1 Month

Caiden Max is 1 MONTH.  I can’t believe we’ve had a baby now for an entire month. Life is definitely getting easier, just as everyone said it would.

So what has he been up to? Well, he’s really cute almost 100% of the time…unless it’s 2am and he’s up and fussy and takes an hour to get back down to sleep…and then wakes up again at 4am. We are trying to get him on a sleep schedule. It means feeding him around 6pm, putting him down at 7pm then dream feeding him at 10pm. This dream feed is what takes some finesse. You pretty much have to feed him and burp him while he's sleeping and hope he doesn't wake up. We've got some work to do on that one. Then he’ll wake up around 2/2:30am to eat again then again around 5:30am. They say that eventually the 2/2:30 feeding will move to later in the night (errr, earlier in the morning, however you look at it) and then disappear all together…I.CAN.NOT.WAIT for that.

His umbilical cord stump finally fell off on Friday; I’ve been waiting and waiting so that we can give him a normal bath instead of just a sponge bath. I really dreaded doing the sponge baths because it was just such a pain trying not to get water on the belly button area. I would get water everywhere; all over me, the floor, the counter, it was just such a pain. I let Aunt Sara take on this task almost every time he needed bathed. On Friday night Marc got in the tub with him and washed him, it was so much easier and we were able to clean him so much better.

I am still only breast feeding him. We haven’t introduced the bottle yet mainly just because there really isn’t a need. I have been pumping about once a day after one of his feedings where he doesn’t eat as much so we have frozen milk to use when we want to start. Everyone keeps telling me that it would be easier if I let someone else do one or two of the feedings each day with a bottle, but I would still have to pump so to me it would not be any easier. I could use some advice on this, anyone have suggestions on if someone else did do one of the feedings how I get away with my breasts not getting so engorged that I want to cry and I have to end up pumping anyway?  I really can’t let them go longer than 3 or 4 hours otherwise they hurt so bad so I really don’t see any advantage in giving him a bottle for one of the feedings. And the night time feedings is where I would really love to have someone step in but I’m not going to make Marc get up in the middle of the night when he has to get up at 6am to go to work. Anyway, any advice would be helpful.

We moved him to his crib in his room at 3 weeks. I know this seems early but it was the best decision we made. His room is right next to ours and we have the monitor on him so we can see and hear everything. But I also don’t have to listen to the little grunts and spastic movements he makes in the bassinet that keep me up all night. I’m actually getting 2-3 consecutive hours of sleep a couple of times a night! Plus now I’m feeding him in his room for all the night feedings which help Marc sleep through the night. All in all it was earlier than we expected to move him but it really does help all of us. Happy mommy and daddy = happy baby, right?!?!

He just looks so big in this picture

Look at all his hair flowing in the water!

I resorted to pushing him around our house in his stroller to get him to sleep

He has this serious face on him all the time

My muscle man