Happy 4 Months Caleb!

Happy Four Months Baby Boy!

His Stats:

We went to the doctor for his check up and he is 14 lbs (22%) and 26.25 ” (90+ %).

Ironically, these are my favorite monthly pictures of him. He looks oh so happy in them, but this has been a really, really hard month. More on that later, though.  He is cooing, grasping objects with both hands, clasping his hands, and grunting. This entire month despite Mom and Dad’s efforts he pretty much woke up every 1-3 hrs at night every single night for the whole month. Needless to say, he has some exhausted parents that may or may not be going a little crazy. Also, because of his lack of sleep, Caleb has been particularly moody this month. One minute he will be so happy and the next so, so sad- so much so it is hard to calm him. But, for the first time ever, he was happy at the doctor’s office. She even remarked that she didn’t have to scream at us over your loud crying while we were asking her questions. Seriously, every visit before he would get so mad when we undressed him, he could never calm down and she would have to yell so we could hear her over Caleb’s screams (I don’t know if others have struggled with this, but it is super hard to concentrate on what your doctor is saying when your baby is screaming so loud you can barely hear, much less think straight)

There were some really special memories from this month:

The past month was probably the hardest thus far. Caleb essentially stopped sleeping- well in the day he would sleep maybe 2 times for 30 min if we were lucky- or sometimes longer if I was wearing him in the Moby wrap but that stopped working as well towards the end of the month (one time at church- we meet at a school- I had to walk outside around the entire perimeter of the school a couple times shushing him to finally get him to go to sleep in the wrap- and then he woke up less than 30 min later) because he was becoming increasingly observant of his surroundings. At night he would wake literally 3-5 times, and while he used to go back to sleep after I nursed him, he wouldn’t really do that anymore. He began staying up for 1 and 2 hrs at a time when he would wake, and we would swaddle him and shush him and walk around and bounce and sing- you name it. We tried everything. And I mean EVERY. THING. Swaddled, not swaddled, back, tummy, sleeping in the swing, in the rock in play, sound machine, black out curtains, soothing bedtime routine, essential oils, reflux medicine, cutting out dairy (of my diet for almost a month), baby massage, letting him cry(for 2+ hrs at a time), cosleeping, supplementing (like once or twice), sleeping with a “lovey”, putting him to bed earlier, putting him to bed later, etc. And nothing seemed to work. I literlaly felt like I was going crazy and losing my joy. All day every day I felt like I had hardly anything to show for the day- Bryan would ask how it went and I barely had time to get dressed (so I could go tutor once he came home) much less eat- I tried increasing my milk supply by pumping after every time I fed, taking herbal supplements, drinking a lot of water, eating a lot of oatmeal, lactation cookies, etc but Caleb was just so unhappy because he was sleeping less and less- and we were also barely making it through as it had literally been months since I had slept for longer than 2-3 hrs at a time. I just wondered how long I would be able to sustain this, and daily asked God for grace. At the end of his 4th month of life, we really didn’t know how to get him to sleep for naps at all anymore. Sometimes we would just put him in the car (he would scream for several minutes until he would finally sleep) and then he would sleep for less than an hr almost every time.