The Stories of our Lives

This morning was Xavier’s doc appointment, so it’s as good a time as any to jot down an update on his development.

Doc says:
17″ around the head
25,5″ from sole to top of head
16lbs 3oz (actually that one we got from the vaccination last week)

…which, on the growth chart, places him in 75% head size, 75% height, 75% weight.
This means he lost some weight, so to speak, as last time he was 90%, 75%, 90%.
Doc’s pretty proud of his progress, overall, and says my man’s in top shape (he hasn’t met Frank… talking about Xavier still).

Now, as for the rest…

Development
When he’s on his tummy, if we encourage him with a toy, he’s somewhat able to turn 90 degrees to his right or left, after much effort. Not moving forward yet, but he’s thinking about it and has started using his elbows and knees a little more, whereas before he was keeping his head, legs and arms all in the air, as if he was trying to fly.

He’s getting pretty good with his hands, actual action getting close to intention. Still putting everything in his mouth.

You wouldn’t call him a smiling baby – making every smile precious! – but he does smile, especially when he wakes up and we go talk to him in his crib. He also started to laugh out loud, to our great enjoyment. He likes to observe everything.

Nights
He’s now regularly going 5 to 6 hours from a feeding to the other during the night, which makes me think full nights are in sight. Last night he only drank at 4h30am, then slept again until 7am. Although, last couple of days he’s been drooling more and more – and he’s never drooled a lot. That might mean teething is starting, and that might disturb his nights. Let’s hope it doesn’t.

Feeding
We still feed him cereal mornings and evenings, but it’s still a small quantity mixed in lots of mommy’s milk. We had tried giving him bottles of my milk before, which he never wanted, so we kind of gave up. We started trying again, with commercial milk this time (Nestle Good Start) because I was tired of throwing away all the milk I was expressing, to terrible results: he’d get very angry. We tried many kinds of bottles and nipples… and have now some progress!
The miracle mix: A rubber nipple that’s similar to his pacifier (which fools him, ha!) and concentrated formula (Similac and Enfalac seem to work both). I’ll admit myself it tastes better than the GoodStart one. We were able to feed him 1-1/2 oz three times already. It’s not a lot (he’ll only last 1h30 hours with this, as opposed to 3 hours with breastfeeding) but we’ll keep going with this. I don’t want to stop breastfeeding yet, but I’m hoping he’ll accept one bottle a day by the holidays, which will make my life simpler.

All this to say… he’s doing good!
Oh here… his November album has been up for two weeks or so:

Xavier – 4e mois