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five months
Yesterday the prince was five months old.
He likes or does not mind me, his father, snuggling, milk, bath time, standing up on our legs and looking around, gurgling and cooing and practicing his vowel sounds, grabbing his feet, rolling from one side to the other in "happy baby" pose, and eating cream of rice from a spoon. He dislikes wet diapers, dirty diapers, being cold, being tired, being hungry, and being lonely when he wakes up in the middle of the night, and he's not wild about naptime, which is an ongoing project over here.
He naps okay in his rock-n-play but not at all well in his crib. At night he sleeps about three and a half hours before he wakes up and his dad goes in and settles him back to sleep; then another couple of hours later he wakes up hungry and I feed him; and usually he sleeps another three and a half or four hours after that before he's up for the day. In short, although the doctor says we're not to let him sleep longer than six hours without waking him up for a feeding, in practice he doesn't sleep much more than three and a half hours without needing attention even if he's not hungry. This weekend we concluded maybe this is because he's overtired, never quite getting enough rest in his daytime naps? We've been advised to aim for 90-minute naps with two hours of awake time in between, but he often naps for an hour or less. We sometimes let a later nap go as long as two hours, but maybe that's not getting it done. So today I tried a bit of Ferber training on the first nap of the day, in the crib, but after 45 minutes I called time on that and put him in the rocker where he slept for about half an hour; so for the second nap his dad and I agreed to let him sleep as long as he wanted. Which turned out to be (surprise, surprise) about three and a half hours. (I'm out at rehearsal this evening, so if a 3.5-hour nap effs up bedtime Himself is the one who will get burned - which he acknowledged and asked me not to wake the kid up mid-nap anyway.)
So that happened. When he woke up he ate almost two tablespoons of rice cereal mixed with about four tablespoons of milk; we started with a sort of 4:1 combination (one tablespoon plus one teaspoon of milk and one teaspoon of cereal) last Wednesday and have been adjusting the ratio and volume since then. Each evening by the time we're having dinner it's only about an hour since he's nursed, which is too soon for another meal, but he's really interested in watching us eat with spoons and forks so we've been giving him snack-sized portions. (And then he nurses again at bedtime an hour or so later. He's definitely loading up on calories late in the day, which is fine because I want him to gain weight, but continues to make it frustrating that he wakes up so often. But obvs the waking up isn't entirely connected to his appetite.) The canister says a serving is a quarter-cup, which is way too much for my little dude at this time, but anyway after a couple days of smaller servings today I made him the biggest bowl of cereal yet and he ate all but about three bites of it. Operation Fatten Up The Baby proceeds!
He has now rolled over from front to back in both directions, that is, over both arms, but hasn't made it from back to front yet. And he's trying really hard to crawl but can't do much more than inchworm a bit. Definitely growing before our eyes; there are days I pick him up at his grandmother's in the afternoon and I'm pretty sure he's bigger than he was when I said goodbye that morning.
Oh - and this is my last week of half-time work (which this week means three days); starting next week I'm back at work Tuesday through Friday each week, and the kid will go to Grandma's Wednesday and Friday and day care Tuesday and Thursday. It will - because of a time none of our friends could babysit and we fell back on shifting my mom's planned visit so she'd be here when we needed a sitter - be the first time since leaving the NICU that he will have been looked after by someone other than family. I ... suspect I may be a bit of a mess.
He likes or does not mind me, his father, snuggling, milk, bath time, standing up on our legs and looking around, gurgling and cooing and practicing his vowel sounds, grabbing his feet, rolling from one side to the other in "happy baby" pose, and eating cream of rice from a spoon. He dislikes wet diapers, dirty diapers, being cold, being tired, being hungry, and being lonely when he wakes up in the middle of the night, and he's not wild about naptime, which is an ongoing project over here.
He naps okay in his rock-n-play but not at all well in his crib. At night he sleeps about three and a half hours before he wakes up and his dad goes in and settles him back to sleep; then another couple of hours later he wakes up hungry and I feed him; and usually he sleeps another three and a half or four hours after that before he's up for the day. In short, although the doctor says we're not to let him sleep longer than six hours without waking him up for a feeding, in practice he doesn't sleep much more than three and a half hours without needing attention even if he's not hungry. This weekend we concluded maybe this is because he's overtired, never quite getting enough rest in his daytime naps? We've been advised to aim for 90-minute naps with two hours of awake time in between, but he often naps for an hour or less. We sometimes let a later nap go as long as two hours, but maybe that's not getting it done. So today I tried a bit of Ferber training on the first nap of the day, in the crib, but after 45 minutes I called time on that and put him in the rocker where he slept for about half an hour; so for the second nap his dad and I agreed to let him sleep as long as he wanted. Which turned out to be (surprise, surprise) about three and a half hours. (I'm out at rehearsal this evening, so if a 3.5-hour nap effs up bedtime Himself is the one who will get burned - which he acknowledged and asked me not to wake the kid up mid-nap anyway.)
So that happened. When he woke up he ate almost two tablespoons of rice cereal mixed with about four tablespoons of milk; we started with a sort of 4:1 combination (one tablespoon plus one teaspoon of milk and one teaspoon of cereal) last Wednesday and have been adjusting the ratio and volume since then. Each evening by the time we're having dinner it's only about an hour since he's nursed, which is too soon for another meal, but he's really interested in watching us eat with spoons and forks so we've been giving him snack-sized portions. (And then he nurses again at bedtime an hour or so later. He's definitely loading up on calories late in the day, which is fine because I want him to gain weight, but continues to make it frustrating that he wakes up so often. But obvs the waking up isn't entirely connected to his appetite.) The canister says a serving is a quarter-cup, which is way too much for my little dude at this time, but anyway after a couple days of smaller servings today I made him the biggest bowl of cereal yet and he ate all but about three bites of it. Operation Fatten Up The Baby proceeds!
He has now rolled over from front to back in both directions, that is, over both arms, but hasn't made it from back to front yet. And he's trying really hard to crawl but can't do much more than inchworm a bit. Definitely growing before our eyes; there are days I pick him up at his grandmother's in the afternoon and I'm pretty sure he's bigger than he was when I said goodbye that morning.
Oh - and this is my last week of half-time work (which this week means three days); starting next week I'm back at work Tuesday through Friday each week, and the kid will go to Grandma's Wednesday and Friday and day care Tuesday and Thursday. It will - because of a time none of our friends could babysit and we fell back on shifting my mom's planned visit so she'd be here when we needed a sitter - be the first time since leaving the NICU that he will have been looked after by someone other than family. I ... suspect I may be a bit of a mess.
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