Ivy || 3 Months Old

Today Ivy turns three months old! Time is warped. It seems like she has been here forever and yet sometimes I still think...wait...wasn't she born last week? Life being so upside down in many ways hasn't helped. But our little baby sister is growing and changing every day and we sure do love her.

Ivy at Three Months

Weight:  11 lbs. 4 oz. (10 lbs. 3 oz. last month)

Height: 24 inches (23.6 inches last month)

Personality: chatty charmer + a little sensitive

Likes

Any and all attention

Fashion? maybe? She seems to like me dressing her up for photos

Bath time

Kippy!

Dislikes

Baby carrier

Any loud or abrupt noises

Nursing on the right side

Getting out of the bath

Being put in the car seat

Getting spit-up wiped off her face

Wearing

Size 2 diapers (a little roomy)

3 month clothing (it's getting tight, lengthwise)

Love to Dream swaddle up for night time

Things I want to remember about Ivy at three months old:

Coos that sounds like "hi"

Kicking so hard she can bounce herself in her seat

How she relaxes so quickly when in the bath

When she spit-up directly into Kip's face when he got too close to her

Tony (the corner ghost - long story I'll have to share some time)

The way she sucks on her fist and has started sucking on her thumb

Receding hairline (it's so sad)

When she toots in her sleep and wakes me up

Haba babies with Kip

When she smiles and coos at me in the middle of the night - ready to chat

Being covered in spit-up (well I don't really want to remember that but it is the reality of this month)

Sleep

Right after Ivy was born I started following two baby sleep accounts on Instagram. Both are run by moms that are sleep consultants and they offer sleep plans for a variety of baby sleep issues. I haven't bought any of the plans but they both offer tips on their feeds with essentially the same advice. One piece of advice I didn't know about when Kip was a baby is something called wake windows. Basically, as babies get older they extend the time they are able to stay awake. Seems obvious right? Well, creating a nap routine is dependent on following the wake windows, which I didn't know. With Kip we just guessed and we often kept him up for hours during the day which resulted in a baby that was overtired and had a hard time falling asleep for naps. He slept great at night but had zero predictability for his naps until he was around a year. With Ivy we've tried to pay close attention to her sleepy cues and her wake window. For a 3 month old the wake window is an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes. So once she wakes up for the day, I feed her and then we have chill time. Around an hour later we watch for yawning, fussing, sucking on her fist. As soon as she does that we put her in her sleep sack and in her bassinet with a paci. Usually, if we didn't push it too far she goes to sleep by herself almost instantly. Around an hour later she wakes up and we do the routine again. Eat, chill, back to sleep. So although her naps are generally no more than an hour, we can predict them and plan the day around that. According to these accounts, the older she gets the longer the wake window and the longer the naps. Then as she gets to 6-9 months the naps consolidate into a schedule. So right now we have a general routine (with no set times) eventually it will fall into a timed schedule. 

 

Now, after I typed all that and made it seem easy...it's not. We often have days where sleep or no sleep is all over the place. It's not perfect every day but it is working well for us for the most part and has given me great stress relief regarding baby naps.

Ivy sleeps great at night. She goes to bed around 6:30/7 pm, wakes around 4 am for a quick feed, and then back to sleep until 8 am. I think she could drop that 4 am feed but my ladies are nearly exploding at that point so I typically don't mind getting up to feed her.

Eat

If you've been around for awhile you know that Kip and I really struggled with breastfeeding initially (see here). Fortunately, all those lessons learned really paid off with Ivy. She and I had a much better start and with the advice I got from the Lactation Consultant in the hospital, I was able to avoid a lot of pitfalls that got into with Kip. I still have an oversupply this time around but it's not nearly has bad as it was with Kip. My supply regulated around 6 weeks and I haven't been painfully engorged or prone to clogs. Ivy figured out how to adjust to my forceful let downs and I discovered the Hakka suction pump for catching the let down on the side she isn't latched on. Thanks to that, we have a healthy freezer stash and I've only used my electric pump a handful of times since she was born! Now that I am back at work (even though working from home) I will pump throughout the day so that Mandy and Dan can bottle feed. She takes a bottle well although it does have to be room temp (Kip liked his cold). Overall, I'm just really grateful for both breastfeeding experiences and I have so much sympathy for moms who don't have an easy go of it. Often times people talk about breastfeeding like it's instinctual and for many women (and babies) it's not. We need to normalize that. Anyways, got off track there. Ivy eats every 2 hours during the day for about 6-7 feeds in a 24 hour period. Her only "night" feed is around 4 am.

She has awful reflux and spits-up nearly every feed. According to the pediatrician, since it doesn't interfere with her weight gain or her sleep she isn't a good candidate for medicine and we just have to wait until she outgrows it...around 6 months to a year. Ugh. Until then, she will always have a burp cloth or a dog piddle pad under her. I'll spare you any gross spit-up photos.

Play

Playtime for Ivy is sitting in her bouncer chair and cooing and smiling at anyone who will give her attention. She loves when Kip engages with her. She has started to kick a lot more and tracks objects in front of her face. She HATES tummy time due to her reflux but she has great head control on her own so fortunately we don't have to torture her by making her lay on her belly. I'm looking forward to her beginning to sit up and grasp soon.

Little Ivy Bean we all love you so much. I have a feeling you're going to be a talkative little girl with how chatty you are already. There are big things happening all around you and you just soak it all up. I'm sad I have to go back to work now but I am so grateful that the current circumstances allow me to still be with you all day. What a hidden blessing in this crazy year! Love you little nugget! We survived the 4th trimester together. Onward!

Now a little outtake from her three month photo shoot...behind the scenes