Austin at two months old

This month has flown by. Again. And I still have yet to write down my birth story. I’m sort of feeling like I’m forgetting some of it and I know I need to write it down so that I can still capture those emotions.

June has been filled with Father’s day, and soccer and karate and trying to see friends and feeling like my head is spinning.

We’ve been able to get out and do some things as a family which is always a good thing because these kids need constant entertainment or they’re driving us up the wall. To put it nicely.

Emelia is still tantruming quite a bit which continues to be exhausting and something we’re waiting out as she adjusts to no longer being the baby in the family.

Austin has his eyes open so much more now and he’s starting to smile which is so much fun. The girls love interacting with him and he just loves watching them.

Stats

Nicknames: Little man, Austie

Weight: 10 lbs, 6 oz (8th percentile)

Length: 24 inches (89th percentile)

Diaper size: 1

Clothing size: Growing out of newborn, into 0-3

Eating

He started nursing a lot more during the day at the start of June. In fact, looking back in my baby app, he went from nursing 3 times a day to 7 to 9 times. And about two weeks ago, I started nursing him at night instead of pumping. When he was nursing more during the day, I was finding myself still needing to pump in the morning and right before bed. Unfortunately, I’m dealing with a touch of an oversupply.

Gradually over the next two weeks, I started dropping pumping sessions and nursing more and around 6 weeks, he was exclusively nursing. Chris would obviously still do bottles when I needed to go to appointments, but otherwise, we were finally off to the races. There’s been so much stress lifted off me because of it.

Sleeping

I would just like to first start out by saying he slept his first SEVEN HOURS on June 18th. It was a glorious night. Though now I want to point out that I didn’t actually get seven hours of sleep in a row, since he went to bed at 8:00 and I went to bed at 11 and then I of course woke up at 1:00 and 2:00 to make sure he was still breathing. But hey. It’s something.

We had started putting him down in the crib in his room when we put the girls to bed, because I was ready to have my evenings back again. I missed crocheting. It has been a way to manage my anxiety and let go of the day and I’ve missed doing it.

And then a few nights after his 7 hour stretch, I nursed him lying down in bed and he did a good job for the first time. Honestly, when I stopped pumping at night and nursed him in bed, sitting up with the nursing pillow, it almost seemed more exhausting. Like, there was one night I used the Haakaa pump on one side while nursing him since I’m leaking quite a bit (oddly, this never happened with Emelia). I was nursing him, and shut my eyes because I was so tired and then kind of jerked and opened my eyes, bringing my hand up to wrap things up and put the baby back and my hand knocked the pump off my boob and over 2 ounces of milk splashed into the bed. Fun times.

But I tried side-lying nursing in bed and have been nursing him like that ever since. So much better for both of us. I get more sleep and he’s happy as a clam, trying to be as quiet as possible so I’ll fall asleep with him.

So, overall, I can’t complain. He’s a good sleeper. He’s your average baby and we’re just going with the flow, waiting for the stretches of sleep to get longer.

Luckily, he does mostly do a good long 6 to 7 hour stretch and then he’ll be awake every two hours after that.

Milestones

This little baby is SMILING now and it’s the sweetest thing ever. All you have to do is talk in a high pitched voice to him and smile and you get the biggest grin from him you’ve ever seen. He especially loves smiling at his sisters. And he’s cooing. Not a lot, but it’s there and we sometimes can have a conversation back and forth.

His eyes are open a lot more now as well and he’s so cute when he just looks around or stares into your soul.

Twice at about 5 weeks old, he managed to roll himself over from front to back in his rage of being put on tummy time. I haven’t seen him do it since though.

Personality

Austin’s a pretty chill baby. He can be dramatic, especially when you have the audacity to do certain things like put him down when he doesn’t want to and tummy time. He’ll let you know. Chris and I both think it’s hilarious the way he’ll “yell” at us when he’s displeased. Like, he’ll make his baby noises and fuss and then he’ll do this yell or shout and we tell him how dramatic he’s being.

And he just loves to be held. All the time. Even by his sisters. I can’t tell who loves to hold him more, Olivia or Emelia. But he just wants to be held all. the. time. In fact, within the last few days he’s been refusing to take his naps in his crib and much prefers to sleep in our arms. Which is cool and all, but you know, I have a life. He’d beg to differ and say the world revolves around him. It’s a conundrum.

Health

Austin has been my only baby (so far) to not have much reflux. Every once in awhile, he spits up, but otherwise, he does really well.

Austin had a tongue tie revision on June 8th. This whole time I thought it was his lip tie that would possibly have to be addressed. He was having a lot of gas pain and we were giving him multiple doses of gas drops for the evening and overnight feedings. I’m doing inversion therapy on him, doing tummy time to help get the gas out, and nightly tummy massages. There was just a lot of clicking and other noises when he’d nurse and I’m hoping that will improve.

We were told by the lactation nurse that he just needs some time, but after a few weeks of seeing no improvement in his ability to maintain a latch while nursing, I started wondering if we’d need to have a consult with the pediatric dentist for a possible tie revision.

When I took him in a few weeks ago, the pediatric dentist checked him over but ended up glossing over the lip tie, saying it was no big deal. And technically, his tongue tie doesn’t meet the requirements to have the revision. What he does have, we discovered, is a high palate.

No one ever told me about this, among all the people who were checking him out, and I wish I would have known about this earlier. Because it ends up explaining what the issue is that no one could figure out. This is another reason why I’m not happy that the lactation nurses blew me off in the hospital that there was anything going on with him, and wouldn’t even look in his mouth.

But the dentist said unfortunately, this isn’t a black-and-white case, and I could decide to get the revision or just wait and see what happens. Basically, she said I could get the revision, with no guarantee it would give him more range of motion in his mouth, I could wait and see what happens, but if I get it done after he’s 4 months, the muscle memory of him nursing won’t allow him to adjust his latch. Or I could resign myself to doing what I’m doing and just supplement with bottles as needed until he reaches a year. Which…I would do if I didn’t have a choice. I work for myself from home, so I have the ability to do this, but I really just want him exclusively nursing.

So I called Chris from the room while she stepped out and we decided to go for it. Because I would always wonder if it would have helped or not.

See, while his tongue technically worked fine when he was nursing, the high palate prevents him from getting a good suck with his tongue, as it can’t hit the roof of his mouth. Doing the revision could help get his tongue up higher to the roof, but it might not be enough.

The process itself was quick. They took him out of the room and he was back in under 5 minutes, sucking on a cloth of sugar water. She showed me the stretches I had to do, 3 to 5 times daily for the next three weeks. I was to do 5 stretches in the first week and then I could go down to three for the remaining two weeks. After that, it’s considered to be healed and I don’t have to go back.

Let me tell you, I hate every moment of these stretches. It’s hard purposely hurting your baby even though you know it will (hopefully) help in the long term. Because that’s just it. I could be doing all this for nothing. Luckily, the stretch itself only lasts 3 seconds, so 15 seconds of my day is spent doing it which puts it in perspective, but still. It righteously sucks.

And the worst part is, so far, I haven’t noticed a difference. She told me the first week I may see a difference, but I may not. In the second week, it might seem like everything is tighter, but that’s part of the process and to keep doing the stretches. But I’m at the end of week two and so far, I haven’t noticed any difference in the clicking I’m hearing and I don’t think much has improved so far in his nursing. So I think all of this didn’t end up helping like I was hoping.

Next Thursday is when we’re officially done with the stretches and I’m counting down the days.

We’ve been doing a lot of his tummy time on his changing pad by laying it on the coffee table so we don’t have to sit on the floor with him.

We try to aim for an hour a day, but many days we don’t hit that. But he spends plenty of time being held up against my chest and so I’m letting go of that guilt because hey, I have three kids and just don’t have the time to be sitting next to him doing tummy time on the floor. (Plus, we have a dog that has no problem walking over the baby and a toddler that loves to run through the house at high speed without a care in the world. I’m doing my best.