Two months: The good and the bad

I really, really need to get more consistent with blogging...sorry for yet another bulleted list post.

• Will turned two months old on Friday. We went to the doctor on Thursday for his checkup and first round of vaccines. He's right on target, weighing 11lbs. 1oz and 23.5" long. He did pretty well with the vaccines but was very tired and fussy the rest of the day and all day Friday. Poor little guy.

• I'm getting consistent smiles and coos from him which is awesome. They are the most abundant in the morning or right after he has really stinky farts (and let me tell you, this boy can fart!).

• He's starting to intentionally put his hands in his mouth. It's hilarious because when he gets them in there he sucks with such passion I'm surprised he hasn't hurt himself. It's so loud Hubby heard it two rooms away the other day! And he likes to double fist. I guess he takes after his Daddy during his college years.

• The sleeping is still a work in progress, but we seem to be down to one night time feeding around 3-4am. At his age, I'm not complaining! I know how lucky we are that he's a good sleeper. I keep waiting for something to happen that will blow up this good thing we have going on. I know I should just relax and enjoy the fact that my 9-week old baby can sleep for 12 hours and only wake once, but I can't. I want to enjoy it, but how do I retrain my brain to not expect the worst?!?!

• I'm still pumping and nursing him once in the morning. I'm becoming very resentful of the damn pump, but loving the morning time with my little man. I don't want to stop nursing him, but for my own sanity I'm going to start weaning him at 10 weeks. It's so bittersweet because we're pros with the nursing but the damn pump is my nemesis. I can't get rid of the guilt either. I've tried to come to terms with my sucky situation of a low supply, but I still feel like I've failed him in some way. Even though I know I haven't.

• I love routine. I like to know when things are going to happen and get a little flustered when my routine gets derailed. I thought having a newborn would fit right into my love of routine, but it doesn't, at least not in the way I was used to having a routine. Yes, there is a routine. Yes, I generally know how things are going to play out, but OH MY GOD is it monotonous. I never knew my life would be subdivided into 3-4 hour segments like this. Why don't people tell you this? Or did they tell me and I didn't pay attention?

• In general I know we've gotten extremely lucky with Will. He's usually a very happy, content and sweet baby. Sure he has his fussy days and days when I can't do anything right by him, but what baby doesn't? All of my issues with motherhood are my own issues. The guilt over the breastfeeding, the resentment towards Will for making my days so boring sometimes, the feelings that I'm doing something wrong that is going to screw him up for life, the general feeling of inadequacy as a mother that I feel. I'm a perfectionist and I think that is playing a huge part in how I feel. I can only control so much when it comes to a baby and that is hard for me to wrap my head around at times. As time passes I'm getting better about cutting myself some slack, but there is always going to be a part of me that wonders "am I REALLY doing the best I can for my son?"

• Despite my crazy feelings, I really do grow more in love with Will everyday. With this face, how could I not?!?!

Our version of sleep training

"Does your baby sleep through the night yet?"

This seems to be the question of the day and it's one I get asked all the time about Will. My answer, no but we're working on it. Here's how we're working on it (nothing scientific here, this is all trial and error and honestly we really have no clue what the hell we're doing!)...

Will has always been a fairly good sleeper, especially at night. He generally goes to bed without a fight and only wakes to eat then goes back to sleep (the daytime is a different story I'll save for another post).

From the time the baby nurse started, when Will was 1 week old, we put him on a bedtime routine. We start with a warm bath, then give him a little baby massage, a clean diaper with his bottom slathered in diaper rash cream (we try to limit night time diaper changes so the diaper rash cream has been important), jammies and his night time feeding. When we feed him this night time bottle we dim the lights, put the TV on mute and play soothing music to "set the mood" for sleep. Regardless how much or how often he feeds at night, we always start with this routine.

After doing a little research online (again I resorted to Dr. Goo.gle), we decided to give cluster feeding a try. Will's bedtime feeding is at 8pm so we started giving him a feed at 6pm to "fill his tank" before he went to sleep. This worked OK and bought us an extra 30-45 minutes, so we thought we would add a dreamfeed as well (yes, both at the same time). Hubby would get Will up at 10pm and feed him again. Will was usually coherent enough to take a bottle but not awake. Again, this only bought us about an extra 30 minutes. We were doing both of these techniques together for 3-4 days.

We realized with the extra dreamfeed, Will was getting way too much to eat in one day causing him to spit up a lot more than usual. We cut out the dreamfeed and it made no difference to Will, he still slept the extra 30 minutes or so. Apparently it worked since we got a little more sleep time from him and had no adverse reaction when we stopped it.

We kept the cluster feed for an addition 4 days or so after stopping the dreamfeed but eventually eliminated it after realizing it wasn't doing anything additional for us after the initial 30-45 minutes extra we got.

So what does this all mean? Well, for Will it seems that these two techniques got him (and us) and little extra sleep but it's a slow process and I think as he gets older he'll naturally stretch out his sleeping times. The one other thing we've done is stretch his daytime feedings a little. Instead of feeding him every 3 hours we usually go between 3.5 and 4.5 depending on his naps. He's getting used to going a little longer between feedings and that seems to help at night.

We're moving him from the bassinet in our bedroom to his crib in the next week or so, and we're hoping once he's settled into his crib we can start to work on eliminating the 5am feeding. I think we're going to try a dreamfeed scenario at 5am and see if we can make that work for us again. Who knows?!?!

I wish I had a magic answer for getting Will to sleep well at night, but I don't. It's just been lots of trial and error with some rough nights thrown into the mix. But to anyone looking for answers to sleeping longer at night I suggest you try either cluster feeding or dreamfeeding or a combination of both. And make sure the baby is getting enough food during the day as well as enough day time sleep (but not too much day time sleep!).

7 weeks...where has the time gone?

Despite my lack of posting I'm still here, but can't believe Will is 7 weeks old today. I have no clue where the time has gone. I seem to be busy all the time but really can't pinpoint what I've done other than feed, change and cuddle my little guy.

He's growing and changing like crazy. By my estimation (and crappy digital home scale), he weighs a little over 10lbs now. He's outgrown most of his newborn clothes and almost fits into the 3 month clothes. He's definitely longer than he is wide, but he has the cutest pudgy thighs.

We're working on getting him down to one feeding at night. He typically sleeps from 8:30pm-8am with two feeds. Hubby does one feed and I do the other. If we can get him down to one feed I think it will mean more sleep for all of us. We're getting close...

The past couple of days he's given me some real smiles. Not gas smiles or fake smiles, but real gummy, toothless smiles. I get them the most in the morning after I nurse him. Sometimes he'll hiccup and think its funny so he'll let out a little squeal and smile so big I can't help but smile right back at him. It melts my heart every time.

The breastfeeding is the same story, different day. I nurse him in the morning and pump during the day. He's still getting 10-12oz of breast milk a day and the rest formula. I'm probably going to start weaning in early November. Honestly, I never I thought I would make it that long given my low supply so I'm ecstatic he'll be getting breast milk for over 2 months. But the guilt? Yeah, it's still there. Now it's guilt over wanting to stop when we seem to be in a routine that works. It's the pumping that is purely exhausting to me. I need to figure out a way to be 100% ok with weaning before I do it. I don't want any regrets.

This motherhood thing is still really hard. It's very monotonous and often really lonely and isolating, despite my best efforts to get out of the apartment every day and meet some other new moms. I know it will get better, but these early weeks are much more of a challenge than I expected. Maybe I need to try and blog a little more consistently...at least this gives me a place to vent without sounding like a horrible mother!

To end on a bright note, here is a recent picture of Will making his fish-face at me.