Ant diary: 8 weeks

Growth check: Ant grew another inch, and put on 2lb 8oz in the last four weeks. Also added 3cm in head circumference. He’s gone from being around the 50th percentile for both height and weight to being a bit of a porker – 66th percentile for weight but only 39th for height. I think they gypped him on the height measurement though, because he was screaming at the time :-). They also gave me the percentiles for his head circumference, which I kinda wish they hadn’t – he was in the 7th percentile at his one month appointment, and is now in the 21st. So he’s got a little head for his size. I hope it doesn’t mean anything about his brain development! At least he’s growing nicely there too.

Tummy-time: He’s now definitely able to hold his head up, I counted 30 seconds the other day. And his head is pretty stable when I’m holding him up on my shoulders. I think he’s almost ready to use the Bumbo and go forward facing in the Baby Bjorn.

Focus: Ant still isn’t interested in objects. He loves looking at the ceiling, curtains, and paintings on the wall. I did just make and print a black and white bullseye, and he’s fascinated by that. That object he will follow, for sure!

Smiles: Oh my goodness. He’s smiling a lot more now, and it’s totally adorable! He does have dimples, although they don’t show all the time. If he ends up with blue eyes and dimples he’s going to be a real ladykiller!

Hands: Still a good grip, but not grabbing at objects yet. Seems to be really good at finding all the hairs I shed though. He does bat at the toys on the gymini, but I think they just happen to get in his way as he’s waving his arms and legs around.

Feeding: He’s now going between 7-8 hours between his last evening feed and the early morning one, and then 3-4 hours until the next one (last night, for example, I fed him at 9:50pm, then 5:27 and 8:40am). So if we could actually get to bed at the same time as him we’d get a decent amount of sleep. But no, I do things like write this instead – went to bed at 1am. Silly! During the day he generally goes around 3 hours between feeds, with a range of 2-4 hours.

Eyes: Still a medium blue. Can’t tell if they’re changing yet or not. But what’s neat is that his eyelashes have gotten much darker, so you can definitely see them now. Not much in the way of eyebrows yet. He started crying real tears over the past few days. So much more heartbreaking when he cries now. Last night he was crying before I fed him, and little tear slipped off his nose. Waaaaaahhh!

Complexion: Cradle cap is gone, for the most part. Still some rough patches around his eyes and nose though. Don’t really know what (if anything) to do about that. I’m putting a little moisturizer on every now and again, hopefully that’s all it takes.

Sleeping: He is doing really well with sleeping at night. We can even put him down when he’s not asleep yet, and that works out fine. For some reason it’s completely different in the daytime. He won’t take a nap unless he falls asleep on me first, and on the rare occasion when I can put him down without waking him up in the process, he only sleeps for a few minutes more before waking. Must figure out what to do about this! Although if I had to pick a time of day for him to not want to sleep as much it would definitely be day rather than night, so I really can’t complain too much.

Me: Back to biking and ice hockey!!! First practices were last Saturday and Monday. I could definitely feel muscles I wasn’t used to using, but was surprisingly not sore afterwards. Yay! I have missed hockey so much, it is really nice to be back. Good for my mental health as well, I find that I am a lot more on edge now than I used to be. I get frustrated and upset a lot more easily (which I am chalking up to lack of consecutive sleep). Taking a few hours for myself to do something fun like hockey really makes a difference. In other areas, my linea nigra seems to be getting lighter. My belly is still shrinking, although it’s hard to see the difference until I try on clothes and see how much better they fit each week. I do have a diastasis (separation between my abdominal muscles) of 3-4 fingers, so need to do some exercises to rectify that. First, though, I need to get Ant to sleep somewhere else during the day besides on ME! Bleeding stopped at right around 5 weeks. Hmmm… what else? Weight loss has stopped, I’d like to lose another 5-7 pounds of my IF weight, but “they” always say not to diet while breastfeeding. It’s hard not to fall back into the “must be thin” habit / mindset (which is what got me into the HA in the first place), but I keep reminding myself that I’m doing this for my babe.