Hellobee

Charlie turned 3 months old today!

Charlie loves taking his nightly bath.

Growth

Charlie’s face has become extra chubby, and he now has rolls of fat on his thighs.  He’s still in the 90th percentile for height (24 1/4 inches) and weight (13 lbs 14 oz), and his head is in the 25th percentile, so he’s stayed on the same growth pattern since his last doctor’s appointment at 6 weeks.

12 Weeks – 14 lbs 13 oz (+1lb 10 oz)
8 Weeks – 13 lbs 3 oz (+2lbs  9oz)
4 weeks – 10lbs 10oz (+1lb 8oz)
11 days – 9lbs 2oz (+9oz)
5 days – 8lbs 9oz (+3oz)
Birth – 8lbs 6oz

Happy baby!

Vaccines

The biggest update this month, of course, is that Charlie got his first round of vaccines.  I read up on vaccines to decide whether or not to spread them out. Dr. Sears advocates an alternative vaccine schedule where you still get all the recommended vaccines, but they’re a lot more spread out. Then I found this paper by the American Academy of Pediatrics that completely debunks most of Dr. Sears’ assertions about the downsides of the traditional vaccine schedule. A baby’s first three rounds of vaccines are typically given at the 2, 4, and 6 month mark. Many pediatricians will not allow you to deviate from this schedule. While our pediatrician doesn’t allow patients to follow Dr. Sears’ schedule, he does give us the option to spread the first three rounds of vaccines out at 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 months so babies don’t get too many at once. But he definitely prefers that we follow the traditional schedule.

I scoured messageboards and a lot of moms who started out with the alternative schedule switched back to the traditional schedule because it was difficult to go to the pediatrician so often. I don’t mind going to the pediatrician that often, but it’s probably easier for Charlie to get them over with in fewer rounds. The most controversial vaccine is also the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps, rubella), and babies don’t get that until they’re a year old.

I don’t believe that vaccines cause autism. In fact a study linking autism with the MMR vaccine was recently retracted.  So after taking everything into consideration, I decided to go ahead with the traditional vaccine schedule. Charlie received three shots, 2 in one leg, 1 in the other, and an oral vaccine. He was smiling and looking at me as he laid on the bed in the doctor’s office, completely oblivious as to what was to come. When the nurse administered the first shot, he was so startled that it took him a little while to start to cry.  But he stopped crying as soon as the last shot was administered, and pulled himself together enough to spit out the oral vaccine.

Afterwards he was his normal happy self and napped for an hour in his car seat. He ate regularly, but oh boy was he cranky and tired the rest of the day. He didn’t have a fever so we didn’t give him any Tylenol. That night he kept waking up every 30 minutes and going back to sleep, but the following day he was back to his normal self.  We’ll continue to follow the traditional vaccine schedule for now, unless Charlie has a bad reaction or I read compelling evidence that convinces me that we should spread them out.

Double fist pump!

Vitamin D

Our pediatrician also told us to start giving Charlie a vitamin D supplement. The most popular brand is Poly-visol by Enfamil, but the poor reviews everywhere led me to purchase these vitamin D drops by Carlson Laboratories instead. The American Academy of Pediatrics says exclusively breastfed babies need vitamin D starting from the first couple days of life to prevent rickets and vitamin D deficiency. Formula already has vitamin D added, so formula fed babies do not need to worry about extra supplementation.

Charlie’s lashes are longer than mine! You couldn’t see them at all when he was first born, but they’ve been growing longer and longer!

Sleeping Through the Night

Charlie  used to regularly take 2-3 hour day time naps when he was a bit younger, but lately he naps for 40 minutes – hour at a time.  An hour and a half is a long nap for him.   He takes 3-4 daytime naps before his nightly bath, and then sleeps through his first 6-7 hours afterwards pretty consistently.  Over the past couple of weeks though, Charlie has developed this bad habit of waking up crying every 30 minutes to an hour from around 4am – 7am in the morning.  He’s full, his diaper is clean, he’s been burped, he’s not gassy…. all he wants is to be held.  He’s still tired because he’ll fall asleep on your shoulder pretty much the second you pick him up.  He’s had nights where he wakes up 10 times!

Shortly after Charlie was born, I wrote a post on whether you can spoil your newborn by holding him too much.  Most experts and parents generally think that you can’t spoil a newborn.  Does Charlie want to be held at night because I hold him so much during the day?  If newborns can’t be spoiled and only cry because they need something, should I continue to pick him up every night no matter how many times he wakes up?

I have friends that have used the cry it out method with success, but I definitely can’t bring myself to allow Charlie to cry it out.   Hopefully this is just a phase like his fussy 6-8 week stage was.

Body Update

A lot of women get really bad gas while they’re pregnant, but that never happened to me.  I have, however, had a ton of gas since Charlie was born.  Has that happened to you too?  Yah me neither…

While I was pregnant, I did have problems with incontinence, aka peeing your pants.  At least twice I sneezed and pretty much completely peed myself.  Other times some pee would leak out here and there.  It often gets worse after giving birth, and it still happens to me every now and then.  Kegel exercises are supposed to help, but I never really did them.  So if you don’t want to regularly pee yourself, you should probably do your kegels.

I also haven’t been trying to actively increase my milk production since it’s at a pretty good place right now.  I usually freeze 4-8 oz of milk a day, so I’m building up a little stockpile in my freezer.  Last night 7 hours lapsed between pumping sessions (I usually don’t go that long), and as a result I have another clogged milk duct.  I also always sleep on that side, and Charlie has been nursing less, which probably all contributed to the clogged duct.  This is already the third one I’ve had!  My Gerber heat pack, hot showers, and frequent pumping/nursing usually does the trick, but this is the biggest one I’ve had yet.  It feels like a huge hard lump inside my boob.  I’m probably just one of those women who are prone to clogged ducts.

Phases

Several parents have told me that no matter what a baby is going through, it’s probably a phase and will soon pass.  This has definitely been true for Charlie.  These are some of the phases he’s gone through in his little life so far:

– From birth – 6 weeks, Charlie was a pretty normal newborn.  He ate, slept, pood, and peed a lot.  He ate every three hours in the daytime, every 4 hours at night, and  took 2-3 hour long naps in the afternoon.
– At 6-9 weeks Charlie went through a very fussy stage, and started having trouble falling and staying asleep.  Practically every daytime nap was a struggle.  We couldn’t leave the lights on in his room anymore because his vision was so much better and he was constantly looking around for any kind of light.  We had to be quiet because he’d stir or awake to normal household  sounds.  I had to nurse him to sleep even if he wasn’t hungry.  And while he’d sleep in our arms, he’d wake up 5 minutes after we put him in his crib.  He’d also cry when we put him down for the night, every night.  This was a tough couple of weeks.
– At 9 weeks on he started consistently sleeping for 6-7 hours straight after his nightly bath and bottle.  But he also started waking up every 30 minutes-hour from 4am – 7am.
– At 10 weeks he went on a nursing strike that lasted about a week and a half.  He finally started going down very easily for his afternoon naps again, sleeping an average of 50 minutes per daytime nap with 3 total daytime naps, and going down for the night without a fuss.
– At 11 weeks, Charlie started going 4 hours between feedings instead of 3.  He’s now down to 6-7 total feedings a day instead of 8-9.  And while he still makes mischief from 4-7am on some days, 4 out of the past 7 days he’s been a good boy and has only woken up to eat around 2 or 3 am.

I’m sure there are many, many more phases to come!