Every day I see Riley do new things and say to myself: I gotta write this down. And everyday I forget, except today!
It’s been a hectic 2 weeks leading up to the 4 months birthday, breastfeeding is difficult as the baby pulls off and cries. Issues with supply? Is he unwell? Weight gain has been slow, 5.8kg 2 days ago, only an increase of 0.4kg in the past month. 60cm tall. In an attempt to understand if he is feeding enough, I have commenced obsessive logging of feeds (10 a day), and am weighing his nappies (340g-600g a day).
On the funner side of baby life, Riley is now grasping at his toys and holding on to them, shaking them about, particularly loves doing this on the play mat while screaming and giggling and blowing spit bubbles.
We spend 5-10 mins every day on a lovely relaxing massage, baby looks so happy whenever we put him down on the change table (except when hungry) coz he anticipates fun and relaxation. I do long body strokes down to his feet, and baby squirms and kicks his legs straight agains my tummy, and smiles and coos. We wave arms round, and clap the feet together, with lots of kisses and raspberries blown. We also practice rolling to the side, Riley is much more comfortable going to his right side than left. Right hand is better at gripping and grasping too, although left hand can grip harder. We also like to get his little hands gripping on to his feet, he gets very tense when we do this instead of relaxing into it, I think he’s trying to grip harder onto his feet but instead the legs tense up and kick out of his hands.
Tummy time still not his favourite, gets quite excited and then tired and cranky quickly. No sign of rolling from tummy to back yet.
Riley is definitely more interested in his toys now, the jingling ones and clickety-clacky ones particularly. Big eyed panda puppet is still a favourite for gripping on to. Riley held on to his plastic mesh ball yesterday with both hands and shook it around, I thought that was very cool.
He’s definitely more distractible now, particularly when feeding, he loves to look around at other people in the room or the trees outside.
At night, usually we get a 3 hour gap till the midnight feed, then it’s every 2 hours. Real pain in the butt as I breastfeed, then supplement with bottle sometimes, then gotta pump (the dreaded blocked ducts).
Riley loooooves to chatter, I love it too. After a feed we can sit and coo back and forth for ages. I love his cute smiles in this time as he tells me how awesome I am, and I tell him how awesome he is. We imitate each others sounds, he can do a perfect imitation of “hi” and “ah goo” now.
Tomorrow we have a GP visit for 4 month vaccines, and then dinner with the Jerk Mums. First mothers day coming up, the most highly anticipated celebration in my calendar in ages.
