I should be better at documenting Harper’s months as I did for bennett and Jillian, but her milestone changes are definitely more subtle and delayed due to her prematurity.
Her first month home she pretty much slept ALL of the time. We had to wake her up every three hours in the day to eat and for the first week was waking her up every 4 hours at night. We had a follow up appt with our pediatrician who gave us the green light to let her wake up on her own at night because of her steady weight gain. She fell into a pattern of going to bed around 9pm and waking up around 1:30am and 5am to eat which was definitely manageable. She did also go through a phase where one of those wake times she thought it would be cool to just stay awake... for 3 hours. I quickly nipped that in the bud and make her 3 hours of wake time around dinner.
Around her due date she decided to wake up to the world and be more alert and awake like a regular newborn which was sort of a hard adjustment for our family. We had gotten spoiled by her sleepy preemie stage that the newborn “witching” hours were hard to handle. Lance kept saying how she was our hardest/fussiest baby but truthfully I think he just forgot how newborns are the first month (wah-wah-wah).
Knowing that disneyland was coming up in October I decided mid September to start transitioning her to her crib. Up until then she was always sleeping in her rock n play amongst the loudness of our living room or in the pack n play napper in our room. She also got accustomed to falling asleep in our arms and as we moved into sleep training it was a little rocky to have her self soothe. The week before we left for Disney she was waking up 3-4 times screaming after we had gotten her completely asleep being held. Finally it dawned on me that she could be having some silent reflux and heartburn laying flat is terrible!We treated her for thrush and reflux and even bought a rock n play for my moms house for her to sleep inclined. The whole week she continued to be very difficult to put to sleep and stay asleep. One night she even drank 10oz as we walked around Disneyland and that night she slept completely through the night.
We had had enough of holding her LITERALLY all day that we initiated a babywise sleep schedule. She did pretty well making the transition to self soothing, until half a week later she was completely hoarse and voiceless with a right ear infection. Now that she’s healthy she’s doing well with sleeping.
Just in the last few days (last week of October) she’s slowly getting over the witching hours and is awake and calm during the evenings. She’s also dropped to one nighttime feeding some days it’s going to bed at 9:30 and sleeping until 5:30, other days it’s waking up at 3 and needing to be woken up at 8am. Bennett and Jillian were both early risers and still are (6:30-7am) Harper I’m slowly making her wake up around 8-8:30 because that fits our life schedule the best (getting bennett off to preschool, everyone fed breakfast, and to the gym on time).
I’ve been trying here and there for months to switch her from dr. Brown bottles to our avent bottles but every time I try she screams and fusses. Just today (10/30) I was able to get her to take a comotoso bottle. Hopefully this means we can wean her off of Dr. Browns because I despise them. (5 parts to clean and assemble + they leak constantly)
She’s doing tummy time for maybe 1-2 minutes at a time before she gets fussy and wants to be on her back.
She likes watching tv upside down which we think is pretty funny.
She wants NOTHING to do with her playmat. Every time we lay her in it she cries immediately.
She was needing to be elevated in her crib for the last couple of weeks but now we barely have her inclined and she falls asleep just fine.
She “smirk smiles” only when she’s woken up from a nap. Other than that no baby coos or smiles.
She loves the mummy swaddle (arms down). The second an arm breaks free she’s awake screaming.
6:00-9:30pm awake Eat 4oz, then another 3-4 oz around 7:00-7:30
Typical routine (as of 3 1/2 months)
5:30am wake on her own, eat 3oz, asleep
8:00am wake her up, eat 3-4oz. asleep at 9am
9:00-11:45 sleep
11:45 wake, eat 4oz
1:00-3:30pm nap
3:30 wake, eat 4oz
4:30-6:00pm nap
8:30 bath
9:00 bottle & bed.
