Sapling Status: 4 Months

Maple’s third month was even more exciting than her second, with her making more talking sounds and even starting to babble in addition to cooing.  She also learned to pull things to her mouth and suck/chew on her fist. And just days before her 4 month birthday I gave her a stuffed doll, and she loves holding it. When she’s sleepy, she pulls it to her face and mouths it, and falls asleep with it in her arms.

It’s funny – Maple talks the most when she’s alone in her crib. A stuffed owl hangs on the side of it, and Maple turns on her side to face it, grabs at it, and talks up a storm.

The third month also brought some obstacles and difficult days, primarily when she was gassy. It turns out that if I eat chick peas, she will be screaming from gas pain later, and we have to just hold her as she rides it out. Seeing your baby cry from pain is heartbreaking!

So. No more chick peas for now.

We did solve the bottle refusal problem, and Maple is once again drinking happily from bottles! It turns out that excess Lipase (which helps baby digest fats in the milk) can cause the milk to taste sour and soapy if it is cooled and then reheated for a bottle. The solution is to scald the milk on the stove before freezing it.

Unfortunately, I have 200 ounces of frozen milk that may taste bad, so I have to start from scratch building my freezer stash. The good news is that I can donate it to a non-profit milk bank to be fed to NICU babies through a feeding tube.

Now that the weather is great, Maple and I are going for 3 mile walks daily. I’ve been trying to strategically plan our errands, such as groceries, so that we can walk to do them. It takes longer than driving, but it’s a good way to squeeze exercise into my day.

We’ve also done some hiking, and found that if I wear Maple in my Solly Wrap, she can nurse while we hike! This was a great time-saver during a growth spurt, because we were out hiking and she wanted to eat every 30 minutes.

Our general schedule hasn’t changed much, except that now I wake up between 5 -7 am. Maple is very active now, so she doesn’t spend a lot of time napping like she used to. She does take a long nap early in the morning, so if I’m awake and prepared I can get some work done then. I put her down for a scheduled nap in the afternoon, but that often lasts only 30 min – 1 hour. She goes to sleep between 7-8 pm and usually wakes up to eat before midnight. We had some nights where she slept more than 6 hours straight after 12 am, but that doesn’t always happen.

One thing I’ve learned about Maple is that if she has a busy day with lots of visitors or if we go out of town, she recovers when she gets home by napping a ton the next day and then going to bed very early (5 pm) at night.

Credit: Erin Lassahn Photography

As I write this post, Ryan and I are in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, and Maple is on her first vacation with her grandparents in New Jersey. She hit 4 months the day before we left her, so I’ll save that experience for next month’s post.