursing him, cleaning him, rocking him to sleep. When he was napping, I tried to take cat naps but normally there was always things to do around the house. I missed my carefree days, I missed going out whenever I wanted, I missed going to the movies, I missed spicy foods (not recommended for breastfeeding mothers) and I wondered if I’d ever get to be myself again. But who WAS I? My doctor must have performed a lobotomy along with the Cesarean surgery because I could hardly remember who I was before I had Jojo. I remembered what I COULD DO before getting pregnant, but I didn’t seem to recall what my goals were, what I aspired to, things like that. And it wouldn’t matter anyway, because I am a changed person. I’m a mother, and that will stay for the rest of my life. So I’d better shape my life around this new identity.
The Clueless Mommy 