Baby on Bottle.

Today my Baby Rae drank from a bottle. Like, the whole thing. With no problem.

We had tried getting her on board with the whole bottle thing about a month ago after thinking how nice it would be to go out every once in a while sans the kiddo. And how nice it would be for her Daddy to be able to feed her every once in a while, y'know...so Daddy could cuddle and feed her. Etcetera, etcetera. It wasn't really that successful...although, admittedly, our attempts were fairly half-hearted.

My own Mama and Papa are planning on coming out for a visit in a week and a half...and they offered to send us out for the night while they watched the Baby. Amidst my calculations of how that would work...how we'd have to only be gone for a couple hours, or how it would have to be after I'd fed her for the night and it was just time to put her to sleep, and yaddy yaddy yadda....I found a renewed desire to try the bottle.

So I did.

Luckily, she just finished a big growth spurt so there was some milk to spare, thanks to her ferociously frequent feedings for the last week-and-a-half (ow, tender). I wasn't even patient enough to wait until her Daddy got home. But it didn't really matter. She got it like a pro.

I was so excited! But not all excited. Which surprised me.

I think I felt a little bit guilty, for one...like I was being selfish, making her take the bottle and all. I worked through that one okay...it didn't appear to be an uncomfortable thing for her to take the bottle or anything...and she still got her cuddles during meal time. It's not all for my own comfort...it's also for hers...so if I was away from her for some reason at a feeding, she would be okay. So I think I'm good there, now.

But there was an itty bitty sad part of me, too, that--I think--was mourning the realization that she's not 100% dependent on me anymore, all-of-the-sudden. Like, I just realized she could live without me if she needed to now...I mean, sustenance-wise. And I guess she always could...in all reality. But it just got real.

(whimper...)


She's four months next week.
And she's taking a bottle.
She's growing up.
And maybe I'm tearing up about that a little.