One Month {Rory}

Rory is one month old today. On the one hand I feel like the time is flying by. But on the other hand, I feel like the kid should be at least six months already.

We’ve certainly gone through a lot since he was born, and I admit that I’ve struggled quite a bit with having two kids. But I know that things will eventually calm down, especially once I’m done breastfeeding (yes, I am already starting to count down the days) and once he’s sleeping longer at night. I pray that time comes soon!

He doesn’t go back to Dr. N until he’s two months, but here are his unofficial stats:

• Weight: 10 pounds
• Length: 20.5 inches
• Head circumference: 15 inches

I guess breast milk agrees with him because he has definitely filled out since we left the hospital. He’s even starting to get little chunky arms and legs.

Here are some things I’d like to remember about Rory’s first month:

• He usually has 8 or 9 feedings a day, each lasting about a half hour with a diaper change in the middle. There’s no way to know just how much milk he takes in at each feeding, but he eats just about every two hours during the day and every three or four hours at night. He started off wanting to eat almost every hour, which was really tough on me, but he eventually settled into a more manageable routine.
• He has had a bit of an issue with spit up, but it seems to be getting a little better. I’ve been feeding him in a more upright position, and we’re doing what we did with Riley: keeping him upright after he eats for 10 minutes or so to try to keep the milk down. We also don’t pat him really hard when we burp him since that seems to cause him to spit up. And he gets the hiccups a lot, which also is a cause. I know his little digestive system is still developing, but it’s hard to see the milk I worked so hard to produce come back up! Not to mention the amount of laundry I‘ve been doing lately. Sheesh.
• He has been sleeping okay, although not quite as good as Riley did at this age. We do get a few decent stretches out of him at night, but he was really fussy the first couple of weeks between the hours of 10pm and 1am. Again, Kenny was my savior and took that shift just about every night with no complaint. He still gets fussy, but he has seemed to settle down more and we hope he’s moving towards sleeping in longer stretches at night.
• We borrowed a rock-n-play from Ashley and that’s what he’s been sleeping in at night, swaddled, of course. I’m hoping he learns that when he gets swaddled that means it’s time for night-night.
• His daytime sleep was practically nonexistent really early on; he was much more alert and awake than I remember Riley being this young. He usually stays awake for a couple of hours after his first morning feeding (which occurs around 8:30am once he’s up for the day), but I have been trying to put him in his bed after his second morning feeding. He has taken to that okay, staying down for two hours at most and 45 minutes at least. The afternoons are more of a crapshoot, with him sometimes in his bed, sometimes in his rock-n-play, sometimes in his bouncy, or sometimes on me. But he does sleep a good part of the afternoon away.
• He started off much preferring to be held but he has come to accept being put in the bouncy for short stretches. He has also gotten much better at taking a paci, although he does not covet it like Riley did.
• He started holding his head up for very short periods of time very early on, just like his brother. We’ll have to start tummy time soon!
• He developed some infant acne at the end of week 2. I hope it doesn’t turn into the same bad eczema that Riley had…..
• He sneezes a lot and also coughs sometimes during a feeding. Both are so cute.
• He doesn’t emit the screech monkey cry as much as he used to in the very beginning, but he will occasionally break it out. And he also does what I call his “count cry” when he’s really upset, usually on the changing table. He sounds just like the Count on Sesame Street.
• He is really starting to focus on things, especially our faces, starting at the end of week 2. He is starting to enjoy watching the ceiling fans and spending time under his playmat at the beginning of week 4.
• He smiles in his sleep quite a bit, and we’ve also seen random smiles when he’s awake. I can’t wait until he starts smiling at us regularly.

One month old!