Vacation Bible School sure made for a busy week! I wasn’t planning to take a couple days off from here, but so it happened. Life and baby got in the way, and that’s a-okay.
It seems like a lot has changed during this sixth week. A lot for the better too!
About a week ago I started keeping a log of when/how long he eats, how his naps go, diapers and such, just to start getting an idea of his natural routine. It also lets me see what worked and what didn’t, and how long he’d cry at naps before falling asleep.
Nighttime sleep
He most definitely has his days and nights in order. He typically goes a 4 ½ – 5 ½ hour stretch after his last feeding of the night, then back to every 3 hours after that. Most nights now I’ve began adding in a dreamfeed before going to bed, but it actually makes me stay up a little later than I normally would.
With a dreamfeed I barely wake him up enough to eat on both sides, burp him and put him back in bed. No diaper changing. The dreamfeed is supposed to happen between 10-11pm. A couple nights he ate around 8-8:30pm and just wouldn’t wake up 2 hours later to eat. He still went 5 hours between feedings.
Thursday night was the very first night he went 7 hours and 15 minutes between feeding (!!!)… but sadly I didn’t get that much sleep. He ate at 9:15pm, and had a heck of a time falling asleep. At 11pm I finally put him in the swing with his pacifier and he fell asleep. I woke up at midnight and moved him to his crib, to then not be woken up by him until 4:30am! I was so surprised he went so long. When I got up to feed him I was definitely feeling ready. My boobs are so not used to going that long yet, but I could get used to it. 🙂
An awesome development this week is being able to put him back in bed semi awake after his middle of the night feeding and him just going back to sleep without crying or having to be rocked to sleep. He knows it’s nighttime and happily falls back to sleep!
I’ve actually cut out changing his diaper during the middle of the night feedings for the most part, unless he feels wet on his blankets, which only happened once this week.
It’s not that he doesn’t poo and pee, he does, I just want him to get used to not having a diaper change during the night since once he begins sleeping through the night it won’t be changed. He doesn’t really ever seem to be bothered by having a dirty diaper which is nice.
Daytime naps
Naps are a different story. Some days he naps better than others, which is probably pretty normal. Since I started putting him down in his crib and letting him put himself to sleep for his naps, naps have been a little more work. His morning naps usually go pretty well, maybe because he hasn’t had too much stimulation for the day, but he’ll typically nap for 1-2 hours for his first nap, and they just get shorter and shorter as the day goes on, lasting only 30-45 minutes for his last nap in the crib.
I try to have him nap at home during the day as much as I can, but I also want to go places, so he naps in his car seat too.
At each nap he cries anywhere between 2-20 minutes or even 30 minutes before falling asleep. It’s so much easier for me to let him cry in the morning. By the end of the day I start feeling bad about letting him cry, especially since he gets such big crocodile tears, but I know it’ll just get better and better.
Since he’s much more fussy in the evenings, and Jacob’s home then, he normally has Hunter fall to sleep on him. Maybe not a good habit, but Hunter needs daddy time, and Jacob needs Hunter time when he gets home.
Our daily routine goes something like this…
Eat (15-20 minutes), diaper change + play (30-45 minutes), nap (30 minutes-2 hours), repeat!
These are the typical intervals all the above happens at:
7am
10am
12:30pm
3:00pm
5:45pm
8:00pm-8:30pm (goes into nighttime sleep)
10:30pm (dreamfeed)
one to two nighttime feeds
On days that I teach I have to tweak it a bit more to make it so I feed him right before I teach. The longest I’m gone is 2 hours, which means he’d have to go a minimum of 2.5 hours between a feeding. This weekend we’re going to work on getting him to take a bottle. The one attempt we made did not go well. Here’s to hoping it goes better!
How did your baby sleep at 6 weeks?
Heather
To see how it changed, check out my first sleep situation post.
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6 weeks was totally Kay’s turning point too! I always reference it as the time when life starts to become normal again!! Glad hes rocking it out
Oh that picture of Hunter with the pacifier falling out is too cute! I love it!
It sounds like he’s starting to get into the groove with his sleep. I can’t remember how Luke was sleeping at that point. Ha! That goes to show how quickly each phase goes by. I think he was hitting a good stride between 6-12 weeks, and then things went south because of his reflux and intolerances.
Ive got a five week old and we are trying to get into some routine ornfigure out his sleepmsituation so this helps quite a bit. Mine has the hardest time fallin asleep during the day that it akmost always goes into overtired him just wailing away since it has been so long, its frsustrating.
For the bottle, if you havent tried it this way, i suggest having your hubby give him the bottle and you maybe not be so near as he might be able to smell you. Afterwards, you just sort of force the bottle, they will take it eventually if they are hungry, well at least mine will.