Height/Weight: At her 12 Week clinic appointment, Willow weighed 12lb 5oz and is just around the 50th Centile. Her height hasn’t been measured since 6 weeks, but everyone comments on how long she is!
Routine & Sleeping: We still don’t have a strict routine for Willow, as this is what works for us and for her; especially as from 10 weeks she started sleeping through the night all by herself! At first I kept waking up to check she was alive haha but now she sleeps through from whenever she goes to bed (usually about 7:30pm and latest about 9:30pm) until 5am. We still start our day officially at 8am and she has various naps throughout the day. We always do the same bedtime routine of feed, bath time, chill and bed (occasionally another feed if needed). I’m trying not to get used to the sleeping through the night though as we’re not far off the dreaded 4 month sleep regression. Now that Willow is 3 months old and is having bottles, I’ll try to have a bit more structure throughout the day where I can. But right now, what we are doing works and it means that Willow is super content and flexible when we are out and about.
Eating/Feeding: Unfortunately from 11 weeks I have been unable to exclusively breastfeed. From about 9 1/2 weeks, Willow would get very distressed when feeding, I did lots of research and reached out to support groups who suggested a ‘growth spurt’ or baby encouraging my supply but this was going on for a while and it was very distressing for myself and most importantly for poor Willow. I also noticed a drop in how ‘full’ my breasts would feel and I was struggling to express enough for the emergency situations when Willow wouldn’t feed from me and only a bottle. In the end from 11 weeks, I decided to combination feed (with the support of our Health Visitor); it’s working really well for us at the moment and I plan to do a whole post dedicated to this… as when I researched, there is hardly anything out there on this!
Sizes: Willow is now comfortably wearing her 0-3 month clothing, although some pieces are still rather large on her and she is still wearing the odd newborn vest and ‘up to 1 month’ outfit. Her legs are rather long, so I may break into her 3-6 month leggings soon. We have hardly any 3-6 month clothing (apart from holiday appropriate pieces for Spain), so I’m excited to build up this section of her wardrobe which will see us through Autumn to Christmas!!!
Milestones: Willow honestly is so smiley, I love it! She’s making lots more sounds and I feel like she is so close to laughing… I cannot wait. Her head/neck are really strong but she hates tummy time… so I’m working on this and using some other ways to strengthen this for her, so that she can start to develop and hit milestones like rolling over. As I mentioned before, Willow also slept through the night and is continuing to do so. Another skill is that she now grasps things and has lots of fun playing with the plastic rings/links and her dummy (she now takes it out with her hand haha!). She plays with her hands a lot and is always trying (and sometimes succeeding) to suck her thumb and attempts to shove her whole fist in her mouth.
Loves: I wanted to add this category as this month I’ve definitely begun to notice Willow has certain preferences and I want to always remember these.
Watching TV (particularly Waybuloo, In the Night Garden and the Tinkerbell movies), sitting in her rocker, lying on our tummies for cuddles, playing with her hands and sucking her fingers/thumb (she prefers it to a dummy when she’s awake but a dummy definitely soothes her to sleep when she is tired), being rocked to sleep, baths, dancing/kicking around naked in the morning on her changing mat haha!
My Body: I’m still gradually losing weight, and still really need to tone up; I’m taking much more care with my diet and trying to walk everyday. Stopping exclusively breastfeeding was hard but I know I made the best decision for Willow. My hormones are still quite up and down, and I have had the WORST skin particularly on my back but there is nothing I can take whilst I’m breastfeeding… so diet and skincare is my focus at the moment.
The Letter B 