Ollie: Four Months

Four months! My little monkey is getting so old! This month seems to have flown by, I can’t believe it is nearly October already. Here’s a little update on how Ollie has been doing these past few weeks:

Weight 6.35kg (21st percentile)

Height 61cm (11th percentile)

Whoop, amazing weight gain from my boy who was born on the 5th percentile! We are just about to move him into the next size of clothing, which is 3-6 months (or 00 here in Australia).

Sleeping

For the first two weeks of this month Ollie was only waking up once a night, around 3-4am, which was heaven. I thought maybe I scored one of those babies that sleeps well at night. Alas, it was not to be! He’s gone back to two wake ups, the first anytime between 12-2am and the second around 4-5am. 

We have a semi-routine during the day, by which I mean he is awake for about 1.5-2 hours between naps, and does three naps per day. He usually wakes up between 7-8am and goes to bed around 7-7:30pm. 

Ollie’s naps are still hit and miss. He almost always wakes up after 40 minutes, but I try and give him about 10 minutes to resettle himself, which works about half the time, and usually for his first nap of the day. Guaranteed, his longest naps are when we have to leave to go somewhere for a specific time. Babies are very intuitive like that. Having to wake him up from a good nap to get to an appointment or Ella’s gymnastics lesson is THE WORST! 

Ollie is still sleeping in his bassinet in our room but has nearly outgrown it. We will be moving him into a cot sometime over the next week or two… fingers crossed the transition goes smoothly! He will stay in our room for the time being. I’d rather move him to his own room but unfortunately the set-up of our house makes this too difficult. We are in a three level townhouse, with two bedrooms on the ground floor and the master bedroom on the top floor. (The kitchen/living room area is on the middle floor). So if Ollie went into his own room we’d be two floors away which is not ideal. Fortunately he is a much quieter sleeper now than his first month of life, when it sounded like we were sleeping next to a warthog.

(As I get around to finalising this update one week later it looks like Ollie has entered the dreaded four month sleep regression stage. He’s been waking about four times a night which is not fun. I remember reading this article when Ella was four months old which helped, and if I recall correctly we ended up pulling her bedtime back to about 6:30pm. So I am going to try that with Ollie to see if it makes any difference.)

Feeding

As you can see by Ollie’s weight gain, the boy loves to eat. He is still exclusively breastfed, and we do one bottle of expressed milk per day, right before bed. I am still feeding on demand so don't really have a feeding routine at all, especially in the late afternoon/early evening when he seems to want milk every 1-2 hours. 

One thing that is more of a challenge recently is that Ollie gets very distracted when he is feeding. Ideally I would take him to a quiet room every time he feeds but that is just not realistic when there is another child to look after! 

Four months is the earliest you can introduce solids to your baby, although it looks like current recommendations are to wait until closer to six months. With Ella I was so excited to start giving her real food and we had her taste different purees from when she was about 4.5 months old. This time around I’m much lazier and am pretty happy to stick with just breastfeeding as long as possible as it is so much easier! Ollie is showing zero interest in food so I don’t think he’s ready for it yet anyway.

Development

Ollie’s getting stronger by the day and tolerates doing tummy time longer now, although I’ve never been great at enforcing tummy time so he’s probably a bit behind for his age. He does like to be propped up on a cushion or bolster to have a good look around though:

We get lots of giggles from our little man, he loves to be tickled and lately has started laughing when we make funny faces at him. 

He still loves his playgym and is much better at grabbing his toys now. He also loves watching his big sister play and Ella is getting a lot better at interacting with him now. I think she loves it when he smiles at her and she wants to hold him all the time, which he mostly tolerates. 

Although Ollie is much better about being on the floor/in his bouncer now that he is older, his preference is still to be held by someone. Preferably while that person is walking around. He has loved having his grandparents here the past two weeks who are very happy to indulge him in this.

I think Ollie may be teething as he is constantly drooling and has his hands in his mouth. This teething glove came up on my Facebook feed recently and I actually saw a baby with one while out the other day, so I’m thinking of ordering one for Ollie. Although I guess there is no issue with him constantly sucking on his actual hands so maybe this is a bit gimmicky! It's so hard to tell what is really worth it when it comes to baby products.