Levi: Week 15 Summary

15 weeks! Levi's first St. Patrick's Day!

I can't believe my baby boy is almost 4 months old! Yesterday we celebrated the beginning of 16 weeks of life for our little man. 16 challenging, frustrating, joy-filled, and wonderful weeks--but who's counting right! Here is a summary of this past week, week 15:

NURSING
Nursing continued as usual for Levi. I did notice this week that he was able to hold off a little bit longer between feedings, especially while we were out and about. Only about 15-20 minutes longer, but still, that's something! He is still only able to stay awake for about 1-1.5 hours at a time (including feeding time), so even though he is starting to go a little bit longer between feedings, I know we aren't quite ready to move to a 4-hour schedule just yet.

I have started nursing him in public more and more. I was pretty nervous about that at first, but ever since having to nurse him on the airplane to and from Florida in February, I've gained a lot of confidence. So far on our list of places are: friend's homes, coffee shops, church, the seminary and Sam's club. He wasn't supposed to wake up at Sam's club :) With a nursing cover, it's a fairly discrete process...and frankly, I've just gotten over the fear of making people feel uncomfortable. Levi also did great with his several necessary bottles this week as well! His daddy was appreciative of that.

WAKE TIME
Levi had such fun this week during his awake time! The beginning of the week, he was still enthralled with his floor gym. He is getting very skilled at his toy grabbing! Toward the middle of the week, a friend gave us a Bumbo to use until we move overseas (such a blessing!), and Levi just loves it! He definitely doesn't care for his floor gym as much anymore, now that he can sit up like a big boy. I like to use that while I'm getting ready every morning--I just sit him in the doorway of the bathroom and he is usually content for a good 10-15 minutes while I do my hair and makeup.

He is definitely starting to stay up longer after eating! We used to be able to pack him up right after a feeding for an outing and he would be asleep within 4-5 minutes of driving. Not anymore! Numerous times this week he was wide awake when we arrived at our destination. It was a bittersweet change.

NAPS
This boy had a few great naps this week! He had been having some trouble getting through that 45 minute transition time, but several of his naps this week were at least an hour to 1.5 hours. He would often wake at 45 minutes and then soothe himself back to sleep. Most of the time, he would go down with only about 5 minutes of crying, which is progress!

NIGHTTIME
I'm really excited about Levi's improvement this week with his nighttime sleep! Two nights he slept from 10 PM-6 AM and two nights from 10 PM-4 AM. Yay! Sleep! I woke up so proud of him. I noticed that on all of those nights we were out and his last feeding was between 9 and 10 PM--so I'm not sure what to do about that. Obviously, we can't and don't want to be out every night! For some reason, when we were home the other three nights that he didn't sleep very long stretches and I gave him a dreamfeed around 10 or 10:30 PM, he would automatically wake around 2 or 3 AM. So we'll just have to keep tweaking it! Sometimes, I feel like this whole parenting thing is like a science experiment--I just keep trying different things to see what works :)

Oh, I did start fully swaddling him again this week. So maybe that has something to do with it?

OUR SCHEDULE
We didn't have much of a schedule this week, which I purposefully planned. Levi woke everyday between 7 and 8 AM, and we had a 3-hour feeding schedule from that time on. That's what my philosophy was the first 13 weeks of his life, so we went back to trying that. I was still so exhausted from the time change, that I couldn't bring myself to wake him at 7 AM every morning, just for the sake of "a schedule" :) But we did follow the feed-wake-sleep cycle, like usual. The nights we were home, we did try to get him to bed by 8 or 8:30 PM.

OUTINGS/EVENTS
This week was COLD....again. So we didn't go on any walks or outside too much! We had to go to the SS office to apply for a new card for him--I accidentally threw his away with the junk mail the day that we got it :-/ Mom of the year award, right here! I also had a pretty bad cold the second half of the week, so I just needed some rest.

Levi did start wearing some 3-6 months clothes this week. He can still fit into some 0-3 months, but the dude is getting LONG, so most everything in that size is starting to get too short for him.