We’ve had a baby for 4 whole months! Longer, actually because it’s been a wild few weeks. It’s still the best. C is so much fun, and watching her learn and grow is my favorite.
C at 4 Months
Oh, my god. She is SO FUN. I’m greeted by big smiles after every sleep. She loves to roll from side to side and kick her legs. Her hands are everywhere all the time, and she hits my face, pinches my skin, and grabs my hair and necklaces while she nurses. She still dramatically rolls away from me when she’s done nursing, and I laugh just about every time. She has no patience for switching from one boob to the next and starts breathing harder and faster the longer it takes.
When she’s working on something, she works hard. Whether she’s trying to inch toward a toy or roll over or grab something, she tries for a good long while before she either succeeds or buries her face in her play mat, frustrated.
C is mesmerized by everything colorful and is entranced by dogs. She shoves her hands and anything else she can get in her mouth and babbles right through it. She also loves blowing raspberries and bubbles. When I read books to her, she turns her head between me and the book with a giant smile, like she’s watching the best tennis match ever. When she’s not fighting bedtime, she is so calm. And when she is fighting bedtime, she’s exhibiting the stubbornness she got from both Jack and me so honestly. I love her more every day.
At her 4-month appointment, she stayed at about the same percentile for length, but dropped pretty dramatically for weight. Her pediatrician let us know that’s actually not as concerning as it sounds, since this is about the age where genetics kick in a little more. She is long and skinny with a bigger head, a lot like me.
Her 6-month leggings fit her perfectly length-wise and are a few inches big in her waist. She mostly wears onesies around the house, and those fit better length-wise. Girly also got my long torso.
Sleep
In all honesty, sleep sucks right now. For a chunk of time from 2-3 months, C slept pretty much all night, and it was lovely… but I wasn’t taking advantage of it because I kept waking in anticipation of her waking, even though she mostly didn’t.
At about 3.5 months, bedtime started taking 2+ hours. We’d put her down and then she’d be up every 15-40 minutes until she magically decided to sleep longer. But she was still sleeping almost through the night, maybe getting up once. So, that’s not so bad. Naps were short, too, but nighttime sleep was decent.
We moved her to her crib for nighttime once our room got too light. We have white curtains, and as the days got longer, it was too light to expect C to go to bed in the evening of stay asleep in the morning. That went pretty smoothly, all things considered. We used rolled-up quilts as bumpers for a bit because C would get mad when she wiggled into the bars of the crib, but I stopped doing that once she started playing with the quilts.
Jack left for an almost-week-long drill at the end of April. I seriously suck at swaddling in comparison to him. And C is sooooo wiggly, that almost every time she did wake up, even before he left, it seemed to be because she had escaped a swaddle.
So, I stopped swaddling entirely. I ordered the Nested Bean Zen One sleep sacks because I thought they looked like a great way to transition out of a swaddle.
I fastened C’s arms down for maybe 2-3 nights using the Velcro in the sleep sacks. She not only wiggled her arms out of it, she also pretty much brought the Velcro loops all the way up to her neck. So that seemed not so safe. Then, I started putting her arms in the little mesh caps of the Zen One and that actually went better than expected. Sure, she could gnaw on her hands, but it worked and she slept pretty well that night at least.
And then Jack got COVID at said drill, and we decided C and I would stay at my parents’ house to avoid also getting sick. So, on top of a ton of developmental changes (rolling, lots of hand-to-hand and hand-to-mouth motion, laughing, inchworming, etc.), having her legs freer and her hands accessible in her sleep, and her dad being gone, I also made her sleep in a pack ‘n’ play for the first time since she was a teeny newborn who would sleep anywhere.
It did not go terribly well. The first night, maybe? But then it was bad. Naps were nearly impossible in the pack ‘n’ play. She was up more often during the night. The mesh caps on the sleep sack seemed to be making her angry, so we took those off. Suddenly, she had totally free arms. Putting her down woke her up so much more often when all her limbs were free. The night before Mother’s Day, she was up till nearly 1am.
Ooof. It was hard. I cried. She cried. But also, she smiled SO MUCH. When I came to rescue her for the fourth time in a given night, tired and frustrated, she’d look so freaking excited to see me that I couldn’t help but soften. When it took 2 hours to put her to bed, and she was crying constantly, I’d set her down on the bed and turn on the light, and she’d be happy and ready to play. It was so hard, and also so reassuring to know she is actually a chill, happy baby, who simply has no desire to sleep. Ever. I think she needs less sleep than I do.
Then we got back to her crib and had a few pretty rough nights, followed by a few much better nights. Poor baby has had to be pretty resilient, but she has handled her lack of sleep like a champ for the most part.
Anyway, now we’re somewhere in the middle. We still have long bedtimes, where I can put her down for 30-45 minutes and then she’s back up and mad that we say it’s still bedtime. We usually put her down for the first time around 7:30 and it’s usually 9 or 9:30 before we’re convinced she’s asleep for a while. She’s often up around midnight and 2 or 3 right now. Sometimes I look at the monitor when I get up between 5:45 and 6:30, and she’s awake and playing with her hands or the bars of her crib.
I’m exhausted (hi, I haven’t slept more than 5 hours straight more than once since like January 3). That said, I don’t feel as drained and stretched as I did for so much of the first week of May.
Naps are still short, but I’ve learned to accept and expect it. I plan for a car/walk nap and/or a contact nap most days, so I get my to-do list done earlier and don’t get frustrated when it happens.
I try to go up to bed around 9pm-10pm, read for a few minutes, and then pass out. But sometimes we’re still working on C’s bedtime around then. Depending on when I went to bed and how tired I am, I get up around 5:45 to work out before C or the dogs need anything, or around 6:30 to take care of the dogs and then fit a workout in before Jack starts working. C is usually up for the day between 7 and 8. If she gets up any earlier, I try to nurse her back to sleep, especially since she’s going to bed pretty late these days.
Feeding
C feeds like a champ, and I feel so lucky for that. She is also very interested in our food when Jack and I are eating. She’s not sitting up independently yet, but when she is, I don’t think we’re terribly far from her grabbing food right off my plate. She does try to intercept forks before they make it to our mouths sometimes.
Schedule
I never got around to a 3-month day in the life, but it looked a lot like the 2-month one before Jack went to drill and got sick. It’s a little different now, so I’ll try for one next week! But as an overview, right now, C eats every 1-3 hours. I offer a nap about 1.5-2 hours after she wakes from her last one. If she doesn’t take the nap, depending on how much sleep she’s had and what the day looks like, I’ll either wait a half hour and try again, or just take her for a walk or a drive to make sure she gets a nap in.
My maternity leave ended at the beginning of May, and I resigned to stay home with C when my leave ended. Maybe that decision turns into a post, but maybe not. It felt like an obvious decision for our family, and I’m so grateful to get to hang out with my little buddy all the time. It feels like a wonderful luxury to not be tied to any particular schedule most of the time and to just follow C’s lead.
Things We Use and Love
- Pretty much everything from her 2-month post. She doesn’t love the pacifiers as much right now, but occasionally they work. She no longer has patience for the Podster, but it served us well when she was teeny.
- Pretty much everything from her 3-month post.
- Lovevery play kits. I signed up for the subscription for these after reading multiple reviews saying these toys are super high-quality and awesome, and after one kit, I agree. We use something out of here every day. C doesn’t always show interest in every toy, but if we stash them away and pull a few out every week, there is almost always something she wants to play with.
- Dreamland Baby weighted sleep sack – I’m not going to tell you this is necessarily worth the price. It has not been magical in helping C sleep. I do think it fits her a little better than the Nested Bean one. I can’t figure out why, but that one seems to ride up a little / not stay near her shoulders as well. Not at all in a dangerous way, more in a it-looks-slightly-uncomfortable-but-she’s-a-baby-and-she-can’t-tell-me way. So, I admit to having a loose preference for this one and I try to have it ready to use at night.
- Nested Bean Zen One sleep sacks – These are a really great transitional item. I use these for a lot of naptimes and if the other one happens to be dirty at night. I think I would’ve used it as a transitional item a lot longer if C wasn’t so wiggly that she loosened the Velcro when she was fully swaddled and got mad about the mesh caps when I started using those. Live and learn. I still use and like these as regular sleep sacks go.
- Eufy baby monitor – I stand by my decision for me to not have a video monitor when C was super teeny. I’d have been looking for her breathing on it. But now that she sometimes babbles for a few minutes and then falls back to sleep, I like being able to see what she’s up to. Is she mad, or is she just working on going back to sleep? This helps. It’s also just really funny to look at and realize, “Oh, her feet are somehow now where her head used to be.”
- The Little Gym – I take C to Little Gym once a week. I’d go more, but there is only class for her age group one time a week at our location. It’s so cute and fun. She is the youngest in the group right now, and she gets so frustrated she’s not crawling like the big girls, but she tries so hard. For now, most of the class for her is tummy time and assisted standing. But she seems to like it and she takes the best naps after.
