4 months!!

Oh my the time is flying by now! Emily is 4 months old! We have entered into a wonderful stage, and I am so thankful for all of the encouragement from so many who have gone before- it does get better! I love this girl so so much and am enjoying getting to see her happy little personality come out.

Emily will go in for her 4 month appointment on Tuesday, but I did take her to a weight check on Friday. She weighs 13 lb 4 oz! She has really started to slow her eating down this past week. It makes me a little worried because I am so used to big weight gains and feeding every 2 hours during the day. I have been hoping that she would space it out...and she has! Now I just have to trust that the slow down is really an ok thing and be thankful for it. :-) She still gets up twice a night to nurse, but she usually goes right back to sleep.

So many changes have come in just the past week!! She enjoys sitting up in my lap now and looking around everywhere. I have a crinkly book with fuzzy animals on it and she has been grabbing it for the last few days and bringing it to her mouth to explore. She likes looking at and feeling the different textures on the animals, too. It is fun to finally see her showing interest in a book!

I am pretty sure that she is teething now! There is a bump on her bottom gums, and I think I see a white patch underneath there. It is not erupting yet and we don't have much drool, but she is definitely wanting to bite and gum anything that she can get into her mouth. I want to ask the pediatrician about it on Tuesday, because it is not an incisor, so I am kind of confused. She seems to be handling it ok so far. I think it might be part of why she isn't nursing as often.

I think that the reflux medicine has been helping her. I hear the gulping sound a lot less in her sleep now and the spit up is less. She is much less fussy when she is awake and when she is nursing. She is also spitting up less now!

She is cooing up a storm and loves it when we talk with her. She has all sorts of different vowel sounds coming out and the typical "ah-goo". I think she is going to be a big talker!

Her favorite toy is still a music star that hangs from her playmat and flashes blue and green lights. I think she could stare at it and smile all day. It is my go-to toy when I need to run to the restroom or pull something out of the oven while she is awake. I lay her on her back where her feet can touch one of the bars that holds all the toys up and she just kicks over and over again and watches the toys shake over her head! She knows that she is causing the shaking and just loves it.

Emily is holding onto many different toys and teethers now, studying them, and bringing them to her mouth. She loves tags and is starting to reach and show a preference for them. When she is on her tummy she will look around the room. If I place a small toy in front of her during tummy time, she will study it with her eyes and then try to scoop it toward her face with her hands. It is so amazing to see what she figures out from day to day!

We have loads of smiles during the day, which is an incredible blessing. After so many tears and day after day of a lone smile here or there, it is so nice to see that my baby girl is enjoying herself and taking in the world around her. A friend of mine shared that she thinks that the first 4 months were the hardest and least fun with both of her children. It is nice to know that things are going to get more fun from here!

We have been having a rough time in the sleep department, and I decided on Wednesday that we just had to try letting her cry. We had gotten into some unhealthy habits for her sleep because we just needed to try anything that might work to get us through the colic stage. Since the end of September she had been swaddled, sleeping on a boppy pillow inside her crib (I know that is bad, but she never once had a breathing problem with it), and I had been nursing her to sleep each time. It worked like a charm for a while (even though I was super exhausted from all the nursing and having to wait each time until she was asleep enough to move.) Lately she was waking up each time I got up from the rocking chair and she was able to wiggle off her pillow and out of the swaddle fairly quickly. All of those things were waking her up prematurely and frustrating her. I ended up often holding a screaming, kicking, 13 lb baby who didn't seem consoled or lulled to sleep by my rocking arms or shushing sounds. We seemed to outgrow the 5 S's overnight.

On Wednesday we changed everything at once. The boppy went away, the swaddle went away, and I put her down in her crib drowsy but awake. Thankfully I had a friend over at the house with me to get us through the first crying period. She cried 37 minutes and slept for 25. Not too bad considering the stories I had heard for other babies. The next nap didn't happen. She cried for more than 40 minutes, and I figured she might as well get up at that point and we'd try again later. The third nap she was so tired that she didn't cry at all and slept for an hour! That night she cried for 15 minutes and slept beautifully, only waking up twice to nurse. I would finish nursing her and lay her flat on the crib while she was still kind of awake and she fell right to sleep. The next few days she has done awesome...less than 10 minutes of crying most of the time and really it has been more like fussing and not crying. We also discovered that she takes a really great nap in her carseat if I make a lot of noise and talk to someone once we get home. I think she likes knowing that I am there and it helps put her into a pretty deep sleep. Overall it has worked well and worked very quickly with much less crying each time than I anticipated. This afternoon has been rough, though. She slept a lot in the car this morning when I took my mom back to the Baltimore airport. I took a break on the way back to have her up to play and nurse for a little while. This afternoon she seemed ready for a nap but cried like crazy before falling asleep. She only cat-napped on the way home so I think that she is overtired. I knew we'd have a bad day eventually, but I do think that it has been a huge step in the right direction for her to transition to being unswaddled and flat in the crib. Now she has her hands available to soothe herself and she can move around. It might give her more of a chance to get roly poly now, too. Pray for consistency for us this week, for wisdom on how to handle each crying time (i.e. is she hungry or dirty, do I need to go to her after a certain time and just try again later, when to go to her for feeding at night, etc.), and also for her to feel love from us and security while she is awake. This is a really hard thing to do, but I think it is going to help her to sleep better and that this is the right time for her and for us to be doing this.

We are into size 2 diapers now and just starting to get into the 3-6 month clothes. She is a long, skinny baby. The 3-6 month sleepers are the perfect size (they probably won't last til 6 months), the pants alone are long, and the onesies are a little puffy but right in the arms and length. She is built a lot like me but longer- small shoulders, long torso, shorter legs. I still think she will get more of Greg's height but she has the proportions that I do. Her super kissable chubby cheeks have elongated quite a bit in the last week and it made her look much older. I can't believe Emily has been with us for 4 months now!