3 Months Old and Milestones We Aren't Ready For

Ben turned 3 months old yesterday. He is a very happy baby. He gives us wonderful smiles with huge dimples when we "flirt" with him and is starting to smile on his own. He's got this cute fuzzy, spikey patch of hair on the top of his head and I love kissing him.

He loves to be on the floor on his play gym. I have toys hanging where he can reach them and he is getting better at grabbing them. We started reading books to him and he's focusing on the pages.

He's growing great. He seems to be at around 13lbs and has outgrown most of his 0-3 months clothes.

Check out those dimples! I love it when he smiles with his tongue out!

Ok, so we've been pretty spoiled for about four weeks now. Ben had pretty consistently been sleeping from 11pm to 7 or 8am. The trick to getting that sleep has been the "dream feed", the swaddle and the pacifier. He's been breaking out of the swaddle for the last week and waking up around 5am. I've been able to just reswaddle him and give him the pacifier and he will then sleep until 8am.

Once he started breaking the swaddle we knew we were going to have to wean him from it. We tried a few naps this weekend. He normally naps for 1.5 to 2 hours for each nap, but he had a lot of trouble falling asleep unswaddled and then only slept for 30 or 45 minutes. When I checked on him it was obvious that he still has the startle reflex. Every time he would relax and start to fall asleep, his hands would touch the crib and he would startle back awake. Since he wasn't doing great with cold turkey, we decided to start trying to put him down with one arm out during naps and then a full swaddle at night to try to start weaning him during the day.

Well, all of that changed yesterday. During his evening nap he managed to get himself rolled onto his side while in the swaddle. He was arching his back and trying to rolled over all the way onto his stomach when I went in to check on him. The problem is that it's dangerous to swaddle babies if they are able to roll over on their stomachs because they need their arms to help ensure they don't end up face down in the crib and to be able to roll back over on their backs. Ben has rolled over from his stomach to his back a few times, but it is about two months earlier than expected for him to be able to roll over from his back to his stomach. It's his favorite thing to try to do now. The minute he's put on his back he starts trying to roll over to his stomach. Of course if we put him on his stomach he rolls over to his back. Fun, huh? It's really important baby work he's doing.

So we put Ben in a sleep sack instead of the swaddle last night. He slept from 8:30 to 10:45 when I woke him to feed him. When I went in to feed him, he was fussing a little and flailing his arms, where he's usually peacefully sound asleep in the swaddle. Then he slept from 11pm to 2am. At that point Chris swaddled him so we could theoretically get some sleep. Ben's sleep must have been disrupted because he woke up around 5am and 6:45am. Both times I reswaddled and gave him the pacifier and both times he was completely broken out when I went to get him. He's probably looking for the pacifier more than the swaddle to get back to sleep. He really needs to learn to suck on his hands or we may be getting up all night to pop it back in. It just seems cruel to take both the swaddle and the pacifier away at the same time though. I told his day care not to swaddle him for his first two naps today, but that if he doesn't get any sleep they can swaddle him for his third nap.

We're also going to have to wean him off of the dream feed. I'm going to move the time earlier and reduce the amount for a week or so to give him a chance to get used to making up for it during the day. He's never been a big eater (I think because of the acid reflux), so he's always needed that extra feeding at night.

I honestly don't know why I'm so concerned. It's just my personality. Ben is sleeping so much better than Sam did and we managed to survive with Sam. Hell, I don't even remember being sleep deprived with Sam even though I know I must have because he was up every three hours for months and months and months (if not years). Someone did a really good mind erase on me when it comes to that.

Ben sleeping in his Miracle Blanket swaddle.

I'm thankful that we caught up on our sleep because I know we are at a time of lots of transitions. He's learning so much with rolling over, grabbing things, and putting them in his mouth. It's hard to believe he'll be sitting up in a few months. Then teething (yikes!), crawling, cruising, and walking are close behind. It goes so fast. I'm trying to sit back and enjoy each stage for what it is. It helps that he's such a cutie pie!

Before he gets so big, we took some pictures of his tiny hands ...

and tiny feet.