Gerrit: One Month

Can you believe our little Gerrit is already one month old?! I’ll be honest, in some ways it went really quickly, but in others it took forever! All those feedings and sleepless nights turn into a blur.

Age: 1 month on 27 November 2014
Weight: 9 lb 5.9oz
Height: just over 21″
Teeth: none
Clothing Size: newborn and some 0-3 month
Diaper Size: newborn… barely
Milestones: He can hold up his head pretty well!

Sleeping: I think we might finally be falling into a sort-of routine. Gerrit likes to take a longer morning nap and a longer nap around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. At night, he usually does at least one stretch of about 3 hours of sleep (4 hours between feeds).

Eating: Eating started out as kind of a chore. With Gerrit’s jaundice and losing 10% of his birth weight, the pressure was on us to push the feedings. We had been feeding Gerrit my breast milk through a tube and a syringe in the hospital, so when we got home, we switched to bottles. I still tried to get him to breastfeed at nearly every feed, and we slowly got him off of the bottles and exclusively on the breast. But we still were having to wake him every 2 hours or so to eat, even at night, which is completely exhausting. It was one thing to get him awake, but then to keep him awake? Plus I had no idea how much he was getting to eat once he was off the bottles, especially with the amount he was spitting up. It stressed me out. But at his 2 week check-up he had gained back what he lost and was up 7 oz from his birth weight. We continued to wake him every 2-3 hours to eat, and when we went back to check his weight a day before his 1 month birthday, he was up to a whopping 9 lbs 5.9 oz! That’s over 1.5 lbs in 2 weeks… I could hardly believe it! So that proved to me that he was definitely eating enough and gaining weight well. We decided to stop waking him up to feed at night, but I still planned to wake him every 3 hours during the day if he didn’t wake on his own.

Mommy Update: Well, losing weight from breastfeeding was definitely true for me. By the time Gerrit turned 1 month I was about 13 lbs under my pre-pregnancy weight. I don’t think it was ALL from breastfeeding. I experienced some postpartum depression & anxiety following Gerrit’s birth (more on that in another post). With the postpartum depression came some major loss of appetite, so I’m sure that contributed. In terms of sleep, I was not getting much of it at the 1 month mark. I really struggled to be able to nap during the day, so I got whatever I could squeeze in at night between feedings. Mood-wise I was slowly starting to come out of the worst of the depression & anxiety at 1 month. Things were slowly starting to come together at this point.

Best Moments: I think our favorite thing that Gerrit does is multiple sneezes followed by an “Ohhh!” sound. It sounds like they really catch him by surprise, and it is SO cute! He loves to sleep on both of us, especially on his tummy on our chests.. He also seems to enjoy bath time. He doesn’t fuss at all, just hangs out and enjoys the warm water while I wash him up.

Gerrit got to meet one of his grandmas in his first month too: my mom! She flew over to visit us a couple of days before Gerrit turned 1 month. It was SO nice to have her here. I had been dealing with some pretty rough postpartum depression & anxiety, and having her here really helped put me more at ease. Especially because that was the week Andrew went back to work.

Gerrit also got to celebrate a holiday on his 1 month birthday: Thanksgiving! It was very low-key, but we enjoyed some good food, including a pumpkin pie.

Do we look sleep deprived? 🙂 Well, except for Gerrit, obviously! It has been quite a month with quite a few challenges but a lot of special moments as well.

Happy 1 month to our sweet baby boy!