This is a summary of Spear’s 9th week of life from Friday January 26th through Thursday February 1st. He was 8 weeks old during this week!
Feeding: I continued to do a bit of tweaking this week. I tried pushing the dream feed from 10:30 to 11:00 and tried dropping it all together! Basically I was just desperate for him to sleep longer at night and tried whatever I could to make that happen (more in sleep section below)
I also tried feeding him just a little in the middle of the night rather than a full feeding. I tried just giving him enough to get him back to sleep!
I had TOTALLY forgotten that I bought a Beebo when I finished out my registry stuff so I busted it out and tried it this week. A big negative of bottle feeding is that I don’t have two free hands the way I did with breastfeeding so I feel like this could help!
And in a lot of ways it’s really neat because it does FEEL kinda like I’m breastfeeding. The bottle rests more against my chest and gives me more of the “breastfeeding vibe.” I need to use it more but it’s also a bit of a pain and I don’t see it being an every feeding type thing to use.
Spear continued to be very congested this week and it did lead to some feeding struggles. He spit up a lot more due to all the congestion in his belly and it was GROSS.
Sleep: By this point ALL of my other kids had slept through the night and I was SO OVER IT. His schedule this week was still the 3 hour schedule with eating at 7, 10 (breastmilk), 1, 4 (breastmilk), 7 and dreamfeed at 11
He was still waking up pretty early in the middle of the night (like the 3:00 hour). Zach was out of town which was a STRUGGLE for me because I wasn’t able to get ANY solid sleep. One of the nights I literally only got 2 hours and 45 min solid sleep. Not. Good.
Up until this week I fed him right when he woke up but I was starting to think maybe his waking was more habit than hunger and tried to give him just enough to get him back to sleep.
This was a typical night for me.
I decided to give dropping the dream feed a try because I remembered with Britt she started STTN when I slept through the dream feed. I know some babies it causes more of a disruption so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try dropping it and see if it helped at all!
Without the dream feed things did start to click. By the end of the week I was trying to hold him off in the middle of the night and often he would go back to sleep. Either with the paci or in the swing. Then I’d feed him when he woke again (usually in the 3-4 hour) and would just feed as little as possible to get him back to sleep. Progress was def happening and I felt like dropping the dreamfeed was a good move for him!
By the end of this week his schedule was: 7, 10, 1, 4 and 7 with one middle of the night waking where he’d drink 1-3 oz.
He still was only handling 45-60 min awake time and was napping pretty well. He’s def been a better napper than night sleeper and typically naps solid! If he struggles it’s during the second half of nap and either paci or swing or both do the trick to get him to go back to sleep until end of nap!
He sleeps pretty solid too!
I had a few baby gowns which are SO helpful for middle of the night diaper changes!
Paci is a tool only used when getting him back to sleep either middle of night or past the mid-way point of nap!
Love seeing all four babies sleeping 🙂
Paci swing combo for the win!
Hand me down paci haha
Other things with Spear this week:
Spear was so congested that it worried me a bit. Also since birth he has done this rapid breathing thing where he just takes really quick breaths. I got a little worried when I looked at his nostrils. They just seem very narrow to me and a few followers on IG mentioned he may have a deviated septum. I had the dr look at it at his next visit (post to come) and he confirmed that he’s FINE and that his airways are plenty wide and not to worry about the fast breathing and that the congestion is just part of things developing at this age.
Here’s a video of his nostrils and his breathing.
Still loving bath!
Awake time is getting a bit better! He’s always so happy!
STILL not rolling over. He’s pretty lazy when it comes to awake time!
My happy baby 🙂
Longest lashes, sweetest cheeks.
Kye spoke at evening church services this week and I was a tad nervous to take Spear. I’ve been avoiding church because it’s THE worst place to get germs! People just get so into his face and want to pass him around and kiss him and such that it makes me nervous and it’s just easier to keep him home right now rather than have that awkwardness of “don’t get near him.” Since Kye’s speaking happened during Spear’s nap I just put him in his car seat and used this car seat cover . It worked GREAT! He stayed there the entire time and never woke up and NO ONE messed with him! A few kids peeked in to see him but that was it! YAY!
And he did look really cute under there too 😉 I love the socks his Auntie Katie got him!
Siblings: When I was going through the pics for this week I got SO EXCITED to see a picture of BRITT WITH SPEAR!!! Let’s all celebrate okay? She fed him this week and I adore these pics of them together! Hurray for having her in a weekly post!
And even got a pic of al four kids together (omg Kye’s hat cracks me UP)
Tessie is still very Spear obsessed!
Smiles for Sister!
She loves waking him up, putting him down, basically being anywhere that he’s at!
Kye loves to hold him too!
I don’t mind some Spear time myself 😉
I’ve had some pretty great interactions regarding Spear being adopted and people not knowing. The dr making the joke about “where did you pick up this kid?” was pretty epic. This week a couple guys came to the house to get our playroom AC working and one of them gave me another epic adoption moment:
Videos:
Comparisons: You can compare to Spear’s older sibling’s 9 week posts here:
These are the cutest pics of Spear but I really wanted to get some pics of how HUGE his cheeks are. I mean you can tell they are big but they are especially massive when he tilts his head to one side because ALL the cheek like goes with him onto that side of his face haha!
Hello February and the love notes on his door!
He turned two months old on Feb 1 (post to come)
More of this cute boy!
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