Lainey: 5 months

Oh goodness how time is flying! Maybe I'm a bit extra sentimental with Lainey being our last baby but I just want to soak this sweet girl up every day!

 

No stats this month since there was no monthly checkup but by our scales she's about 16.5lbs! CHUNK!

Lainey has become obsessed with her TONGUE! It cracks me up but, wow, its also messy! Silly girl!

At 5 months, Lainey is:

• FINALLY in all 6mo clothes!
• still in size 2 diapers
• On a 4 hour schedule in the day starting at 7am and bedtime right after her 7pm bottle
• on 5mL of prilosec twice a day (more details on this below)
• starting to show more personality!!! Laughing more, fussing more when she's unhappy and talking SO much more!
• ROLLING from back to tummy! (only to the right)
• Napping 9-11, 1-3, 5-6:15ish 
• Still sleeping on her back for the most part but I just bought her a new mattress thats firmer and she immediately started rolling to her tummy. More to come on that next month since it JUST started the day of her 5th month bday ;-)
• LOVING standing! She's not a huge fan of her jumparoo or exersaucer but let the girl stand up while you hold her hands and she's a happy girl!
• Loves itsy bitsy spider but her FAV song is wheels on the bus! she cracks up and so do I!

Mack and Rhyan continue to LOVE her and want to play with her ALL the time! So so sweet!

So our struggle this month was Lainey's reflux, again. Right around her 4 month checkup Tracy and I noticed that she started spitting up again a good bit. But it didnt seem to bother her, really, so I didnt pay much attention to it. In fact, I didnt even think to mention it at her 4 month checkup! Honestly, we were dealing with so much sickness around the house that I honestly didnt think much of her spitting up...
But then she started getting fussy. Which we kind of assumed was teething...

Then, she started having an occasional bad nap here and there. And by "bad nap" i mean that she would go from sleeping to SCREAMING mid nap. And even after I'd pick her up it'd take a few minutes to calm her down. And if I tried to lay her back down or even sit down, she'd SCREAM again. Very, very unlike her.

So I called the Dr and with the thought of "is this really TEETHING?!" or could it be an ear infection? I honestly didnt really think it was her reflux. I mean, she was spitting up about 30 times a day but it STILL didnt occur to me until the day of the dr's visit. I guess I was just thinking that if it were her reflux she'd not be sleeping all night??

Michelle, our favorite PA at the office has 2 kids of her own who have each battled reflux and as soon as she saw her and heard her symptoms and checked her ears ("beautiful") she said she was positive it was her reflux again. She said that babies start making stomach acid pretty heavily around 4-6 months old and often reflux wont even show up until then but that in babies who have struggled with regurgitation in the past it will typically become pretty bad in this time frame b/c the regurgitation becomes very acidic and painful.

She told us to up her dose of prilosec to 4mL twice a day and if there wasnt significant improvement in 3-4 days to go ahead and up it to 5mL. We ended up at the 5mL but I'm happy to report that she's back to being happy on tummy time and sleeping great and overall so much more content!

We also left Lainey overnight for the first time just before she turned 5 months old! We attended a relaxing worship retreat (our worship pastors planned it for those of us who serve on worship team and tech team and we had a WONDERFUL time!). The kids stayed a friday night with Jeff's parents. Sadly, she did have a crying episode that sounded just like when her reflux acts up (it was only day 3 on her new dose but we could already see big improvements so i was very hopeful for a good night with them!) but she slept great all night and was fine on Saturday. Whew! I was grateful that they were with Jeff's parents instead of my Mom for that episode because I've experienced Lainey's crying episodes with all 3 kids and its overwhelming to say the least. I'm glad there were 2 adults there to help trade her off so they could stay sane!

So overall, her 4-5th month was a little challenging. She dealt with just what seemed a continuous cold as well so the whole month seemed a bit sickly! But we seem to be on the upside of it all so HOPEFULLY her 6 month post will be a little less eventful ;-)