Eleanor turned 3 months old recently and she’s utterly amazing.

Feeding

Eleanor is still being combination fed at the moment. My aim was to breastfeed until 6 weeks, then 8 weeks and then 12 weeks. I’m still going and I don’t know when I’ll stop. I’ve come further than I thought I’d be able to and I’m not ready to stop. Eleanor is topped up with 3-5 bottles a day of around 2-3oz each. Because she’s combo feeding I do find she feeds more often.

Her weight gain has been slow but is steadily going up and the health visitor is happy with it.

Sleep

I feel quite blessed with Eleanor’s sleeping habits. She won’t go to bed before 10pm and sometimes we’ll be up til midnight trying to get her to bed. But she usually goes for about 6 hours. Sometimes it’s 4 hours and occasionally we get 8 hours so it’s always different at the moment.

I would love to get our evenings back and get her down to bed by 7-8pm but I’m sure that will happen in time. The problem with the late night is that she likes to nap until 11am or even midday so when we go out in the morning she doesn’t get enough sleep. And those morning naps won’t happen in her bed either, she has to be on me otherwise she’ll just cry and stay awake. All naps are on one of us during the day which is a shame as it means I get very little done. If she’s asleep and I try to put her down she knows instantly and cries.

Development

It’s been so much fun seeing E change over the last few weeks. She’s been batting her toys on her play gym and shaking her rattle when we give it to her to hold.

She’s in need of dribble bibs now. She’s forever chewing on her hands or blowing bubbles. She’s such a little dribbler and I don’t know if that’s just normal or possibly there’s some teeth movement going on in there.
I love her big smile. Usually in the morning when I get her out of bed she gives me a huge smile when she sees me. It melts my heart. She is making so many noises now too. It feels like we can have a bit of a conversation now, one that makes no sense but hey, she’s only 3 months old.

E will happily kick and hit her toys in her play gym now which is great to see. It also means I can put her down for 15 minutes or so and she’ll happily entertain herself so I can drink a cup of tea.

I think rolling won’t be too far off. The last couple of days she’s been trying to get onto her side to look at something. I’m excited for rolling but also scared as it means I’ll have to watch her all the time.

She absolutely loves floating. We’ve been going to swimming lessons for a few weeks now and she loves it. It’s hard to time feeds around it as they aren’t supposed to eat before swimming so sometimes she’ll cry because she’s hungry. But when she floats or does an underwater swim she calms down. She adores bath time too so she’s a proper little water baby.

My 3 months postpartum update

If I can’t be honest here where can I be? My GP said I have post natal depression. I have really good days and then sometimes I have bad days where I wonder if I can cope looking after her. Luckily I have more good days than bad and I have a very supportive husband and family. The bad days are usually the ones where Eleanor won’t feed properly and is just crying all the time. The way I’m dealing with it is to meet up with mummy friends often and get out the house. My health visitor has referred me to a group to chat to about it all as well. My HV has been a star and she comes out every couple of weeks to have a catch up with me.

Apart from that I’m doing really well. With the new year starting soon I’m going to try and tackle the pregnancy weight gain. I’ve written about my plans to shift the baby weight and my goal is to run the New Forest 10km in September.