Ben at 14 Weeks

He’s changed so much this week that a short post on his achievements seems just right.

Over the last fortnight he learned that breast full time is better than anything else. He started by refusing formula, then moved on to refusing breast milk in a bottle. He’s back to fully breastfed now and we got past 13 weeks. Back 10 weeks ago I didn’t think that was going to happen to be honest and it’s only now that I see him awake and chubby that I can truly see how frail and sick he was and how much he improved once we started managing his feeding with expressing and occasional top ups. In the last two weeks he;’s become a far more efficient feeder, takes breathers between them even, has energy to be awake and not feeding most of the time, doesn’t need to feed for 8 hours at a time any more. Whatever the purist rights and wrongs of it, the expressing and the 150 ounces or so of formula he had were absolutely the right thing for him. We struggled and we needed a shove to get over the hump and it did that. We needed a baby that thrived more than one I could congratulate myself on fully breastfeeding. All that mattered was him. So far he seems to be mirroring the older two in having no baby/toddler eczema; let’s hope it stays that way.

This last ten days has seen less sicky possetting (because no bottles I imagine) but a lot more dribbling and frantic chewing of fists. Teeth are moving, I think. He’s happy as can be in general though, a very placid boy who interacts loads. He’s mastered ‘goo’ and ‘aaah’ and plays a copying game with Fran. He and I practise ‘Buh!’ sounds together which he thinks is very funny. He saves his best smiles for sisters 🙂 And he sleeps in his crib now, something I’ve mostly got to grips with thanks to gadgets to keep me sane.

Much as I want the blue eyes to stay (for a change!) I fear I see hazy grey coming, which I think means brown will inevitably win. *sad* I really see the beginning of a boy in this picture though. He’s in there and trying to get through the baby face already.

Just to show the change in size, here is his first babygro. I ought to put it on a doll really because flat doesn’t do the smallness justice!
But best of all, for a baby who is owner of parents with a toy shop, he’s found his hands and is starting to play.

I thought we’d get to a point where life went back to the old version of having a new baby, being desperate to put him to bed, or get on with other stuff. But no. We’ve changed. Max and I still spend every evening just sat on the sofa looking at him. When he’s still awake at 11.30pm and grinning at us, we grin back. We still can’t believe we got this lucky.