Need guidance on several issues with my 6.5 month old

Question

My 6.5 month old daughter is beautiful and growing normally and healthily, almost a perfect baby, except for some minor issues such as:

1) She takes in 3 feedings during the day, all bottle fed with expressed breast milk. And in each feeding, she only sucks in 2-3 oz before refusing to drink. And usually we have to try again, with only 50% chance of success, in 30-40 mins for the remaning 2-3 ozs. She does take in an additional 3-4 ozs at night with breasts. So her total intake per 24 hours barely 20 oz. She's gaining weight but slower and slower, has been dropping on the weight chart every week.

2) She wakes up 4-5 time per night, crying. Usually we can soothes her back to sleep by holding her for 5-10 mins. We put her to bed around 7:45pm, and she can fall asleep within 30 mins with moderate crying and holding/putting down/holding putting down. We never put her down asleep, yet she still wakes up wanting to be held frequently during the night.

3) She still cannot sit up and crawl. The only thing she can do is flip into tummy-down position, but not able to flip back.

4) She has stranger anxiety. If a stranger comes closer to her or try to hold her she would cry hard. This means we cannot take her to visit anyone's home.

5) She needs constant attention .If you leave her eye-sight for more than 30 secs she cries hard.

6) She hasn't shown much interest in any type of toy, just looks at it and looks away. Not very enthusiastic about her surroundings.

Answer 1

When you're first a parent, everything seems worrisome. You'll eventually get used to some of it.

1) 20 oz a day is fine according to the American Association of Pediatrics (page 23, recommending an average 20 oz of formula). If you are worried, consult your pediatrician.

2) My wife and I prioritized sleep with our infant and ended up very lucky as well. There are several different approaches you can take here. If you feel comfortable doing it (and this will fluctuate depending on the situation) you can try waiting 5-10 minutes before soothing them. This works best if they are in a different room and we made use of timers. Frequently we found our child would go back to sleep within 5 minutes. I wouldn't do this if the crying is REALLY intense though. I recommend checking out this website for help, they cite all of their recommendations with scientific journals.

3) Children develop at different rates. You can however play games with her to encourage development. Your baby is in the range when she will start to learn these things on her own and it can often develop quickly before you know it! The USDA's WIC guide has a brief timeline of motor skill development here on page 2. There are games you can play with your child to encourage sitting up. For example, holding her hands and helping her go from laying on her back to sitting up. Watch out not to pull roughly though, be gently and make it a game!

4) I have no citations for this one. I'd say introduce them to more people. Our child became more social when we began to do more. He waves and says Hi to everyone now.

5) Encouraging independence is a hard one..I don't have a good quick citation for you here. We focused on a mix of independence and had a well protected area for him to play in/stay alone in for awhile. We also used a swing at that age.

6) That isn't really unusual for that age either. Our kid wouldn't even shake a rattle until around month 7 or 8.

Answer 2

1) Obviously, you should see your doc if you are concerned about weight gain, but make sure your doc is using the WHO scales, which take into account breastfed babies. Most docs use those now, but some older scales make breastfed babies look like they are dropping at an alarming rate, but it's normal for breastfed babies to slow down significantly with weight gain in the second part of the first year, whereas formula fed babies keep gaining at the same rate. Link to WHO scales here: http://www.infantchart.com

Also keep in mind that even though she isn't crawling, she is more active than before. That will burn more calories.

2) I can't touch this one. I'm obviously not a sleep expert. I've got sleep "problems" with my guy that I've just made peace with.

3) There is a wide variation on meeting gross motor milestones. She will probably sit up soon. Crawling may take a bit longer. I wouldn't worry. 6.5 months would be a pretty early crawler, I think.

4,5,6 will probably sort themselves out soon. My boy is 9 months adjusted age and it is lots of fun at this age because he finally is interested in toys and figuring things out. I think at 6.5 months, he still mostly wanted to be held and definitely wasn't interested in toys much. I think my husband was quite frustrated at that stage, but now he already misses when our boy wanted to be held a lot (he often squirms to get away now, if he wants to go explore or play)

Those play gyms can be good for that age, though. Have you tried that? Good for encouraging tummy time and has some toys she can bat at while on her back.

I don't know much about stranger anxiety, either, but my guess is she will also outgrow that once you take her out more.