Babywise with a Four Week Old

I am going to shoot out week four and week five today since, as I am writing this, Henry is six weeks old!

Six weeks old today 🙂

I am so so happy I chose to take a full 12 weeks of FMLA this time around. Knowing that I am only at the halfway point of time off with him is such a great feeling. With Sam I’d already be headed back next week and with Tom it would be soon after that.

It will still be hard to leave him, no doubt. Hard is an understatement…if history repeats itself I will have a nearly impossible time leaving him. But being a third time mom comes with the luxury of knowing things will be okay, even when they don’t feel like it right then.

The same is absolutely true for sleep routines and Babywise. I know new moms come home feeling lost and confused and tired. Lack of sleep on top of the lifestyle change that is a new baby is such an unfortunate combo.

You will get less sleep, for a while. But if you find (like I would imagine all of us find) that a lack of sleep effects you negatively, stick to your best efforts at getting the new baby good at sleeping.

For me, those best efforts are courtesy of Babywise.

I will admit week 4 really had me feeling the grind of things. On the sleep front it was sort of uneventful. Still doing fine, still waking in the night, still just doing our best!

For some reason I felt more anxious than normal and had a hard time sleeping. Oh the irony of having a hard time sleeping when you are dead tired…

But soon enough the efforts pay off and we’ll all sleep 🙂

Here are the notes for sleep schedules of a 4 week old:

Sam

Just here for the picture since my sleep notes were all lost on my old phone. Look how hard he must have been going on that paci to leave a mark! He was the paci addict.

Tom

Tom had crazy fussy evenings at this age. And although Henry does too, Tom was doing a projectile spit up after most bottles as well. Sam NEVER spit up, Henry does a few times a day but not violently. They have all been different in that aspect.

Notes show we started Tom on Zantac after his one month appointment and it seemed to help him.

All days more or less followed our 3 hour schedule. Depending on when the first bottle of the day happened, the ideal would be 7:00, 10:00, 1:00, 4:00, 7:30,10:30 and then whenever he wakes up at night. We weren’t doing a that cluster evening feed at 6:00ish anymore unless really needed.

So since days are pretty established I am just going to show when he woke at night!

4 weeks 1 day: woke at 2:15 and 5:15 and we woke him to start the day at 7:30

4 weeks 2 days: woke at 2:15, 5:00 and we woke at 7:30

4 weeks 3 days: woke at 2:15, 5:00 and we woke at 7:00

4 weeks 4 days: woke at 2:15, 5:50 but I was able to keep him happy rocking until 6:30

4 weeks 5 days: woke at 2:15, 4:50 and 6:30

4 weeks 6 days: woke at 2:00 and 5:45 but was happy with a paci until 6:30

Henry

Henry is a true third child and had a very “on the go” week whether it was his big brother’s pumpkin patch field trip, thrifting for Halloween costume pieces, or a 4 hour road trip to his first college football tailgate.

Just like with Tom’s info above, we have pretty well established the 3 hour schedule and he always eats within about 15 mins of these times: 7:00, 10:00, 1:00, 4:00, 5:45 (still cluster feeding in evenings with him) 7:15 and 10:30.

During this week below, that evening cluster feed was not needed twice so we are working on moving away from it so he can take a good full feeding at bed time.

4 weeks 1 day: woke at 2:30 and 6:15 but fell back asleep while I rocked him til 7:00 so he did not eat til 7:00

4 weeks 2 days: woke at 2:30 and 6:00 to start the day (he was not at all about being soothed so ate right at 6:00)

4 weeks 3 days: woke at 2:30 and 6:30

4 weeks 4 days: woke at 2:45 and 6:45

4 weeks 5 days: woke at 3:30 and 6:00

4 weeks 6 days: woke at 1:00, 4:00 and 7:00 (because we missed doing a dream feed, whoops!)

Stay tuned for week 5–I’m going to get it posted today as well so I’ll be on track!

Check out this post for links to each week.