A giggle

Lilly laughed for the first time today. In all honesty, I had been worried because the books say that babies should have had their first giggle between months 2-3. And we passed the three month mark without any laughter sounds. But she smiles and coos, so it was a small worry on the edge of my mind.

But today, this afternoon, she gave out the sound. She had not been having a good day. She slept ok (about an hour) for her first nap. But not so great for the other ones. I tried to let her cry it out (8-10 minutes each time I lasted before they overwhelmed me. The cries are hard to hear. And it felt and sounded so loud) but that didn't work. She was hungry when she woke and was not on her three hour schedule. Twice, she fell asleep eating and when I put her down she lasted about 10-20 minutes before waking up crying. So the cycle would begin again.

By 1PM I was growing quite frustrated with her. The repetitive crying is hard to take. And we were supposed to meet a friend of a friend to go walking in the park. So by 2PM, she finally went down, and seemed to stay down, so at 2:30 I called my new walking buddy and asked for a raincheck (she has a 11 month old) as I wanted to let Lilly to sleep. She said no problem and as we were rescheduling Lilly awoke and her cries and screams reached the phone and I had to go. Needless to say I was a bit annoyed but also worried - what was going on with her?

I got her up. Checked her diaper. Not wet. She just ate. But she didn't want to play on her mat. So I held her. And held her. Until I felt a heaviness in her diaper. Sure enough, she was wet now. So I went to change her and while laying in her napper, and after seeing the new diaper, she gave me a little smile. We talked some more - ok, I did the talking, she just listened. And then before I knew it, she gave me a laugh. It was deep and a bit nasally sounding, but it was her laugh. Immediately I wanted to hear it again. I tried to tickle her. No go. Then I blew my mouth on her stomach and that got her laughing. It was awesome.

I called Mark and repeated the stomach manuever and she laughed. Such a cool sound. She only laughed one other time after that. She basically went back to her not sleeping. Crying. Eating. Until I gave her more than four ounces (thank goodness for the freezer door of breastmilk), and at the 5:30 feeding she wolfed down 7.5 ounces. So she must have been hungry all day. No wonder she didn't want to sleep.