Ian Free - 2 months

I have always liked reading about what other babies are doing at certain ages.  Even though Ian is my third baby, and I know that all babies are different, I still have been reading where I know other bloggers have posted similar things.  Chronicles of a Babywise Mom has posts for each week during the first year of two of her girls’ lives, and it has been so helpful for me in giving me some sort of a framework for what we could be aiming for.   So, I do this partly to be a resource for others and partly for myself to be able to remember these things about my boys.  Now on to the notes:

Ian is about 12 pounds by my highly technical personal weighing system.  We’ll go for his 2 month appointment in a few weeks to see for real.

He is wearing 3 month clothes and size 1 diapers, although those are getting to be a bit of a squeeze.

The new bottles we’ve been using for him have helped his gas troubles exponentially.  Yay!  I mostly just give him the gas drops at nighttime now and any other time I can hear him swallowing lots of air.  

I get him up for the day and he eats around 7:30 or 8:00 in the morning.  Then he eats again around 10:30, 1:30, 4:30 and 7:00 or 7:30 right before bed.  From there he usually wakes up once in the night around 4:30 or 5:30.  These times are not exact, but very flexible, and it most assuredly varies a bit from day to day, but this is the basic gist.

Speaking of nighttime sleep, I did a dreamfeed for him up until 9.5 weeks.  (That’s where I feed him around 10 before I go to bed, and I feed him in his sleep with the idea being that he’ll sleep during more of MY night without needing to eat)  But it interfered with his sleep more than helped.  He would consistently only sleep 5 hours if I did dreamfeed him, but he will sleep 9 or 10 if I don’t.  He is my second out of three kids to have this happen.  Micaiah was the same way.  With Caeden, I stopped dreamfeeding him at 9 weeks as well simply because I could NOT get him to wake up enough to nurse.  Then it ended up that he slept longer without it as well.   They must be like their mama….we don’t like broken sleep...but then again, who does?

He is taking 4 naps each day usually 2 hours each.  He has trouble waking at the 45 minute transition, but if he doesn’t put himself back to sleep within a few minutes, we move him to the swing and he will fall back to sleep there to finish his nap.  Then I’ll almost always have to wake him up for the next feeding to make sure he continues to get enough calories in during the day so that he doesn’t need to eat as much at night.

Another Babywise milestone that he hit just recently is waking happy.  I still have to wake him from 98% of his naps, but the few that he wakes from on his own he has begun to talk to himself and laugh for a few minutes.  If I take too long getting to him, he’ll start to fuss; he is only 9 weeks afterall, but I sure do LOVE hearing that happy sound coming from his room!  J

He is still swaddled, and although he is generally pretty warm natured, I find that he likes to be toasty warm while sleeping.

Like our other two boys, the fourth nap of the day is his least favorite and if I put him in his crib he will just cry and cry.   So, he either takes the entire nap in the swing or we use the time to go out as a family.  He is usually content if we are out…just so long as he’s not in the crib. 

His surgery—We go see Dr. Yu July 23^rd and we’ll schedule his surgery for 1-2 months out from that day.  I am ready to get it over with.  I don’t exactly dread it, but I’m not looking forward to it either.  Actually, I am dreading part of it.  I am kind of dreading the recovery.  He is able to suck so well from a bottle right now, I don’t know how I’ll be able to stand watching him be in pain trying to suck afterwards until it’s all healed up.  I lived through it myself and I lived to tell the tale, so I know he’ll be fine, but no one wants to see their baby in pain.  Also, the doctors at the hospital before we took him home convinced us to wait until his cleft surgery to have his circumcision done.  It made sense at the time because they said then he would only have to endure one stressful surgery event instead of two.  When I later talked with his pediatrician about it, she seemed surprised and said, “Really?  Oh poor guy, he’ll be hurting from both ends.”  And ever since she said that I have regretted not having the circ done when he was a sleepy, more or less oblivious, newborn.  Sorry about that bud.

If you have a baby and don’t know about Wonder Weeks yet, you must read about them!  I have been totally fascinated that with all 3 of my boys, their behavior has matched up to a tee.  Each time we seem to hit a rough patch with sleeping and/or eating and/or general fussiness, and as they get older, clinginess, I check the chart and sure enough it’s usually right at a Wonder Week/Developmental leap time.  Ian has been no different…except I forgot about wonder weeks at first.  There is one at 8 weeks, and right around 7.5 weeks he suddenly had less of an appetite.  He was only eating 2-3 oz instead of his usually 4-5.  He also began having more trouble settling in for a nap.  Then the other day at 8.5 weeks it’s like he literally just snapped out of it.  It’s weird and fascinating all at the same time.  This link may work to the chart.

He looks like he's mad at the world here.  I probably had the flash on.

At Publix the other day I had all 3 boys with me and my cashier asked if Micaiah and Caeden were twins.  I thought to myself that if they were it would maybe make me look a little less crazy if they both came in one shot instead of having a 3 year old, 2 year old, and 2 month old.  But then I felt like the Lord told me, “Ashley, just put it on Me.  I’m the One who gave you each of those boys.  Don’t feel apologetic for how close they are.”  That helped my perspective.

His hair has lightened up a lot this month as well as mostly fallen out except for the mohawk section.