Five. Part 1

Will is five months old!  The past month has been very busy for us, and Will has changed so much.  I don't even know where to begin.  Will started rolling over when he was around 12 weeks old, but now we can't keep him in one place.  He is officially a roly poly and goes all over the family room.  And of course, it's supervised rolling.  I like to see how far he'll go. :)

I tried to get some video of him rolling, but it happens so quickly, sometimes I only catch a part of it.  Here's the best I got.

Will has always loved his paci, but now he is trying to put anything and everything in his mouth.

I can't remember if I've mentioned on here before that Will has had issues with gaining weight, but it's something we've been dealing with since he was around 12 weeks when his reflux issues came to a head.  He goes weeks without gaining an ounce.  Then he'll gain a few, and then he'll stall again for weeks.  The mom group I go to weekly has a scale, so I weigh him on it every Friday.  He has been stuck going back and forth between 12lbs 6oz and 12lbs 12oz for at least the past 6 weeks and has dropped to the 3rd percentile in weight.  I know a lot of babies are in the bottom percentiles for a while, so it's nothing that I'm losing sleep over.  However, it's certainly concerning when your child doesn't gain an ounce for weeks at a time.  In three months, he's gained one pound.  Normal weight gain for babies is two to four ounces a week.  Even if he was on the low end, only gaining two ounces a week, he should have gained two pounds in three months.  Also, Will wasn't born in a low percentile for his weight.  He was 7lbs 9oz and was in the 40th-60th percentiles for weight his first couple of months.

This past week, we had another appointment with Will's GI.  When we were there two months ago, Will weighed 12.4 lbs.  This past Monday, he weighed 12.7 lbs.  Doctors look for babies to double their birth weight by 6 months, so that would mean Will should weigh 15 lbs by August 20th.  We are certainly not on the path to achieving that goal.  His GI is concerned with his lack of weight gain and said we really need to bump up his calories.  Much to my dismay, I now have to pump every-other feeding and give Will a 4oz bottle of breast milk with 1tsp of formula powder mixed in for the extra calories.  Will has been a 100% breastfed baby, so it's hard to tell how many ounces he actually drinks.  At the suggestion of a lactation consultant at Northside Hospital, we've rented a scale to weigh him before and after feedings to see how much he actually takes from me.  It has been quite enlightening!  He does not take more than two ounces per feeding except in the morning.  A baby his age should be getting 28-32 ounces per day.  He eats an average of 6 times a day, so he's only eating about half of what he should be eating.
While enlightening, it has been so frustrating.  I've been asking his doctors for a while about his weight and have even mentioned at my breastfeeding support group meetings that I'm concerned with his weight and my milk supply.  In the early days, I had over supply, so it was never an issue I was concerned with until his weight gain started stalling.  It's frustrating that it's gotten this bad, and now we have to rush to try and make up for lost time. It's not anyone's "fault" that this has happened, but I wish we had been guided to rent the scale months ago.  Perhaps this entire situation could have been avoided.  But I can't dwell on that... 
The lactation consultant described what Will does as "self-limiting".  He stops eating because of his reflux.  I knew that he had shortened his feeding time, so I've tried to make up for it by feeding him more frequently, but it still hasn't been enough.  With the help of the scale, I can make sure that Will has gained weight by next week when we have to go back to his GI for a weight check.  If he hasn't gained a sufficient amount, I'll have to pump and bottle feed with 1 or 2 tsp of formula at every feeding instead of every other.  If you are or have ever been a nursing mom, you can understand how I do not want that to happen!  It not only interferes with the bond I have with my son, but it's also a major inconvenience.  (Not to mention expensive!!!  we have to get the hypoallergenic formula, and it's $30 a can!)

So that's where we are.

His weight is 12.7lbs and his height is 26.7 inches. (long and lean like his daddy!)

Five months old!

 

I love these two :)

I love how Will is standing and looking at this daddy in this pic.

 Here's a video showing how precious my little boy is.  I love all of the faces and smiles I get to look at every day!

Did you notice the music in the background?  That's my amazing husband, who has never had a piano lesson in his life, learning to play my favorite song Clair de Lune...just for me.  This song is special to us, and Wayne has always found ways to play it for me (on my iPod) when I've needed a pick-me-up.  In fact, all of this about my husband leads me to Five. Part 2....