3 Weeks Old

Today Hunter is 3 weeks old. I can't believe how fast time is flying and that he's almost a month old already!

3 weeks old

We took Hunter to his pediatrician appointment yesterday and he's already up to 9lbs 3ozs (he was 7lbs 12ozs at birth) so needless to say we have a little chunky monkey on our hands. As you can see from his weight gain this little boy LOVES to eat. I'm still doing a combo of breast feeding and pumping/bottle feeding and every now and then we'll give him a small bottle of formula-- mainly at night to help him sleep. The BF/pumping definitely is a time commitment, I'm having to do one or the other (and sometimes both) every 3ish hours or I feel like I have two boulders on my chest.

The doctor says he's looking great and developing well and we're hoping once we see the pulmonologist he'll be able to get off his apnea monitor. We were supposed to have seen that doctor yesterday but had to reschedule due to delays with Hunter's insurance.

We're still working on the whole sleeping at night thing. Overall he's doing much better but there are still nights (like Wednesday night) when he's up ALL NIGHT. We've started a nighttime routine which seems to be working a bit. We try to keep him awake for at least two hours before bed, then we'll move him upstairs, give him a big bottle, change him, swaddle him and either lay him in bed with us until he falls asleep or rock him to sleep. The whole routine can take up to an hour or more and he's usually asleep by 10:30pm. He then will typically wake up around 2am wanting to be fed again and then again around 5am. We've had relative success with this and hopefully with time he'll get more used to it.

The doctor explained that a lot of babies his age hate to sleep on their backs, and this seems to be the case with Hunter, he hates sleeping in his bassinet. He has no problem sleeping anywhere else so long as he's not flat on his back. The doctor said it was fine to let him sleep in his pack n play (which has a cradle part) or even in his car seat. My concern is that he'll never get used to sleeping flat on his back and will make the transition to the crib even harder, the doctor said that as he gets older he'll get better at sleeping on his back so hopefully it won't be an issue.

Last night in an attempt for both Kristian and I to get some sleep I stayed in the living on the couch while Hunter slept in the pack n play and Kristian stayed in our room so he could get a good nights sleep. Hunter actually slept great and only woke up once to eat and be changed.

Hunter has also been staying awake more during the day which is nice however it also means that I'm not able to rest as much or get as much done around the house because he's always wanting to be fed, changed or held. Fortunately, playing Reggae music still seems to settle him down when he gets fussy, it's actually amazing how well it calms him down.

As for me, the area where my incision was is still pretty tender and gets sore but other than that I feel pretty much back to normal. I still have a good 15 pounds to lose to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight but my belly pooch gets smaller by the day. It will be nice once I'm allowed to start exercising again. I have noticed that since having Hunter my right wrist has been killing me and it's even hard at times to pick him up because of it. I've read that there is such thing as pregnancy related carpal tunnel syndrome and I'm pretty sure that's what I have. I'm hoping it will go away on it's own, if not I plan to talk to my doctor about it at my 6 week checkup.