AJ Four Month Update

I've blinked and already a third of AJ's first year has gone. It seems like this year has been going by so fast, even with the social distancing and the two of us staying mostly at home. This month has been so full of new developments in her life that I feel like I haven't been able to touch on all of them, so I apologise if I have missed any! And like usual I'm a little late getting this update up, so we can't really claim I'm not consistent with that.

Family Life

T has started back up at work and training to become a carpenter so we've been getting back into a routine where he isn't around during the day. It was a little hard the first wee as he was only going in for a short period of time and coming home but the second-week things picked up and we all got into a good rhythm. Arlo and Daphne are missing having T around as we're not able to go on walks as early as we were when he was home. 

AJ has also really started to show a preference to me over her Dad. She settles a lot easier for me, she doesn't like him getting her dressed (but that may be more to do with his cold hands than anything) and she knows when she has been handed to him while asleep as she automatically wakes up and is not happy. This isn't something I want to continue, so T is starting to do a bit more with her when he is home. He's always been very active in her life and I can't fault him on how great he is with her, but he's just stepping it up a little bit more to help her get used to him once again. 

Health

With turning 4 months comes her 4-month vaccinations and boy did AJ let me have it afterward. She chewed me out for 40 minutes after the shots and was a grumpy mess for the next couple of days. On top of that, we had a pediatrician appointment and got some answers to some things that I've been wondering about. 

She has officially been diagnosed with Exaggerated Physiological Reflux which is basically her baby anatomy not working well on a liquid diet. However, she's thriving and happy so he's not concerned about starting her on solids until 6 months as planned. We are however going to be trialing her on a different formula to see if her reflux has gotten better as the formula she is on, despite it being a godsend, is making her poo too hard for his liking. 

He's hoping that if she goes well on Nan Comfort that it will soften that up a bit and we'll have a much happier baby. If it doesn't then we go back onto the one we're one and add Lactulose, which is a sugar that doesn't digest but binds to water. It will help make everything softer in the meantime. We're supposed to trial things once a month and see how she goes.  

We're also going to go an see a pediatric physiotherapist to get some exercises to help with her flat spot. It's getting better and he doesn't think that it's going to require a helmet but going to the physio is going to help prevent that even more. 

Feeding

AJ has been doing really well with her feeding. We're still only on formula but it's helped with her reflux a lot. She has gone up in the amount she is eating, from 140ml to 175ml, every 3 hours but it wasn't happening often enough before her 4-month vaccinations to get her to gain any weight. The nurse nor the doctors are concerned as he's very happy and thriving, but it has made me focus on getting her to eat a little bit more regularly so I'm not purposely waking her from her naps in order for this to happen. With the increase in the amount that she is eating I'm hoping that she will be gaining again very soon and I'll be stopping waking her by the next update. 

I have also been thinking a lot about starting solids and while I have no intention of starting until she is 6 months old, I have decided that we're going to go the baby-led weaning route. I'm looking forward to starting solids with her and I've actually been looking at plates and things that we're going to need in the next few months. I've also been using her high chair and booster a bit more so she gets used to them. 

Sleeping

I'm pretty sure I said this last month but AJ is a champion night sleeper. We're getting longer stretches at night where she's not waking and at most she's up twice and that's just to eat before going right back to sleep. 

Our day sleeps are another story. I have finally bit the bullet and we went cold turkey on sleeping on me during the day. With her Dad back at work, I was falling behind with a lot of the housework that I needed to get done and it sucked. So we started with her sleeping on the floor in the lounge room. All that got me was 30-minute naps and an exhausted baby. So I reached out to my nanny friends and got their tips. In the space of a week we went from only sleeping 30 minutes to 30 minutes asleep, 30 minutes awake and 30 minutes asleep to 30 minutes asleep, 15 minutes awake to an hour asleep. 

Slowly that awake time is getting smaller, especially as I took my Mum hat off and put my Nanny hat back on and started implementing what I would do if I was her nanny. It's meant a lot of watching her on the monitor as going in and trying to settle her wakes her up completely and she won't go back to sleep but she's getting back off on her own. I do however go in when she's crying and resettle her as I'm not one for letting babies of any age cry themselves to sleep. I have discovered that sometimes she does cry out in her sleep so I've had to double-check the monitor so I don't barge in and wake her. 

Development

AJ has had such a month for changes and developments. The day after she turned 3 months I decided that I would try and see if she could sit with help. Low and behold she could do it. She was wobbly but she was sitting. A month on the wobbles are all gone and she's now working on strengthening her core so she can stay upright, but she can sit on the floor and hold my fingers to keep her balance or use the breastfeeding pillow. 

She's also starting to try and commando crawl. She's almost got the legs worked out and once she works out how to move her arms, I'm in for a world of trouble I think. She also is holding her own weight when standing and you just have your hands under her arms to keep her up. 

In other development news, she is getting a lot more vocal and will lay there and coo to me or whoever is listening. I call it "telling us stories". She says a lot of "ahh" and "ooh" sounds and I've started to say "mmm" and "d" sounds in the hope that it will inspire her to say "mama" or "dada". However given how many times I've heard her say a sound that is exactly like it, I'm pretty sure she has been saying "No!" since she was born. 

She is seeing a lot better and is very much a sticky beak, wanting to see what everyone is up to. If you hold one of her sensory balls in your hand she will cup it and kind of play with it but we haven't quite got there yet with her actually grabbing and gripping them yet. 

She's starting to remember a lot of the songs that we sing and by far her favourite is "Hickory Dickory Dock" and "Row Row Row Your Boat". 

Her emotions are really starting to show. She gets excited when we sing her favourite songs, inquisitive when she is watching her Dad or Arlo and Daphne, happy when you wish her a happy morning and frustrated when she realises that her attempt at commando crawling isn't working. 

Overall she's just had a big burst of development and it's amazing!

Mum and Dad

Mum and Dad are doing good. I'm tired but now AJ is sleeping better I'm getting a lot more sleep. T is adjusting to his new job and its resulted in him missing some things like the doctor's appointments but we knew when he got accepted that this would be the case until August next year. It has also meant that we've had to get better at communication between both of us but overall our relationship is good. 

I can see that T is itching for when AJ starts to move because he's not really a baby person. Once she's on the move he's going to be in his element and is going to love getting out and doing things with her. In the meantime, he's happy getting her "help" when he cleans the house. 

What's Coming Up

The whole of the coming month is going to be one GIANT developmental leap for AJ, so we're going to see a lot of new things appear over the next month. I'm hoping that with a bit more practise we're going to see some commando crawling and she'll be sitting much more steadily but there is a lot of other things that are up in the air. 

We do however have a trip to the farm this month without T unfortunately and hopefully, we'll be seeing some readiness markers for beginning solids.