Things are getting better. Joshua is gradually stretching out his happy times and doesn't appear to have the same level of discomfort. He still has his moments, but between me feeling that he isn't hurting quite so badly and having developed some coping skills, overall things are better.
I started putting those little scratch mitties on him when we drive and now it doesn't bother me nearly so much when Joshua cries in the car. He may end up purple and dripping with sweat, but I know that his face will still be intact when we get to our destination.
I am still giving him the homeopathic drops. I also ordered a Baltic Amber necklace for him. Apparently when worn, the heat of the skin causes some substance(s) to be released from the amber and they help to ease pain and reduce acid in the body. Lots of them targeted to the teething baby available on
Etsy. Figured it might help, and it couldn't hurt.
Joshua gave us his first social smile yesterday morning!! Andrew was holding him, Eva and Micah were gathered around and they were all talking to him. And voila! Big grin. It was amazing.
He feels so much bigger and more solid now that he's got muscle tone in his torso. He feels and looks long. His legs are chunking up a bit but his arms are still kind of skinny. His eyes are still blue, but darker. More along the grey/hazel lines. I wouldn't be surprised if his eyes end up the same colour as Eva's (hazel). He has just about got the hang of holding his head up.
Things I have learned about Joshua lately:
- just holding him usually is not good enough to get him on track once he's started to cry. Things that may work to calm him include:
* bouncing. This is almost always a winner. Exercise ball is best, but bouncing on tip toes may constitute a reasonable facsimile. Hippy, dancy walking can also do the trick.
* swaddling. This helps to get him organized. Fortunately the weather should be cooling down any time now and allow us to employ this technique more frequently.
* shushing. Loud shushing beside his ear sometimes calms him, but only if used in tandem with one of the above methods.
* noises such as blow dryer, blender, vacuum, and shower distract and quiet him. They don't put him to sleep, but pull him back from crylandia and get us back to square one.
* soother. Neither Eva nor Micah had any interest in a soother. I am not one to automatically introduce one. But I have found that the soother helps to bring him back, and reorganize him. If he's really upset, sometimes tummy-to-tummy dance walking, together with soother can do the trick where he would have still been crying if there were no soother. Or, it can help take him from reasonably settled all the way to sleep. It was VERY helpful in the car during the 8 hours of driving we did this weekend. I am very happy to nurse him whenever he wants (except when I'm driving, of course) but he doesn't always want it. I'm pretty sure the soother as we're currently using it is not taking away from his time at the breast.
* wrap. Bouncing or possibly walking, maybe shushing and offering soother, while he is in the wrap can often put him to sleep. The sling is not nearly so effective. He hates laying down in it until he's already asleep or almost asleep. He does not like to nurse in it.
- He has sensitive feet. Ticklish, and becomes VERY annoyed if you try to cut his nails or otherwise mess with his feet.
- His bedtime is around 8 or 9pm. As long as he's not hurting too much, he's ready to go down for the night around then. Very recently he's been going down solidly enough to spend the first part of the night in the Amby. He is pretty consistent about waking up to eat around 3 or 4am. He tends to wake up for the day around 6 or 7. He's often stuffy nosed, which may indicate reflux in the night from nursing laying down? This past weekend, a couple of times he refused to nurse laying down. I was not happy about having to wake all the way up after being used to dozy wee hours nursing sessions.
- He always has a white tongue. My initial research indicated that it was milk tongue and not thrush, but further research has cast doubt on that. It sounds like it's a bit hard to know for sure unless it's really obvious. So at Lucia's suggestion I am swabbing his tongue with a baking soda solution a few times a day. I am also taking acidophiles. We'll see if there's any change.
I really thought this baby #3 thing would be a snap. I have a sling, a wrap, and two kids worth of knowledge. I figured he'd be sleepy for the first month or two, easily soothed by being in arms (and especially by driving in the car!), and that I'd spend a lot of time nursing in the night. Well Joshua has been the exact opposite. He has never been placid during the day; we've never been able to put him down and just leave him to doze off or coo happily. But the nights have been better than I ever could have hoped for. So I'll count my blessings and continue trying to find ways to meet everyone's daytime needs adequately.
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