Charlotte at Two Months

Well if it's blowing my mind that Anneliese is going to be two this week, it might be freaking me out even more that Charlotte is already two months old! Um, what?

On some level I feel like we're still in those fresh newborn days, when really we're... not.  Not even a little.  Maybe because the fussy sleep-deprived fog hasn't quite lifted, it's hard to believe it's already been two months.  But it has.  The calendar says so.

The past month has been... hard. I won't lie. Charlotte is still colicky and spends a lot of her waking time frustrated. She spits up a lot, which sometimes makes me worry her tummy is upset.  Her doctor says she has molars (!) bulging in her back gums, which at this age is unusual but not unheard of, and is likely causing some pain too.  Basically we're all exhausted.  We hear her crying even when she's not crying anymore.  It just sort of stays ringing in our ears. We call her Baby Screamsalot so that we laugh instead of cry.  It works, sometimes.

But there are some good things happening as well:

- She is less fussy now than she was even just a week ago, especially during the day.  If we're on the decline, I'll take it.  Even if it's slow.

- She is going to bed by 8 or 9 most nights, and then only getting up for one feed before daybreak. Our nights are much more manageable, overall.

- She has a couple of periods of sweet quiet and smileyness every day.

- She is a joy to cuddle with in the wee-morning hours when she comes to bed with me.  I love waking up next to her. Those few minutes a day are doing wonders for our bonding, which otherwise has been frustratingly slow.

- She does great on the go. I can haul her to the grocery store, for preschool dropoffs, shoe shopping, and even on road trips, and she handles it like a champ. She loves the car seat and seems to like being out and about, where there are new things to see and hear.

- She can stay with a sitter.  This is a really important breakthrough.  When your baby screams for hours every evening, there's really not many people you trust to leave her with.  Now that she's a little more manageable before bedtime, we can actually leave her for a few hours and actually be able to relax enough to enjoy some adult time.  It sounds small, but this has done wonders for our sanity.

- She's huge! She's growing really well, just shy of 12 lbs and just over 24 inches.  That's about the 75th percentile for weight, and off-the-charts tall (99th) for height like her sister.

- She's a great eater.  Once we got her tongue-tie sorted out, she has been my easiest nurser of all three.  She eats well, she eats regularly (about every hour or two during the day), and she doesn't seem to have any aversions to what I eat (except caffeine). She and my milk seem to be in a good rhythm of supply and demand, including enough to pump a bit for the freezer most days if I want to.

- Nathan and Anneliese still adore her. I keep waiting for some sibling rivalry or jealousy, but so far it's been really smooth sailing.  Yay.

So the past month has been a bag of mixed blessings.

We hate that she's not happier, but we're grateful she's healthy and thriving.  It's hard to adjust to meeting her difficult needs, but at this point our family wouldn't feel right without her. 

Someone told me recently that a new baby is a hundred days of hell, and then it's awesome.  And since the hell days are decreasing while the awesome days are increasing, I'm daring to hope we're right on the brink of that.

It's been two hard months, Charlotte, but we know you're worth the ride! We love you, Squeak.