Nate seems to have slowed down on his weight gain slightly this month. He has averaged about one and a half pound per month but when we got him weighed this week, he weighed 15 lbs and 13 oz, which is only about half of what he’s been gaining so far. Hopefully it’s not acid or food allergy related. The doctor suggested that we just wait and see how he does by next month. As far as diapers are concerned, Nate started wearing size 3 diapers around week 18. He went through about 380 of size 2 diapers. Yowza! Lastly, Nate finally stopped being bothered by gas so we stopped giving him Mylicon before each feeding.
Sleep Schedule
Nate became well established in his wake-up disposition around week 19, which is right on track according to Baby Wise. He started waking up happy regularly and would coo and talk for a while until we came to get him. During the day, he continued to start the day between 7 or 8 am and took 2 hour naps after 1.5 hour of wake time. At night, he started going down for the night around 7 pm starting about week 16 and with the exception of occasional longer stretches, Nate continued to wake up once in the middle of the night for a feeding between 1 and 4 am.
Swaddling
The question of whether to swaddle or unswaddle Nate continued. After a few weeks of swaddling Nate again, we tried to unswaddle Nate again at week 19 for his morning nap. Again, he kept himself awake and cried for an extended period of time so we ended up reswaddling him. Then at week 21, we noticed that he was really starting to move a lot during his sleep. He had not started rolling yet but he would pivot and get himself completely turned around or got his face right up against the bumper. We tried to use the sleep positioner to stop him from moving but it didn’t seem to stop Nate from moving. This had us wondering if we should try to unswaddle him again. Then one morning, Nate woke up with one arm sticking out. He went right back to sleep so we kept one arm out again for his naps and kept both arms out by the last nap. He stirred here and there but seemed to do okay. We kept him swaddled for night sleeping for the time being.Milestones and Other Notables
By week 18, Nate seemed visibly excited when we approached him to pick him up. He would smile or laugh, swing his arms and pump his legs all at once. It’s quite a cute sight to behold! What we’ve noticed however, is that he loves to look at the person who is not holding him. He could be staring at me while Brandon is holding him but once I take him from Brandon, he will then start staring at Brandon. So we have to pick between holding him or having him look at us because he usually will not do both at the same time with the same person.
As far as interactions with people are concerned, Nate hasn’t done too well with large crowds. He’s done well when we’ve gotten together with a few friends but when we had a larger crowd over at our house for March Madness, it seemed like Nate got way over stimulated and had a hard time settling down for his bedtime. But Nate does seem to enjoy being outside now. We took Nate out for long strolls a few times and he seemed to enjoy that. We even noticed him sitting back in his seat with his right leg kicked up on the handle bar of the stroller. I guess he was just kicking back and enjoying the view!
We suspect that Nathan may have begun teething around week 19. He suddenly was not napping as well and often woke up early from his naps and seemed fussier. He was also drooling more and seemed to want to put things in his mouth and suck constantly, including his upper lip. Perhaps the lip sucking two weeks earlier was teething related as well? It also seemed like Nate finally found his thumb. He loves to suck on his thumb, although we’ve still occasionally seen him sneak his index finger along with his thumb.
At week 20, Nate seemed to become more aware of his surroundings and was very easily distracted. He has always been like that but it seemed like he was looking around to see what was going on around him more and more. We also introduced Nate to his exersaucer and he loved it! At first he just turned his head to look at all the different toys on the exersaucer but he learned pretty quickly that he could move his legs and turn to get to the various toys.
During week 21, Nate seemed like he was really working hard to roll from back to tummy. He would roll over but would roll right back onto his back because he hasn’t quite figured out how to get his arms out from under him.
Also with the rolling, he started turning over onto his side and reaching for anything and everything around him, even during diaper changes. It was the first time we’ve really had to work to keep him still. I’ve started giving him a toy to distract him and that seemed to keep him occupied long enough for me to finish changing his diaper. He also found his feet this week and began grabbing them at times during diaper changes instead of just lifting up his legs like he had been doing for the previous few weeks.
Nate also continued to experiment vocally and began to let out a rather loud scream when he would get fussy. Lastly, we noticed that he’s continuing to do better with eating solids. It seemed like everything kind of clicked for him this week and he began opening his mouth wide when he saw the spoon and his tongue was no longer getting in the way. We’ve noticed that Nate got visibly excited when he saw us with his bowl of food and he typically finished all of the 4 tbsp of cereal we gave him.
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