Luke at 4 months!

Lukey, Luke, you are four months old. August just FLEW by in a whirl of camp and travel and camp Mommy and school starting. Luckily, you were feeling better for most of the month and mostly a happy participant in our adventures. Last week was a little rough, but you are getting back to the happier Luke again. As we enjoy our last week at home together, I am amazed at how much you are growing.

At 4 months, Luke is:

Growing: 15lbs 2oz, 25 inches, and a head circumference of 17 inches. That's 50th, 50th, and 90th (!!!) percentiles, respectively. You've outgrown 0-3 month clothes, but I'm so sad about it that I haven't packed them up yet. So you're living out of a laundry basket full of clean 3-6 month clothes.

Eating- still almost exclusively nursing  (12 bottles in your whole life- how do I even know that?) although that is about to come to come to an end. You still eat about every 2 hours during the day and every 3 at night. Your total nursing decreased to a little over an hour a day early in the month and then shot up (growth spurt? finally feeling better?) in the middle of the month to over 3 hours a day for a week. It's back down to a little less than 2 hours a day. When you do take a bottle, you usually take 3oz, tops.

Sleeping...sorta....Last night you  fell asleep at 7:30, needed your pacifier to stay asleep around 9, and then woke up at 12, 3:45 and 7am to eat. That's pretty typical of the last few days, but your sleep this month has not been great. You learned out to fight your way out of the swaddle, thereby waking yourself up. Then you learned how to roll over from your back to your belly- but you were not happy when you woke up on your belly. We didn't know whether we should swaddle you or put you back to sleep on your belly or what. There were a rough couple of nights where  you barely made it 2 hours at a time. Now you're sleeping more consistently for 3-4 hours at night on your belly, but you can do better this month!

Moving: About a week after you turned 3 months old, you started rolling over from your back to your belly. Only to the right and only from back to belly. Now when we put you on the playmat, you barely spend any time on your back and immediately roll onto your belly. Unfortunately, you don't love being on your belly- it makes it much harder to look in the mirror, kick, and grab your toys. Hopefully you'll learn to roll the other way too.

Having silly, happy conversations: Luke is becoming more interactive. He LOVES his Mommy and giggles and laughs at her. Daddy and big brothers have to catch him in the right mood to get the same response. Luke does stare in awe at his brothers moving all over the place. He's a bit slow to warm up to strangers, but once he does it's all smiles.

Enjoying the exersaucer- not only is it fun, it's also a great way for you to stay upright after eating, which helps your belly!

Trying big  boy things with the help of his brothers...like the swings at the park!

Reflux update:

Zantac did not work so we were switched to Prilosec and it made a difference pretty quickly. After about a week he was a much happier baby. But once we got on a schedule and I started to feel confident, it all went downhill: crying spells, screaming SCREAMING in the car, lots of spit-up. We were near the bottom of the medicine bottle and I think it stopped working as well since it was specially titrated for a baby. Then the pharmacy took 4 (!!!!) days to refill because it takes them 48 hours to refill and we called on Saturday after closing (1pm). Needless to say, they got an earfull from both Luke and I when we came in and were very apologetic. Luke is starting to get back to his happier self.

At his 4 month appointment, the doctor upped his dosage a bit. She said he should outgrow the reflux as he sits up more and starts eating solids. She also recommended we start him on rice cereal because it will expand in his stomach and make it harder to reflux.

We love you, Lukey!