Jane: 5 months

 

Jane is 5 months old!!! She is such a sweet, happy baby.  She is usually perfectly content to be held (as long as she can see what is going on) and is getting more interactive and smiling more every day. She does occasionally get mildly upset, but usually only when she is tired and/or bored.  She doesn't even cry to be fed unless it's at night.  We all just adore her.

Can you blame us?

I especially adore when she gets excited. Her face lights up and she kicks her little legs.

Movement and Coordination:

Jane has pretty much mastered getting her fingers (and any object in her hands) into her mouth.  She's a big fan of sucking her first two fingers (like Caleb and Lily before her) but always seems so pleasantly surprised when those fingers make it to her mouth.

She has mastered the tummy-to-back rollover, but is still working on the other direction. 

Jane LOVES to sit up...but is nowhere near being able to do so on her own.  Which is funny to me because all my other kids were sitting up at 5 months, or at least could solidly tripod, but Jane has no interest in the tripod position. She is getting better, though, so maybe by next month so we can get started on solids.

Doctor visits!

Jane had her 4 month appointment.  She was 12 lbs, 6 oz, which is the 9th percentile...so she is staying small and not growing as fast as I'd like to see. I've had to force her to keep eating multiple times and try to encourage her to eat on both sides for a little extra milk.  I also have to make sure it is totally quiet or she won't eat because she wants to check everything out.  And it's close to impossible with 3 other small children, but I've at least tried. Which has made a difference.  When I took her to the urgent care a week after her appointment (she would stop breathing and it freaked me and the doctors out, but it only lasted a day, so she's totally fine) but her weight was up to 12 lbs, 14 oz, which was up to 11th percentile. So that's a plus.

And she got her vaccines.  She's really sensitive to them.  Every time I touched her legs for 2 days after the shots, she would cry in pain.  It's kind of a bummer. And she broke out a little. I'm thinking she's allergic to the Band-Aid adhesive like I am, though it was a mild enough reaction that I didn't get her checked at this point. If you look closely, you can see a faint outline of red from day 2 in the above picture.

Sleeping:

Jane seemed to be doing well with sleep so we decided to wean the swaddle.  We tried for a week before giving up. It was a disaster. Naps were terrible, she would wake up 4-5 times a night, and seemed to have a real struggle putting herself to sleep, even though she is perfectly capable of doing so without a binky or crying.   Every so often, she would find her fingers and suck herself back to sleep, but for the most part, it was just a terrible idea for her at this time. We're planning to try again after my half marathon next week, so hopefully an extra month will have her mature enough to handle it this time.

Naps are getting a little shorter (usually a little over an hour in the morning, and a longer one in the afternoon, sometimes a catnap in the late afternoon), and she alternates 3 nap days and 2 nap days.  Which means we are quickly heading toward the 3-2 nap transition.  She has made the nap transitions on the early side every time, so I am not surprised, though I'm trying to hold her off until we start solids at 6 months because 2 nap days mess up our feeding schedule. But the 3-2 is the last transition for at least 8 months or so, which means we can get a little more consistency in our lives.  I'm a big fan of consistency. Nights are still usually 1 feeding, sometimes 2 (especially if it was a 2-nap, early bedtime kind of day), but she is so small and distracted by the day eating that I'm resigning myself to keep to it until solids are well-established (hopefully by 7-8 months).

We also tried Jane out on the baby swings, propped up by blankets.  She loved it.  I loved that all 4 of my kids were entertained by the same thing so I wasn't running wildly all over the place. And no one else was at the park so we dominated the swings. :)