what do you do with your baby?

[octobermoon]

and how old are they? i mean all day, just curious.

[2boyzmama]

I was just thinking today that Gavin probably needs more "face time" with me! I'm so busy with the two older boys, Gavin is basically in my arms draped over my shoulder, in the sling, nursing, or on his tummy across my legs all day long (if he's not in his carseat or sleeping on the bed). So he rarely gets one-on-one face time with me! I was wondering why we don't have more smiling pictures of him yet, and that would be why!

With anything other than your first baby, it's basically just life as usual with a newborn in tow. But with my first baby, I remember spending a lot of time at first talking to him, playing with him, etc until I got bored with it (newborns just don't respond, you know?!) so then I spent a lot of time walking outside (bye bye pregnancy weight!), a lot of time online, and I rented some tv episode seasons (we lived overseas with my first baby, so I couldn't watch tv, instead I rented entire seasons of a series and watched it).

[kismetbaby]

My LO is 6 weeks old. Its pretty much one continuous cycle of sleep, eat, change, brief awake period, sleep. . .etc.

His awake-but-not-eating-or-crying periods have gotten longer and more alert esp. in the past two weeks, but they are still not very long, maybe half hour each time. And there is maybe only 1 hour total in a day that he is not physically attached to me in some way. He'll tolerate maybe 10 min at a time in the bouncy chair or swing (enough for me to go to the bathroom at least!). And he's happy with daddy as long as he's not hungry (but he is hungry a lot of the time mind you!). . .he will even occasionally fall asleep with daddy. But he still won't stay asleep when put down except at night when he'll stay asleep as long as he is cuddled right next to me in bed. So his naps during the day I either nap with him or put him in the Moby so I can get a few things done while he naps.

Day *generally* something like this: Wake for good around 7:30am. Spend an hour in bed nursing and talking/cooing. Change, go downstairs. DH will take him for half an hour so I can make my tea and breakfast. Around 10am he is ready to nurse and fall asleep. Will sleep for 1-2 hours. Wakes and wants to nurse immediately. Change. Sit in bouncy seat while mommy gets lunch. Take a walk or wander around the house talking/singing. Sometime between 2-3pm another nurse to sleep for an hour or two. Wake, eat, change. The rest of the day after this later nap he cluster feeds and I get nothing done! DH has to make dinner b/c LO wants to be attached to the boob all evening without fail. And he likes to take these mini-naps all evening too. . .nurse, doze off, wake-up, repeat. All evening! He is only happy not eating in the pm if we take a bath which he loves. He goes down for his first stretch of night sleep around 9pm. He wakes every 2-3 hours at night to nurse, but usually will fall right back to sleep.

[guestmama9922]

Ozzie is 8 weeks old and basically I nurse him, cuddle him, about 5 minutes of booping his nose to get a smile and that's it. He sleeps the rest of the time. I have two older kids that need a lot more of my attention.

[JordanKX]

Rowan is two months tomorrow and has great mornings - he is alert and happy. So we have at least an hour for face time. We coo back and forth; he stands on his legs and kicks. He's quite wobbly but most of the time I'm not holding his head unless he gets too excited :-) He's just started being interested in laying on the caterpillar thingy - you know, the colorful mat with the danglies on it. We've added longer danglies that he can bat with his hands..he's not there yet, but he'll lay on his back for a good 20 minutes and look at the colors and smile at the toys.

During the day it's mostly hold him, feed him, try to put him in his bassinet - which recently has become 20 minutes tops, try the swing - another potential 3-5 minutes. When we go out I wear him in the bjorn which he endures; at home and walks around the neighborhood he's in the moby which he Loves. Plus I can nurse in it, so if I have things I have to do around the house that don't require too much bending, he could stay in there for hours.

We try tummy time but he doesn't really like it. He just balances on his big ole frog belly and kicks his feet out for a few seconds before he wails.

And night time, there's normally a bath in the "bucket" - consistently the past few days since we're working on the cradle cap - which is becoming more and more fun for him. He can sit immersed up to his chest and then push himself into a standing position, which really gets him riled up :-)

Yesterday was the first thought of putting him in a stroller - just the umbrella one as I don't have an insert for the jogger. He wasn't a huge fan - just like the doesn't really like the swing or bouncy chair or carseat. I really think this baby would prefer to be standing :-)

Writing all this down, I'm realizing why I'm not spending too much time "at school" (online) or "at work" (at home). We're still having too much fun together :-)

[cristeen]

Originally Posted by kismetbaby

My LO is 6 weeks old. Its pretty much one continuous cycle of sleep, eat, change, brief awake period, sleep. . .etc.

Of course, until the last 2 days, most of his awake time was spent screaming, and even his sleep time was disturbed by screaming... but now that we have him on donor milk he's sleeping much better, and is happy during awake time.

[tzs]

thank you! so i'm not the only one who has this question!!!
we have happy pajama mornings where we eat, laugh at each other, and watch the view or some other trash. then around martha stewart time she takes a nap....a short one, sometimes i get an hour.
then the afternoons we run errands that really don;t need to be done. just making myself feel busy. sometimes we do them walking in the stroller.
but i was wondering what we really should be "doing."

[coldandsleepy]

Grey's six weeks old. Our day tends to go kinda like this:

6 a.m.: wake up for the first time. I feed him, change his diaper, feed him, sing him a couple songs. He's smiley for a little bit.

7 a.m.: he falls back asleep. I leave him in bed with his dad and run around trying to get some stuff done before he wakes up.

8:30 a.m.: he wakes up again in time for another feeding before his dad leaves for work. We usually get a ride in to town (about half an hour away) with his dad, which he sleeps through.

9 a.m. - 1 p.m.: I run errands, walk around town, go to new mother's support group, or visit friends depending on the day. He spends most of this time sleeping in the Moby, just waking up for feedings.

1 p.m. - 4 p.m.: we lie in bed and try to nap. He will usually nap for one hour somewhere in this time frame. We spend the rest of the time smiling at each other (that's all this guy wants to do these days! not that I'm complaining), making faces, nursing, etc. This is absolutely the best part of the whole day as far as I'm concerned!

4 p.m. - 6 p.m.: he is sort of low level fussy. I put him back in the Moby and we walk around, do laundry, stuff like that.

It's kind of all downhill from there. He alternates between fussing and nursing between then and bed time... which is usually around midnight. Sigh. It helps if I wear him in the Moby. We spend a lot of time rocking on the glider in the back yard. This is the least fun part of my day. :P

I'm really looking forward to the point where he'll start to actively play more and our social interactions will be a little more exciting than "I stare at you, you stare at me."

[diana_of_the_dunes]

I was wondering about this too. From what everyone else wrote, it sounds like Ethan's normal, so I feel better

Ethan gets up to eat anywhere from 7:30 - 8:30 am. We get up for the day, and I try to eat breakfast. Sometimes Ethan goes right back to sleep and I lay him in his crib. Sometimes he wants to stay up and I'll "play" with him (talk, coo, dangle toys, etc). Sometimes he's just happy to sit in his bouncy seat while I eat.

Then he gets up to eat every 2 - 3 hrs. Usually I'll wear him in the Beco carrier for a few hours. I still don't manage to get much of anything done, but I can play on the computer or put away laundry or whatever. If it's nice enough outside we often go for walks, sometimes in the jogging stroller and sometimes in the Beco. He likes both. If it's a good day I'll get a shower while he naps and maybe run an errand or two.

DH gets up around 3 pm, and I'll put Ethan in bed with him for a while to get a bath or shower. When he gets up from this nap he stays awake a long time 1-2 hrs and is happy and "talkative".

Evenings can be slightly fussy, but if Ethan gets his 6 pm-ish nap (even for 30 minutes), things go much better. This is also the time of day when we run any errands I didn't get to during the day or want DH to come along on. Ethan is usually content unless he's in his carseat. He started disliking that about 2 weeks ago for some reason. He gets a bath every other day, then eats again between 7:30 and 8:30. That's considered bedtime.

Ethan gets up to eat during the night at about 12:45, 4:30, and 6:30. Then we start all over!

[~Laura~]

You guys sound like us!

Emmeline is 6 weeks now. We have no schedule, but definitely a routine. The three older kids are in school, so our morning revolves around them. I get up at 5:30 to start getting them up, showered, dressed and fed. Emme sometimes sleeps until 7 am and other times as late as 9. It really just depends on how loud we are being. She sleeps in the master and the kids prefer the tub and shower in there.

The kids are at school by 7:40, so that leaves Emme and I to start the eat, play, sleep routine. Hubby leaves for work at 8:30, so we hang out with him until then.

She eats every 2 hours during the day unless she's napping. 90% of the time she's in arms sleeping. Partly because I am selfish and soaking up every monent of her itty bittyness, and partly because she sleeps awesome that way and her sleep is way more important to me than putting her down (where she will sleep much less).

She HATES her car seat, so I avoid driving when I can. I opt for the 2 min drive to the grocery store over anything else. She just freaks if she can't see me - if hubby is driving us around, she's always fine in the car with me next to her.

We are really lucky that she has no set fussy time and hasn't really ever. I make sure she gets tons of sleep during the day - I basically live my life around her napping in the carrier to make sure she's sleeping as much as she wants to - so she's generally really happy (for all 30 mins she's awake at a time!). My first was totally sleep deprived, and I now realize that was partly my fault because I didn't understand baby sleep and his needs.

Night time is great. I put the big kids to bed at 8 and she hangs with me while I sit with them while they fall asleep. (Hubby gets up at 5 am to work out, so he goes to bed at the same time.) She might be nursing then or awake on my shoulder or sleeping. Once they are asleep (around 8:30), I take the baby to bed and put her to sleep. That's either by nursing (which I avoid if she's been nursing already or she will puke up with overflow while she's trying to fall asleep), or rocking in the lazy boy, or her laying on my chest in bed. I try to vary what we do. I watch TV for a bit until she's out and then I go to sleep or get up and do stuff around the house. She's pretty much always asleep by 9:30, but more often earlier. I try to get to sleep by 10, but I sometimes try to get too much done during my free time!

She sleeps from 9 pm to 12 or 2 am, depending on the night, and then eats again every 2 hours after that, but I barely wake during these. I change her once or twice while nursing in bed (she sleeps through it). She pees a TON, but only poops every couple of weeks.

I feel really blessed that she inserted right into our schedule with the big kids. I love that we are so close 24/7 because it feels like our rhythms are totally in sync - she easily goes to sleep when we do and wakes when we do. Life is good!

Laura
Mom to 4!

[darcytrue]

It just depends on the day I guess. I work from home and home school my older kids so we just try to keep the same routine. I spend most days putting her in the swing at times where she may doze off for a bit or just sit contently, putting her on her belly or back on her activity mat for 5 minutes here and there, wearing her while doing chores (she loves the vacuum!), rocking her and talking to her, DS talks to her a lot and carries her around and hangs out with her, and ofcourse she eats about every 3 hours at this point.

It's kind of boring at this age. I can't wait until she is a little older. I guess because I have older children I know how fun it can be and can't wait until she is sitting up and able to do more.

[dosergirl]

what everyone else said...haha. Cora is 8weeks

wake up at 7ish, eat, change. then happy giggle time. she normally goes in her swing for a bit as well. then she eats again and then either goes to sleep or more happy giggle time til like 10am. depends on how she slept/ate through the night.

then pretty much a 2 hour sleep/eat schedule all day.

bath time around 7pm and eating and then "bed"

we have a new moms group on thursdays and we meet at 1pm so that means on thursday we wake, eat, giggle, sleep, eat and leave for class.

i try to go on an outting at least twice a week, i walk alot and she sleeps or gets to see things.

[cymbeline]

Chet is 9wks. He's starting to sleep less during the day, so I've also been wondering what to "do" with him! He has absolutely no schedule, so I have to just hope that he will fit into our schedule.

On M-Th this week, he barely slept during the day. Every little noise woke him up, so he was sleeping/nursing in 20min increments. It was awful. He wasn't terribly fussy, in fact he was cooing and smiling quite a bit, but he wanted to be on me the whole time, so I ended up wearing him in the sling 10+ hours each day. I had to keep moving, but there wasn't really any way to get things like dishes or laundry done, so I mainly just walked in circles around the living room! My back is killing me.

Today, he's a sleepy little dude. He woke up at 630 and we did our little AM routine and got the older sibs out the door. He fell asleep when we got home around 8am and he's been asleep ever since (it is now 1030). So, who knows what today will bring. He might sleep through it all. I've been able to get to the dishes and laundry, tho

Needless to say, I am trying to roll with the punches.

[Julia24]

eh? I honestly don't know!

She wakes for the day sometime between 6:30 and 8:00.... she eats and then has play time - usually up for about 1 to 1.5 hours and then she sleeps - either in the swing or in her bassinette...and swaddled if in bed.

During playtime (if we're at home and not running around like the mom of three I am), she will usually first lay on the ottoman and kick around and watch tv (terrible, I know - she must like the lights) while I change her diaper and get her dressed in the morning, then when she starts to fuss I'll pick her up and sing to her (I try to do the ABCs every day with her - Grace is nearl 4 and stil can't sing it I think I failed her in the song department!), talk to her and gets some smiles and talking and GIGGLES started this week. Then I end up holding her facing out (the new norm - she no longer wants to snuggle she wants to see the WORLD!) and then when I'm desperate to put her down, I'll stick her in the bouncey seat or the swing. Sometimes she'll fall asleep there - otherwise she'll start crying and need to be put into her bed because she's just had enough.

Repeat every 2.5-4 hours. She seems to be falling into a L-O-N-G afternoon nap, but otherwise it's a crapshot. Felt like she was every 2.5 hours all day today....ugh. Sometime between 6 and 8pm she cashes it in for the night and then sleeps until at least 2am....sometimes she goes until the next morning (meaning 5:30 or even later!) You just never know.

[darcytrue]

Originally Posted by Julia24

During playtime (if we're at home and not running around like the mom of three I am),

same here. I stay so busy here lately with the older two and feel guilty at times lugging the baby around, but she likes getting out especially when I wear her the whole time. The sunshine does her good.