River is 6 Months Old!

River is 6 months old!

-He weighs 17 lbs according to our digital scale when he’s naked. 

-He is about 28.5 inches

-He wears 9 month sleepers (I literally never put him in anything but a sleeper). Because it’s winter he is wearing all fleece sleepers, and they are larger than the cotton sleepers we have. Otherwise I think he’d be in 12 month. The 9 month fit him perfectly. There’s not really any room to grow. 

-His hair is blonde and his eyes are blue. 

-He has his bottom right tooth. It just came in two days before six months. The other one will be breaking through literally any moment. Maybe even later today. 

-He is still exclusively breastfed. No solids or bottles.

-He nurses about every 2 hours during the day.

-He's very distractable while nursing. We have to be somewhere quiet, otherwise he pops off to look around. No people or TV.

-He still loves diaper changes, but he’s less cooperative because he wants to roll onto his belly and eat the change table.  

-He still poops infrequently, but it’s a little more than it was a month ago. It’s probably 1-2 times a week, sometimes less, sometimes a little more. I’ve been taking him to the chiropractor every 1-2 weeks, massaging along his spine daily, and giving him BioGaia Protectis drops, and that has really helped his painful gas. 

-He wears Flip diaper covers on the smallest rise with prefolds (Indian cotton and Thirsties hemp prefolds). I prefer prefolds over flats because it makes diaper laundry faster, and he hasn’t really been sharting much this month so I don’t need to use zinc cream with the flats. 

-At night he wears a sloomb medium OBF with a Geffen Quick absorber on the outside and a Disana wool cover. 

-He has three naps a day. Typically the first one is about 1.5 hours. The second is 40-90 minutes. The last one is 30-45 minutes. 

-I still wear him for all of his naps, with loud white noise. 

-He actually seems to like to be worn now (sometimes, anyway). I’m so used to trying to do everything with one hand while holding him with the other arm, because he used to scream as soon as we put him in a carrier. But lately when I put him in the Tula so I can have two hands, he’s fine with it. He doesn’t like it as much as Isaiah did, though. 

-He has awake periods of about 2 hours and 15-30 minutes. I can’t seem to get him asleep after just 2 hours anymore. 

-He sleeps about 10-11 hours at night. Usually more like 10-10.5 hours. 

-Getting him to sleep at night is still a long process.  However, this month it’s usually all been done IN BED. Which is huge. I sit in our bed and nurse him. He won’t nurse to sleep though. He always pops off when he’s full and squirms to get out of my arms. I lay him down and cuddle with him. He has occasionally gone to sleep like that, but usually I just have to wait until his fussing escalates and I’ll nurse him again and he goes to sleep that time. Sometimes it’s a lot more complicated than this, though. 

-His sleep sucks. He wakes up 4-8 times a night. On a good night he sleeps 1.5-2 hour stretches, with MAYBE one 3 hour stretch. 

-He is a tummy sleeper and has been since about 2 weeks old. 

-He is an okay sitter. Considering how strong he is, and how advanced he’s been physically his whole life, I thought he’d be better by now. But he can do it. 

-He is excellent at army crawling. 

-He is a proficient roller. Sometimes he does a big barrel roll (front to back to front) and it makes me laugh. 

-We had to put the bouncy chair away a few weeks ago because it was useless. He would just do a sit up and try to dive head first out of it. 

-He smiles SUPER easily.

-He really loves everyone in our immediate family. He has giant smiles for all of us and smaller smiles for other people.  He seems to like other people fine as long as they don’t want to hold him. 

-Christmas Eve was awful. My inlaws were over and of course they wanted to hold him now that he doesn’t scream all the time. But he just does NOT want to be held by other people. So he turned into a total dragon and couldn’t recover until after he napped. Then he’d be perfectly happy again, but turn into a dragon when they tried to hold him again. So after his third nap I flat out refused to let them hold him when they tried. It was just too stressful for him, and then really hard on me because he could not relax even after he was back with me. He just kept crying. I’d take him away from everyone for awhile and get him back to an okay place, and then they’d take that as their cue to hold him again. And within 30 seconds he’d be upset. 

-He is a HUGE mama’s boy. He can only tolerate being awake from me for so long before there’s nothing anyone can do, he’ll just cry and cry and not stop until he’s with me again. Even if he’s just laying on the floor of the bathroom watching me get ready, he’d rather do that than be held by someone. 

-He loves playing peekaboo, and he can pull the burp cloth off his face (he’s been doing that for at least a month). When he sees it's about to go over his head he gets this giant smile on his face, breathes really fast, and gets crazy legs.

-He is extremely drooly, but that’s nothing new.

-He puts everything in his mouth, much more so than many other babies. He always has to be chewing or licking something. Even if it’s just the floor. 

-He still doesn’t take a soother, just chews on it. 

-He loves his doorway jumper. We put him in it, and Noah, Isaiah, and I sit on the floor next to him and play card and board games. 

-He hardly ever uses his play mat anymore because he immediately rolls onto his tummy and creeps off of it.  There’s the odd time he’ll actually stay there and play with his toys, though, so we haven’t put it away yet. 

-He cannot, under any circumstances, be left on any elevated surface without being watched every second. He can creep to the edge of our king sized bed very quickly.

-Sometimes we have to play music to stop fussing in the evenings, but it’s less necessary and frequent than it used to be. It only happens 1-2 times a week, and usually only if he’s with Justin. 

This month has been the best yet. River is a super sweet baby. He’s got an adorably wonderful personality. He’s just not easy. He is great as long as everything is just so. He’s not very adaptable. Hopefully that will come in time. 

River is 5 Months Old

River is 5 months old. 

-He weighs about 16.5lbs according to our digital scale when he's naked.

-He is about 28 inches long.

-His hair is light blonde and his eyes are blue.

-His bottom two teeth are playing peekaboo and causing him (and us) lots of grief. 

-He actually likes the bath now!  

-He is always mouthing things and chews and sucks on his hands a lot. He also licks the floor and his bed a lot. He HAS to have something in his mouth at all times. He’s like baby Noah in that way.  Frantic for oral stimulation. 

-He still doesn’t take a soother, just chews on it. 

-His nursing is hit or miss. Sometimes he will easily nurse twice during every 2 hour awake period, sometimes I feel like I’m pulling teeth to get him to nurse after 3 hours, even when he’s obviously hungry. 

-Getting him to sleep at night is still a long process.  However, I no longer have to nurse him bouncing on the exercise ball. A couple of weeks ago I banished the ball to the closet at bedtime. For about a week I was able to nurse him and rock him to sleep. Now I can’t though. I have to stand up and bounce him while he cries and fusses. 

-Lately he almost always wakes up 30-60 minutes after I lay him down at bedtime and I have to nurse him back to sleep.

-His sleep sucks. He wakes up 6-8 times most nights. He usually only sleeps 30-90 minutes at a time. I’ll occasionally get a 2-3 hour stretch out of him, but it’s rare. 

-He typically sleeps about 11 hours at night (waking up to nurse many times). 

-He is a tummy sleeper and has been since about 2 weeks old. 

-We babywear for every nap, with blaring white noise. I have laid him down in bed for some naps (maybe like 6 in his life), but they are ALWAYS short if I do that. 

-He is down to 3 naps. The first two are usually long, and the last one is usually 30-40 minutes. 

-His awake periods are at least 2 hours long. Sometimes a bit longer. 

-He still doesn’t love being worn while he’s awake, but he can tolerate it for 10-15 minutes depending on his mood. 

-He really loves everyone in our immediate family. He has giant smiles for all of us and small smiles for other people. 

-He can tolerate being held by someone not in his immediate family for a few minutes and then wants me back. 

-He still really likes his doorway jumper as long as we’re sitting there with him. 

-He started rolling back to front at 14 weeks and is rolling front to back now, but he’s not as proficient at front to back as he is at back to front. 

-He is pretty proficient at army crawling for his age.  He moves with actual purpose. That started around 4.5 months. 

-He still loves diaper changes, but he’s just starting to be less cooperative because he wants to roll onto his belly and eat the change table.  

-He rarely ever poops, but I’ve been taking him to the chiropractor once a week, massaging along his spine daily, and giving him BioGaia Protectis drops, and that has really helped his painful gas. 

-He wears Flip diaper covers on the smallest rise with various prefolds (Indian cotton, Thirsties hemp prefolds, and Flip organic - the ones they now call overnight). I prefer prefolds over flats because it makes diaper laundry faster, but when he’s sharting a lot I use zinc cream on his bum and when I do that I use Birdseye cotton flats. I haven’t really had to do that much this month though. 

-At night he wears a sloomb medium OBF with a Geffen Quick absorber on the outside and a Disana wool cover. 

-He is adorably talkative and shrieky and smiley. 

-Sometimes we have to play music to stop fussing in the evenings, but it’s less necessary and frequent than it used to be. 

Overall I’m loving 5 month old River. He’s pretty awesome. Except at night. He sucks at night. Haha

4.5 Months

I wrote this a week or two ago but haven’t posted it until now (that’s why the date is “off” for 4.5 months).

At 4.5 months there have been a few significant changes with River, some that are really awesome for us. 

For the past week I have actually been able to nurse and rock him to sleep at night in the rocking chair instead of having to bounce him on the exercise ball. This had never happened before in his entire life, and it is so much easier on my back!  Unfortunately he has also started frequently waking up again shortly after he falls asleep for the night. 

He seems to kind of like the car now. If he’s fussy and I put him in his car seat he’ll keep being fussy, but as soon as we go outside and I put him in the car he will quiet down. I’ve never tested it on a very long trip, but it’s nice for short ones around town. 

He also fell asleep in the car for the first time last week. Noah left his water bottle at gymnastics and I didn’t realize until we got home. We had to drive back and get it, and when we pulled back into the driveway River had just fallen asleep. He opened his eyes as we were getting the boys out of the van, but then closed them again and went back to sleep. It was so weird. I left his car seat in the van and kept checking on him every couple of minutes. He had a 40 minute nap. 

I’ve taken him to the chiropractor a couple of times now. I’m hoping it’ll help with his gas. Although his gas is caused by his infrequent pooping so I don’t know.

This week after his chiro appointment we came straight home. It was nap time but he also needed to nurse, so I sat on the couch to nurse him before putting him in the Lenny and turning on the white noise. He totally fell asleep nursing on the couch. He hasn’t done that since he was a BRAND new baby. Like just days old. He barely even did that as a newborn. I unmatched him and carried him to the bedroom and laid him down, and he didn’t even wake up. I turned on the white noise and closed the curtains, and he still didn’t wake. He ended up only having a 30 minute nap because he never sleeps long if I’m not wearing him, but it was still a crazy thing for him. 

This week River has had his first cold. This is his first illness, as he somehow skipped the bad cold Isaiah had a month ago even though Noah and I got it too. This time it’s a much milder version, and it also started with Isaiah (why is everything starting with Isaiah lately), and River caught it. It caused a couple of bad nights of sleep. He kept waking up SO upset from his blocked nose and had trouble nursing. He seems to have adjusted to the experience though. 

River is 4 Months Old

River is 4 months old. 

-He weighs about 15.5lbs according to our digital scale when he's naked.

-He is about 27 inches long.

-His hair is quite blonde and his eyes are blue.

-His bottom two teeth are playing peekaboo and causing him (and us) lots of grief. 

-He is always mouthing things and chews and sucks on his hands a lot. He also licks the floor a lot. 

-He’s even worse at taking a soother now. He just chews on it and can’t keep it in his mouth at all. 

-He’s still kind of a terrible nurser. His latch is good, and my supply is perfect (plenty but not too much), but he just doesn’t seem to like to eat. During the day it’s hard to get him to nurse every two hours. If he does, it’s for 1-2 minutes and then he’s cranky and fussy and won’t nurse for a long time, usually not until he wakes up from a nap and it’s been several hours since he last nursed. He has some good days, but overall it’s pretty frustrating. 

-Getting him to sleep at night is still a long process. Getting him to nurse before bed usually involves me nursing him while bouncing on the exercise ball next to loud white noise. He still won’t nurse in the rocking chair. It’s very annoying. Then I bounce him on the ball until he’s actually sleeping. Then I transfer to the rocking chair for awhile before I lay him in bed. 

-He used to always wake up and I’d have to put him back to sleep once or twice at the beginning of the night, but that rarely happens anymore. 

-At night he sleeps anywhere from 1-3 hours at a time.  We hit the 4 month sleep regression a week before he turned 4 months. For two weeks he was waking up and nursing every 1-1.5 hours. That lasted two weeks and now the past three nights he’s waking up every 2-3 hours. That’s a lot, but much better than every 1-1.5 hours. 

-He typically sleeps 11-12 hours at night (waking up to nurse many times). 

-He is a tummy sleeper and has been since about 2 weeks old. 

-Just days before he turned 4 months he’s stopped screaming in the bath. He still doesn’t love it but he doesn’t scream and cry anymore. 

-We babywear for every nap, with blaring white noise. I have laid him down in bed for some naps, but they are ALWAYS short  if I do that. 

-Just after he turned 4 months he seems to be down to

3 naps. One or two of them are usually long, and the others are short. 3 naps works a lot better when two of them are long, and sometimes he still has four naps. Four naps are hard to fit in the day, though. 

-His awake periods are an hour and 45 minutes to 2 hours. 

-He still doesn’t love being worn. On Halloween when we were trick or treating he was in and out of the Tula frequently. 

-He really enjoys everyone in our immediate family. He has giant smiles for all of us and small smiles for other people. 

-We try to make sure he has lots of time with Justin when he’s home, so he really likes him now. 

-He still really likes his doorway jumper for about 10-15 minutes as long as we’re sitting there with him. 

-He started rolling back to front at 14 weeks and does it automatically if you lay him on his back. His play at has become kind of useless because of that. He doesn’t roll from front to back yet. 

-He still loves diaper changes.  

-He rarely ever poops, which makes him painfully gassy and sharty, which gives him a rash from constantly having a tiny bit of poop in his bum crack. He usually only goes once a week. He recently went 15 days!  

-He wears Flip diaper covers with various prefolds, flats, and inserts. I prefer prefolds because it makes diaper laundry faster, but when he’s sharting a lot I use zinc cream on his bum and when I do that I use Birdseye cotton flats. 

-At night he wears a sloomb medium OBF with a Geffen Quick absorber on the outside and a Disana wool cover. 

-He is adorably talkative and shrieky and smiley. 

-We don’t need to blare loud music in the evenings to stop him from crying anymore!  Sometimes we have to play music to stop fussing but it’s less necessary than it used to be. 

Things are SO MUCH BETTER this month than they were at 3 months. He likes his dad, so I don’t have to juggle him by myself at all times anymore. We have some more peaceful evenings. He is much less fussy during the day. And when he IS fussy, it’s now typically for a reason (tired, hungry, gassy - he has a lot of painful gas because of his infrequent pooping). 

Just before 4 months I went through a really rough time. I was very depressed. I was kind of hating what I had done by having another baby.  I was always feeling tired of my life, tired of everything being hard, and tired of River. And I was  feeling really guilty about it. 

It got to the point where I felt I needed to go on medication. Feeling angry at my baby wasn’t okay. And then I realized I can’t make it to a doctors appointment because of River’s unpredictable “schedule”. And I’ve been through worse before. Last summer when my baby died and then I almost died, I was in deep depression and managed to pull myself out. So I was determined to do it again. 

I started meditating and reading positive quotes. I decided to pretend that every time my kid was fussy or crying that he was really suffering (instead of fussing and crying for no reason, like how he screamed constantly for no reason during colic). 

I’ve had a lot of healing to do from colic. I have some ptsd from it, and I had a lot of resentful feelings toward River. But writing this paragraph now (at 4.5 months) I’m feeling so much better. It still takes effort sometimes, but it’s a lot better. 

Overall River is a pretty happy baby now. He’s not exactly “easy,” but he’s so much better than he used to be and we all really enjoy him.  I’m really glad he’s part of our family!

100 Days

It’s been 100 days. 100 days since I pulled my little baby out of the water.  It was 3am, the big kids were sleeping, the midwives hadn’t arrived yet, and everything was calm and quiet. Labouring and giving birth to River all on my own was so peaceful and powerful. Nobody telling me what to do, or checking me, or suggesting I try a new position.  I was free to do exactly what my body and instincts wanted without thinking about it or being watched. His birth was probably the most amazing experience I’ll ever have, and I wish I could do it again. 

The past 100 days, though... I do not want to relive those. We have felt every single one of those 100 days, times three. River can be such an incredible delight, but also such a trial. The days of non stop hysterical inconsolable screaming are over, but they’ve left some pretty deep scars.  

It’s only this week that River has had some days where he acted a little more like a normal baby, and I remembered that babies can actually be nice to have around. Every day for 14 weeks I wondered why I wanted to do this again so badly.  It’s hard to explain the guilt and sadness I feel that this has been the case; and yet, I’m not sure how I could possibly have felt any differently considering what we’ve been dealing with. Yes, there were moments of great joy in those 14 weeks, but the overwhelming mood was misery. 

I really think I could use some counselling to help me deal with all these feelings, both toward myself and toward River.  Unfortunately he’s still impossible to plan anything around so that can’t happen right now. 

I’m looking forward to better days ahead. 

River is 3 Months Old

River was 3 months old yesterday. 

-He weighs about 15lbs according to our digital scale when he's naked.

-He is 25.5 inches long.

-His hair is quite blonde and his eyes are blue.

-His bottom two teeth are playing peekaboo. 

-He is always mouthing things and chews and sucks on his hands a lot. 

-He’s not good at taking a soother, even though it makes him happy when he does. 

-My oversupply issues seem to be under control, but River still doesn’t really comfort nurse because if he’s not hungry he can’t handle the fact that he’s getting milk. 

-He nurses on demand, which ends up being about every 2 hours. He isn't usually hungry more often than that. 

-He often has issues nursing in the late afternoon and evening. I often have to stand up and bounce him next to loud music to get him to nurse, even when he’s hungry. It’s so frustrating because he’ll scream because he’s hungry but then refuses to actually nurse.  And he’s never had a bottle so it’s not like it’s a preference thing. 

-He never ever nurses to sleep except in the middle of the night. 

-Getting him to sleep at night is way easier than it used to be, but it’s still a long process. Getting him to nurse before bed usually involves me nursing him while bouncing on the exercise ball next to loud white noise. He won’t nurse in the rocking chair. It’s very annoying. 

-I used to have to wear him to sleep every night because it would take an hour and a half to get him to sleep, but now it’s a little shorter and I cradle him while bouncing on the exercise ball until he falls asleep. Then I transfer to the comfy rocking chair until he’s MORE asleep, and then lay him in bed. 

-He used to always wake up and I’d have to put him back to sleep once or twice at the beginning of the night, but recently we’ve had more nights where that wasn’t necessary.  It still happens though. Last night he fell asleep pretty easily and I was pumped, but he woke up smiling right when I put him down. He thought he had a nap. It took 45 minutes of bouncing him on the ball in the Tula to get him back to sleep. 

-At night he sleeps anywhere from 1-4 hours at a time. The 4 hour stretches only happen a few times a week. Usually he’ll have his longest stretch at the beginning of the night and then be up every two hours, but sometimes he’ll do another three hour stretch and sometimes it’ll be as little as an hour. 

-He typically sleeps 12-13 hours at night (waking up to nurse many times). 

-He is a tummy sleeper and has been since about 2 weeks old. 

-I only give him a bath a couple of times a week now because he screams through every single one. But before every bedtime I always lay him on a towel on the counter beside the sink and wash his hands and face and diaper area. He really loves laying there and is really sweet and smiley even if he’s been crying up until then. But if I put him IN water, watch out. 

-We babywear for every nap, with blaring white noise. 

-Most of his naps are short 30 minute ones. He is definitely happier and easier to deal with when he naps longer, but unfortunately I can’t FORCE him to sleep. I would if I could. 

-His awake periods are about an hour and a half. 

-Just within the last week he’s not immediately crying as soon as I wear him. I’m using a different carry (front cross carry) and I don’t know if that’s it, but it’s only since I started using that carry with the beastly toddler worthy Pavo Trillium that he hasn’t started crying as soon as I wear him. 

-His contentedness is getting better but it’s still a challenge to keep him from fussing after the first 45 minutes of awake time.    

-He no longer immediately loses his mind when he’s with someone else. He likes being with me best but if he’s in a good mood he can handle a bit of time with someone else (just a bit). 

-He loves watching his brothers play.

-We just got him a doorway jumper this week, and he seems to really enjoy it for about 10 minutes as long as we’re sitting there with him. 

-He can go on his playmat and be entertained for about 5 minutes. He likes batting at all the toys and is getting better at actually grabbing them intentionally. 

-He still loves diaper changes.  

-He's been wearing AMP size small and Applecheeks size 1 with Geffen Baby xs and Thirsties size 1 hemp prefolds inside.  Just this week I’ve been sick of stuffing pocket diapers so I’ve pulled out our new Flip covers (the elastics are too relaxed on our old ones) and I’m using them with flats, prefolds, and inserts. 

-At night he wears a sloomb medium OBF with a Geffen Quick absorber on the outside and a Disana wool cover. 

-He is adorably talkative when he's happy. He has the most amazing smiles when he's happy. 

-He’s not grunting at night or in the morning anymore!

-He goes up nice and high on his elbows when he’s on his tummy (he’s shrieking with delight on his tummy as I type this). He can also travel really far when laying on the ground, although it’s not really purposeful. 

-We recently have been able to leave the house for very short periods (like half an hour) in between naps, so that’s progress. It’s only been a few times once in awhile though, and it’s still stressful. 

I don’t think colic is really behind us. If it weren’t for loud music and loud white noise River would still be spending hours and hours screaming every day.  But it’s better than it was. 

Things are not wonderful. Life is still hard. This week was especially hard compared to last week. But doing this update and comparing what things were like at 2 months to now, there has been improvement in most areas, even if it’s not vast. 

He brings me a lot of joy, and also a lot of... I don’t know how to say it without sounding horrible. It’s just hard with him. Very very hard. Hopefully things will keep improving!

It Will All Be Okay

I had a mental breakthrough yesterday with my friend, Laura. 

I was talking to Laura about how I feel bad for my older kids that we can't go out and do everything we would be doing if it was just the two of them and we didn't have a dragon baby. I was saying how the dragon baby would bother me less if I didn't feel bad about my older kids being stuck at home. I was talking about how Isaiah was a dragon but then got better, but how I realized we basically stayed home for an entire year, out of necessity. Like seriously, we didn't really go ANYWHERE. He hated the car and I accepted that and we stayed home. And it was fine and it didn't last forever. It was just a year, and frankly it was a lovely year at home with my two boys, because I just met my child where he was at and didn't put ANY pressure on him or me to do something I knew would turn into a disaster. 

River is fairly easy to handle at home now. He's not actually easy, but we have methods to cope with it. Which is great, if we just stay home. 

And Laura was like "So stay home. Just stay home."

And it just clicked for me finally. We can stay home. I don't have to sign my kids up for all the cool homeschooling activities available while we're in this difficult time. I can send them to gymnastics with my dad if I have to, and stay home with River. And that's ALL I have to sign them up for. I don't have to pressure myself or River to be ready to sign up for library stuff or gym and swim in September when I don't know if it'll even work or not. 

We can stay home for a year if we have to and the kids will be fine. They have each other. We have friends who will come here and are willing to work around our dragon baby. 

It will all be okay. This will pass, and in the meantime we will all be okay "missing out" on stuff. I wanted a baby who would fit into our life as it was, but it doesn't seem as if we've gotten one. So we just have to meet him where he's at and not pressure him to be different or pressure myself to find a way to deal with him out in public. We don't actually HAVE to go out in public if it's going to be hell. One day we'll be able to again. 

This will all pass. And in the meantime, it will all be okay. We will all be okay. 

I feel very free.