5 months old, sleep, and weaning

Martina was 5 months old on tuesday and I only got to post about it now. She is doing very well, rolling over, chatting to herself and doing her best to sit up unaided (not there yet!). Today we had our second round of jabs, I am keeping them a bit more spread out than the recommended two months, but we believe vaccines save lives so we do them all.
Her sleeping is significantly better, I think trying to stick to a (EASY) routine helps me as much as her and I think we are in a transition phase from 3 to 2 naps (just when I was getting comfortable with the 3 naps gig) so at the moment it goes like this:

Wakes happily at 7am and breastfeed
Nap at 9 am for about 45 minutes but on good days is 1 our and 15 minutes
Eats at 11.30  solids, we are still on the root veg mostly, standard fruits, yoghurts
Nap at 12.30 and this one varies depending on the length of her morning nap, if the morning is short this one can be 2 hours.
Eats at 3.30 milk, I was breastfeeding her till two days ago and as of yesterday I introduced a bottle at this time as she is mostly chewing at my nipples and I'm back in pain
Cat nap (or not) around 5pm for about 30 min
Eats at 6.30 solids, mostly cereals of some kind (rice, tapioca, millet) and a bit of cheese
Bedtime routine starts around 7.30 with a bath, cuddles and breastfeeding to sleep.
Dream feed a bottle around 11 pm.

So the days I have them sorted, according to some suggestions I got on the babywhisperer forum, I should stretch the awake time to 3 hours and move to 2 naps a day which should be longer.
The nights are mostly good, she wakes once for breastfeeding at 4.37 (exactly!) but some are totally out ow whack and I don't know what I do differently. Only two nights ago she woke at 10.30, 2, 4.37, 6.10...and those nights are hard. Interestingly it is quite obvious when a night is going to be rough, it starts at bedtime and she seems to be in a very light sleep when I put her down, and wakes shortly afterwards and then keep waking. Anyway I can handle a couple of bad nights a week when I go back to work, hopefully no more than a couple!

In the process of going back to work I have started weaning her from the breast too as I mentioned, I kind of need my body back, I've been a little more than an amoeba since she is born, no sex drive whatsoever and my poor husband is very understanding of course but at the moment I can't tolerate much a suggestive caress, let alone touching my boobs...I think my period won't be far away, I have had ovulatory cramps and classic signs, so I'm hoping that my hormones are also resettling and I'll get some mojo back. With Oliver this...dryness...didn't really happen, I think it was due to the fact that I didn't breastfeed. Any of you guys in the same boat?

Ready to go!

Two meanings of course here!

We are getting ready to go to Italy tomorrow for 2 and half weeks, seaside with my mom and sister and then realx on hills of the Apennines. Mike won't come with us this time and we'll miss him a lot but I know he'll miss us even more. I don't have much to pack, but I look forward to see how the superlight stroller will perform at the airport, it's way to warm in Italy for the sling and till I'll be comfortable carrying Oliver on my back, the weight on the front is a bit too much.

This was us the last time at the airport in Italy

I'm never very good at taking too many pics, but I'll definitely make an effort this time and I'll bring also the camcorder. We'll see!

And remember last week I had my blood tests done at the GP on CD3 to see how my hormones were doing. Here they are:

FSH 6.4

LH 3.6

E2 168 (pmol/L or 45.8 pg/mL)

TSH 2.80

So needless to say I'm delighted and the Fav Doctor texted me when she got the faxed results saying she was confident the response in September will be good.

I also had my total blood count done and all is well, very good haemoglobin and the only thing out of range were my neutrophiles which are a bit below the minimum but the GP said it's nothing to worry about as everything else is normal.

I won't have much of a connection while on holidays, so I'm afraid I won't be able to comment if not sporadically, but you are all in my thoughts!