Ollie: Two Months

Last week Ollie turned two months old. It’s been a crazy two months, that’s for sure. For anyone out there that is unsure let me set the record straight: having two kids is HARD. The transition from one to two has been much more challenging than I ever anticipated. But, as we pass the two month mark and Ollie changes from a newborn to an alert baby, we are slowly getting the hang of things. Here is an update on our lovely little boy.

Height: 55cm (5th percentile)

Weight: 4.8kg (10th percentile)

When Ollie was born both his height and weight were on the 5th percentile, so he is tracking well. He seems huge to me compared to when he was born, so I find it hard to believe that like 90% of babies are bigger than him at this age! It’s all relative I guess.

Sleeping

This is the question everyone always asks when you have a new baby. Is he sleeping through the night? Well, that depends on your definition of “sleeping through”. To me that means 7-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep each night for an adult, and more like 11-12 hours for a baby. But for a newborn baby, sleeping through the night is five hours in a row. Ollie has done that a handful of times, but usually it is more like 3.5 hours of sleep, followed by a 30-45 minutes of feeding. However the night of his two month birthday he did his first six hour stretch (8pm-2am) which was very exciting. So we are getting there.

Naps are a different story. I am trying to put him down drowsy, but awake. Apparently this is key to getting babies to self settle and eventually reach that all important goal of sleeping through the night. (Although I did the same with Ella and she didn’t sleep through the night until she was nine months old, so…) We have had limited success with this and we often have to pick him up and give him a cuddle a few times before he stays asleep. He’s pretty inconsistent when it comes to going down for a nap in his cot and usually wakes after one sleep cycle, or 40 minutes. I’ve tried to not rush in and pick him up as soon as I hear him start to grizzle, but so far that hasn’t resulted in a longer nap. He has surprised us a handful of times by sleeping longer in the cot so I’m hopeful that this will improve. He usually has at least one nap in the Hug-a-bub carrier each day while I go for a walk. Earlier in his life he would sleep for hours in there, but lately he has gotten a bit picky and will start to wake if I stop moving around. No sitting down for you, mummy!

Ella, thankfully, has settled down with her sleep. Just before Ollie was born she was waking with what we think were nightmares. She would just scream and be inconsolable for like 20-30 minutes. It was pretty horrible. And then when Ollie was born she was sick a lot and waking in the night due to that. But she’s been pretty healthy the past few weeks, and is sleeping through from 7:30pm-7am most nights. Phew! It was pretty hard when they were both waking up a lot. Andy wakes up with Ella, so at least we each only have one kid to deal with at night!

Feeding

So far Ollie is exclusively breastfed. I’m hoping to do this for the first six months, and then we will see. With Ella I started mixed feeding around five months as I went back to work when she was seven months and I wanted to be finished breastfeeding by then. I also didn’t really enjoy breastfeeding with her if I’m honest. I’ve had a much easier time breastfeeding Ollie though, and he is thriving on it so I’m not as keen to stop it as I was with Ella. I also now know how much easier it is to breastfeed then to have to worry about making bottles with formula. When he was born he was this scrawny little baby but now he’s got these lovely chubby cheeks and legs! He also feeds pretty quickly most of the time. 

We don’t really have any set feeding routine yet which drives me a bit nuts. In the day he feeds nearly every two hours and even more frequently in the lead up to bedtime. As he was a smaller baby I’m still feeding on demand, but as he gets older and bigger I’d really like to stretch this out so it is more like every 3-4 hours.

At two months he is still pretty unsettled after each feed with lots of gas and wind.The evenings are worse, lots of crying since he was about 2 weeks old which has been hard to deal with. I guess it is colic? The maternal child health nurse thinks he just has an immature gut and that it would sort itself out in time. It is gradually getting better so she was probably right. We’ve found that the best antidote to his constant crying is to put on some 80s Tunes and dance around the living room. I even have a specific Spotify playlist for this occasion. I'm not sure if he actually likes the music or if he's just so shocked at his mummy’s terrible voice, but whatever it is it stops the crying for a little while. Ella and Andy usually join in resulting in a pretty fun dance party before dinner. Dancing and singing are a very good way to put everyone in a good mood, no matter how hard the day has been.

We are still giving Ollie a bottle of expressed milk every evening It’s a bit of a pain to express every evening but I’m hoping this is one of those things that will pay off in the long run so that he is happy to take a bottle.

Development and Playing

Some things that Ollie has started to enjoy over the past few weeks are his bath and lying on his play mat. He’s even started bashing at the toys dangling overhead. He still likes to be held a lot but is gradually spending longer and longer happily playing by himself. He smiles at us a lot now which is just the best. Ella is able to interact with him a bit more now, she likes that he looks and smiles at her and she will dangle toys in front of him. I am really looking forward to seeing their relationship develop. Which brings me to...

The Big Sister Transition

This is something we are still finding a challenge. Although Ella loves Ollie, she does not love sharing our attention with him. She is particularly protective of Andy, and gets very jealous whenever he tries to hold Ollie. She is ok with it as long as Andy can still play with her, but when Andy tries to give Ollie his evening bottle she pretty much loses it. We’ve resorted to me giving him the bottle which seems pretty pointless as it is expressed breastmilk… I could be saving the trouble of expressing and just feed him myself! To be honest I’m not really sure what to do about this problem, for the moment I’m just hoping it is a phase that will end at some point!

And that’s our two month update! If I’m completely honest, although I do love newborn cuddles, I am looking forward to hitting the three month mark.