Hellobee

With our baby girls five weeks apart, each day I get to see and experience the differences between a one-month-old and a two-month-old. I’ve been told by my mommy friends that the developmental gulf between the two that seems so huge to me right now will quickly disappear by nine months or so. But for now, the girls are very clearly in different developmental stages. So how are my one-month and two-month-old different?

Let me count the ways…

P H Y S I C A L

While you might expect our older baby to be larger than our younger baby, the reverse is actually true! Younger Baby Audrey was born at 8 pounds and 13 ounces and at her one-month checkup she was up to over 11 pounds. Meanwhile, older Baby Lilly was born at 5 pounds and 7 ounces and at her two-month checkup she was just under 11 pounds. Both babies are the same length. If we ignore a couple of ounces, both girls are roughly the same size. This really comes in handy with clothing and diapers because it’s great that we don’t have to keep two sizes on hand…

Baby Lilly on the left; Baby Audrey on the right.

Perhaps the biggest physical difference between the two girls at this stage is muscle control. We have nicknamed our youngest “Floppy” because she hasn’t quite gotten the hang of moving her body yet. Her movements are still very jerky, and she has a particularly tough time managing to move and control her enormous head. Meanwhile, our oldest is now holding her head up very well. We can sit her on our laps and she will hold her head up and look at us and her surroundings. We don’t have to worry as much about supporting her head when we pick her up, but we are still extremely careful with her sister. Our oldest also is able to put some weight on her legs if we stand her up on our laps and she loves to furiously kick her legs while sitting in her bouncy chair; our youngest doesn’t do either of those things just yet.

S O C I A L

Two months old is so different from one month from a social perspective! Our older baby Lilly first gave us a smile a few weeks ago and she is smiling up a storm these days. That smile makes my heart melt every single time and makes all the challenging times of my day with the girls absolutely worth it. I am watching our younger baby Audrey for her first smile closely because I just can’t wait to see it!

Eye contact is also markedly different between our babies. Our older baby will follow us around the room with her eyes, while our younger daughter still frequently goes cross-eyed and makes what we call her “crazy eyes” expression. Still, every day I notice that our younger daughter’s eye movements are getting better and more controlled like her older sister’s.

Our oldest daughter also is currently obsessed with mobiles. She is absolutely entranced by them, particularly one that we have that has a mirror on it. We love watching her smile and make sounds at the “other baby” she sees in the mirror; it is so adorable.

Our youngest daughter, on the other hand, is very cuddly and snuggly these days. She is fighting some colic (and I think she’s in the heart of it) so she pretty much insists that I carry her around all day in the carrier when she’s not sleeping. It is sweet, and I love my time with her all snuggled into my body. Sometimes I think that she’s getting her time in with mommy’s body since she was carried by our surrogate and she missed the time with mommy for all those months. But more likely, her tummy just hurts and my body heat and movements are soothing to her.

S L E E P

We recently crossed over the seven-hour mark with our older daughter Lilly for nighttime sleep. It is still not happening regularly, but you can bet that there was definitely a big celebration the next morning in the Starfish household as we marveled at SEVEN HOURS!

Meanwhile, younger daughter Audrey is a sleeping champ for a one-month old. She is approaching five hours on really good nights, although she still regularly wakes in three-hour intervals most nights. Still, considering her daytime fussiness and colic, we are thrilled with how well she is doing at nighttime and we hope it keeps up.

I frequently get the question if the girls wake each other up. The answer is yes and no. When they are in deep sleep, there is no waking them even if the other is screaming loudly three feet away. But when they are restless or coming in/out of a sleep cycle, they do wake each other. For this reason, right now we typically keep our youngest daughter in our room to sleep in the Pack ‘n Play, while our oldest stays in the nursery.

I also get asked if we have the girls on a schedule yet and coordinate their feeding/sleeping times to be in sync. We are not quite there. This has been a little challenging because our oldest daughter eats less frequently than our youngest. We hope that in a few more weeks we will be able to implement some scheduling strategies, particularly when our nanny starts and can help us out with some tactics.

Daytime sleeping for the girls is also pretty different. Our youngest still sleeps quite a lot during the day. I may get 2-3 short periods during the day of active alertness with her. This is very different from our two-month-old, who is awake for much longer periods during the day and seems to be gravitating to a regular napping pattern.

E A T I N G   A N D   D I A P E R S

Perhaps in accordance with their size, our youngest daughter is a better eater than her older sister. She loves to eat, and she eats quickly. She also is great at burping. A couple of pats on the back and we get that satisfying burp out efficiently.

On the flip side, our oldest daughter is a very slow eater. She needs a lot of breaks while she’s eating. She frequently pushes the bottle away. And it is often impossible to get a burp out of her.

Both girls seem to struggle a little bit with gas and digestion. This past week, we started implementing a probiotic to help them with this and – knock on wood – it seems to be improving the situation. Let’s hope it just gets better from here!

As for diapers, our youngest still will hit the double-digits many days for diaper changes. But it has been weeks since our oldest had that many changes. This is a welcome change, to be sure! A lot of this has to do with eliminating some of the nighttime changes as older baby Lilly is sleeping for much longer stretches at night.

It truly is fascinating to observe our two-month and one-month-olds and marvel at all of the differences; it’s just mind-boggling how much they change in such a short period of time. It is also nice in our situation to know what’s coming for our youngest and to be able to experience some of those magical moments that we had with our oldest so soon again with our youngest. Meanwhile, for tougher moments like the colic that we are currently fighting with baby Audrey, it’s so great to know that it will be short-lived because we already went through it with her sister.

I’ll be sure to keep you all posted on our girls and all of their changes and development to come!