(I’ll be taking a photo of Eleanor sitting in the Eames rocker and wearing her pin each month until she’s two years old.)
Previous Photos
One Month Old • Two Months Old • Three Months Old • View All
Tag: baby
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Four Months Old (Eleanor’s Monthly Photo)
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Three Months Old (Eleanor’s Monthly Photo)
(I’ll be taking a photo of Eleanor sitting in the Eames rocker and wearing her pin each month until she’s two years old.)
Previous Photos
One Month Old • Two Months Old • View All -
How I Got My Baby to Sleep Through the Night (Without Crying)
I get a shower each morning too. Now, let me preface this entire post by saying that I think temperament has a lot to do with it. And before you hate me too much for having such an ‘easy’ baby, just know that she barely sleeps during the day and she doesn’t appreciate me trying to do crazy things like oh, sitting down.
Our Bedtime Routine
I don’t keep Eleanor on a strict schedule during the day. I pretty much parent on demand (though a natural schedule is starting to emerge), but I’ve followed the same bedtime routine each night since she was two weeks old.
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Two Months Old (Eleanor’s Monthly Photo)
(I’ll be taking a photo of Eleanor sitting in the Eames rocker and wearing her pin each month until she’s two years old.)
Previous photo:
One Month Old -
Eight Weeks Old
I’m still enjoying my maternity leave, though I’m eager to open the shop again too. Now that Eleanor is getting used to being in a sling, I can get more done during the day but it’s not consistent at all. Some days she takes a nice long nap (or two), sometimes it’s just 20 minutes here and there.
Although Eleanor doesn’t nap much, she’s doing remarkably well at sleeping through the night! I start her bedtime routine around 8:00 and on a good night she’s asleep by 8:30. If she’s fussing a bit it might take an hour or more for her to finally fall asleep, but once she’s asleep she’s often out for the night. I always get one of two variations… she sleeps straight through from 8:30-5:30, or she sleeps from 8:30-3:00, nurses, and then sleeps again from 3:30-7:00. Either way, I get a decent night’s sleep so I’m happy.
Eleanor plays with her hair now to soothe herself when she’s tired. We first noticed her doing it a couple of weeks ago. It’s cute to watch her do something so deliberate! I feel like we’re getting a peek at her burgeoning personality. And she’s always been very alert, but now she’s becoming more curious too. She loves to be in her bouncy chair or on her play mat so that she can bat at her toys. She makes little cooing noises as she explores.
And she smiles! It melts me a little each time and of course I give her one right back. She’s even started laughing… well, it’s more like the precursor to actual laughing. Practice giggles. It’s not the squealing baby laugh you might think of, but more of an abrupt breathy sort of thing accompanied by a beaming smile.
Lately though, Eleanor has been crying for Brandon when he holds her. She calms down right away when she’s back in my arms. It’s way too early for her to be experiencing separation anxiety and we don’t know why it’s happening, but it’s heartbreaking. She smiles at Brandon, but it seems she just doesn’t want to be held by him.
When she was three weeks old, I mentioned that I was having a hard time with breastfeeding. I’m happy to say that things have finally improved! I was feeling discouraged when I was still in pain at six weeks because even though I now there’s no magic time frame, I kept hearing “give it six weeks”. I had taken a breastfeeding class, seen lactation consultants, read books, applied lanolin religiously, kept soothies in the fridge, varied positions, carefully latched the baby on… I was doing everything right and I was still in so much pain.
The left side had actually felt better since around the fourth week, but the right side was awful. There was some damage early on (probably by the third day), and it seemed like it would never heal. I dreaded each feeding because even if it was the side that didn’t hurt, that meant I was just that much closer to nursing her on the painful side again. Well I don’t know what changed, but all of a sudden one day nursing didn’t hurt anymore! Maybe Eleanor finally grew into her high palate, or maybe she changed the way she latches on? All I can say to someone having the same difficulty is that it does get better (even though I was afraid for a while that it never would).
Oh, and our little girl is quite the chunker. At her one month check-up, she weighed 12 pounds! That’s off the charts. Now she’s already outgrowing her 0-3 month clothes. She’s getting so big so fast.
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Adventures in Baby Wearing
Eleanor does not like to be put down. Therefore, I’ve ended up with a nice assortment of baby carriers all in a valiant effort to regain the use of both hands.
Eleanor and I both love our mei tai from BabyHawk. She likes to be held in the ‘snuggle hold’ (tummy to tummy with me), so she was comfortable in this one from the start. The head rest is stiff enough to be supportive, but I fold it down sometimes too so Eleanor can look around more easily. Oh, and the fabric choices are excellent! Mine is pink and brown, natch. The drawbacks: The shoulder straps are so long that they tend to drag on the ground and get dirty while getting the carrier on and off, and they also make it difficult to fold the carrier up. When you have time, you can fold the whole thing up into a nice little rectangle that fits neatly in your diaper bag. When you don’t have time, you end up doing what I do and just stuffing it into your bag in a wrinkly pile that takes up a ton of room.
My other two carriers are both slings.
The slings took more getting used to for Eleanor, but she’s happy in them now and I like each one for different reasons. The one that I’m wearing in the photo is from hotslings. It’s comfortable and it has minimal padding, so it’s incredibly easy to fold up. It also keeps Eleanor a little cooler than the mei tai. The only drawback is that it is sized very specifically and it isn’t adjustable. I’m not sure that it’s a drawback really, it’s just something to keep in mind.
My other sling is by Balboa Baby. It has padding on the shoulder strap and along the edges – very comfy but the padding makes it bulkier. It’s sewn into a slightly more structured shape too, which makes it harder to fold up. I like that it’s adjustable, but the padding on the strap makes it difficult to adjust and it’s not easy when your baby is still in the sling. If I were to buy another ring sling, it would be a Maya Wrap. There is still some padding in the shoulder, and there is a lot of extra fabric at the tail, but you can use that extra fabric as a nursing cover.
And speaking of nursing… I go out with Eleanor fairly often, and figuring out how to nurse her while she’s still nestled in a carrier will be liberating! We’re still learning, but these videos have been helpful so far: How to nurse in a sling and how to nurse in a mei tai.
p.s. I was able to take, edit, and upload that photo, AND write this post, all while Eleanor slept in her sling. Do you know how amazing that is? I typed with both hands and everything.