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| Two Months Old! |
Killean is doing well though. He's growing and getting to be more alert during the day. Don't get me wrong, he still sleeps a lot, but he's having more times of being awake when we're just at home hanging out. When he's awake, he's looking around and trying to observe and absorb the world around him. He is starting to smile more and more. He loves when we sing to him and when we make funny noises. Raspberries almost always incite a smile.
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| Fair skin, fair hair. |
His sleep is far more challenging than Rowan's was. Killean is real hit and miss when it comes to sleeping for long stretches. Some nights he's going about 4 hours between feedings. Other nights, it's more like 7 or 8. It's a bit frustrating for me when I'm not sure when he's going to wake up in the morning. Makes it hard to know whether I should pump or wait to nurse in the mornings. I'm sure we'll get it figured out when I start back at work for real, but for now it would be nice if he would be a bit more consistent in the waking and eating department.
Getting Killean to sleep is different too. He seems to prefer falling asleep in bed with me. The other night I was rocking Killean in a chair to get him to sleep. He would doze, but not really sleep. I laid down with him in our bed and in less than a minute he was OUT. He even had a little grin on his face in the process of getting him into bed that just screamed "I win, I win!" I'm honestly not sure how I feel about that. I swore I would never have kids sleep in the bed with us. I just feel like it's OK for kids to have their space, and parents to have their space, and beds are areas that can be "mine" and not "yours". However, Killean seems to disagree. If we put him in his pack and play sleepy, but not sleeping, he won't usually fall asleep. If we hold him until he sleeps and then transfer him, he'll sleep for a while, but wake up after a few minutes. If he does manage to sleep for a while, he'll only sleep a couple of hours before waking up. If he falls asleep in bed with me after nursing, he'll sleep for the 7-8 hour stretches I've been longing for. Usually he'll sleep this long even if Ian transfers him to his pack and play when he comes to bed. I can't really complain about having some one-on-one time with Killean where we just get to be together though. It's quite nice not to be pulled one way by a toddler...or cleaning...or whatever and spend some time with my son.
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| Sweet Blue Eyes |
Killean is certainly a mama's boy too. Not only does he seem to prefer to sleep with me RIGHT there, but he seems to be much more calm around me most of the time. I know this is incredibly frustrating for Ian, but there's not much either he or I can do about it. If Killean is upset, Ian will try EVERYTHING to calm him. If nothing works, he'll hand Killean to me and I won't do anything different (or sometimes anything at all) and Killean is calm in a matter a minutes...sometimes seconds. I think a big contributing factors is the fact that Killean has had very few bottles (from anyone, let alone dad) in his life. I've been the almost exclusive source of food for his two months of existence. And who isn't comforted by food, or the memory/association of a person or place with a favorite meal? I'm sure once he starts getting more bottles from Ian this dynamic will change.
We haven't even attempted cloth diapers yet. With the move and everything it just hasn't worked out. I think here shortly I will be pulling them out. I figure even if we only do cloth diapers for some of his changes, we're saving some money and some tress in the process. I'm not going to lie though, the though of not having to keep up on laundry for two adults, two kids, AND diapers is almost appealing enough to skip cloth diapers this time around.
He eats like a champ. He's eating about every 2 1/2 to 3 hours during the day. Sometimes he eats rather quickly, other times I feel as though he's latched onto me for an hour. Thankfully he is content to go for longer stretches if he manages to fall asleep, so life can go on if it's hard to find a place to stop and nurse every 2 hours. I have nursed him while walking around (looked at a couple of houses WHILE nursing...boom!), but I much prefer the chance to sit...relax...and nurse rather than nursing on the go. The result of all this eating: at 2 months he weighed 13 lb 8 oz and measured 24 inches. That's almost 6 pounds bigger than birth weight! Way to go buddy!
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| Getting our work out in |
I have wondered if Killean has a sensitivity to dairy. One of the challenges with his night time routine is that he can be QUITE fussy at night. It's not quite colic, but some nights he's just mad and we can't get him to calm down. That has settled down SIGNIFICANTLY in the last few weeks, but for a short time there, I was afraid we were going to have a baby with colic and I was bracing myself for some long nights. Once he did get to sleep, he was pretty fidgety and didn't seem to settle that well or quickly. Then I noticed some of his stools were almost a little mucousy too. The wonderful world of the Internets told me that those were signs of MSPI-Milk and Soy Protein Intolerance. So I started an experiment and cut out obvious sources of dairy in my diet (milk, cheese, yogurt, sour cream, etc). I didn't look at all the labels to cut everything out, but I wanted to eliminate a bunch of the 'big ones' to see if we noticed a difference-and we have. I have slipped a little bit of dairy into my diet here and there (first time having cheese on a pizza in over a week was GLORIOUS!) and haven't noticed any ill effects. When we go to Killean's 2 month check next week, I'll bring it up with out Dr. and see if we can get any recommendations from him. I'm not convinced he has MSPI, but I'm also not convinced he is easily digesting mountains of dairy all that well. I LOVE dairy products and was consuming a lot of them. Perhaps 24-32 oz of milk, cheese in at least one meal, and other sources of dairy (milk chocolate, yogurt, sour cream, butter, ice cream, etc) every day was just a little too much for Killean to process. Until then, I think I'll probably greatly limit my dairy intake for a while just to make things easier on him. I did the same thing with Rowan, so it makes sense that I shouldn't OD on the dairy with Killean too.
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