Arlo is seventeen weeks old and fast approaching his 4-month birthday (on Thursday)!

He gained another 11oz last week, and his thighs are getting nice and chubby. Fun! We've pretty much reached breastfeeding normalcy. There's still some pain while nursing, but it's tolerable.

I didn't mention it earlier, but I took Arlo for craniosacral therapy a few weeks ago. Patrick has remained staunchly opposed to trying it (see here), but after putting up with nursing pain for 4 weeks, I felt it was worth a try, even if I will now have my science degrees revoked for resorting to hippie woo-woo treatments ;) I went to see Dr. Korin, and it was a really enjoyable visit. Even if it didn't work, it was probably worth it just for the opportunity to talk about Arlo's birth and breastfeeding issues for an hour with a friendly, sympathetic person.

It's hard to say if it worked--the first day, the nursing pain definitely seemed reduced, and then it returned off and on after that. It's complicated by the fact that I had a plugged duct and milk blister on the right side the evening after our session, so that led to a lot of pain unrelated to Arlo's latching, some of which is still lingering. However, nursing on the left side is pretty much pain-free at this point. But who's to say if that was because of the CST or just because Arlo got a few weeks older and wiser. I'm still glad I tried it, just so I wouldn't wonder "what if..." every time Arlo had a painful latch.

So yeah, feeding is going really well! We're still going to keep monitoring his weight for a while to make sure he's gaining well, but I feel pretty confident that he's getting enough milk from me. It's funny--I should be thrilled that we've finally overcome pretty much all of our feeding challenges, but I'm kind of hesitant to acknowledge it. I guess I'm afraid that I'll jinx it if I declare victory. Silly. But anyway, it's good. I'm happy about how things have turned out :)

Possibly related, Arlo is still waking up a lot at night--like every 2 hours for the last few days. It's pretty exhausting, but it seems like he's actually hungry when he's waking up, so it's probably related to us cutting out the milk supplements. Hopefully once my milk supply gets to a level that he's happy with, he'll sleep better at night!

On the plus side, now that we only do one bottle a day (first thing in the morning, around 6am), theoretically Patrick gets to sleep through the night. Of course, he feels bad that I'm waking up so frequently, so he still tries to wake up and help me get Arlo back to sleep after the night feedings (an easy task, thankfully). I'm really grateful to be raising Arlo with such a considerate and caring husband!

In other good sleep news, Arlo continues to nap well. He's gotten to a point where we can be pretty confident that he'll sleep for more than an hour during his first nap of the day, and then after that his naps tend to be around an hour. This is great, because it gives me some time to work while he's asleep (the original plan was that we'd get a nanny at 3 months so I could go back to working from home part-time, but instead I'm just working a tiny bit during his naps, with plans to do the nanny thing in January). Normally I end up doing non-work stuff in the mornings (like sleeping more or going to my mom groups) and then working during his afternoon naps. So far, so good!

The weather was beautiful on Saturday. We went to a Friends of Trees volunteer picnic (Patrick continues to be a FoT crew leader; not sure if I've mentioned that lately), and then I got to do some fall wardrobe shopping while Patrick watched Arlo.

I may have mentioned before that my post-baby goal is to wear more skirts and dresses and to generally try to dress nicely every day (somewhat complicated by the fact that Arlo spits up on me many times a day). This has been my goal for a while actually, but I'm trying to use the major life change of having a baby to spur myself into action. So far it has worked well, but it'll be more challenging as the weather gets cooler.

To help motivate myself, I bought my first pair of fancy lady boots on Saturday, as well as a nice pair of rain boots, which should hopefully last for more than one rainy season. I also visited some of our local resale shops to try and find some nice cool-weather dresses, but it was kind of exhausting and demoralizing (too many full-length mirrors!), and I didn't find anything good. I had better luck on Sunday, when I gave in and went to Anthropologie (nothing against them, but I was hoping to buy local/thrifted clothes if possible). I picked up three skirts and one shirtdress, all with pockets (I love things with pockets!). All that I need now are some nice tops to go with the skirts, and maybe a few pairs of warm tights from Sock Dreams!

I'm planning on doing a post showing you my new wardrobe (always a good time!), but it'll have to wait--I need to go to bed!