"They Grow Up Too Fast!"

(Jacob at our yard sale this weekend in a box of his newborn-six month clothes... sniff sniff!)


It's so cliche, but it's true. I don't think I'll ever stop getting all sentimental when I look for clothes for Jacob and realize that he's grown out of a smaller size once again. Infants are so precious - and their teeny, tiny clothes are just so adorable -, and mine's growing up.

Where to start. Hmm. Jacob is now six months old - almost seven months! He's been doing so much lately in regards to his development - and I haven't posted in so long - that I can't even remember how long ago he started doing some of the things he does. :P So, I guess I'll start with the physical stuff.

At his six-month check up, Jacob weighed 19lbs. 5oz. (with a onesie, bib, and socks on) and measured 27 inches long. I know one-year-olds who only weigh twenty pounds! I never mentioned it before, but he has a slightly flattened area on the back of his head due to lack of Tummy Time when he was constantly upset with the dairy formula as an infant. His pediatrician didn't mention anything about this when he went in with Dave for his four-month appointment, so I asked him about it this time. He noted that it did look a little flat but didn't seemed too concerned with it and stated that there was still time for it to round out as long as he was spending the majority of his awake time sitting up or on his tummy. So, hopefully he's right and there's nothing to fear. Most babies' spit-up issues start slowing down around this point, but Jake's still spewing fountains on a daily basis. Sometimes he fusses before, during, and/or after spitting up and sometimes he'll just puke without warning and with a smile on his face. The doctor prescribed something for reflux and we're going on week two without much of an improvement. I've started feeding him more solids/food lately, so perhaps that will bind with the formula and help keep it down better, too. Fingers crossed. I am SOOOOO tired of cleaning up spit-up out of his bibs, clothes, and blankets... and out of MY clothes, too. Some days we go through six or seven bibs. One day he went through that many bibs AND at least five outfits. So, yeah... I'm seriously looking forward to this being resolved.

(Update: August 8th - We're on Day Three or Four now of VERY, very little spit-up at all throughout the day! Most days he's only going through three bibs or so, and that's usually due to them being messy from the foods he's eating! I hate to get excited too soon, but I'm hoping this is how it will stay from here on out.)

Because of fearing his fountains of vomit, we likely slowed Jake down as to his motor development... namely rolling over, pushing himself (his tummy) up off of the floor, and sitting unassisted. Upon discovering that a majority of babies start doing these things around five months, I started getting a little concerned. I contacted a local family/child services organization and requested an evaluation. Someone came for an initial interview the week before last, and we set up a day (Monday) for both a physical and developmental therapist to come for the evaluation. I probably just jumped the gun, because I've been giving Jacob a lot more floor time and Tummy Time lately and he's already doing a lot better. I guess we should have just ignored the puke issue and dealt with all of the messes earlier. He still has absolutely no interest in grabbing/sucking his own toes (yet?) and still doesn't really like being on his stomach, but he's tolerating it a little better and is finally starting to reach his arm across his stomach to get his toys ("crossing the midline" - which, of course, is necessary for rolling over). Sometimes. :/ We'd been working with him on sitting on the couch and sitting him on our lap, but now I'm making sure to work with him on sitting on the floor, in his crib, on his changing table, etc. so that he can develop his balance. I'm sure this all sounds like pretty obvious stuff that most people do with their babies, but like I said... I think we were just a little preoccupied with all of the vomit. So now I'm sure the therapists are going to wonder why on earth I even wanted them to come in the first place. I think he's progressing pretty fast now with the added floor time, but I'd still like to hear other suggestions for getting him off of his stomach and geared towards crawling.

(Update: This past weekend - July 31st and August 1st -, Jacob made some major strides in sitting up unassisted. He can now sit on his own for a minute to several minutes at a time... although we're always right at his side since there's no telling when he might just topple over/sideways/backwards. :P It's so awesome to see this, and I'm so glad that he's developing this skill so quickly! He just needed the opportunity! Nevertheless... the therapists and the case worker from the social service agency all came over this past Monday and determined that Jacob does have enough delay to qualify for physical therapy services. He scored a little low in some areas that the developmental therapist was looking at, too, but she said that those were all skills in areas that were closely linked to developing his stomach muscles and coordination... things that will start coming along with more Tummy Time. He doesn't have the "safety reflex" of putting his hands out to stop himself if/when he falls forward (or when the therapist lowers him face-first to the ground) along with the other things mentioned above. Anyway, so the physical therapist is supposed to call sometime within the next week or so to set up a day and time to start coming on a weekly basis. Hopefully we'll be able to set something up so that I can be home to participate in since I'm going back to work in just a little more than a week.)

A week or so before his six-month birthday, he started babbling "da da", "ma ma", "ba ba", and "pa pa" along with the vowel sounds "aaaaah" and "O". It was so adorable, but it's now seemed to have disappeared. I'm hoping that maybe this is just following his normal Jakey-timeline where we see a skill/milestone and then don't see it again for a few weeks. He did that when he first smiled and first giggled, so hopefully it'll come back soon. Right now all we're hearing is the vowel sounds and occasionally a "ffff" or "fuh fuh fuh"... and - for whatever reason - usually only when he's laying down. We remind Grandpa to use words and syllables when he talks to Jacob instead of doing Baby Talk and/or making silly noises, but that seems to be something he forgets about each morning. Hopefully that's not the cause of Jacob's disappearing babbling.

On July 28th, I noticed Jacob's first tooth popping up through his gums! He woke up from his nap that morning, and I started playing with his tongue after getting him out of his crib. He likes having things touch his tongue - whether it be a wet washcloth, a towel, a finger, a stuffed animal, a toy, etc. -, so I was tapping his tongue with my finger and making "panting-puppy" noises (which always makes him smile or giggle) and saw white below his tongue. I felt along his gum line... and felt little ridges! :) This first tooth didn't seem to bother him. No screaming in the middle of the night... no restlessness... no obvious signs of pain. A few days ago, though, his second tooth (right next to the first one) started surfacing, too! He'd been alright until today (August 7th), and was just a little fussy off and on. Twice today I gave him one of these little natural dissolving strips that I found at Walgreens a while back. I'm not sure if the strips helped at all, but Jacob didn't get any worse. :P I guess we'll just have to keep our fingers crossed that his future teeth don't cause much more pain than these ones have, but I'm not counting on it.

I've been introducing him to a lot of foods over the past month or so. We started out with rice cereal when he was about four-and-a-half to five months old. Ummm... can you say "blech!"? :P I think the first food I gave him was sweet potatoes mixed in with the rice cereal to try to sweeten it up a little. After sweet potatoes came bananas and then squash, apples, pears, and peas. Now we're onto oatmeal cereal and "Stage 2" foods. The other day, I picked up a few jars of various combos. So far, he's tried pears and mangoes (which he LOVED) and peas and rice (which he ate fine). I cooked up and pureed some fresh Japanese eggplant yesterday (August 6th) and was worried that he might have a bad reaction to it given his stomach problems, but it was pretty mild and he didn't have any reaction to it whatsoever - facial OR digestive. :) He ate a whole Japanese eggplant in one sitting. Tonight I steamed and pureed two thin carrots, and he ate all of that. As long as he still seems alright tomorrow, I think we'll move on to either the Lentils and Rice or the Spinach and Potatoes. Ooooh, and Apples & Blueberries in his oatmeal for breakfast. :) I have some butternut squash that Dave brought back for me from one of our friends' gardens. I'll have to cook that up in the next few days; some in a dish for me, and some for Jacob. I can't wait to start cooking regular mini-meals for him. My mother- and sister-in-law sent us a package last week with a bunch of clothes for Jacob and some wrestling shirts and a picture for Dave, and a "Vegetarian Mommy and Baby" book/cookbook. The book has a bunch of information about feeding, about the different fruits and vegetables, and about nutrition as well as a section of recipes. There are lots of baby food recipes and information online, but it's nice to just have a book handy to pull out whenever I need something.

That's about all I can think of to update about right now. I'm sure there are a lot of things I'm forgetting... but I'll get around to posting more in another week or so (hopefully!). School/work starts for me next Tuesday. It's going to be sad leaving my little guy for the majority of the day again, but I'm so glad I had all of this time over the summer to work with him on developing his skills, to play with him, and to get to know him more as his personality emerges more and more. Hopefully the physical therapy sessions will start soon and we can get him crawling over the next month or two!

A Family Bed

Co-Sleeping (sleep-sharing... family bed... whatever you want to call it) is for us! :)

During his first two months, those of you who know Jacob or have read all of blogs here know that he had some pretty bad issues when breastfeeding didn't work out for us and when I started him on dairy formula. After battling through a day pretty filled with Jacob's screaming, crying, and fussing, Dave and I were both exhausted come nighttime. We had him in a bassinet in our room from the start, but it was just too tiring to have to get out of bed every ten minutes or so to replace his Binky (pacifier) when he woke up screaming because it fell out of his mouth... or to pick him up and rock him or sway with him when the pacifier wasn't enough to comfort him (and when he didn't need a bottle or to be changed). I can't even imagine if we had put him in his crib in another room that early on! Anyway, after about a month or a month-and-a-half of struggling with this and getting very little sleep, we brought Jacob into our bed on his Boppy Newborn Lounger Pillow.

Jake never liked laying flat on his back - for naps, diaper changes, or anything -, and the lounger pillow is contoured to support/raise babies' backs and heads up a little and cradle their bums. The only way we could get him to nap was to lay him in this pillow. Once we started using it for nighttime sleeping, too, (bringing it into the bed with us) we all got a lot more sleep. I started off placing the pillow next to me but away from Dave for fear that Dave might roll over on him or something. The pillow is actually pretty thick, though, so I probably didn't even need to worry about that to begin with. Plus, babies don't start really moving around in their sleep much until about four months or so, so there wasn't much to fear in the way of any accidents happening. After about two or three weeks of having him next to me constantly, I moved the pillow in between Dave and me so Dave could help out occasionally, too. So, with him in bed next to us, we could just reach over and feel for his Binky in the dark and put it back in his mouth or lean over and put our arm on him for a little comforting pressure or just sit up in bed and rock him in our arms (well, usually MY arms). Most nights, that's all it took to get him back to sleep - unless he was hungry for his 2 or 3 am feeding. No more up and down, up and down, up and down every ten or fifteen minutes!

At first, sharing our bed with Jacob was something we did out of necessity so that we could get a little extra sleep and not go insane as first-time parents. After a few weeks, though, I came to love sleeping next to my little one. Hearing his little breaths right next to my ear... being able to reach over and touch his little hand (which led to him closing his tiny fingers around one of mine)... inhaling his "clean baby scent" on nights I had given him a bath... gave me comfort at the end of the day as well as peace-of-mind in the knowledge that he would never have to wake up alone in a dark room after being so close, safe, and secure inside my belly for over nine months.

After a few months in bed with us, though, Jacob continued growing... and started moving around. The first night of concern was when he started making noise, and I opened my eyes to find his head flopped over the top of the Boppy pillow. I repositioned him and he was fine for the rest of the night. After that I started placing another pillow above the Boppy (between the Boppy and the wall) to prevent any more head flops. A few nights later, he had wiggled himself half off the side and was partially laying on top of me. So, I started rolling up receiving blankets and stuffing them under the Boppy to prop the sides up. A few nights after this, I woke up to Jacob fussing because he had scooted his legs and bottom off the end of the pillow. I had been too scared to just lay him between Dave and I on the bed, but I was too scared NOT to at this point. Bye-bye, Boppy Lounger!

After he seemed adjusted to the soy formula, he didn't mind laying flat much anymore. So, we kept him between us and folded up the thick, super-soft blanket that coordinates with his crib sheets to use as his "bed" on our bed. We folded the top portion of the blanket under to make a little pillow so that his head was still elevated (in an attempt to help with his periodic congestion). With the blanket keeping him at a slightly different height from us, it seemed to be a good next step. Over the next few days and weeks, Jakey started moving around more and more... so I rolled up receiving blankets again to use as a bumper so he wouldn't scoot into my chest at night. (I would always lay facing him while Dave would lay away from him, so he almost always turned toward me instead of Dave.) Most recently, he realized that he was just an arm's reach away and would wake up flailing his little arms around while babbling to the ceiling fan which, of course, would wake us up in turn. So, despite the fact that both Dave and I love sleeping with him in our bed (most of the time waking up to his sweet smile), it was time for Jacob to start sleeping through the night in his own crib... in our bedroom, of course.

I took measurements of everything and figured out where all of the furniture would fit. Over the course of about a week or so (we're pretty slow-moving sometimes with Dave's hernia and being busy being baby-parents), we got everything moved and in place. There's still some organizing to do, but the big part's finished. This past Saturday was his first night in his crib, and he slept just as peacefully as he did when he was in bed with us. He fussed a few times like usual, so I got up to give him a little rub or to turn him on his side or to put the Binky back in his mouth (yes... the Binky is back!) and he went right back to sleep.

Jacob usually sleeps a good eight hours or more and is sleeping even longer now that he's taken to the pacifier again. It'll be nice to have the bed to ourselves again after all of this time, but we both miss him in between us even though he's still in the room with us. I figure he'll probably wind up back in our bed periodically once teething gets too bad... unless that ends up entailing resuming the rocking chair and/or pacing and bouncing routine. I don't know anything about teething yet!