3 months!

C turned 3 months on Monday - how time flies!

I've been a terrible blogger, but I'm trying to stay at least a little present on twitter.

C is doing great. He continues to be 50% percentile on weight, 70% on length and 97% on head. He's almost 14 pounds, based on the oh-so-scientific-home-scale-with-and-without-baby method. He has a long torso, so he's in 6 month tops and one-piece pajamas, but still ok in many 0-3 pants. He's in cloth diapers (www.ittibittiusa.com or www.ittibitti.com.au for their main website) during the day and size 2 (soon to be size 3) disposables at night.

He's really vocal - trying out lots of sounds. Ah-goo and oo-ee are current favorites. And on Monday he giggled at DH for the first time (and at me the day after).

Sleep has been rough, though not unusually rough for babies this age from what I've read. I've gotten at least 5-6 hours of sleep every night since he was born, just not all in one stretch.

He was quite gassy from 5 weeks to about 8 weeks - enough that it would wake him up and he'd scream until he burped/tooted. Thankfully that's almost gone entirely at this point now that his digestive system is more developed.

We ended up hiring a night doula to help us 2-3 nights a week. She'd arrive at 10pm and leave at 6am, and helped us from 5 weeks to 12 weeks. I'd pump right before she arrived (if he wasn't awake), and could usually sleep through the night until about 5am when I'd feed him (she'd do a bottle for night feeds). For the last week she was helping us, I'd sleep until 6am when she'd bring him to me in bed.

Weeks 6-8 he was starting to sleep in his crib from 7pm to sometime between midnight and 2am, and would then feed every two hours, but I'd have to bring him to bed because I couldn't successfully settle him in bed. I never thought we'd co-sleep but it worked out reasonably well. Lighter sleep was still better than no sleep...

Then he had his 2 month shots, and his sleep patterns went to hell. He started waking around 10-11, and could sometimes be resettled in his crib until 12-2. (He's also had green poops since the shots, oddly.)

We planned on sleep training early, and based on our reading (my reading, really), 3 months seemed like a reasonable time to start given he wasn't having any issues other than not wanting to fall asleep in his crib. (We'd pick him up to calm him before resettling and he'd go right to sleep on our shoulder.)

So Monday, we started sleep training - happy 3 month birthday! We're mostly following Ferber. First day was rough - he cried through all of his nap attempts. And at bedtime he cried for 56 minutes, but then slept until 11pm and then resettled to about 1:30am when I fed him. Took awhile to get him down again, but he was down around 3am and then woke up at 6:15. Yay! And naps on Tuesday were all successful except for one, and he took 34 minutes to go to sleep at bedtime, and didn't wake until 1:15am (then slept 3am-5:50am). Wednesday every nap was successful, and all but one didn't require me to go back into the room to reassure him - one nap he even got back to sleep all on his own. And he slept from 6:50pm-1:50am, fed at 2am, and then slept another 3 hours, then another hour. So we're definitely making progress!  I sleep so much better without him next to me - I'd get all sorts of weird kinks in my arm and shoulder. But I miss the baby snuggles - I figure once he's really good at falling asleep in his crib, an occasional nap together won't cause problems.

My recovery has been great. I was back at my pre-pregnancy weight 4 weeks after delivery (though not the same shape...) and I continue to pull more non-maternity pants out of storage and move them back into my closet. No stretch marks (thanks, Mom!) I had postpartum bleeding for 8 weeks, and was one of the unlucky 25% of nursing mothers to have a 6 week bleed - kinda scary, actually, since I was suddenly having fresh blood and cramps. When I called my ob on a Sunday to ask, he said 'oh yes, it's one of the most common reasons I get called postpartum'. Would have been nice to have some warning that it was possible...  My fingers are still painful, though they're slowly improving, as are my ankles/knees. It's weird - there are patches that are numb to the touch, but pressure/strain can be very painful. But I'm seeing slow improvement, and my ob did tell me it could take months to go away entirely. We had se.x for the first time about 7 weeks postpartum, and it wasn't entirely comfortable, but was ok. (My se.x drive came back a few weeks earlier than that, which helpful.) It's gotten better since, though not quite back to normal (and TMI - I have a teeny bit of bleeding each time, I think from where I had a minor tear/stitches). Breastfeeding continues to go well - I'm so thankful knowing how common it is to have problems.

The placenta encapsulation was such a lifesaver. When I stopped the pills after taking them 3x a day for 2 weeks, both I and DH noticed a difference. So I kept taking 1 pill a day for a week or two, and then did it again here and there when I noticed myself being extra moody. I have a few left, and haven't taken any in about a month.

I'm back to my pre-pregnancy ability to hike - kind of surprised I didn't have to work back up to hilly hikes, but it's been fine. I've tried a bunch of baby carriers, and currently prefer the Baby K'tan, now that I can use the hug hold instead of the kangaroo hold.

I realized a few days ago he's halfway to starting to eat (or at least mess with) real food - crazy!

DH is taking a week of paternity leave every month, which is great. He went back to work 2.5 weeks after C was born, which was earlier than we would have liked, but January was a busy month for him. He's off this week while we sleep train - not a coincidence. :)

I regularly get comments about how much he looks like me, which I find entertaining. We did choose a donor who resembled me. But apart from those sorts of comments, I really don't think about his donor conception very much. Early on, my mom brought it up a bunch (to the point where I was going to have to say something to her soon) but then she started comparing him to me. She hasn't literally forgotten, but for all practical purposes she's forgotten. :)

I'm completely in love with C - he's gorgeous, and so cheerful when he's well rested.  He's very intent - really focused on things and absorbs them, and stubborn and smart. Around 2 months he started social smiling, and very early on would grin at us to make us smile. So fun! And now the giggles are great.

I'm so lucky.