The View from 3 Months

It's been so long since I posted. I've wanted to get back to this for a while, and I'm grateful for the opportunity while Natalie is catnapping.

Natalie is 12 weeks old--officially three months old as of this coming Tuesday. It's been a wild ride. She still has reflux, but is now on Zegerid (Omeprazole, similar to Prilosec) rather than Zantac. Medication helps a little, but not much. As of her last doctor visit, she was up to 14 lbs, which is excellent. At least we don't have any sign of the dreaded "failure to thrive".

Natalie likes and dislikes different things all the time. I used to take her for walks almost every morning in her carseat/stroller combo, and she would fall asleep as soon as we hit the crushed granite park trail. Then she stopped sleeping until after the first or second lap. Then she stopped sleeping entirely, and started fussing, sometimes early in the walk to the point where we had to abandon it. That's where we are now with it.

We soothed her by strolling her around the house, and that used to take a while to work, but would eventually lull her to sleep. Now it just pisses her off.

I bought a Sling EZee and persevered through her initial distaste for it until she would reliably go to sleep in a "hug" hold (facing me, on my chest). Now she only wants to face out in the sling, in the "Buddha" or "colic" carry, and may or may not fall asleep that way. I took her to a meeting of the Austin Babywearing Group, where I learned how to carry her in a forward-facing hold in the Moby wrap. That works reasonably well, and she'll even fall asleep if I walk and dance around the house long enough, but she almost always gets fussy and wants out before I can get her out.

She went through a phase in which she took a 2-hour nap every day at 11AM. Gone! That phase was followed by the no-nap-at-all phase, which is now followed by the 30-minute catnap phase. Hey, I'll take it, any nap is better than no nap.

She also got into the habit of sleeping for a 5 to 7 hour stretch for her first sleep of the night. I didn't have a clue how lucky I was. That's long gone now. She's into some variation on 4-2-3-1 hour stretches at night now.

Last night she slept from 8 until 12:20, fed well, got back to bed by 1:15, then woke up and started crying inconsolably at 2AM. She was doing her stiff-as-a-board thing that tells Rob and me that it's the reflux/gas and she's hurting. I bounced her (one of our latest soothing gimmicks), danced with her, paced with her, burped her, gave her Mylicon and Gripe Water, to no avail. After 30-45 minutes of crying, Rob got up and offered to soothe her. He put her down on her back in the crib and moved her bent knees back and forth in an abdominal twist to help relieve the gas. He got her settled down at 3AM, at which point she was hungry again. She fed again, this time a little less, and thankfully went back to sleep until 6AM. At 6, she fed again, then got into the reflux/gas agony again.

She and I went through the same routine, only this time she had a massive BM diaper blowout. She hadn't pooped in at least 24 hours, so we guessed this was part of the reason for her discomfort. She still didn't settle down until 9:30, after her next two feedings.

My early frustrations with nursing her have really come into perspective over the past several weeks, in no small part due to the excellent advice of Cheryl Heymans, the lactation consultant at Special Addition. Cheryl helped me transition her to a cradle hold position (football hold was killing us), and explained that she didn't need to feed for x minutes y times a day--she's gaining weight impressively and just needs to eat however much she wants, whenever she wants. Perhaps due to the reflux, this often means 10 minute feedings every hour and a half, all day. Sometimes she feeds for 5 minutes or less. Sometimes she feeds for 30 minutes. Sometimes she goes 3-4 hours between feedings, sometimes she's hungry again in an hour.

One of my biggest lessons was learning not to force a schedule on her. Trying to feed her, get her to sleep, etc, against her will was a major drain on both of us. I couldn't have known it at the time, but I needed not ever worry about her not eating enough. These days I still don't read all of her cues perfectly, but I know when I sit down to feed her and she arches back and cries that she's not ready to eat yet. Often she's ready for a nap at this point, and I bounce her or otherwise soothe her down to sleep.

The fun stuff:

She started smiling at just under 4 weeks, and oh what a sweet smile it is! Her whole face lights up. At around the same time, she started "talking" in her cute little breathy way. She seems to be experimenting with vowel sounds. If she's talking and you don't pay attention, woe unto you!

We started doing tummy time with her in earnest at around 7-8 weeks. She rolled over from her tummy to her back for the first time at 11 weeks, and now it's hard to keep her on her tummy. She still tires quickly during tummy time, but she's made so much progress.

She's started squealing with excitement/laughter this week, and she delighted us by making the "pbbth!" sound, sticking her tongue out in response to our modeling this (highly sophisticated) linguistic behaviour.

I'm going to stop here, because I don't think I'll be able to type much longer without scooping up Natalie and dancing around with her again. She's awake and on the floor, playing with her toy keys, hiccuping, kicking her feet and looking around.