Major development:1. His feeding time dragged from every 1-2 hours to every 3-4 hours from Sep 24 onwards. And finally we managed to reduce his feeding time to 6 times a day from Oct 04. (used to be 8-12 times and even more). This is really a tremendous improvement as now I can have some time to catch 2 TV series and even cook dinner every night.
2. His neck gets much stronger and can lift up for quite a while.
3. He starts to drink quite a lot of water during and after feeding.
4. Able to differentiate milk and plain water clearly by rejecting his bottle when he does not want to drink either one.
5. From Oct 06, he starts to smile to himself while looking into the mirror.
6. From Oct 11, he starts to move his hands and legs and lean his body towards Mummy Chan for cuddling when being called for. (So touching, sorry Win, don’t feel sad if he has not done that to you yet, he just needs more bonding time with daddy)
7. Starts his baby talk very often, and besides “arh” and “orh” and “eeh”, sometimes he can making sound like “arh-orh” or “eeh-orh-arh” or even longer “sentence”.
8. We were quite worried about overfeeding him but now he takes about 850ml (+/-) of milk daily which is perfectly normal based on the guideline given on formula milk tin.
Daddy Chan and Mummy Chan's new worries from this month:
1. Ingrown nail
Our poor little Renzo had ingrown nail for his right thumb after a finger nail cut and recovered only after about 1 week time. We should have thought about that because me, my sister and my mother are all having this same problem. Now we dare not to cut his finger nails too short.
2. Scratches on his face
Since we can’t cut his finger nails too short, and he stopped wearing mittens after full month (for better development as baby learn new things through touching with their little hands), now we see more marks on his face. Luckily baby’s skin cells regenerate really fast so hopefully there will not be any scars left.
3. Need of cuddling
I have to cuddle him to sleep for a few hours at night, and during daytime he cries often while sleeping half way, and all he needs is just attention, so we have to spend quite a lot of time carrying him. My in laws advised us to use sarong, I am pretty sure it is going to help, but for sure we cannot let him sleep in sarong at night, so I rather just do without it then.
4. Way of carrying
From Oct 11, after a growth spurt, he started to prefer being carried in an upright position. We have not figured out the reason but if our bicep muscles are not strong enough, it can be a really big challenge.
Daddy Chan and Mummy Chan's worries from previous month:
1. Renzo is not sleeping much especially during daytime (Improved)
Same as last month, he is still not sleeping well, but at least now he seems to have a pattern. Usually he has 1 or 2 naps in the morning for a total of 1 to 1.5 hours. And then sleep another 1.5 to 2.5 hours in the afternoon. At night he can sleep for 3-4 hours after bathing, and then from 1am to 7am I will have to cuddle him to sleep for a few hours because he will wake up once I put him into his cot.
2. Vomiting (almost resolved)
I must say there’s really big improvement from 2nd month onwards as Renzo did not really vomit this month, despite spitting up a little bit sometimes. Of course we still need to be extremely careful while feeding him, because if we push the milk bottle teat too deep into his mouth, sometimes it really irritates him and cause him vomiting.
3. Awake after bathing (totally resolved)
Now we fixed his bathing time from about 7pm to 8pm. And usually he can eat a bit more as long as the previous feeding was about 4 hours apart. Or if the previous feeding was only about 1-2 hours ago, he can be very tired after bathing so he does not eat much. But the good thing is he can sleep for 3-4 hours right after that.
4. Passing motion (Improved a lot)
"Poopersaurus" starts to have 3 times bowel movement a day from Oct 01, and further reduced to only twice a day from Oct 08. Guess we should not call him poopersaurus anymore.
And my biggest achievement for the month is – I managed to understand Renzo’s cue a lot better, 80% of time I can tell when he wants to:
-fart
-burp
-past motion
-have milk
-have water
-sleep
But of course, the most satisfying achievement would still be when I call out to him "Want mummy to carry?" and then seeing his little body arching towards me and kicking frantically. That feeling is just pure magic... And the smile on his face - Priceless!!!
On Oct 23, my mother who's been helping me greatly for the past 2 months plus went back to China and officially, we are on our own with our new Myanmar maid Aye-Aye. For the past two days little Renzo has been doing fine, it seemed that he was not affected much by the fact that grandma has left and will not be returning soon in the very near future. and that night he even slept for 5 hours from 9pm to 2am for the very first time. But the amazing thing is when we were at the airport, he stayed awake all the way till my mother left for boarding during his usual nap time. I guess somehow he really sensed that grandma is leaving him.. I am hoping that Renzo grows up healthily and by next year, we could bring him to meet my parents in Japan for my cousin's wedding...
So far she's able to successfully feed him but of course not everytime. Feeding him is many times tougher than putting him to sleep (okay putting him to sleep is never easy either), because he needs to do at least 4 things including burp, cough, pee, poop, rest and drink water during one feeding, if you cannot get his cue, he will just keep on crying.. The good thing is we can see that Aye-Aye really likes Renzo a lot, whenever she's free she just likes to carry him. Also she gets disappointed when Renzo cries hard in her arms and I have to take over at the end.
Want to know what happened after this? A big mess on the floor, Renzo tried his best to aim at the dustbin but too bad, being a poopersaurus, his pooping is just sOooo powerful!!
