Monday, August 8, 2016

Abby and Amy: Three Months


Another month older!  I feel like we are starting to see their personalities blossom a little bit at this point.  Abby is a cuddler.  She loves resting her head on my shoulder and is content to just stay there.  Amelia is a bit squirmier.  She prefers when I help her stand and likes to look at me.  She's also a pro scooter!  Just like Allie was able to, Amelia can scoot herself around the crib and can wiggle her way out of her swaddle.  Then she will repeatedly hit Abby in the face until they are both awake.  Needless to say, we are avoiding this situation for now.  More on the sleep situation below.
 We had their 2 month visit about 3 weeks ago--Abby was 9 lbs 13.5 oz and Amelia was 8 lbs 7.5 oz.  They are both officially on the regular growth chart now!  Amelia is just BARELY on there at 0.5% percentile but she made it!  Their height and head circumference are pretty much the same at 20" and 14.6".  Because they are still small, we are having to see the doctor again in a couple of weeks instead of just the normal 4 month visit.
Neither seemed to handle the pain of getting their shots very well.  Once we got home, before either of them would eat, I had to give them Tylenol.  They slept FOREVER and then finally took a bottle again.  It is very unlike Abby to not eat anything so I knew it was really bothering her.  Thankfully, once the medicine kicked in they both seemed okay.

Both girls are still in size 1 diapers and are wearing the same size clothes they were last month--Amy is still fitting in newborn and Abby is in 0-3 or 3 month.
Sleep has improved dramatically this month but it's going to be confusing to try to explain what we do.  We didn't really follow a set schedule for most of the month but we did make sure to stick to feeding them every 3 hours until the evening time.  We try to feed them twice between the hours of 5-8, whether that is at 5, then 7 OR at 6, then at 8 it doesn't matter.  Then, we let them decide when they will eat next.  Sometimes they sleep until 3-4 the next morning, sometimes they wake up around 11 pm.  If they do wake up again at 11, they will sleep FOREVER.  I typically have to wake them up to take Allie to school.  The first night they slept through the night, they were wearing matching footie pajamas.  So now we refer to them as "the magic PJs" and try to put the twins in them as much as possible.  The amount they are eating has increased since longer sleep=less opportunities to feed.  We give them a little more than 3.5 oz in each bottle.  They are sleeping in their Rock N Plays exclusively right now because every time I lay them in their crib, they spit up all over each other.  Until we can get their reflux under control and until we get them a second crib, they are doing just fine in the RnP.

**Update** So, I drafted this post a couple of days before they turned 3 months old.  Over the weekend, Thursday-Sunday, I started feeding them every 3 hours starting at 7 am and stopping at 10 pm and every night they slept all the way through!  We are loving it and are going to do everything we can to keep it up during this next month.
(Amelia)
Amelia is finally eating her full bottles every time and doesn't give us any issues when we feed her.  She used to always squirm around and just have the hardest time with eating from her bottle.  Up until about 10 weeks old, then everything changed and she did just fine.  She sometimes eats faster than Abby at this point.

Their fussiness is also much improved now!  It peaked around 8-9 weeks and everything has been smooth sailing since then.  We are finally starting to get some smiles.  We have to work really hard to see it though.  We get a lot of leg pumps and it seems like they are trying to smile.  They sometimes 'coo' but mostly it's still just crying that we hear from them.  They hate tummy time and are just now starting to actually lift their heads when they are on the ground.  Amelia is better at it than Abby currently.  Abby just tends to fall asleep and then she gets so so mad when you turn her back over.
(Abby)

I feel 100% recovered at this point.  Over the past month, I lost another 10 pounds so I am just working on the last 10 pounds and then I will be back at my pre-pregnancy weight.  I did sign up to do a half marathon in March and Carson and I are currently doing a Whole 30 this month.  I'm pretty sure with those 2 things going on, I should be back to where I was soon.  My Aggie ring fits, but barely and can be difficult to take on and off.  I occasionally will put it on but if I try to take it off at the end of the night, I need to use lotion to get it over my knuckle.