No 13-week pictures quite yet, but in the meantime I wanted to mention a few ideas and products that have been useful to us so far in our baby adventures. Hopefully any parents-to-be out there will find this helpful!

• Sleepy Wrap - I know I've mentioned our sling a bunch of times before, but it deserves another mention. It has been so useful in enabling us to get out and do things with Arlo in tow, and it's also a great way to get him to stop crying (and go to sleep) when nothing else works. We have a Moby as well, which is very similar but made out of non-stretchy fabric. I like the Sleepy Wrap better though--it's easier to get Arlo in and out of it.

  

• Snappi - We use cloth diapers (prefolds and diaper covers) during the day and disposables at night. When we started out, we were folding the prefolds in thirds and placing them inside the cover, but we had a lot of leaks using that approach. After a few weeks, we started using a Snappi to fasten the prefold around Arlo before putting the diaper cover on, and it definitely cut down on the number of leaks.

  

• Reusing disposable wipes - The disposable wipes I sewed before Arlo was born turned out to be duds--they're too thick to maneuver around little baby parts. Instead, we've been reusing disposable wipes. We use Seventh Generation wipes, and we found out that you can wash them along with the cloth diapers and reuse them. They get pretty threadbare over time, but you can use them for a couple months before they need replacing. Before using, we dampen them in a little tray of water, and then spray with a solution of 1/2T baby wash, 1/2T baby oil, and 1/2c water in a little 4oz spray bottle. It has worked really well so far!

• Majamas Sleepy Dress - I love this nursing nightgown! It's comfy, flattering, and practical. I ordered a second one soon after Arlo was born, so I'd always have a backup on hand on laundry days.

• Fabric headbands - I have worn one of these almost every day since Arlo was born. They're great for making my hair look decent, even when I haven't showered in 3 days (a pretty standard occurrence these days).

  

• Breastfeeding bracelet - Maybe you've noticed the yellow bead bracelet I'm wearing in many of our pictures. I bought it from annielina on Etsy, to use as a reminder of which side to start with the next time I nurse Arlo. It seemed easier (and more stylish) than using a safety pin or ribbon loop on my bra strap, which was another suggestion I'd seen online.

  

Okay, that's all I've got for now!

Arlo is twelve weeks old!

The most exciting news this week is that we weighed him on Monday, and he's gained 13 ounces in the past week! It looks like our lots-of-milk plan is working. I'm so glad! His cheeks are filling out nicely.

It'll probably take a few more weeks of this for him to catch up to where he should be in terms of weight. My milk supply isn't increasing as quickly as we'd hoped, but it's making progress. Because of that, we're running low on frozen milk, so we've cut back on how much we're topping off his bottles, so his weight gain will probably slow down this week. Still, it's so encouraging that he put on so much weight already--about three times as much as a normal baby gains in a week.

Oh, and Patrick told me that Arlo rolled over during tummy time a few days ago! Apparently he was so outraged at being on his tummy that he figured out how to roll onto his back. He hasn't done it again, but it's exciting that Patrick got a little preview!

We've been working on establishing a sleep schedule for Arlo, now that he's coming up on 3 months. I started reading Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child this past weekend. Initially, it really stressed me out. The book isn't written very sympathetically, and the author makes it sound like if you don't follow his instructions, your child will be fat, stupid, and bratty (and he has scientific studies to back him up!). He also says not to let your baby sleep in a sling, and he says that parents who keep their baby out past 7pm (which we have done many times in the past) are being selfish. It just wasn't what I needed to hear, especially since we didn't get a ton of sleep this weekend and were kind of worn out.

But I kept reading the book, and I feel better about things now. It sounds like having a baby sleep in the sling or stay up late prior to 3 months is fine, since you can't really establish a sleep schedule at that point. We should just be a little more mindful of naptimes and bedtimes going forward. It certainly cramps our style a little bit, and I'm not sure if I'll be able to stick with it 100% to start (I love my nice long walks with Arlo sleeping in the sling!), but it's nice to have a plan at least. At this point, the goal is to (1) put Arlo down for a nap every 1-2 hours during the day, as dictated by his sleepy cues, (2) establish a morning nap around 9am, and (3) put him to bed around 6-8pm. I find it helpful to have these guidelines, even if they're hard to follow all the time.

I've also been working on establishing a naptime routine for Arlo. Right now, it involves reading him I Am a Bunny, singing him "Sweet Baby James," swaddling him, and putting him down in his crib (it's finally getting some use!). Depending on how successful I am in reading his drowsiness cues, sometimes he conks out pretty quickly, and sometimes he cries and needs to be comforted for 15 minutes or so.

The main problem we're having is that he tends to wake up after half an hour during his morning and afternoon naps. We've had decent luck with the earlier bedtime though; twice we've put him down in the evening and had him sleep for at least 3 hours before waking up to eat. It's definitely still a work in progress--for instance, as I write this, he's upstairs with Patrick, wailing and protesting bedtime loudly. Today wasn't such a great day for baby sleep. I'm hoping things will go better tomorrow. I know we need to be patient; he's still little. I sure would love some more of those 6-7 hour blocks of sleep he teased us with a few weeks ago though!

Speaking of nice long walks in the sling, we've had some fun adventures recently. Earlier this week, on a nice cool morning, we walked to Ladd's Addition and explored all four rose gardens and chose our favorite roses (mine was Hot Cocoa; Arlo is undecided because he was asleep). And last Thursday, we walked to the Buckman farmers' market, listened to some fun cowboy music, watched preschoolers dancing to the music (looks like a good preschool--I want to go to one of their open houses!), and bought some delicious peaches and apple crunch bread. I feel so fortunate to be able to do such fun stuff with Arlo while I'm on maternity leave.

Last week, Susan's fig tree was going crazy, so Patrick and I went over to her house, and Patrick picked a bunch of figs. I used them to make two kinds of jam--plain fig and more of the fig and strawberry jam that I liked so much last year. The recipes were from the Ball Blue Book and The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving, respectively.

There are marionberries at the farmers' markets right now, so I bought some and made mini marionberry pies for a party we went to. I used the marionberry pie recipe in Rustic Fruit Desserts, but I used muffin tins instead of a pie plate, and I baked them for about 25 minutes (though they could have gone a little longer). I had some issues with the pie dough being too warm when I was assembling the pies, but they were still yummy!

We've been eating turkey sandwiches for lunch pretty regularly since Arlo was born, but last week I wanted to try making something vegetarian for lunch. I turned to Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, and I ended up making sandwiches with Swiss cheese, tomato, arugula, avocado, and tempeh strips in smoky molasses marinade. They were really nice! I'd definitely make them again.

Okay, time to go to bed and get some sleep before Arlo wakes up again!

Arlo had a very productive cooing session this morning!

Arlo Practices Cooing from Caitlin D on Vimeo.

Remember how we were worried about Arlo being 10th percentile in weight at his 2-month checkup (compared to being 90th+ percentile at 2 weeks)? Even though our pediatrician wasn't worried, we couldn't stop thinking about it, so we met with our lactation consultant, Adrienne, earlier this week. I'm glad we did, because it turns out Arlo hasn't been gaining weight--at 11 weeks old, he weighs 3 ounces less than he did when he was 4 weeks old.

When Arlo was 4-5 weeks old, we switched from round-the-clock pumping and bottle-feeding to mostly breastfeeding, and it was clear that he was getting less milk with the breast than with the bottle (based on a big drop in my milk supply when we made the switch), but we figured it was still a reasonable amount of milk. It was clear from our weekly pictures that Arlo was becoming skinnier, but I figured this was because we'd been overfeeding him with the bottle; not because we were underfeeding him with the breast. Poor little guy. Look at those sweet little chubby cheeks when he was five weeks old!

Five weeks:

Eleven weeks:

At our appointment, Adrienne measured Arlo's weight before and after nursing. It turns out that he's only getting about 2 ounces of milk at each feeding, when we were thinking it was more like 4 ounces, based on how much I was able to pump at our one nighttime bottle feeding. Based on Adrienne's estimate of how much milk Arlo's been getting, we're not too far away from where we should be (so it's not like we've been starving him), but he could definitely use more calories so he can start gaining weight.

Adrienne estimated that Arlo should be getting about 25 oz of milk each day. Since my milk supply is low at this point, we need to supplement it in order to get this volume of milk. Luckily, we have a pretty good stash of milk in the freezer from the early days when I was overproducing. So in order to get enough calories into Arlo, we've increased the daily number of pumping/bottle-feeding sessions from one to three, using frozen breastmilk to make each bottle 5 oz. And then we do at least four normal breastfeeding sessions per day.

We've only been doing this for 3 days, but we're already seeing results. Arlo seems more alert and is content for longer periods of time. He has also started cooing a lot more (so sweet!), though that could just be a coincidence--he is coming up on the magical 3-month mark, after all. Also, his diaper output is very impressive! I won't elaborate, since I realize not everybody is interested in knowing about Arlo's diapers :)

In addition to getting plenty of calories into Arlo, we're working on increasing my milk supply. I've been taking a blend of herbs meant to increase milk production (galactogogues!). It's expensive, but I think it's working. Pumping three times a day should also help, and I've been doing a lot more nursing without the nipple shield, since that lets Arlo get more milk (Adrienne determined that this was the case during our appointment--apparently some babies have diminished milk transfer when using a nipple shield). Arlo still needs the shield to start nursing (because of his high palate, he needs a strong stimulus to trigger nursing), but we can get rid of it after about 5 minutes, which is progress--it used to be that he couldn't nurse without the shield at all.

Nursing without the shield is definitely not as relaxing, since Arlo gets pretty agitated and squirms around, and it tends to hurt unless he latches on just perfectly. But he does get more milk out and finishes nursing faster, which is nice. Adrienne thinks the nursing pain is because of Arlo's high palate and other issues related to being tongue-tied when he was born. She still strongly recommends craniosacral therapy to fix it. But Patrick is just as strongly opposed to spending our money on something that doesn't seem like legitimate medicine. I agree that it sounds bogus, but I've also heard a bunch of first-hand accounts from moms that it helped their babies nurse better. And when Arlo is chomping on my boob at 5am and I'm wincing in pain, I'm willing to try pretty much anything to make it stop! But it has only been a few days, and I think he's getting better at latching on. I have a check-in call with Adrienne on Monday (and I'll be taking Arlo to Zenana's breastfeeding support group to check his weight), so I'll re-evaluate things then.

Man, I thought breastfeeding was supposed to be easy! This is hard work. I love going to my weekly new parents group, but I have to admit that it breaks my heart a little seeing all the other moms breastfeeding their babies so easily. The funny thing is that I know a lot of them had to see lactation consultants when they were just starting out--they've had problems too. I just have to remember that we have made so much progress already--we'll get there. Hopefully a month from now, I'll be comfortably nursing my chubby-cheeked baby, just like all the other moms.

Despite the milk drama in the last few days, we're all in high spirits. It's great to see Arlo acting more content, and I think his cheeks are already getting fatter. We're excited to find out how much weight he's gained on Monday!

Arlo is eleven weeks old! We're having more and more luck each Sunday catching him when he's bright-eyed and in a good mood.

With the hot weather we've been having for the last few days, he hasn't been wearing his beloved stripey socks, but he still likes looking at his bare feet. And it gives me a chance to play This Little Piggy with him!

My dad and stepmom Vicki came to visit us from Colorado this weekend, which was fun! We even managed to get some pictures with Arlo where he wasn't crying his head off. Progress!

We've been giving Arlo Mylicon drops for the past two days, since he still seems to be having some gas-related crying (the cutting-out-dairy experiment I mentioned a few months ago never went anywhere). So far we can't tell if they're working.

Possibly related, or maybe just coincidence, Arlo has been alert for an extra long time in the evening for the past two days. We took him to Broder for dinner with my dad and Vicki yesterday, and he spent about 20 minutes looking around intently before falling asleep in the sling. It's so cool to see him developing and changing!

We haven't been doing much cooking because of the heat, but we did make some tasty turkey burgers with coleslaw, as well as two batches of homemade Fudgesicles! The Fudgesicles are great--easy to make, tasty, and not too unhealthy. We got to use our new grooved Tovolo popsicle molds, which I'm liking so far.