The Bean is 3 months old! Holy wow!
What a month this has been. Easily the longest so far (I know, we’ve only had 3, but mamas, you get the idea.) in terms of the amount of “stuff” that happened. In the last month, I had to make the difficult decision to stop nursing and bottle feed, and though it completely changed our colic fight, it proved very difficult for me to cope with, and I was officially diagnosed with postpartum depression a few weeks ago. I have a feeling this would have happened with or without the ending of the breastfeeding, it was already there, it just so happened that that decision really was the trigger that made both Cameron and me realize that I wasn’t just dealing with the baby blues anymore, and it was time to address it. I’m on meds and in counseling now, and I am feeling a lot better, but depression is a moving target and I don’t anticipate being off this bus for some time to come.
Anyway, I am happy to say that the Bean is doing so much better with the colic. It’s basically nonexistent now. She really is a changed baby.
I don’t have official stats for her this month, since we don’t have another doctor’s appointment till her 4 month checkup, but we believe she is finally over 10 pounds! She still wears mostly newborn size clothing but is finally able to fit in some of her 3-month clothes. Weirdly, the 0-3 month clothes are usually waaaay too big on her regardless of the brand or style. Her eyes are still dark gray and she has one brown spot on her left eye. Her hair is starting to thin out a little in places, and is lightening significantly (I didn’t realize it till I looked at some of her newborn photos) but she is still rocking the mohawk up front. It is so long now it almost hangs over her eyes!
The Bean is, as of now, a formula-fed baby. For a little while I was pumping and giving her breastmilk bottles, but my supply slowly started to dip regardless of how many times a day I pumped, and it was giving me anxiety (another PPD signal). I was constantly worried about having enough for her or feeling like I had to be home in so many hours to pump another bottle for her. So a few weeks ago I finally just made the decision to switch over to formula (I’d already been supplementing due to the low supply) and I immediately felt better, though I still had to deal with the nasty voice in the back of my head that kept telling me how awful I was and how bad the formula was for her–another post for another time about how I came to terms with that particular problem. She drinks 4-5oz every 4 hours or so, every 6 hours at night, and doesn’t seem to mind the formula one bit. For a while I was continuing to pump a few times a day so that I could give her at least one breastmilk bottle, but it seems like that is about to come to and end since my supply appears to have finally kicked the bucket.
At the risk of jinxing myself (didn’t I say this last month?), she is still sleeping great. At night she has been going 5-6 hour stretches pretty routinely. We get her down for bed usually between 7:30 and 8 and she will sleep usually till 2 or so, have a bottle and a fresh diaper, and crash again until 7 or 8. She has also been napping consistently, typically going down around 10 or 11 in the morning for 2 or sometimes 3 hours, and then again between 2 and 3 in the afternoon. I have (mostly) figured out her patterns, and can tell that if she’s been up for 2 hours or so and is starting to get cranky, it’s time for a nap. In the last week I transitioned her out of her swaddle for nighttime sleep and she now sleeps in her sleep sack (or snugglie as we have been calling it) on her tummy the same as she does for naptime, and it is working pretty much like a charm. I put her in bed with her binkie, her pink froggy, and her nighttime music (usually Enya) and she conks right out. Every so often if she won’t go back down in the early morning I will bring her into bed with me, but for the most part she sleeps nightly in her own crib in her own room with the door closed and rocks it.
This month, patterns and favorites really started to emerge. We have a daily schedule pretty much locked down that involves getting up, sitting in her booster seat on the counter for a morning bottle while I have my coffee, usually a short snooze in her chair, then some playtime on her mat, and then a nap. After her first nap she gets up, has a lunchtime bottle, more playtime, (if it is nice out we will take a walk or run an errand) and then another nap. We are still ironing the kinks out of the evening routine, since she usually gets tired before we are able to put her to bed (I have rehearsals 4 nights a week so sometimes nailing down the right bedtime is wonky), but she is typically good throughout the dinner hour and then goes to bed. We learned this month that she adores Michael Jackson, and sometimes now if she is being fussy we will throw the “Smooth Criminal” video on the tv and dance with her and she is happy as a clam. Most music will engage her or calm her. She loves her pink froggy, her hanging birdy toy and her plastic keys the most. When she spends time on her playmat now she will reach up and grab the birdy, which I was super stoked about. She can hold onto her keys if I hand them to her, though she hasn’t quite figured out that when she moves her arm, the keys go with it, which has resulted in smacking herself in the face a few times with them. She also smiles all the time now. At her toys, at us, when being tickled, she’s just a smiley girl. She isn’t quite giggling yet, but she does have a definite sound that indicates she is amused or excited.
She still isn’t too crazy about having her clothing changed (onesies that go over the head are pretty traumatic), having her nose sucked out, and long rides in the car, though those seem to depend on the day. I recently took out the infant insert in her car seat and she did pretty okay the next time we were in the car, so maybe it was an issue of not fitting right. I have finally started to overcome some of my anxiety about taking her places by myself, so in the last couple of weeks she has visited Babies R Us and the grocery store. She even got to wait in line in the post office with me for the first time.
I love my little Bean and can’t wait to see what this next month brings! If we get a nice day of weather we might take her down to Denver to visit the zoo or the aquarium for the first time. Part of my dealing with the PPD means getting out of the house and taking her places more often so that I won’t be so terrified of it–like I said, moving target and all that. In the meantime, I have a stack of boxes that means I need to start packing up this house. (Still no word on where we might be going to but we need to be prepared for a fast transition.) Yikes.
Finally, for your viewing pleasure, a video!
Two Lattes and One Bean 