Baby girl, you are 25% through the way of your first year! Your current nickname is boo boo, will it stick? We will have to see!
At your 4-month check, you were 27 inches, putting you off the chart for height, 13lbs 1 ounce, putting you around the 40th percentile for weight and 50th percentile for head circumference.
Here are your brothers at 4 months. I feel like you are the perfect girlified mix of the two of them! But I think you resemble KJ just a little bit more than KK.
Baby KK
Baby K
You’ve come alive and almost demand to be recognized as a member of the family. Your brothers LOVE to make you laugh, and you have the biggest, most contagious smile and laugh that warms my heart. You love to talk and make sounds now that you can. You lost your voice twice last month due to little colds the boys brought home. A baby with a hoarse voice is about the cutest and saddest thing ever. Luckily, you seem to have healed and are back to talking up a storm, especially after you wake up from a good nap or in the morning.
You love this stick teether and crinkle bags, especially when you are in the swing. You are happy to hang out in the swing, bouncer, or on your playmat most of the time. Tummy time isn’t your favorite thing ever, but you will tolerate it enough to at least get the minimum recommended time in a day. Right at 12 weeks, you rolled over (back to front), which meant you had to come out of the swaddle. (I know they say most babies roll front to back before back to front, but all my babies always did back to front first!) Just like the boys, you had a rough transition out of the swaddle. For the third time, I tried the Merlin suit, but this time it actually worked!
I was able to modify it by rolling up the ankles so you couldn’t pull your legs up and out of it (which is why I could never use it with the boys). Initially, I was pinning it with a safety pin to keep the rolls in place, but now you are already so big I don’t need to modify it. You went from waking up every 1-2 hours to back to your normal sleep routine in the swaddle, which was waking up 1-2 times total a night. Sleep was pretty steady for about a month until a couple of weeks ago when you definitely hit the four-month sleep regression and woke up again every 1-2 hours. Now you are kind of at one four-hour stretch, then every 2-3 hours. Luckily, you go right back to sleep after you nurse, but on the nights you fuss Daddy jumps in and rocks you. I’m starting to realize that it’s so true what they say: the third baby may get less focused attention, but they get experienced parents. When it comes to you, Daddy and I work much better as a team than we did with the boys. It’s much easier when you know what to expect, and you have a pretty chill baby.
Many nights, you’ll put yourself to sleep in your halo bassinet, sometimes when I nurse you, but more consistently after a bottle. Every time you put yourself to sleep, I’m amazed. Your oldest brother could put himself to sleep, but with a pacifier, and only after a fair amount of rocking so that he was almost asleep, then he woke up 8 trillion times. Your second oldest brother never ever ever put himself to sleep but would sleep long stretches. So when you happily play in your crib and drift off to sleep, it surprises me every single time. I’m not doing anything different with you than I did with your brothers. You’re just a more independent sleeper *for the most part.* I wish I had been able to understand that variability in independence as a first or second-time mom. Even though I’m an “experienced mom,” you’re still teaching me your preferences, your likes and dislikes, and who you are as a person all the time.
Because you are able to fall asleep so much easier after a nighttime bottle, we switched your bottle from the dream feed to bedtime, and now we’ve been skipping the dream feed, but I’ll probably reimplement it by nursing you. Speaking of nursing, you’re going strong, but I did start supplementing (at about 3 months old) with one bottle of formula per day (at night time). The boys both needed a supplement right around four months, so I decided to implement it earlier than later for you since your weight gain was borderline adequate. Now, it’s great! We’re using Bobbie Gentle, which you seem to be doing okay on. You refused to take Nutramigen, flat out refused. I don’t blame you. That stuff smells terrible. Mama is still dairy-free because I notice when I have dairy, you get a bit more congested, have more reflux, and more diapers. But, since you’re on a dairy-based formula (broken down proteins, though), I wonder if it’s really necessary. I’ll keep going for another couple of months, and then I’ll re-evaluate.
I haven’t started any food with you because, unlike the boys, your weight gain is steady, and you are pretty happy during the day, so I’m not in a rush. You are doing your baby sit-ups all the time and can even sit on my hip for short periods of time, so I think you’ll be sitting and ready in no time, though! Like any third baby, your life is so much different than your brothers were when they were babies. You often are catching naps in the car for pick up and drop off, your wake windows aren’t perfect, and you’re often just hanging out while life is happening around you. Like at soccer practice on a Saturday morning.
Your drooling A TON these days, and you always have your hands in your mouth, particularly your right index finger. There have been a couple of times when you chewed on your finger so hard you made yourself cry! You’re grabbing things easier now and are generally happier if you have something to hold. And if you are not holding something, then you are grabbing your toes. Happy baby (grabbing both your toes) is your favorite position! But, overall, you are a pretty laid-back baby. You only cry if you are tired or hungry or we’re driving to Flagstaff. You normally don’t cry too much in the car, but for some reason, when we drove to Flagstaff for the fair, you hated it and cried the whole way there and back. Not sure what that was about! It’s just a baby thing, I guess!
Either way, now that you’re smiling and engaging more with us, I find myself really soaking in this time with you as the last baby because I know how fast it will go! Just like when we had KK, I now can’t imagine life without you. You bring a sense of peace to the boys and their brotherly battles. They love you SO SO SO SO much already, and they take their brotherly duties very seriously. They will even squeeze in the tub next to your baby bathtub so that they can take a bath with you. The best way I can describe it is that you were born into a chaotic, crazy world that is filled to the brim with love, and we’re so happy you are here!
Things we’re loving:
- Crinkle Bags
- Swing
- Bouncer with toy attached
- Safari Playmat
- Merlin Suit
- Hal0 Bassinet
- Dr. Browns Narrow Glass Bottles
- Bobbie Gentle Formula
- Portable sound machine
- Hatch Rest + (gifted to us)
- Doona Carseat –> the one big purchase I did for baby 3!
- Baby Brezza Sterilizer
- Ergo 360
- Legendairy Milk cups – I use these with my Elvie Stirde pump, and it’s definitely way better output.
- Elvie Breast Pump
- Elvie Breast Pump Bag
- Motif Luna Double Electric Pump
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