The Newborn Stage

Today Adelaide is 12 weeks old. That means she is out of the newborn stage or the “fourth trimester” as I have heard it called. On my calendar I wrote “have things gotten better?”. I added it when she was about 2.5 weeks old. I remember it was late one night, I was exhausted and Jon was bouncing a very small, swaddled Adelaide because she wasn’t falling asleep and did not want to eat. Both Jon and I just wanted to go to bed. We were still trying to adjust to our new normal. I glanced at my calendar, counted the weeks until she would be 12 weeks old and marked the date. It was like I needed something concrete to look towards. Obviously I love my daughter, but I do not love the newborn phase.

So are things better?

Yes, things are much better. I think we have adjusted to having two little ones and we have our routines pretty much down.

Adelaide is on a pretty good schedule and for the most part our days look the same and run smoothly. She is getting better about putting herself to sleep and does it for about 75% of her naps. She is really good at doing it at bedtime and when/if she wakes around 5 am to eat (last night she slept from 7:30 pm-7:30 am!) and since those are the two times I really don’t want to be patting her to sleep, I’m pretty happy with that.

She is much more content to sit in her bouncy seat or my lap while Aedan and I play or I get things done around the house. She likes to lay on her play mate and I think she is close to being able to start grabbing at the toys. She still does not love (read: hates)riding in the car for the most part, but she does pretty well riding in the carrier when we are out and about so once we get to where we are going, things are good.

I think the hands down hardest part of her newborn stage was losing out on the free time Jon and I had in the evenings. We had gotten so used to putting Aedan to bed between 7:30/8 and then being totally done for the night. It was hard when she wouldn’t settle for the until 9:30/10 and then just be up to eat again around 12:30. Thankfully Adelaide goes down at 7:30 now and right after I put her down, I put Aedan down so by 8 we have our free time again. If she wakes in the middle of the night, it is usually around 5/5:30 and I can feed her and put her straight back down so I am out of bed for maybe 15 minutes.

So goodbye newborn phase, bring on babyhood. I can’t wait to watch this little one grow!

-Lauren-