Yes, you read it right, Baby Bear is 6 months old. He’s around 16lbs (25th percentile), wearing 3-6 month clothing and size 3 nappies.
The scariest part of that is the fact in the same amount of time again, we’ll be celebrating his 1st birthday.
As positive as I want to keep this update, I feel it’s going to be a dumping ground for my exhausted brain.
Feeding
You may have read my 5 month update a few weeks ago where I explained how BB has been feeding 3 hourly day AND night recently. Well, the bags under my eyes will tell you he’s still feeding 3 hourly all day and night.
I’m starting to lose it a bit if I’m honest. I even had an anxiety attack the other day which has never happened before. 6 months without a decent chunk of sleep will do that to you.
Today marks the day of 6 months of exclusive breastfeeding and I’m pretty damn proud about that! Breastfeeding is still going strong. I don’t really have much of a choice as he still won’t take a damn bottle! To be fair I haven’t tried that hard to get him to take one.
One thing I have noticed is he prefers to take a bottle with breastmilk, rather than formula which I’ve been giving him. The only reason I gave him formula was because I was trowing away so much breastmilk, and expressing when you’re exclusively feeding isn’t easy. It was stressing me out, so I made the decision to train him to take the bottle with formula, then once he would take it confirmable I’d start expressing again. Luckily I’ve got a few bags in the freezer than I’ve been defrosting as and when I need them.
At this point I can see myself breastfeeding until he’s one. I don’t have any desperation to stop, just desperation to sleep. But I can sleep when he’s older, they don’t stay small for long.
Sleeping
Since the 4 month sleep regression BB’s sleeping has gone out of the window. He literally doesn’t sleep. Today, for example, he had a 45 minute nap all day. And no, I’m not exaggerating. My 6 month old baby is surviving the day on a 45 minute nap.
I’ trying to train him to sleep upstairs in his crib during the day. Today I fed him and placed him in his Snuzpod awake. H drifted off then around 10 minutes later started crying, well, more like shouting. My sister in law was here and she told me to leave him (she could see I was tempted to run straight back to him). She was totally right, he was distressed, just shouting for mummy. I left him for about 5 minutes and we could hear him drafting off. I think it’s just going to take some determination from me and switching off from his cries to get him to nap upstairs.
No, I’m absolutely not doing controlled crying, that’s not my thing. I’m just teaching myself which cries really need to be tended to.
As mentioned above, I’m still nursing every 3 hours so sleep at night is like that of a newborn. Joy.
Development
I feel like BB achieved so much in the first few months of his life and then decided to take a break! He rolled so early and showed signs of crawling, but he’s not quite crawling yet. The past couple of days he’s been dragging himself around the floor grabbing at stuff. I literally can’t leave the room. I come back to find him in a completely different place! He’s taught himself that with a combination of rolling and body dragging he can achieve anything!
I’m trying to get him to say cat, wouldn’t it be adorable if both my boys had the same first word. BB has taken a shining to Luna so overtime she’s nearby I say ‘cat’ over and over.
They say that babies are either walkers or talkers and their brain develops one of those at a time. Lamb was absolutely a talker. He didn’t roll hardly, and couldn’t crawl. Yet his speech has always been incredible and he was talking from a young age. BB seems to be the polar opposite and he is much more active. I know it wont be long before he’s crawling and I’m sure he’ll be an early walker.
Weaning
I decided to start weaning about 2 weeks ago. I wasn’t doing it strictly, just offering him finger food when it was available/suitable. A bit of toast or banana here and there. He was eyeing up our food so much I felt it was the right time to offer it. Last week I began weaning a bit more regularly with breakfast every day, then introducing lunch and dinner.
At the moment we are doing a combination of baby led weaning with some purees. We were sent some Piccolo pouches to try and BB seems to really like them (when he decides not to clamp him mouth shut!)
Cucumber is a hit as well as humous and pitta bread.
I’m actually really enjoying weaning. Something I wasn’t expecting.
I’I’m pretty sure by 6 months Lamb had said his first word, which was cat. We are no where near that stage with BB but he has started saying new sounds, one being ‘yah’. It sometimes sounds like he’s saying ‘yeah’ which is super cutem hoping to start doing weaning blog posts, if I ever get my baby to nap so I can write, so if there’s anything you want me to share let me know!
I’m not sure if weaning will help with BB’s sleeping, probably not but I’m holding on to that glimmer of hope.
~A~
Leave a Reply