Dear Alice- Week 12

Dear Alice,

My goodness. 12 weeks old! Time has flown by, it really has. When I first bought you home you were a little chubby, wrinkly baby who barely opened her eyes and spent most of the day with a bottle in her mouth. Now you are a proper little baby! Cooing and crying and kicking and playing. Every day I just know you are learning something knew as your little eyes light up!

I have started a routine. A proper routine! Ok, it's very flexible and we have strayed from it a couple of times, but you really do seem much happier now. Instead of guessing if you're tired or hungry (or both), I can immediately see what you need depending on the time of day and what you did before. You nap in the morning, have a long sleep at lunch and a nap in the afternoon. The bedtime routine is going SO well I am actually shocked! Bath time, milk time, cuddle time and bed. I have started putting you down to sleep before you are actually asleep. The first few times I did this, you SCREAMED. But now you are quite happy to fall asleep by yourself so I am very happy I persevered.

It means I am now concentrating on getting all of your feeds in the day, instead of night time! I had you weighed the other week and you were just over 12 pounds, so needing about 28-30 ounces of milk a day. So 5 bottles at 6 ounces should do it! I have been waking you up at 10pm every night to feed you. When I was "demand feeding" I actually didn't give you a late night feed because you were asleep. This meant you were waking up twice in the night! Now, with the 10pm feed, you only wake once (at 2am) for about 2 ounces of milk and then you sleep right through till 6! Much better for mummy.

In other news, daddy has a new job! A much better one, with much more money! It means we can soon look to buy our own place, which is what we've wanted for ages! Woohoo!

xx