Keaton Week 6

Keaton is already a month and a half old!  The bad news is that means my maternity leave is halfway over :-(  When I think back as well as read previous blog entries, it was about 6 weeks when Lexi starting staying awake more often but being super fussy when she was awake.  This lasted for a couple weeks until her 2 month birthday.  Fortunately (knock on wood!) Keaton has not yet hit this milestone.  He has started staying awake more during the day, sometimes only sleeping an hour or two total, but for the most part he's pretty content when he's awake.  Don't get me wrong, he still has his moments, especially when he gets really tired, but generally he can be calmed.  When he is awake though, he prefers to be held and doesn't like if I leave his sight.  I bought a new bouncer that has more activities/toys for him and he will sit in that but usually not more than 15 minutes (long enough for me to take a shower!). 

Another thing that happened with Lexi around 5 weeks was her hatred for the carseat.  Keaton doesn't seem to mind his carseat too much and actually spends a lot of his daytime naps sleeping in it.  Generally he will fall asleep as soon as he's in the carseat and feels motion, but lately he's been staying awake but content in it.  I hope he keeps liking his carseat because I remember how awful it was with Lex hating hers!  We couldn't wait until the day she turned a year old and 20lbs so we could switch her to forward facing!

I had mentioned in a prior post how Keaton seemed to get really fussy at the same time every night and there was nothing we could to do calm him.  Luckily this has subsided since then but prior to this week he was still having times where he would get really fussy.  My Mom found this video on YouTube of the author of Happiest Baby on the Block where he was demonstrating how to calm colicky babies.  It's basically a technique of the 5 S's which includes, 1. Swaddling 2. Side or stomach position 3. Shushing 4. Swinging 5. Sucking.  The key is that you have to do them in that combination and the shushing has to be very loud.  Whenever Keaton does get fussy we use the 5 S's or at least one of them and it has been working so far!
 

Here are some other updates:

Feeding
Last post he was only eating about 4 to 5 1/2 oz at each feeding.  The last few days he's been able to eat 6oz, sometimes 7oz, for most of his bottles.  Occasionally, he will still only eat a 4 oz bottle though.  He's done really well with the every 4 hour feeding schedule during the day.

Sleeping
He's still doing a 5 to 7 hour stretch most nights but a couple nights he even did a 9 hour stretch!  For the most part though, he only gets up once during the night and he's been doing much better falling asleep on his own when I lay him down.  We haven't made much progress on daytime naps, so that will be our goal for this coming week!

6 Week Pictures: