Today is Alethea’s five month birthday. Happy Birthday, Baby!
Since we don’t have another well-baby check up until six months, I don’t have any current stats for height/weight, but I do think she went through a growth spurt the week after her last visit to the pediatrician, so she’s definitely getting bigger!
This month has brought about huge changes in Alethea’s gross motor skills. At four months, she was just beginning to roll from back to tummy, could only sit if she was really slouched over and supporting herself with her hands and didn’t really seem to be aware that crawling was even a possibility. Now at five months she can roll over at will, any time, on any surface, even if she is swaddled. We find her wedged into all sorts of funny positions in her crib and she’s never in the spot I put her down when she wakes up from her naps. Just this past week or so her sitting has improved so much that she can sit with her back is straight for several minutes and she can even sometimes reach for toys without falling over.
The biggest development though has just happened over the past few days when Alethea has begun to do something of a cross between an inch worm imitation and an army crawl. She doesn’t get very far very fast, but it is unassisted forward motion nevertheless. Yikes! Time to go baby gate shopping.
As far as sleeping and eating go, we are still not on solid foods because every time we try, Alethea ends up with horrible gas and can’t seem to sleep at night. For a while in the middle of the month, I felt like we were making progress with sleeping issues, but after Alethea got sick, everything went bad and even though she seems to be feeling better now, the disruption has caused some regression in her sleeping habits. As I posted previously, I was hopeful that being able to move around would help her sleep and she does seem to prefer being on her stomach, since that’s usually how she ends up, but it doesn’t seem to have made any change to her inability to sleep for longer periods.
Other than huge changes in her motor skills, this month has continued pretty similarly to the fourth month. I am still not eating dairy, although I missed cheese so badly in the middle of the month, I had an experimental dairy eating day, but Alethea was terribly gassy that night, so I’m back off of it once more. We continue to use the swaddle/pacifier combo for sleeping. I’ve tried a few times to put her to sleep unswaddled and she either doesn’t go to sleep or it takes her a really long time and then she takes a very short nap, so we’re still working on that transition. In the middle of the month, she was putting herself to sleep without the pacifier once or twice a day, but since she got sick, that skill has not returned.
While I am long over-due for a good night’s sleep, it sure has been fun to watch her change so much this month and she certainly seems to enjoy showing off rolling every which way! She is such a happy child and seems delighted by anything new or shiny or bright. The best way to get her to stop crying is to take her outside or for a car ride and then she forgets whatever upset her because she is too busy looking around at everything. The other day when we went to Target, she just laughed the whole time, up and down the aisles, she was just giggling away. It was so funny!
Over all, this month was a bit easier than the last so I’m hoping that means that we’re making progress, even if it is a bit slow in some areas.