My boy is now 12 weeks old. The time has flown by. I stare at him in awe most days, amazed at how fast he is growing and how quickly he is learning to do new things. Yesterday he rolled over onto his tummy for the first time – this mummy was very proud!
Now that we are quickly approaching the end of the third month since my boy’s birth, I thought it important to do a review of where we are at.
At 12 weeks of age…
I am still exclusively breastfeeding my boy. On occasion my husband has given him a bottle of expressed breastmilk, when I have had errands to run and found it easier to leave baby and hubby at home rather than drag them around Hong Kong. I have not given him any supplemental water, sugar water or formula.
We are feeding, on average, 6 times per 24 hours. I continue to demand feed my boy and am finding that his pattern of feeding has naturally fallen into a loose schedule of one feed every 2-3 hours or so, with the loss of the night feed at 8 weeks. I was surprised when my boy started sleeping through the night (anywhere from 6 to 10 hours uninterrupted sleep each night) at 8 weeks.
Each nursing session is lasting anywhere from 10-15 minutes and I am continuing to nurse only on one side. I don’t often offer the other breast mainly as my boy seems happy after feeding on only one side and doesn’t take the other breast when I offer it.
I am noticing that my boy is able to stay awake during a feed! When he was first born, he would feed for a few minutes before falling asleep. Now he is able to finish a feed and come off the breast with a big smile!
My boy is now 6.3kg and approximately 62cm long. He is consistently ranked in the 85th percentile for length and the 50th percentile for weight. Personally, I am not so concerned with which percentile my boy is ranked, but rather that he is showing a consistent pattern of growth.
In the first three months (although having nothing to do with infant nutrition) my husband and I have been able to enjoy watching our boy grow. He now smiles, giggles and coos everyday, visually tracks us around the room, enjoys looking around at new things, loves to be sung and spoken too and loves to lay in his play tent and touch his hanging toys. His ability to engage with us in such a short period of time is amazing.
It will be interesting to see what the next three months brings!
