Two-month check-up

At his two-month well-baby check-up today, William weighed 12 pounds, 10 ounces and was 23.2 inches long. Not too bad for the little prince! He is slightly above the 50th percentile in both height and weight. I was surprised, thinking he'd surely be off the charts, and said something like, "Let's hear it for average!" And the nurse said, "No, we prefer to say he's perfect." Right on.

So William is growing just fine and looks "gorgeous." He even smiled a little bit during his visit. And oh, if you think those smiles are cute in photos, you should see them in person. After checking out all his vitals, the nurse practitioner spent some time counseling me about helping him sleep better, which is really our biggest challenge. And as I suspected, she confirmed that she thinks he tends to be happier on his tummy. Of course. I've been a tummy sleeper my whole life, and I've long suspected that William would be, too, based on how he likes to curl up and nap on my shoulder and chest (or anyone's--he's not picky). Of course, the current SIDS prevention guidelines advise parents to put babies on their backs to sleep, and we'll continue to do that. But I may try soothing him to supervised sleep on his tummy sometimes, then carefully turning him over, and seeing how that works. He may hate that. He and I may just have to suck it up and wait 'til he can successfully roll himself over. We'll see.

Right now, William is napping in his car seat. That's about the only place he'll reliably nap, and even that is not always a given. But I guess all the excitment at the hospital wore him out. Hopefully, he'll sleep better tonight than he has the last few nights. I keep reminding myself that he's sleeping at night better now than he did the first month of his life. But it's still not enough for Mommy--I need longer periods of consecutive sleep to get by. The cumulative sleep debt is wearing me out. I probably should be napping right now, in fact, but it's hard for me sometimes to wind down mid-day and then ramp back up at the sound of his crying. So everyone out there who doesn't have a new baby: the next time you go to bed at, say, 11 p.m. and wake up again at, say, 7 or 8, count your blessings. If sleep were an actual substance, I'd be mainlining it, trying to get caught up!