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2008-04-12 - 12.45am��previous entry��next entry
3 months old / What in the world?!
Two-sided entry again today, haha! Soooo crazy. Here's side one, you know the part where I just HAD a baby?! ;) Part two (further down) will be where I slightly freak out at the slim possibility of having another one!
My baby boy is THREE months old today!!! Yay! That's a whole quarter of a year already! How did that happen?! Behold his complete scrumptiousness (not that I'm biased at all! ;) )...
How I love him!!! *sigh*
He's doing great! On Wednesday I get to find out what he weighs and measures and I'm getting sooooo excited about it!
Nathan's cradle cap has got much worse suddenly, so - thank you SO much for the recommendation girls! - Neil bought some Dentinox Cradle Cap shampoo today and I'm going to use it on him tomorrow morning when I give him a bath. He doesn't seem bothered by it, but Arthur thinks it must be itchy for him and that's maybe why he cries a lot :) He doesn't really cry a lot - well, I suppose he does cry quite a lot. But normal stuff, you know? He is fussy and windy a lot, and the speed/volume of my milk is bothering him quite a bit at the moment, like it did Matthew and Arthur (Arthur less so, I think?). I've started the old one-breast-for-as-long-as-I-can-bear-it thing, to try and fix that. He's getting more reflux symptoms now, and starting to fuss more at the breast and milk is pouring everywhere, etc. So I'm going to make a few changes. I nurse him from the same breast (he fills up on one side only these days) for 2 or 3 feeds running (or ALL night), by which time I'm impressively lopsided, hehe! Then I switch and feed him the other side only for the next 2 or 3 feeds. My milk is supposed to regulate itself a bit after a while of doing that. I hope so! I'm SO grateful for my abundant milk supply but it sometimes frustrates me that it causes pain and annoyance to my babies! Never mind the leaking (read: soaking), although that can be managed too. I hope this technique works for us!
I got the 3-6 month clothes down from the loft today! Little Man has grown out of the 0-3 month vests (even with disposable nappies!) and sleepsuits, and (unlike Arthur!) he has outgrown the sleepers in the LEG length as well as the torso. So he has Neil's long legs and not my (and Arthur's!) stumpy ones. It was so exciting to see cute little clothes that have been hidden away in the loft since Matthew was teeny tiny! I love the packing and unpacking of tiny clothes :)
Nathan is cooing all sorts of sounds and volumes now, inhaled and exhaled, and is practising all manner of expressions to go with them as he "talks" to us! It's so sweet! He's very expressive, a bit like Arthur was as a tiny one. He's the same way now, so perhaps that gives us a glimpse of what Nathan will be like as a talker, later on? Like Arthur (incessant!), I'm thinking. He's incredibly smiley all the time. The only time he's not smiley is when he's crying or doing this:
Ohhhhh I'm so mushy over that boy still! It is not abating at all. Maybe it never will? I love him soooo! :)
I have started to put Nathan down for a nap basically about every 90 minutes after he wakes up, just going by something I read at my Feb 08 buddy group - lots of them there are doing the 90 minute thing at the moment and it's working well. It IS about the right amount of time for Nathan - he is getting sleepy around 1hr 15mins to 1hr 45mins after waking up. Today when I did that, he pretty much went to sleep within 5 minutes of me putting him in his cot, at the 90 minute mark (roughly). He DID fuss plenty when I put him in there though, and needed a dummy to calm him down and get him sleepy, and some patting on the bottom from me too (he's still napping on his front at the mo - must start to try him on his back more!). Last night he slept fine on his back in his sleeping bag next to me in bed - he slept for maybe a 3 hour block and a 2 hour block, and then from 6am he woke every 30 minutes till I got up with him at 8.45am in the end.
Problem - at night he soaks through his nappy, clothes, sleeping bag, and bedsheets after about 4 or 5 hours in the same nappy. On a good night it's 6 hours. But still, EVERY night, unless I wake him to change him to avoid it. Which sucks! I thought disposables were meant to be more effective at this part?! I had trouble getting good enough absorbency with my other boys at night in cloth nappies, but I did find a system that worked in the end. We are not currently using cloth nappies, but I'm surprised that the disposables are that rubbish to be honest. They're Tesco's own, which I have heard from many mums to be the best around. Advice??
Nathan is suddenly interested in toys! Yay! It's so exciting!! Well, to me anyway :) If I put him under the playgym on his playmat, he is soooo focused on watching things dangle down at him. He spent literally 5 minutes without a break intently focused on a Mega Blok piece today! It's from the "Monsters" set, just an orange stick part with an eyeball on one end. I held it in front of him to look at it and he was so fascinated! I thought he'd have a good look and then get bored, but he literally kept it up for 5 minutes straight! I was turning it this way and that, and my arm got really tired in the end!
He is also making attempts to touch and bat things, just the last couple of days! He especially likes that musical bug toy that all of them have liked at this age. Yesterday I sat with him on the sofa and put the bug on his lap with the music tinkling away. He stared and stared at it, and then he reached out and grasped it! Today he has made some lurchy jerky attempts to bash the crinkly wings with his hands as he stares at them. I helped him in the end because he tried for ages to coordinate himself but couldn't get his hands to go onto the wings. So I laid his hands on them and he pushed them about awkwardly for a bit to hear the crinkly sounds :) Here are a couple of pictures of him staring at the bug and grasping it!
Sometimes when I'm talking to him and making silly sounds and faces, I get the impression that he's gearing up to laugh at me, but then nothing happens. I think this is evidence that he'll be laughing fairly soon! I'm SO EXCITED about that!! I just can't wait! I think Arthur was 10 weeks old when he first laughed, and Matthew 11ish? Nathan is 13 weeks old (today!) but is a few weeks behind the boys, gestationally speaking, so maybe he'll get round to laughing in another week or two?! Soooo soon! I can't waaait! :)
I'm thoroughly besotted with my sweet baby boy. I'm so delighted that he's been with us for 3 months already, and so excited about the rest of the time ahead! Sometimes loving him so much makes me scared to lose him in some way, but I try not to think about it if I can help it.
I'm going to draw that line again and do part two now. But I'll finish this bit with two more photos of my sweetie from a few days ago, in his sleeping bag one morning. He's so gorrrrgeous! :)
Wellll. Following on from my last entry - The Continuing Saga (it seems!) of The Non-Existent Pregnancy (!!) - I know there is like 0.1% chance or something that I could be pregnant, but something or other is up, somehow. Same as I wrote last entry really, except spotting the day before yesterday, nothing yesterday, and then a little again today! What?! I am willing to admit it could be pretty normal during my early months PP with breastfeeding (probably), but it isn't my norm at all. The spotting is sooooo faint though, it's just a tan colour, not even brown or pink. I recognise it as spotting though because I am WELL experienced with spotting now, and I know that when I've had pink or brown spotting in the past, however faint, it fades to a light tan before disappearing altogether. I have only had the tiniest amount on the two separate days I've had any though. I charted it for reference.
So, the spotting is weird. I'm 11 days past parsnips today.
The only other thing of note (as such!) is Neil. He is giving me funny looks and the usual kind of thing he does when we're actually TTC and he thinks I'm pregnant. Maybe it's just paranoia on both of our parts? Probably that's all it is.
Also! I read on the January 08 buddy group that quite a few of the mamas there have been feeling sort of pregnant lately, and several have even tested to rule it out (none of them actually are). They surmised that maybe it's a hormonal shift at around this time PP? And I am feeling similar, and had my baby in January so I'm the same amount postpartum that they are. So, that's probably it - I'm probably just in the same boat that they are.
Yesterday I walked into the kitchen and Neil grabbed me round the waist (or, you know, that part of my girth that used to be one) and drew me close to him, and his eyes were all shiny. He said (with a happy smile, I might add!) something that I have heard him say several times now, "You might be pregnant!" :) I always love hearing him say that, because it's more than the words - it's the tone, which I can't convey here. It's like there's a glow in his voice. I'm HAPPY that he could say those words with that glowy tone when our baby wasn't quite 3 months old yet and we really hadn't considered the even the remote possibility that we could survive having another baby so soon!
Today he has looked at me funny a few times. This evening Matthew woke briefly and I went to settle him. When I came to the top of the stairs to come back down, Neil was almost at the top of the stairs. I started to tell him what went on with Matthew, but he was giving me this odd look again. I finally said, "Whaaaat?!?!" and he said that he wondered if I really might be pregnant. He looked smiley, but nervous! Hearing him say that so seriously made me suddenly anxious (the cold, clammy kind, hehe!) because really I haven't believed there's ANY possibility that I am pregnant again, until he said that in that way. I asked why he thought so, and he said, "I don't know. You just look a bit different, in the face. And I've seen you look that way before...." Which immediately made me think of about 90 minutes earlier on, when I was excitedly trying on the BIG clothes that I got from the good-as-lost box of post-baby clothing (found it in the loft at last, yay!). I have been eager to put away my maternity clothes (which I'm STILL wearing!!) as I don't fit any of my non-maternity clothes, except for this boxful which I thought was lost somewhere. Anyway. I was trying some jeans on in front of the mirror, and when I looked up my face distracted me. I went up close to the mirror and everything, just to take a closer look. I could not put my finger on what I was looking at that seemed different. I actually figured I had maybe lost a bit of weight in my face at last, as it looked just a bit "different", though I couldn't say how. I remember thinking that didn't make sense though, because I weighed myself again today and I seem to have GAINED 2lbs!!!! What?! My mum says maybe it's because I'm still resting up a lot and not dashing around madly after 3 little ones with Neil home to do much of the running around for me. She said the weight would not go up once I was on my own with the boys! She's right, I'm sure! But anyway, so that didn't make sense to me. But I just brushed the thought aside and it didn't concern me, UNTIL Neil said that about my face and it reminded me of my own thoughts just an hour or so earlier.
Hmmm. I am also crampy, and feel kind of warm looow down in my womb. BUT, I am wondering if that's just IBS and I'm reading it wrong, or something? If there IS a chance that I'm pregnant, I am soooooooo in denial, haha! Meg sent me a message at FF (thanks Meg!!) saying she was just waiting for me to test and that I was showing good willpower so far! That's the reason I am not testing, really. I just refuse to believe it, hehe! I REALLY think the odds are practically nil, but if God has already planned the life of another little person who he meant to be conceived SOON after Nathan, then (after we've regained consciousness from the shock/fear!!) we will REJOICE and be so thrilled and excited! This, more than any other of my pregnancies, would feel like absolutely totally 110% GOD carrying out his will. And so I would not need to be afraid of what's to come, because he gives us everything we need to handle the situations he puts us in. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I am also NOT THINKING about the reality of it, and refuse to do so until such a time that I definitely know I'm pregnant! Hence the denial. I think I would be scared. And upset that my milk would dry up before Nathan was much past 6 months old (hence formula for the rest of his first year). And worried about Nathan missing out when it comes to HIS babyhood (would he?). And anxious about how it would affect all 3 boys (especially Nathan) to have another baby before Nathan even turns one. And boggled at the thought that I could have two babies born in 2008 (as this remote possibility would result in a Dec 08 due date! How amazing!). Neil is convinced that I'm pregnant with twins and we'll have 3 babies born in the same year! ;)
But, nigh-on impossible, right? That's what *I'm* thinking, anyway. I will follow up with keeping a close eye on things (esp. with this weird spotting and cramping). Maybe I'm getting a period early? Or maybe it's just a hormonal glitch? Or absolutely NOTHING and I would barely have noticed a thing had I not had the parsnips?! Probably! I won't take any tests because I really don't think there's a need to. I do have one single test left from the last time, but I don't plan to use it, unless there's much more evidence that I should! If I get more symptoms then I suppose I could temp for a few days and see if those temps are in the high range (if I haven't ovulated yet since having Nathan they shouldn't be) or not.
Oh, but my skin is NOT pregnant-soft. So that's something! Anyway I will continue to waffle about this till enough time elapses and it's obvious that I never was pregnant after all! I'll be closing this diary on the Nathan side of things by the end of this week coming (so sad!!) as he will have had his "new baby" postnatal check at last, but unless this slight weirdness is totally resolved, I think I'll keep track of it here for a while longer.
But anyway! I'll be back with news of my tiny boy's exciting appointments this week! And lots more photos, of course! :)
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