Miss Virginia is TWO months old!

I’m glad that I waited until the end of the week to write this post because as of yesterday I can report I have one HAPPY baby girl! The last two days she has been a different baby. Several people said that the crying would just stop one day and I’m hoping that they were right. Cross your fingers that it won’t start back up tomorrow Don’t get me wrong, she still cries and when she does it is long and loud but we are definitely seeing a much happier baby most of the time. We have even had tummy time yesterday and today without tears. Now if we can get big brother back on track we will be one big happy family. William has seen better days and I can’t help but think it has a lot to do with his colicky baby sister. After all, the crying does get her a good bit of attention. I have also made sure to put her down in her crib for naps and bedtime before he goes down, even if it’s not time for her to go down and hope she doesn’t scream too loud before I can get back in her room to get her.

Ryan described her as being like the Princess and the Pea. She is very particular about how she likes things. For example: She doesn’t like for you to sit down while you are holding her. She likes to stand up. She prefers to be up on your shoulder instead of being cradled. She does not like to be in the sling unless she is asleep and doesn’t know any different. She does not like to be swaddled and prefers to sleep on her tummy. She really prefers to sleep in my bed but is learning to sleep in her own bed. She has taken all her naps the last few days in her crib and made it half the night last night. I’m sure she could have made it all night but I was sleepy and didn’t have it in me to get her back to sleep in her bed after nursing her last night. She can nap in her carseat but I think the time has come that she will need to stay home for her naps. She sleeps longer and the quality of sleep is better if she is in her my bed. We give her a bath while William is in the shower usually around 6:30. I feed her and then Ryan takes over Princess duty while I put William to bed. Sometimes Ryan gets her to sleep and she will sleep for around an hour and then briefly wakes up before we get her down for good and then there are nights, most nights, when she SCREAMS and Ryan tries his bed to calm her down. Usually I take over after William goes down and eventually we get her to calm down and she goes straight to sleep. She is always asleep by 9 if not earlier. Again, this has gotten significantly better. She is still fussier in the evenings but that is pretty typical of baby’s that do not have colic, right? I also think that she is very close to being able to go to sleep at 7, have a dream feed around 10 (maybe-William never needed the dream feed) , nurse once around 3 and get up around 6:30 or 7 in the morning.

At Virginia’s two month appointment she weighed 11 pounds, 4 ounces and is 23 inches long. I had taken her in the week before because of all the crying and she weighed 11 pounds, 3 ounces which meant she only gained one ounce which the doctor said was a little odd and that maybe she was hungry. He suggested I supplement and offer her one or two ounces of formula AFTER I nursed just to see if she was in fact hungry. He is not a fan of supplementing but he didn’t want me to send me home a second time with no solution for the crying. I was ready to try just about anything so I went home and made a formula bottle. She spit it out. I tried again several times and she was not at all interested. So either she didn’t like the way it tasted or she just wasn’t hungry. I decided to just try and feed her every two hours and pump when I could to increase my milk supply. I did this for a couple of days and she seems pretty satisfied after nursing (which she always has but it was worth a shot.) So this post has basically covered her sleeping and eating at two months which is about all she has done. I did notice while she was in her swing the other day that she was starting to grab at the toys. I am excited to introduce her to more tummy time and toys as she gets happier with being on the floor and in her bouncy seat.

It’s been a hard two months (or 5 weeks rather-the first three weeks were a breeze) but I couldn’t imagine my life or our family without her. Everyone says how the crying must just drive me crazy. I’ll admit there are times when I get frustrated but not frustrated with Virginia, frustrated that I can’t soothe my baby girl and frustrated that I can’t spend as much time with William because I am spending so much time trying to soothe Virginia. I want so badly for her to be happy and healthy and no mom wants their child to feel pain, if that is in fact what is going on. No one really knows for sure what “colic” is. We love you Princess Virginia and are excited about sunnier days ahead!