Baby progress
Wednesday, 19th September 2007 by Julie
Our lovely little guy will be 12 weeks old tomorrow. Jonathan now weighs approximately 5kg and is in the process of popping out of the smallest of his 0 – 3 month babygrows. (As an indication of how fickle babygrow sizes are, he’s still fitting into a set of three marked 0 – 1 month!)
It’s great to be right on hand to watch all the little changes in him. Yesterday morning for example, was the first time that I had to remove a very firm, but slippery little hand from Jon’s mouth so I could put in a dummy at 05h20. Aside from that we’re still waiting for the coordination to extend to batting or deliberately grasping things.
His eyes have been turning a hazel-type colour (like Tom’s) for a while now. Thwarting my hope that they’d stay the deep blue they were at birth. At the moment though, the hazel is just a ring around the pupil and the outer parts are a dark blue which is quite an attractive mix.
We’re also seeing more of the baby highs and lows expressed as sound. More happy little noises when he’s content which interestingly get countered by more tantrum-like, desperate, “you’re betraying me” type howls when he feels
badly let down.
But some things just don’t elicit cries or yells any more. Like drying him after his bath for example. One day he just didn’t cry, and that was the end of it. Rather cool I thought. Nappy changes have gone quiet as well. Mild unhappiness is more often conveyed by expressive yells rather than just plain crying.
Crying seems to be reserved for when he’s particularly tired and fed-up with the world. At these times a dummy and a quiet environment are good aids to helping him unwind and fall asleep.
Content times are best experienced after a feed and before he gets tired. He’s still happiest while looking at light areas — be it electric or windows, and pictures on the walls, and he does appreciate a sound-track.
Right now he’s lying on the floor chirping and gurgling along to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and looking around, smiling occasionally.
I miss some of the cute tiny baby antics that have gone as well though. Like the way he would try to eat the cotton wool that was cleaning his face at bath-time. And the delightful sneezes that would start off with him extending his arms out to the sides as he felt it coming on, and then jerk them together over his chest as the sneeze hit.
As far as middle of the night feeds go, we’ve come a long way! From having to wake Jon up at 3am in the early days, to being woken up between 2 and 4am, to the most recent stage of being woken up between 5 and 7am.
This last stage is a little more tiring to be honest. The days when he wakes up after 6:30 are great! But when he wakes up before 6am we try to keep him going till at least 6. We’ve had one day where a single dummy application took us all the way through to 7am when our alarm goes off! And two days where he didn’t wake us up at all — we woke him at 7am! Hallelujah!
But we’ve also had rather a number where he’s woken up at 5am and needed 3 – 4 parental visits to see him through to 6. Sigh. These are the days when I end up feeling a little ragged around the edges and we’re hoping that they’re numbered!
In general, Jon has adapted very well to the routine we’ve given him. He’s even delighting us by going down quietly at 19h30 now (as long as he hasn’t slept too much during the day). I’m a little nervous about what 3 weeks in SA will do to all this, but that will definitely be another blog entry!
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P.S. Fresh baby pics here.
