The First Months with Eris

Eris is almost three months old. For the first six weeks, I was on parental leave. This time went by so fast, and I enjoyed the slow-paced life of nursing, naps, and cooking. Well, some work snuck in as well. Because the pandemic has moved everything online, I have been able to attend talks, workshops and presentations while nursing. Great!

The first month with Eris was characterized by a lot of sleep. To be clear, it was Eris who did the sleeping. She slept. A lot. The first few nights, we had to wake her up every four hours so she could nurse. But we quickly figured that this was likely just a phase and we should all just get as much sleep as we could while it lasted. At this point, Eris sleeps a long stretch of maybe four hours at the beginning of the night, and then some shorter stretches after that.

For the first two months, we were amazed to discover that, during the day, Eris was strangely able to fall asleep by herself. By which I mean, that we occasionally put her in the bassinet or the bouncy chair only to discover some minutes later that she had fallen asleep! No help needed. Based on our limited experience, this sort of behavior was not to be expected in a baby. I mean, our toddler doesn’t even do that…. While I was quite excited at this ability, it was often not worth it to let her fall asleep alone, as she tended to wake up after ten or 15 minutes. Now, at nearly three months, we are where I expected to be with a baby – naps in our arms or the carrier, or nursing to sleep. Luckily, we are used to dealing with this.

Co-napping with two kids can leave you feeling rather trapped…

It is also lucky that Eris does not seem to hate the car. We have undertaken a couple of hourlong trips as a family – they went well, and in a few months we have a couple of very long car trips planned. Fingers crossed for those.

So far, Eris has been growing and gaining weight well. In a way this is surprising, because while she likes to nurse, she tends to get annoyed when it results in milk… but since she is not interested in the pacifier that we have offered (and offered and offered and offered), we’re at an impasse: we nurse often, and when sufficient quantities of the offending liquid make it into Eris’ mouth, she spits it out. And we do lots of laundry.

Overall, however, Eris is generally a very easy-going baby. She’s very smiley, and she’s happy to entertain herself for a while, particularly if she is placed where other people are doing stuff. She likes to watch Storm play, and will also tolerate hanging out in the kitchen while dinner is being made. Now, at nearly three months old, she is starting to discover the power of her hands. Just today, she grabbed hold of a hanging toy for the first time. An exciting new world is about to reveal itself to you, my daughter.

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