Carson: 4 Months

Growth

• Clothing size: 3-6 Months, 6 Months
• Diaper size: 1
• 15 lbs 5 oz (46%) and 25.7" (74%)
• Rolling over!
• First belly laughs
• Pushes up on his hands during tummy time

Likes

• Grabbing both his toes!
• Sitting up and standing
• Jumping
• His zipadeezip
• Being outside
• LOVES BATHTIME

Carson vs Brooks

Dislikes

• Being left alone
• Getting out of the bath (we're getting better at this)

Brooks vs Carson

Same age. One jacket is gaping, the other super snug haha!

General

90% of the time Carson is a sweet and happy baby. He is seriously so good! He has his days when he's clingy and fussy but generally he's happy. He's 'teething' but I put that in quotes because who knows WHEN the teeth will actually come in. He's got the red cheeks, ALL the drool, chewing and swollen gums. When he is sad it's usually because he's hungry, tried, been left alone or would rather be standing (I feel like the 'must stand at ALL times phase' hit us early with this one).

His pediatrician says he's doing phenomenal. He's big and growing right on track, developmentally he's right on and she was impressed with his ability to 'stand'. Brooks just adores Carson. I hope this is the start of best friends for life! Brooks always wants to help Carson, gives him toys, binkys and is the biggest helper for me. He's never once said anything mean or bad towards Carson. No aggression or jealously which is a huge relief because that's totally normal. When Brooks gets frustrated it's usually at me and the lack of attention I can give him but I'm glad it's directed at me! Brooks is so kind and is such a great big brother.

Carson is a MOVER. He'll lay on his back and butt-scoot FEET across the floor. He has rolled over but hasn't realized he can move around like that. This kid always wants to be standing and especially jumping. He's not big enough for a jumper yet so for now our laps and arms will be sore.

Breastfeeding

Overall breastfeeding has been going well with Carson. He takes a bottle beautifully! The only snag so far is that he's been kind of unpredictable when he's hungry. For two weeks is was every 2 hours. Then suddenly when I try to feed him at the 2 hour mark and he gets so mad when I try to feed him and he's not hungry. Then he went to 4 hours but as of lately he's finally settled on eating every 3 hours during the day. The other hiccups have been he seems to prefer one side and is very impatient for food. It's hard to stimulate a milk let down because he takes three sucks and starts crying, mad the milk isn't there yet haha! And he'll refuse one side constantly and then when I offer the other side he'll latch instantly. It's weird and sometimes frustrating but maybe he knows something I don't? Right now he still eats twice a night usually around 1 and 4am.

Sleep

This month I did ALL the things in regards to sleep. AT 3 months Carson was sleeping, swaddled, with a binky in a bassinet next to my bed. But he started to show signs of rolling, he was outgrowing the bassinet (he would turn himself sideways and get stuck) and as the morning came closer we were playing the reinsert-the-binky-a-million-times game which isn't fun. SO I decided to fix everything at once and see how it went. 

I started with a couple naps in his zipadeezip and he still fell asleep right away! Zipzdeezips are amazing because it still gives babies their 'edges' so they feel enclosed but they can suck on their hands (without clawing their faces) to self soothe and roll around safely. Anyways Carson did great in his zippy for naps, it took him a couple days to connect a sleep cycle for a longer nap here and there but he eventually figured it out. I also decided not to replace the binky for naps and gave myself a 10 minute timer to let him fuss and just experiment to see what would happen. 4 out of 5 times he put himself to sleep before the 10 minutes was up! So with this positive outcome I was ready for nights (which is probably where I should have started but oh well!)

I put him in his zippy, put him in his crib and decided not to replace the binky but would give him a 10 minute fuss limit. First night started out terrible. We woke up at like 10pm and I let him fuss for 10 minutes. He wasn't slowing down so I picked him up, rocked him, he wasn't hungry, wouldn't nurse to sleep and I tried everything else (before the binky) to calm him but no luck. I ended up giving him the binky, he was asleep before I could set him down and I felt like a failure! I was supposed to be taking the binky away and I failed on the first wake up! I say this so I can remember that as the night went on he got better! Second night he only got up twice to eat! What! Was that it? Since then he's done about the same thing. If he wakes up and it's not time to eat I let him roll around or fuss for ten minutes to give him the time to learn how to self soothe. He's done so good and I'm so proud of him!

We've settled into a loose 4 nap schedule following the wake times of 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, 2 and then 2.25 hours before bedtime. His naps are usually 40 minutes with one 2ish hour nap somewhere during the day. Sometimes it's his first nap, sometimes it's his third. Sometimes he just takes 40 minute naps all day.

Postpartum

I've been doing really go this time around. I mean I've had my husband home for a majority of Carson's life. Even though he's working, having him there to help in the mornings, during lunch and dinner have been amazing, I have felt so spoiled! The times when I'm struggling it's almost always because I need a bit more (uninterrupted) sleep. I've just started to loose the excess of hair I grew during pregnancy and I'm shedding SO MUCH. I have a lot of hair to begin with so it's a lot. Thankfully my hair lady was able to start working again and helped me by CHOPPING it short for summer and thinning it out a lot so it's lighter. It feels amazing!