11 Weeks

Drew is 11 weeks now and his newest nickname is Chief Chubby Legs. He is getting quite heavy. He is enjoying tummy time much more in the last week. I still do it for only 5-10 minutes at a time, but I decide when it ends now (usually when he lays his head down out of exhaustion) instead of him whining or crying for it to end. He likes tummy time best in front of his gym (shown here) and when Isaac and I let him read books with us on the floor.

Drew finally has a favorite song! "Winnie the Pooh" He smiles and even laughs when we sing the "Pooh" part in particular with a puff of air. However, just the beginning of the song "Deep in the hundred acre wood..." gets him smiling most of the time.

His schedule has not changed, somewhat unfortunately. He is still nursing 8 times a day which is a little too much. I think I may have figured out the problem, but I have come up with no easy solution yet. I think he doesn't need the 8pm nursing and it is causing him to not take a full feeding at his 10pm dreamfeed (which isn't much of a dreamfeed since he does wake up on his own for it) which then leads to waking up in the middle of the night. I really think if we dropped the 8pm feeding by force, he would follow with sleeping through the night after a short time. The bigger problem is that I am almost certain that he would cry nearly nonstop from 8pm until 10pm if I forced him to drop that 8pm nursing, at least at first. He still has a lot of trouble during that time. It was getting better before Thanksgiving, and we haven't had a good evening since that blip in his schedule. I am going to stick with things the way they are for one more week and give him the chance to do better in the evenings, but then I am going to start moving that 8pm nursing back until it can be close enough to the 10pm that I can combine the two into one. Seven nursings for a 12 week old is more than enough, especially a 12 week old as chunky as this one.

His 4 naps a day are still going great. He goes down and soothes himself to sleep with little (<5 minutes) or no crying about 98% for naps and after the 10pm and middle of the night feeds too.

I am also a little concerned that I am letting him fall back asleep when I nurse him sometimes. So my goal for this week is to pay more attention and keep him awake. This will also help him to get full feedings and hopefully drop a feed on his own .