Three Months Old

First time rolling over from her tummy

Aubrey will officially be three months old tomorrow. She is really blossoming into an active baby these days. She now loves tummy time and sometimes prefers to lie on her stomach and gets upset if she accidentally rolls onto her back. When she was smaller she absolutely loathed being on her stomach since she could barely hold up her head, poor thing. Tummy time really does feel like you are torturing your child in the beginning! Now she kicks her little legs and smiles until eventually rolling herself over onto her back.

Getting updated on current events while watching The Today Show

She is becoming a very vocal kid. Michael and I joke that she got the talking gene from her Uncle Stephen and Grandpa Randy. She has a surprisingly loud voice and blabbers to any person (or stuffed animal) that will listen. She even likes to talk while eating, we’ll have to work on the “no talking with your mouth full” thing later on.

Sorry the above video is huge!  I couldn’t figure out how to resize it. I know I talked about how Aubrey was a scream machine for the first few weeks of life and mentioned how us learning more about her needs and wants was the first step in making our baby happy. Well, I can’t believe I neglected to talk about the other piece of our happy baby puzzle: ACID REFLUX MEDS! Aubrey has always been an overachiever in the spit-up department. This girl would go through three outfits a day and I cursed at burp cloths for being so nonabsorbent thinking “who the F designs these pieces of crap!?”, “how is this tiny burp cloth supposed to catch all of this puke? Imposible!” After awhile I just accepted the fact that my child was a big spitter upper, always had multiple burp cloths in reach,  got used to changing both of our outfits a few times a day, and even washing the puke out of Aubrey’s hair almost every morning, it became normal. Then one day home girl decided to not just spit up anymore, but vomit. And not just any vomit, PROJECTILE VOMIT. The best kind right? She started shooting puke three feet away from herself. If she was laying on her back puke would shoot out like a volcano. She did it three times in one day and I decided to call the doctor. The office wanted us to come in that evening after I shared our puke stories; she was diagnosed with acid reflux and started on meds immediately. Lo and behold I had a non-puking baby after that, she didn’t scream at my boob in anger anymore (because she wasn’t in pain), and I realized that burp cloths really can work as long as you have a baby with normal bodily functions. Her medication did seem to not be working as well in the last couple weeks so I took her in the other day to get a weight check and new dosage amount. The little nugget gained one whole pound in three weeks! An average weight gain is about 1/2 an ounce per day, which would have equaled a gain of 10 ounces in 20 days but she went above and beyond and gained 16 ounces instead. Her doctor was pretty surprised. Unfortunately they didn’t measure her length because I’m pretty sure she has stretched out a whole lot more too.

Lately I have been getting more and more anxious about dreaded sleep training. Technically you are “supposed” to begin at 4 to 6 months, but I decided to get Aubrey accustomed to her crib a bit earlier. She has been sleeping in a bassinet next to our bed for the last month. Before that she slept in our bed almost every night, definitely not ideal, but I’ll admit I like having her there to snuggle. Now she sleeps in her bassinet until her first very early feed around 4:30 or 5:30 which is technically morning meaning cuddle time is a go. It’s been really hard to break myself of the selfish want to hold her all the time. In the beginning she wanted to be held 24/7 but now she is perfectly capable of sleeping or hanging out solo. It’s been surprisingly hard to allow this, I have to actively tell  force myself to put her down for her nap, after all she gets a better sleep when she’s not in my arms. Back to this crib situation though, the past few nights we have put her to sleep in her crib for bedtime, she has gone down surprisingly easy and fallen asleep in there by herself. She then wakes up hungry at 10 or 11 and I feed her and put her to sleep in her bassinet beside our bed. This might sound like a funny routine but there is some logic, and also some laziness behind it. I want her to slowly get used to her crib and as she starts sleeping for longer stretches, she’ll stay in her crib for a longer time period gradually. She can fall asleep on her own but cannot put herself back to sleep yet which is why I transition her to the bassinet once she naturally wakes up for her first nighttime feed. I would like to keep my sanity and can’t yet wrap my head around having to go to her room twenty times a night because her paci fell out. So until she masters putting herself back to sleep, the bassinet is our friend. She learned by herself how to fall asleep on her own, without the assistance of me rocking, singing, or nursing her to sleep so I’m hoping she can learn how to soothe herself back to sleep too. There is no way I could ever allow her to cry it out until she falls asleep. We seriously have the loudest screamer and crier of all time, and she works herself up so hard she is dripping sweat, I just can’t. I have seriously read about people who allow their kids to cry it out until they throw up. That is the weirdest fucking thing I have ever heard and can’t imagine doing that to Aubrey.

I am so looking forward to April! There are a lot of great things this month, my sister and dad’s birthday, springtime, Navy Birthday Ball, and my mom is visiting! She gets here in just over a week and I’m so excited to have her hang out with her granddaughter who she hasn’t seen since she was about 4 days old. We have been chatting on face time a lot so hopefully Aubrey will recognize her voice at least.

I bought a storage tote this week and put all of the newborn and some of the 0-3 month clothes in it that Aubrey doesn’t fit into anymore. I also had her try on her newborn Christmas beanie and it’s super tight! I remember there was so much extra fabric hanging off her head as a newborn, now I can’t even pull it all the way down her little head. Still looks cute though, even with a mismatched shirt! Until next time, thanks for reading!
xoxo

The Hiatus is Over!

Hi friends! I’ve spent a long time away and have received requests to pick up blogging again, so let’s all celebrate my triumphant return! Seriously though, let’s really celebrate that I have finally have developed a schedule for myself and baby A that allows me to get things done. A is 9.5 weeks old today and our days have become filled with more smiles and a whole lot less tears. Warning: the following is a raw account of my personal experience with a newborn, if you just want to see pictures, feel free to scroll past the text.

The first six weeks or so of having Aubrey home was pretty hard. I thought I knew being a Mom was hard work, but I had no idea. I think the most overwhelming part was having the expectation of myself (and therefore thinking others shared this expectation of me) that I would instantly know what to do as a parent and be great at it. WRONG. It took just over six weeks to start getting the hang of things. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I had her diapers on backwards and fed her pizza, it took six weeks to understand what she needed from me and when. I went back and forth as to whether I should write about how things have really been or sugarcoat life with a newborn and just post cute pictures. Then I realized the reason I had the expectation that things would come naturally for me and that the love for your child is so deep that every day is filled with unicorns and rainbows, is because that is the message I had perceived from the edited accounts of motherhood I had read before. Sure, the occasional “being a mom is hard work” was thrown around, but that statement was basically brushed aside by pictures of beaming moms with their beautiful newborns, and the idea that a mother’s love would conquer all. In reality, sometimes your baby is upset and nothing you try will cease the blood curdling screams that cannot possibly be coming from a mere mortal, let alone a 7 pound infant. And guess what? You feel frustrated, really frustrated. Then, you feel guilty for feeling frustration towards the baby that you should only ever feel endless love for. The first couple weeks were basically a battle between frustration, and then guilt. It was really hard not knowing what to do and having a baby who really does have the loudest baby scream of all time.  In those weeks, I wish that I had known it is okay to feel frustration, and other moms feel it too! And that’s why I decided to share my real accounts in parenthood, and not just countless photos of my baby girl.

I really think Michael and I lost at least 40% of our hearing ability in her first month of life. Hearing other babies get mad sounds like a tiny kitten crying. I even googled, “baby is always angry when awake” for the hope that there might be a miraculous cure to end her crying or perhaps an online tutorial outlining what my specific baby wanted. I found no answers. After six weeks and lots of trial and error, we finally started to understand what Aubrey wanted and when, and now that she trusts her needs to always be taken care of, her tiny cries rarely turn to screams. It’s all about getting to know your baby and that takes time and practice! We can run errands together and she’ll happily look around the store from her stroller or baby carrier, and I can shop without the nagging anxious thought that a baby meltdown could happen any second.

Aubrey tagging along on our trip to Costco

These days, we actually have a nap schedule (thanks to the handy chart found here)! Naps mean I can get things done such as: write blog posts, shower, eat meals, etc. A two month old baby is much less difficult and much more fun. Little A’s personality is really starting to come through. She has become very vocal and really likes “talking” to her toys, especially her new Minnie Mouse courtesy of her Grandpa Nacho. After looking back at her newborn photos today it’s amazing how much she has changed already. At 9 weeks she is 10 pounds, 6 ounces and 24 inches long (that’s 6 inches longer than birth!). She smiles A LOT, it really is the best thing to wake up to, especially after a poor nights sleep. I’ll be sure to make more posts now that things have calmed down over here; posts complete with spit-up stories and cute photos, always.
Thanks for reading!
xoxo