Sleeping: At night, Ellowyn sleeps in her own room, in an inclined bassinet (for her reflux, see below). Overnight, she'll sleep for a 9-10 hour stretch, then be awake for 30 minutes to an hour, then sleep again for another 2-3 hours. I never knew babies could sleep so well at night. Naps are a little trickier for her; she naps wherever she can: the car seat, the moby wrap, in my bed, in my arms... but she only rarely naps longer than an hour. Some days she boycotts naps altogether. This could be a factor of her age or it could be because we don't really have a set nap routine for her yet. But as long as she continues to sleep so well at night, I can forgive the short naps during the day.
Eating: Ellowyn is a great nurser! It's her favorite thing to do. We are still exclusively breastfeeding and plan to continue for a good long time. She has completely rejected bottles now, and we've given up on trying to convince her to take one, so feeding Ellowyn is all me all the time. It's a pain to be chained to her that way, because it means I can't be separated from her for more than an hour during the day and that there are certain times of day that I must be there with her, but I got used to that when Mira and I were in the same situation so this time it's not such a big deal to me. I know this is just a brief blip in my parenting career, so I'm inclined to enjoy the positives about our breastfeeding relationship rather than fixate on the negatives.
Reflux: Most babies have some level of reflux; that's what causes spit ups. But in Ellowyn's case, she has fairly severe reflux which causes her esophageal pain. So we've chosen to put her on a mild antacid temporarily until she grows out of her reflux (most babies do outgrow it at around 4-6 months old). The medicine treats her reflux very well: she's clearly happier on it and miserable off of it. She recently had a few days where the reflux symptoms came back despite the medication (refusing to nurse long even when hungry, back arching during feedings, extreme distress before and after burping/spitting), so we had to up her dose: as she gets bigger, her gain in body mass means that she'll need more of the medicine to treat her effectively. But now that she's on the higher dose, she's back to her happy self again.
Communicating: Ellowyn has discovered her vocal chords and is spending every waking minute doing verbal play. Most of it is just her yelling happily at the top of her lungs. And she is quite social. She loves being talked to. It seems like every time someone engages with her, she is smiling like crazy.
Playing: Ellowyn is at that stage where everything she gets her hands on goes immediately to her mouth. The lips are a very sensitive part of the body with lots of nerve endings sending loads of sensory information to the brain, and she's definitely making the most of that fact. She also really likes to kick anything that's dangling over her feet.
And last, on Friday Ellowyn hit a milestone: she is now rolling from tummy to back. She'll do it repeatedly at each tummy-time session, so it's definitely a skill that she has a firm grasp on (rather than being something she did once on accident).
2 comments:
Wow! So glad you're having such a good time of it with a happy, happy baby who sleeps so well!! Hopefully the reflux keeps getting betters,and that you are well yourself!!.
That's quite precocious, rolling over at just 3 months; following in her sister's footsteps or crawl/roll tracks... I think perhaps she has the advantage over Q in that she's so long and SLIM and only needs to get her head to turn so the rest of her goes easily right along. He's so butterball/compact and you can't find a neck, so like a sumo wrestler, has way more inertia to beat...:)
Color me massively jealous. I've been happy the past few days at managing to set Quinn down in his bed for a handful of 20-minute naps throughout the day. I hope all the awesome sleeping continues for you.
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