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The week before I "designed" an invitation using Instagram stories and then texted it out - the whole process took up 15 minutes of her morning nap, leaving me nearly an hour to browse donut themed party items before realizing nothing was going to arrive in time anyways (okay, I did cave and order a bag of two dozen plush donuts, figuring they'd look cute and we'd get a lot of play out of them after).We scheduled the "party" for right after her morning nap and ran out to pick up a ton of donuts (plus some bagels) first thing in the morning. It was a little more work to clean up at the end of the day, but it wasn't too bad and it made me happy. The stars aligned and Adrian took her naps exactly on schedule that day, which meant she was wide awake and happy for the whole party - we scheduled it based on her usual naptimes, but that's never a guarantee, so this was a happy surprise.

So in her short life, we've used the SNOO , we've done bedsharing (on and off starting around 11 weeks), we did gentle self-soothing training to get her in her crib around 5 months, we went back to bedsharing during a sleep regression (in her room this time, so that we could at least take turns getting decent sleep), and then we realized it was time to sleep train for real. She wasn't falling asleep on her own at night anymore, and we had to hold her for a long time to get her to sleep and then half the time she'd wake up as soon as we set her in her crib and we had to start over. The other half of the time she'd sleep for an hour or two and then wake up, and the only way we could get her to sleep was by lying down with her (and then staying there all night, because she'd wake up multiple times and look for us). I don't expect that this means we have a perfect sleeper on our hands for all time, and we've had small regressions when she's teething or not feeling great, but honestly, just knowing that we can do this, and that D and I can eat dinner and talk about our day and then actually get some sleep, is worth it, even if everything changes in another couple of months., to get through the crying.

She's almost always all business, eating fairly quickly every 3 - 4 hours and then wanting to get on with doing something else (other than in the first few months, when cluster feeding was real).I did struggle in the beginning and somehow I wasn't fully prepared for that. She did pre- and post-feeding weights, checked the baby's latch, showed D how to help get the baby in position, and told me that my postpartum bra situation was an actual travesty that needed to be remedied ASAP (shockingly, the $10 bralette I purchased from Target was not cutting it). My sister's (male) doctor told her that you won't properly bond with your baby if you multitask while breastfeeding, to which I say - spoken like someone who has never had to sit alone and feed a baby for 45 minutes out of every hour, for weeks on end. I sometimes feel a pang when I feed her right before bed and realize that these days are numbered, but for the most part I feel pretty relieved that we're close to being done and that pretty soon I won't have to think about the pumping/feeding logistics.

If I left later then I would just feed her instead of pumping first thing.(pumping 3x a day at work, feeding/pumping at least once per night). Personally, I found that my supply wasn't really impacted by dropping the night feeds - if I'm on duty and feed her at night, I usually pump 4 - 5 ounces at 6am, whereas if I sleep through I pump 8 - 10 ounces at 6am - By 7 months she would rarely eat more than 9 ounces per day at daycare, often less, and with three pumping sessions I was routinely pumping 12 ounces (plus pumping more in the morning and pre-bedtime sessions). I had a small dip in the beginning, but then my body adjusted and between the two pumping sessions I would produce 10 - 12 ounces, which is almost the same as what I was getting out of three pumping sessions.(pumping twice a day at work, sometimes skipping night feeds):at home.at work.