Another baby must-have

Allow me to give the "Claudia Summers-mom-for-almost-16-weeks" stamp of approval on another wonderful baby-must-have: The Feed Baby App. It's been a life saver. I just wish I had downloaded it from the very start. About 2 weeks in, I realized it was impossible to keep up with all of Hannah's feedings. At first our pediatrician wanted us to feed her every 2 to 3 hours, and I think conversations between me and Stephen consisted mainly of trying to figure out when she was due to feed again (when you're nursing a newborn a zillion times a day, who the heck knows?!) Then on top of that you're supposed to switch sides when you're nursing, which I never could remember either. "Did I feed her on the right or the left last time?" At 3:00 am, I can assure you, you don't remember. So, I downloaded this super handy app, which tracks EVERYTHING for you! All you do is hit L for left or R for right and it times every feeding. It also gives you lots of cool charts and graphs that track how your baby is feeding. I love it! 

My favorite graph is the one that tracks "Feed Session Intervals". It shows how many hours baby goes between feedings- so coincidentally it also shows me when Hannah started sleeping through the night.

 It's kind of hard to see, but in those dreary January days the longest stretch between feedings was 2 to 3 hours (so that's the most sleep I ever got at a time). Slowly by March you can see those bars getting a little higher making it past the 5 hour mark. And then by April it's clear to see where the nights are by those beautiful long stretches that reach past the 8 hour mark.

Below is a zoomed in view of last week:

I know, I'm a nerd, but I just LOVE this graph. It shows that (for now anyway) Hannah is sleeping through the night consistently. Isn't it beautiful?!! She has such a great routine right now.  Here's her feeding schedule that we've followed since early March:

6:00am- I wake her up and nurse her
9:00am- She gets a bottle at the sitter's
12:00pm- I go nurse her on my lunch break
3:00pm- She gets her afternoon bottle
6:00pm- Dinnertime nursing
7:00pm- Evening nursing session
8:00pm- Bedtime nursing session

Why so many evening feedings? Well, at Hannah's 2 month doctor's appointment, her pediatrician, Dr. Latham, who is this soft spoken older man, (and a genius in my book) told us she was old enough to be able to sleep through the night as long as she was getting enough calories during the day, and that I should purposely "cluster feed" her in the evenings to fill her little tummy up. I have to admit I was skeptical at first, but no kidding- the very first night we tried this new schedule she slept ALL night long... and has ever since. Needless to say, Dr. Latham is our hero and we will do whatever he says from now on because he knows everything and gave us the secret to getting a 2 month old baby to sleep through the night.

He also told me at that appointment that I could cut Hannah off after 15 minutes of nursing on each side. This was a game changer in my nursing journey. Before, Hannah would nurse for close to an hour every time, which meant I was nursing over 7 hours a day. Dr. Latham said she was just a social eater and liked to snuggle, but that after 15 minutes on a side she really wasn't getting much more milk. This new '30 minute rule' cut my nursing time in half!! I was skeptical of this at first too, convinced she wouldn't get enough to eat... but she's happy and healthy and plump as can be.

Look at the drastic difference in time I spent nursing below. The timeline on the left shows a 2 week period from February vs. the graph on the right which shows a 2 week period from April. The blue bars show what time of day I nursed her and for how long. We went from a helter-skelter mess to a nice, orderly, predictable routine. Ahhhhhh.... the OCD, perfectionist side of me is at peace when I look at the timeline on the right. ;)

Our evenings sure are busy with all those feedings, but it means a full night's rest for us all, and as you can see there are no pesky blue bars on my April timeline from about 9pm to 6am because that's when the Summers family of 3 is asleep. :)