Abigail: 2 Months Old – Trav and Erin + 3

Abigail turned 2 months old on October 16th! We finally made it past her actual due date :) And I actually got her monthly stickers in time for her pictures…so yay!

At 2 months old, Abigail weighs 6 lbs 9.5 oz and is 20 inches long. She is about the size of a small newborn, which makes sense since she just passed her due date. If you go by her real age, she is less than 5th percentile for both height and weight—no surprise there! By her adjusted age, she is 60th percentile in height and 25th in weight. Sounds much better! ;) She is definitely filling out though and starting to get a few fat rolls here and there. Our big achievement this month is that Abigail is now exclusively breastfeeding! By the end of September, I was getting SO tired of bottles and pumping. It was just an exhausting process that seemed to take up so much time. We made several appointments with the lactation specialists at the hospital, and they would weigh Abigail before and after she nursed so that we could see how much she was taking in. She did great at every appointment except for one where she was so sleepy that she didn’t want to wake up to eat. But those appointments really helped boost my confidence that she was starting to nurse well and getting enough to eat without having to supplement with a bottle afterward. With such a small baby, one of my worries was that I didn’t know how much she was taking in when she nursed, whereas it was easy to know how much she ate with the bottle because we measured it out first. But, after a few appointments and weight checks, it was easy to see that she was definitely nursing well enough at that point to drop the bottles. As she got closer and closer to her due date, Abigail definitely got better at nursing and wouldn’t just fall asleep right away after getting started. It was definitely a long process to get to this point, and I couldn’t have been more thankful to pack the bottles and pump stuff away when we were finally finished with it :)

Abigail is still pretty sleepy overall and only stays awake for very short periods of time during the day. I am feeding her about every 3 hours during the day and usually have to wake her up in order to do so. At night, she usually eats every 3.5 to 4 hours, which is an improvement at least over what she was able to do last month. She is pretty much sleeping exclusively in the Rock n’ Play that we borrowed from Aaron and Emily at this point. It’s nice because it keeps her elevated a little bit, and it’s pretty snug so I think she sleeps better in it than her crib. We are swaddling her for naps and at night because she tends to wake up more if she isn’t swaddled.

Abigail is definitely a little cuddle bug! She loves to be held, and she also likes being worn in the Boba carrier that we have. We used the Moby wrap a few times, but the Boba is just so much easier to put on. She’s technically a little small to be using it yet, but it’s not too hard to keep her positioned correctly, so I’m not that worried about it :) She has also started holding her head up better recently. When I’m burping her, she can lift her head up off my shoulder and hold it up for a second or two. Those neck muscles are getting stronger!

Abigail loves her paci (a Soothie that she came home from the hospital using), but we have a love/hate relationship with that thing. She has a hard time keeping it in her mouth, and she’ll frequently cry when it falls out unless she’s good and asleep already. The Soothie is a lot heavier than the Mam pacifiers we used with Savannah. I’ve tried to get Abigail to use a Mam paci, and so far she just hasn’t gotten the hang of it. I guess we’ll keep trying to make the switch and see what happens. One of Brooklyn and Savannah’s favorite ways to help with Abigail is by putting her paci back in when it falls out. Brooklyn does pretty well with this task, but Savannah is still learning how to be gentle ;) I think Savannah thinks that the harder she pushes it in, the more likely it is that Abigail will start sucking on it…haha!

Abigail’s eye color is still a mystery to me at this point. I feel like they look different depending on the light—either dark brown or dark gray. I feel like they might be starting to change to dark brown, but who knows. It may be different next month! At this point, her brown hair is very thin on top and is mainly a curtain around the back and sides of her head. It makes her look like a little old man ;) She also has that signature strawberry birthmark between her eyebrows that all of our girls have had when they were born. That gene (which came from me) must be a strong one! I packed away her preemie clothes this week—she is officially wearing newborn clothes and newborn diapers! I didn’t think I’d be too sad to pack the clothes away, but it really is a little sad knowing that from here on out whenever she outgrows something, we won’t need it anymore. It’s a new era of not having to save all our baby stuff, but we’ll have to make room for all the new clothes we’ll be accumulating over the coming years. With three girls, I know it’ll be a lot!