Renzo's development - Month 03

Renzo has just turned 3 months old this week, many of our friends visited him and all of them commented that he is a really big and chubby baby.

03 Month vs. 01 Month

Weight: +2.9kg

Height: +6.5cm

Head Circumference: +4cm

Compared to the major changes that occured from month 01's transition to month 02 (one most significant example being his serious vomiting stopped at month 02), it seems that nothing has happened this month, but in fact I think he has improved a lot in terms of his daily feeding and sleeping routine.

Renzo's daily feeding schedule at 3 months (starts from 7am):
- 1st feed around 8am to 930am
- 2nd feed around 11am to 1230am
(nap about 1 to 1.5 hours in total in the morning)

- 3rd feed around 4pm to 530pm
(nap about 2 to 3.5 hours in total in the afternoon)
**Shower around 7pm to 740pm**
- 4th feed around 8pm to 930pm
(sleep from 9pm -1030pm to 130am-3am)

- 5th feed around 130am to 3am
(sleep from 2am-3am to around 4am-5am, then I have to carry him to sleep till about 530am-6am)
- 6th feed around 530am to 6am

Around end of Oct, we tried to change his shower time from 7pm+ to 8pm+ so that when I return back to work, I still have ample time to rush back home and shower him. But as a result, we have to feed him 7 times instead of 6 times a day, because when he cries around 6pm to 7pm, we substitute the shower with another feeding in hope that after his shower around 8pm+ he will drink around 10pm and sleep around 11pm and only wake up once from then till 7am next morning. But too bad, somehow Renzo just has this bio clock running in him that right after shower, he must have a bottle. Thus we only managed to drag his shower time by one hour, there's no change in his sleeping routine and still, he ended up having 1 more feeding around 6pm+.

Basically that means our new schedule has failed completely. And hence I just reverted back to the old schedule on Nov 12, fortunately my bosses (one Dutch boss in the Netherlands and one US boss in Singapore) allow me to work from home, and that means I can shower him around 7pm without the worry about not being able to reach home before that, and most of my night conference calls only start after 9pm so there's no conflict at all. A bit off topic but seriously western bosses are generally more understanding and humane in this aspect. Of course I think being able to work from home attributes to my dedication to work also. There was one day I left Renzo at home with Winson (poor hubby was on MC that day) and our maid, and went back to office from 10am to 5pm to re-image 13 computers. Great thing is these 2 bosses always appreciate my work and in return, they are very flexible with my working schedule and help me solved the biggest problem so far.

Why I said so? Because our maid Aye Aye is really having a hard time handling Renzo. I have no idea why, Renzo just cries hard in her arms, of course not all the time. So the biggest problem was, who can look after Renzo once I started working? Our initial plan was to leave him to Aye Aye and let my father-in-law come to our house every morning, just to supervise her. Basically he is not able to help with anything despite that he has babysitting experience in the past. Nowadays babies are very different, not to mention that Renzo has a lot of "patterns" and not easy to look after at all. And I could already imagine that our poor little boy is crying badly and the two just have no clue and no idea how to console him. But now at least I will be around, and it is not a compulsory thing for my father-in-law to come everyday, instead he can just visit us at anytime when he wants to.

Major development:

1. He can almost support his head steadily.
2. He can burp by himself without us patting his back or carrying him.

3. He coos a lot more and changes his tune very often.

4. He is able to grasp a rattle and swing it for quite a while.

5. He drinks 90-150ml per feed and 180-230ml for the feed right after shower, 6 feeds per day and total around 800-970ml.

6. Finally he likes to stay and play in his playpen, sometimes he can sleep for quite a while inside. That also means we need to carry him less often than before.

Now we do not really have much worries like what we had in the previous 2 months, because after reading a lot of posts on Singaporemotherhood.com, I started to realize that many Aug mummies are having same or even worse situation than us, and all of us just have to face it and slowly find our own solution. The only thing that we still can not manage well, is when Renzo cries very very badly for 10-15 minutes, even I cannot stop him, that means he is extremely tired and frustrated because he is also hungry at the same time. We just have to let him cool down, and feed him while he is half awake.

I have consulted some other Aug mummies, and a few lucky ones have their babies sleeping through the night from as early as 6 weeks. Some of them are using pacifiers, some are not. I wish I could train Renzo to sleep through the night (I still do not want to give him pacifier), but even if he could not do that, I am fine with the current schedule and waking up twice during midnight is not a problem to me anymore.