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I’m already several days late with Liam’s two-month update!  We went to the pediatrician last Friday for his check-up, and I saw a couple of brand new little ones there.  Could not believe how much bigger and sturdier Liam seems in such a short time!  But I don’t know when that happened?  I mean, it’s hard to see the changes on a daily basis, and then all of a sudden he’s not a tiny newborn anymore.  Since we are currently leaning toward not having any more babies, it’s a little sad for me when I realize — that’s it — I may never have a tiny little jello-y newborn again.  He’s a solid infant.  (But still a bit of a bobblehead!)

So.  The facts:  At two months, Liam weighs around 11 lbs.  I realize now that a baby’s weight can vary quite a bit over the course of a day, because we had a rented scale and I was weighing him routinely.  So, when we weighed him at home, he was 11 lbs 3 oz, but at his doctor’s appointment, he weighed in at 10 lb 15 oz.  That put him at the 30th percentile for weight.  Length was 22 inches (16th percentile), but our pediatrician thought maybe the nurse didn’t get a very accurate measure, because he thinks Liam looks more proportionate length to weight than that would indicate.  Noggin is 15.5 inches in circumference, which is at the 75th percentile!  But he doesn’t really look like he has a huge head.  He just looks perfect.

Liam eats around 4-5 oz at a feeding, about 6 times a day.  After all the breastfeeding issues we had early on, things finally fell into place — almost instantly — at around the four-week mark.  So, needless to say, I am so, so glad I persevered.  I really don’t know how at peace I would have been if I had quit, at least for a long time.  So now things are smooth sailing, and I couldn’t be happer about that.  He is even getting a bit faster with nursing, which is a blessing, because at first it would take over an hour sometimes.  We have continued to give him a bottle (of pumped milk) the feeding before we go to bed and in the middle of the night.  I have tried nursing him at those times, and he is just really sleepy, so I’m afraid he won’t get full and will wake again a short time later.  I am all about maximizing our sleep potential.

Speaking of sleep, I am pretty grateful for what we’re getting, but I’m definitely ready for Liam to decide he can sleep through the night.  The last several days, we have fallen into a *tentative* pattern of feeding around 8 or 8:30, then he goes down.  We will get him up to feed him again around 10:30, before we go to bed, to try to stretch the time until the next feeding.  Then he will wake around 2:30 or 3, and hopefully not again until at least 5:30 or 6, which is when we (or at least I) grudgingly get up for the day.  However, the last two nights he has slept for a solid six-hour stretch the first part of the night, which is great, because then he didn’t get up for the day until after 7.  Lily has been getting up between 6:30 and 7 anyway, so that has worked pretty well.  We’ll see if it lasts.  So, you’d think that 6 hours of sleep would feel pretty good right?  I wouldn’t know.  My body is still on Liam’s previous 3-4 hour schedule, so I lay awake last night, just waiting for him to wake to eat.  I know we’ll all get in sync one of these days!  Probably just in time for daylight savings time to through us all for a loop next week.

Liam is on medication for reflux, which we hope will help with his fussiness.  When I say fussiness, I really mean a lot of screaming and crying, often during or after feedings.  He spits up a TON, which means not only does he go through a few outfits a day, but often Bill and I have to change sometime during the day, too.  We’re talking projectile, and often.  That in and of itself is not reason to medicate, as medication will not have an effect on the spitting up, just the discomfort of it.  And it’s so hard to know if that is what is causing Liam’s unhappiness so much of the time.  He can go from happy and smiling to screaming mad in a split second.  Lily was pretty much the same way, and we spent a lot of her first year trying to figure out why.  She was on relux medication, too, and we never were completely convinced it made any difference.  So it could just kind of be temperament.  Still, that is a lot to explain to strangers at the grocery store who look at me like, “What is WRONG with that baby and WHY aren’t you doing anything about it?”

But he does have periods of content time, too.  When he’s happy, all is right with the world.  Liam started smiling soon after his one-month update.  He even kind of laughs a little now.  He coos and gurgles and makes all those little sounds you forget about since you last had a newborn.  He loves looking at faces and is starting to track faces really well, even turning his head to keep focused on his target face.  He is starting to reach for things a bit more, primarily to bat at toys in front of him.  When on his tummy, he can hold his head up for a few seconds, but it’s admittedly my fault that he’s not stronger with this (for shame, pediatric physical therpapist!).  It’s just been so cold, and our house is so drafty near the floors, I haven’t been too inclined to do a lot of floor time.  Just one of the many challenges I have found with having a winter baby.

And so we look forward to spring and getting outside!  The weather warmed up into the 50’s for the past several days, and I was able to take Liam to and from the car without a blanket covering the carseat.  I realized that he really hasn’t even seen the outside world, because anytime we have him out, he is completely covered.  Poor little guy.  But what wonders he has in store for him over the coming months!