Sleeping

I bet you're starting to wonder if you're ever going to sleep again. You won't. Hahah I'm just kidding. As your little one starts to get older you will slowly increase the amount of sleep you and the baby get. 

0-3 months :

* they are the hardest! The baby is awake every few hours. I mean 1-2 hours. And unless your spouse is feeding them there is honestly nothing they can do to help you. 

* your beautiful little baby will wake from a sound sleep and will scream until you feed them. 

* it will be 1-2 hours. Eventually it will be 2-3 hours so just hang on. 

* it's okay if you decide to use a bottle and have your spouse get up during one feeding. Really...it's okay. Let your spouse have that connection that you and your baby have.

* honestly, try to sleep during one of the babies naps. It sounds so childish but it will save your sanity.

3-4 months:

The golden month! Oh my goodness. One day your little baby will skip a feeding at night [because you were getting up every 3 hours] and you're going to freak out but they just extended your sleep from 2.5 hours to 5.5 hour. Yes, you can get excited! When I learned that baby W lost a feeding, I had mixed emotions. At first I was like YES!!! Three more hours of sleep for me and then k was sad because that was one less feeding he needed from me. After a few nights my boobs stopped hurting and i was able to stop waking up when he normally woke up. 

One of my obstacles that I had to work on was a thought that didn't leave my head. If he wasn't feeding during that time a lot... Should I pump to keep my supply up OR sleep? Want to guess what won? If you guessed sleep...you are correct! So here was my thought process... If he's not waking up during that time and he is going to be sleeping through that particular feeding then why am I pumping if he won't need that feeding again? I pumped enough for him during the feeding before and after the feeding after that I didn't really feel like I needed to pump for the feeding that he missed. Now if he was still eating during that time I would not have skipped feeding him or pumping him. I try to stick to his schedule the best that I possibly can. Of course that won't always work but for the most part I make it work. 

Stay tuned for his five month schedule!

Solids already?

So I can't believe it but it's now time for baby W to actually start eating solids. We started off with rice cereal strictly because the doctor told us we have to. It was just to teach him how to eat and how to swallow food. I probably would not have started him on the rice cereal but I am one of those people who follows the doctors orders. The first 3 days were to teach him how to use a spoon because let's face it - he didn't swallow anything. The four after that were to see if he was allergic to the cereal. After seven days we started giving him different foods. We first started off with peas. He loved it… But after the fourth day he was like all right I'm done. I have heard that you can give them food over 3 days buy per our pediatrician we went four days. You could totally tell that he enjoyed eating the food, however, he wanted to see what else is out there. So on the fifth day of him with his new food we switches foods again… And it was great! We actually ended up giving him peaches as his third solid. After that he ate  mangoes. 

How did we decide what food to give him? Well, first off... I did not make his original tasting food. Why? Because I didn't want to go and make a ton of food for him especially if he wasn't going to like it. I wanted to buy separately because you only give the him 2 tablespoons with their first trying food. So I wanted him to use the squeeze packets. I poured it into a bowl and fed him off a spoon and not right out of the  packet. I ended up buying two packets of each mix. So it would be two mangoes. It would be two plums. It would be two peaches. In the beginning I measured it by tablespoons, but now I can estimate that half a packet W will eat. So I can have a packet and I would feed him and then I would watch him and I try to give it to him about two hours before his bedtime. That way if he did have an allergic reaction it was while he was awake and not while he was sleeping. the rice cereal became his breakfast. His typical day looks like this now 

4 month old schedule:

2:00/2:30- nurse

5 AM nurse

*Back to sleep

8:30 AM – nurse +2 tablespoons of rice cereal ( I wait 30 minutes before I give him the cereal. That way his milk will digest)

*nap at 9:30/10 - really just power naps -

11:30/noon - 4 to 5 ounces of breast milk or formula 

*nap at 12:30/1 - power nap again

2:30/3:00- 4 to 5 ounces of breast milk or formula 

Sometimes he took a quick nap from 5

530 tablespoons of food

645 P.m. rest milk and then he went to sleep.

His five month schedule is looking a tad bit different so when it gets solidified I will post about it! Hopefully this helped some of you and any questions you had about how to start solids and a 4 month olds schedule.