Navigating Newborn Life: Essential Tips for the First Month S5|EP124
Welcome to episode 124 of Sense by Meg Fora. Today we’re joined once again by Julia, mom to four-week-old Aurelia, and we’re going to explore the wonders and the challenges of life with a newborn. In this episode, we dive into the universal experiences of the newborn period, discussing key topics like normal weight gain, interpreting growth curves, and understanding what not to overlook when assessing your baby’s development at this tender age.
We also unpack really practical advice on managing day feeds, establishing a bedtime routine, and navigating night feeds. Plus, I’m going to share a simple experiment that you can try with your newborn to discover their astonishing emotional capabilities. It really is something special.
So if you’ve got a newborn, you don’t want to miss that. And then we’re going to tackle some of the more pressing questions for new parents, like how and when should we let babies start to sleep later and through the night? And is it okay if they miss a feed? And also, why do babies cry just before they fall asleep? And can their awake windows start to be safely stretched? So join us as we provide some insights and tips to help you feel more equipped and reassured during this beautiful, albeit sometimes daunting, stage of parenthood. Welcome to Sense by Meg Fora, the podcast that’s brought to you by ParentSense, the app that takes guesswork out of parenting.
If you’re a new parent, then you are in good company. Your host, Meg Fora, is a well-known OT, infant specialist, and the author of eight parenting books. Each week, we’re going to spend time with new mums and dads just like you to chat about the week’s wins, the challenges, and the questions of the moment.
Subscribe to the podcast, download the ParentSense app, and catch Meg here every week to make the most of that first year of your little one’s life. And now, meet your host. Welcome back, mums and dads.
Awesome to have you join me here again today on Sense by Meg Fora. I am Meg, and today we have got a regular guest back again, and that’s Julia. Welcome, Julia.
Hi, Meg, thanks for having me again. Yeah, it’s awesome to have you. We have started probably about three weeks ago starting to track Julia’s journey with little Aurelia.
And in our first week, we heard about how she had had a caesarean section, an elective caesarean section, and just what an amazing journey that was. So if any of you are preggy and are thinking about an elective caesarean section, please do go and listen to that one. And then unfortunately, we skipped a week because Aurelia ended up in hospital, which is very unusual for a neonate, for a newborn.
And so we talked a little bit about that. And now we’re back with our little four-week-old. Has she turned four weeks old now, Julia? She’s five, actually.
Yesterday was five weeks. Oh my goodness, can you believe it? So we’re gonna be looking at the fourth week of her life now. She turned five weeks yesterday.
And it was quite interesting, Julia and I have, you know, you corresponded a little bit. And Julia, you said that you had gone back and listened to Cassidy’s journey and her podcast with Max at four to five weeks, and you found quite a lot of similarities. Yes, it was so interesting.
I went back and listened because I’d only found the series in the sort of second half of Max’s first year. And so I went back and listened to those first couple of episodes. And I mean, it’s almost verbatim, the same series of events and also the same advice from you, which is quite funny.
And a lot of things that you were repeating yourself on. So it was really interesting to sort of, not just see the parallels, but also feel a little bit more normal. You know, there is a lot about our experience that is completely typical.
So that was interesting. And then to sort of listen to the five-week update and almost get a sense of what’s to come in a general sense and what sort of challenges she faced so that if and when they happen to me, it’s in the back of my mind and I can perhaps cope better, or again, just sort of not feel so isolated and like there’s something wrong necessarily. Sometimes as a mom, you skip immediately to worrying that something isn’t normal or isn’t right, when in fact it probably is entirely.
Yeah, and you know, that’s exactly why I love doing these podcasts, these regular ones where we actually really start to move into somebody’s life and go regularly through. And the reason is exactly that, is that what happens for a baby at five weeks is fairly typical universally. I mean, the type of challenges you go through, the type of joys you experience are pretty universal.
So, and I think that’s why moms keep coming back and listening to all of the episodes. So it’s really lovely to follow your journey. So when we talk about all of those kind of commonalities that so many parents kind of have, one of them is of course the joys that happen around about four to five weeks.
So maybe you can share a little bit of the things this week that have really brought you delight and joy and that you’ve loved seeing for the second time round. Yeah, so, well, I mean, again, I was noticing this before with the experience between with the two different kids is so different in so many ways. There are obviously lots of things that are the same, but it’s really interesting to sort of see how they do differ.
My son was always a fairly kind of robust, healthy, above the curve kid. And because Aurelia had a little bit of a slow start in the beginning and we had a real dip with her weight, she’s quite sort of scrawny in comparison. So it’s been really, I mean, it seems like a sort of simple superficial thing, but it’s been lovely to sort of see her really like fill out her newborn baby grows, which I think Santiago was only in his for probably a week or two, whereas she’s only just really kind of filling them out now.
And it’s just lovely to see her put on weights and the cheeks getting rounder and yeah, she eats so well. And to be honest, that was the one thing that we were so lucky with when she was sick, that she never stopped eating. Thank goodness.
But it’s just, it’s wonderful that there’s a certain comfort and reassurance in that, that she, you know, and actually we had her weighed this morning and she’s 3.8, just over 3.8 kilos. So still below the curve, but like I said, she’d had that sort of big dip in the beginning. So not anything to be concerned about, but yeah, definitely putting on weight.
She’s put on a kilo in the last month, basically, which is pretty amazing. That’s incredible. So let’s just talk a little bit about weight gain, because it’s something that just comes up as such a common thing for parents at this age.
So first of all, 250 grams a week or kilogram over a month is a very healthy weight gain for a newborn. And, you know, some little newborns can put on as little as 120 grams in a week and we still wouldn’t worry. So it’s, you know, it just, you know, weight gain doesn’t have to be as robust as that.
But of course it is lovely because she did lose quite a bit in the beginning and she was ill. So, you know, so it’s that’s, she’s probably just being playing catch up as well. And the other thing just about growth curves, and you know, this is something that Kath McGaw and I always say is that we want to be a little bit careful about being too fixated on growth curves.
And I say this because as moms, we often are a little bit fixated. Like we feel like there are very few other measures, like standardized measures of newborns, because there’s no standardized milestones. There’s very little is standardized.
But the one thing that we kind of get handed is this growth curve. And so we go, well, there’s a standardized measure, but actually babies do gain weight so differently. And being a little bit under average is actually not a bad thing.
You know, and Kath McGaw talks a lot now about how, you know, this pursuit of fat babies at all costs is actually really not what we want. You know, the babies actually, and it does code for long-term obesity as well. So we actually want babies who are not obese.
And, you know, I think, and I know you talking about her just being well covered, but, and, you know, kind of chubby cheeks, but a really fat baby. And there is in Africa actually quite a big, almost cultural preference for very fat babies because they look like they’re very healthy then. But actually the reality is that a very fat baby and a baby who’s crossing curves, the lines on the curve is actually not what we want.
So moms, if you’re thinking about your baby’s curve and your baby’s like, let’s say under the 50th percentile, but gaining every week, we’re super happy. You know, they don’t need to be over the 50th percentile. You know, it’s not like your marks in maths, you know, where the higher the better.
This is not the case of that. It’s sticking to- Can’t relate to that. Exactly.
It’s sticking to curve and preferably not crossing lines. So in other words, if they’re born at the 25th percentile, not dropping below it and not going over the 50th. So just continuing their curve all the way up.
So yeah, but thank you for raising that. And I’m glad she’s putting on a little bit of weight. Yeah, and I think also the second time around, it’s easier to have the perspective of not looking at something like weight and isolation from all the other markers.
You know, the fact that yes, okay, she’s putting on a little weight now, which is great, but you know, she’s also eating very consistently and healthily and her sleep is improving and her other milestones are there. She’s starting to potentially smile, not quite there yet, but there’s a little glimmer of hope. You know, her eyesight’s really coming in.
Like those are the things to look at as a whole, I think, as opposed to obsessing over one particular angle of it. Like you say, thinking about it being below the curve, it doesn’t matter, you know, in the context of all of her other growth, that’s really the way to look at it. And I think as a first time mom, it’s not as easy to see it like that.
Absolutely. And it’s hard to keep perspective. I mean, the thing that for me at this age, like if you said to me, what is the thing that would be most important for her at this age? And the thing that I should experience the most delight in, the actual thing is engagement.
It’s making eye contact and we call it falling in love, where she actually, you know, makes eye contact with you and really looks at you. And I think that is a much, much more important indicator of particular emotional, social emotional wellbeing and development than any other indicator. And moms, if you’re listening and your little one is not doing that kind of falling in love, making eye contact, looking intently, a few of the activities, I mean, one of the biggest things I always say is just slow right down, because, you know, I think sometimes our lives are so busy, particularly, I’m sure you’re finding it with two kitties, Julia, that, you know, you’re scrambling with Sante and, you know, you kind of, she just becomes a, almost like a box to tick.
And it’s actually not having it as that. It’s like having the super slow time of making eye contact and holding her 20 centimeters from your face so she can really see you and focus and kind of make eye contact and focus on her. Yeah, no, exactly.
And that is something I’m also trying to do. And, you know, even as small things that I think about, like I look back and I haven’t done a lot of videos of Sante when he was little, when he was really small. And so something I’ve been conscious of this time is videoing her as well, so that I have a kind of record of what she was like at this age that isn’t just photos, because you do get so much from their movement and their expression.
And, you know, it’s so rich. And I think you forget that as time marches on, even from one week to the next in the conversations that we have, there are things I can’t remember I spoke about last week. So sort of having a record of that.
And I think in that process, also slowing down and taking the time to watch them and engage with them is really important and something I’m quite, yeah, I feel really kind of passionately about. I think it’s really important as part of the bonding to really look at them and take the time. Absolutely.
And, you know, they do this incredible thing called serve and return. And this is a term that’s been coined by the Harvard Center for the Developing Child. And really what it is, is that she makes a little signal, which at this age is actually only really eye contact.
You then catch that signal, so like catching a ball and give it back to her, which again could just be eye contact at this age. And that much at this age is, you know, it’s really important. And I think a lot of parents don’t slow down enough to actually watch that serve and return happen.
And then one of the other experiments that’s really cool to do with her at this age is when you, and you have to be quite still and focusing in on her and then do something very exaggerated with your mouth. So stick your tongue right out and just hold it there and then wait and see whether or not she does it back to you. And what’s incredible is that they start to actually mimic facial expressions, even at this age.
And one of the things that I did with my middle child, so she was a very, very highly and still is a very highly empathic. She’s an empath. She just takes on people’s emotions.
And I’ll never forget once I was showing my husband the trick and I said, watch this, stuck my tongue out. She stuck her tongue out, smiled. She was around, you know, kind of making it look as if she’s going to smile.
And then I made my face into a very sad face and, you know, kind of made it look so sad. And she burst into tears. Oh Lord, we were so shocked.
And so, I mean, they really do. It’s those mirror neurons that actually, you know, right, even at this early age, their brains are starting to perceive the emotions that your face gives off and vice versa. So, you know, when your little ones are smiling and laughing, you feel those emotions too.
So do experiment with it. Yeah, I will. I’ll definitely give that one a try.
It sounds adorable. Yeah, no, it’s very sweet. And what else is happening? How are you finding, I know last time we spoke a little bit about potentially starting to leave her to wake up for feeds at night if she was gaining weight.
Well, have you thought about that? Yeah, so our conversation galvanized me into action and I decided it was time to be brave. And so I have been leaving her basically since the end of the last week or so to wake by herself overnight. And yeah, it’s been good.
I mean, she’s had a couple of longer stretches. So the night before last, for example, she landed up effectively kind of skipping a feed because she had slept until midnight and then she slept all the way until half past five. Oh my word.
Which was, I mean, I’m not going to assume that that’s the norm from now on. And certainly it wasn’t last night, but just to know that she’s capable of those stretches in the daytime, she’s also having slightly longer periods of sleep and time between her feeds. And that, I suppose in a way it’s quite satisfying because based on our conversation to then sort of see it unfolding in action, really kind of reinforces that the timing was right for that and that she is ready to have longer stretches at night and certainly building up to them being longer and longer.
And she’s been absolutely, she’s coped very well with them. And I had some advice this morning from the baby nurse to perhaps just increase the size of her bottle slightly so that, because she’s obviously, she may well be skipping a feed completely for the next little while overnight. She is having a little bit more food and certainly I do feel like that she could cope with a slightly bigger bottle.
So, and having waiters as well now, we might do that as well. So, there’s been a lot of sort of experimentation around that and I suppose the kind of knock on effects coming from the first few weeks where she was on a fairly rigid schedule because of having to wake her to feed her every three hours, day and night. Now we’re faced with the challenge of she’s waking herself effectively, especially in the morning.
And then we’re having to sort of follow her lead throughout the day. But then I have this problem of now what do I do at bedtime? Because last night we had a time crunch and I didn’t know what to do. And effectively she was awake, she’d woken at four for a feed and she’d had a feed and she was up for an hour.
And then I put her down trying to squeeze a nap in because I couldn’t keep her awake till seven o’clock for bedtime. So, I tried to squeeze a nap in which didn’t go terribly well. But then I woke her again between six and seven so she could have her bedtime routine and it didn’t go swimmingly.
But I just wanted some advice on whether I should have maybe pushed bedtime out or what your approach would have been. Yeah, so let’s talk about both. Let’s break our day into three parts, the day, the bedtime routine and then the night.
So, I’ll start with the easy one, the night you’re doing spot on. She’s gaining enough weight. I mean, to gain a kilogram in a month is really excellent.
You leave her to wake up. And my suggestion would be if she wakes less than three and a half hours, now I would even give her a little bit of cold boiled water. You can do that at this age because she’s gaining weight so nicely.
So, if she won’t settle, you know, then you would give that to her. If she settles quite happily with you just popping your hands on her or patting her back to sleep, then do that. Otherwise feed her, obviously if three and a half hours have passed and she’s woken up naturally at night.
So, that would be the night one. The day routine, you know, you can, again, you can start to guide her towards, how many hours is she doing between milk feeds at the moment in the day? I would say roughly about four. Okay, perfect.
I mean, last week was closer to three. Okay, perfect. So, definitely don’t let her go over four in the day.
Like if she’s heading towards three and a half hours and she’s still asleep, I would actually wake her in the day now. Like I would make sure we’re getting in her nutrition in the day. So, four hours is the maximum she must stretch between milk feeds.
And if she’s demanding a milk feed closer to three, that’s also fine. So, three to four hourly feeds in the day, spot on. And then obviously watching her awake time.
So, that’s what you would do during the day. Now, in the evening, it’s quite interesting. So, what is the app telling you that her awake time is in the evening? For the wake window, it’s about 60 minutes.
Okay, good. So, 60 minutes for your little four week old, four to five week old is spot on. In the evening, you can stretch that a little bit longer if you needed to.
So, you could even go to kind of 60, 70 minutes would be absolutely fine. And so, if you have, and you mentioned that she would, let’s say she was awake from four until five in the evening, and then she suddenly wanted to fall asleep at five o’clock and then woke up at like quarter to six. There’s two different options here.
The one is that you treat five o’clock as the separation of the day, and you actually let her go down for her full bedtime at like 5.30. So, let’s say if sleep was due, it had been an hour of awake time at five or anywhere between five or six. What you can actually do is you can put them down for the night. And the way that you do it is that you stretch the awake time slightly longer.
So, you take it out to 70 or 80 minutes so that you can just fit in a little bit of a kind of longer stretch. And then you literally put them down for the night and then don’t wake them. So, then you go into the don’t wake cycle after that.
What you’ll find is one of two things. The one option is that she’ll wake herself up 45 minutes later anyway. And you talked about that last week as the false starts.
So, she might do one of those, in which case that’s perfect because you give her a top up feed and she goes back down. Oh, you might actually find that she starts her bedtime, her sleep time, night sleep at like as early as 5.30. And while that feels not fabulous, it’s actually preferable to do that than to actually wake her and try and have another whole awake window and treat it like daytime. So, in my mind, any time from 5.30 can actually be bedtime.
So, if that awake window is such that she needs to sleep again at five, push it to 5.30 and then let that be her nighttime. If that makes sense. Yeah, I think in retrospect that would have worked better because in fact, we battled to get her down at five.
I was just so hyper aware of the wake window and not wanting to stretch her too far. But actually it would have made much more sense in terms of the rhythm for her to have been awake a little bit longer and faster to actually have put her down for bedtime earlier. So, I’ll definitely keep that in mind for future.
And on that, I mean, the wake windows are generally, I always say to parents, stick to them religiously for the morning because they shouldn’t stretch longer than that. And they usually are quite tired actually. But in the evening, that last little one can actually go 10 to 15 minutes longer.
And we do that, in fact, and as they get older, when they are a year old, we actually make that kind of half an hour longer. So, we do stretch that last wake window of the day a little bit and it helps them to just settle and settle a little bit more easily. Yeah, no, it’s definitely worth a try.
Good, and so are there any other challenges that are going on at the moment or other things that are kind of top of mind for you? This episode is brought to us by Parents Sense, the all-in-one baby and parenting app that help you make the most of your baby’s first year. Don’t you wish someone would just tell you everything you need to know about caring for your baby? When to feed them, how to wean them, and why they won’t sleep? Parents Sense app is like having a baby expert on your phone guiding you to parent with confidence. Get a flexible routine, daily tips and advice personalized for you and your little one.
Download Parents Sense app now from your app store and take the guesswork out of parenting. And so, are there any other challenges that are going on at the moment or other things that are kind of top of mind for you? No, look, I mean, it’s again, I’m reminded of how, you know, things tend to happen in a bunch of days followed by a bunch of days that are slightly different. And then, you know, this whole thing just constantly changes.
You know, at the very beginning of the week, she was quite screamy. So, you know, it felt like if she was awake, she was screaming and not necessarily distressed, just sort of giving the lungs a good go and maybe a bit grisly or I’m not quite sure what it was, but it was sort of day or night she was just not 100% happy. And then, you know, two days later that completely stopped and, you know, we haven’t struggled.
Sometimes that happens, especially when we’re trying to settle her to go to sleep. And that may well be the kind of awareness of, you know, wanting to having a bit of FOMO basically, her awareness of the social aspects of life. And I’m not sure, but, you know, that hasn’t happened a few days, but then now I’m dealing with the current problem and tomorrow there’ll be another one.
So, it’s completely just a case of taking each day as it comes, which again is something that I probably wasn’t as good at the first time around and was much more compelled to try and decipher every single behavioral change. Whereas now I basically just wait for the time to pass and think, oh, well, tomorrow it won’t be a problem, I’ll have something else to deal with. Yeah, it’s actually quite interesting.
I mean, the way that the human brain works and learns anything and actually just survives in the world is by deciphering patterns. So, if this, then that, when that happens, then this, and this is what makes my world predictable. And so we love patterns.
And often as a mom of a newborn, if they do something two days in a row, you think, oh gosh, this is it, right? Okay, so this is the pattern, this is what we must follow, or that really worked yesterday and so therefore it’ll work today. And babies don’t do that. And I think that’s part of the reason why we feel so out of our depth, because we can’t find patterns easily with newborns because every day is different.
So, being a little bit more flexible and going with the flow is really, really important, which is of course exactly what you’re doing. One of the things that I do think, and I just wanted to mention was that, the reason that she’s crying and fussing, you mentioned the word FOMO, at this stage, it’s not possible. And the reason for that is that they have no experience or expectations.
So she, and that’s one of the reasons why we always say to moms, don’t worry, you can’t spoil a baby at this age, because they really don’t form habits. It’s just like, if they’re demanding to be held to go to sleep, it’s because they lack the contact. It’s not because it’s a habit that they’re expecting it.
That changes at about 14 weeks, but at this age, there isn’t such a thing of expectation of what they’re missing out on or what they could be having. It is very much at this age, a sensory need and also a transition battle. So little ones of this age as part of their regulatory development, they start to have to transition from state.
It’s called state transition. So from going from an alert state to a calm state, or from going from a calm awake state to drowsy state, or going from a drowsy state to sleep state. And very often, particularly that drowsy to sleep state, they just really battle with, and they become a little bit niggly and they don’t like that feeling of kind of shifting into sleep space.
And so they might do a little bit of crying before sleep. And this is where one of the things that I certainly found as a new mom, and I think a lot of moms do, is that you start to worry, oh, I mustn’t let my baby cry it out. I mustn’t let her fuss.
I must be there for her. You hear all this noise on social media that if you let your baby cry for more than a minute, there’s gonna be all sorts of emotional damage. But the reality is that when they’re navigating state, just being around them, you don’t have to pick them up.
You don’t have to fix it for them. You can just pat them and kind of stroke their heads and do things like that, rather than having to kind of fuss with them and do something to fix it. And I often say to parents, and you probably know this because you’re a second time mom, but part of being a mom is being uncomfortable, becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Being okay with the fact that a toddler’s gonna throw a temper tantrum because they can’t have the sweeties in the sweetie aisle. You’re gonna be comfortable with that. Temper tantrum’s not gonna scare you.
That’s okay, because they’re still not having the sweetie in the sweetie aisle. And for newborns, it’s also being comfortable with this niggle doesn’t mean she’s unhappy. It doesn’t mean she is, and we project a lot.
It doesn’t mean that she’s being emotionally damaged. It doesn’t mean she’s got oodles of cortisol and stress hormones. It just doesn’t mean that.
It just means she’s navigating herself to sleep. And so the important thing is not that we’re gonna try and fix everything and make it all smooth for her, but that we’re just gonna be there with her while she navigates it a little bit. And that’s quite a different perspective from thinking about let her cry it out.
It’s a perspective of be there with her, help her to learn to soothe, but you don’t necessarily have to fix it. And I think moms kind of need to know that, that they don’t have to fix everything. It doesn’t always have to be perfect.
Yeah, I think that’s such good advice. And I think it speaks to a kind of broader parenting concept around teaching your children resilience. Now, I’m not necessarily suggesting that she needs to learn resilience at five weeks old, but certainly as a building block to a lifelong capacity to deal with disappointment, for example, or frustration.
Yeah, that is something that is important to me because it’s something I had to learn as an adult that was very, very difficult. And I think setting your kids up for that early is a good thing. As well as also, like you say, as a parent learning to cope with when the child is perhaps niggly or distressed and isn’t necessarily something to fix, it’s something to also cope with because they actually are okay.
And sometimes the simplest things will push her over the edge. Like last night, it was ratcheting up the white noise a little bit and putting some telement on her dummy that took her from screaming her head off to passing out. So, it’s not always something dramatic.
Yeah, no, absolutely. It’s a very good point. And I love that telement drops on the dummy and the white noise.
It’s a spot on approach. White noise, for those of you who don’t know is, it’s kind of almost like static or the sound that you hear in the sea, coming off the sea, or if you’ve tuned a radio to no station in the old days when you could tune a radio to no station, and it’s that kind of static sound or hairdryer or vacuum cleaner. And it really is amazing with soothing little ones.
In general, you should play white noise no more than 70 decibels, which is about the level I’m speaking at now, so that it’s not too noisy and it should be quite quiet if it’s being played throughout the night. So, and that’s because it can damage hearing. Having said that, and I think what you did, if I’m not mistaken, is you might’ve played it quite loud if she was crying.
And there’s nothing wrong with doing that occasionally. And I certainly did that with my little ones that when they’re in an absolute state, hysterically crying, kind of putting them in my arms, putting them in the dummy, putting on the white noise quite loud, so you can go 90 decibels, it can be actually be quite loud. And then it’s like, and then they kind of switch off.
And if anybody’s interested in seeing, there’s a million YouTube videos on kind of getting babies to soothe with white noise that look like that. You wouldn’t leave them at that volume after that, you would turn it right down. So yeah, spot on recommendation for moms from you.
Yeah, I was reminded of that actually in one of those episodes, either before the five week episode of Cass, you had said that exact thing, and it reminded me about the decibel volumes. And so it was a case of kind of turning it up temporarily and then bringing it right once she was asleep, bringing it right back down again, because it is definitely something to think about.
But yeah, white noise is magical as far as I’m concerned. Yeah, it really is great. And so is swaddling and so is carrying.
So, you know, if she does have one of those days like she had last weekend, I know you probably know that the crying curve starts typically at about two weeks, peaks at six weeks and then disappears by 12 weeks. So she’s kind of in her most fussy week this week, and then after that, it’s going to get better and better. But if she’s in that fussy week and understanding she’s not going to form habits, then it’s really looking for those sensory strategies, which is white noise, swaddling, and then putting her in a carrier.
And I think, what is the carrier that you use with her? Remind me. I use a, it’s called a NunuPi. It’s the stretchy one.
It’s literally a long, stretchy piece of fabric. I much prefer those to the ones with all the bells and whistles. I find them a bit complex.
I’d much rather just throw her in the stretchy one because it’s comfortable for me and it is for her. She loves it. Yeah, so I love those stretchy ones.
So those are kind of the Mai Tai wrap versions and that’s a stunning one. And then if anybody is looking, and I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the SnuggleRoo carrier. It’s also soft.
It’s also a wrap carrier, but it’s actually already in a shape. So you just slip it over your head instead of having to do the wrap. That’s also a great one, yeah.
So good. So popping her in the carrier works as well. Yeah, she loves it.
And also her swaddles. Loves her swaddles. Yeah, and that swaddling is just so important.
I mean, it inhibits those little reflexes and gives them proprioception. Are there any final questions from your side? No, nothing that I can think of because invariably my mind goes blank as soon as we start talking because there’s so many things that happen every day that I think, must chat to Meg about that. I never do.
But I think, you know, we’re on a good innings. I feel like she’s, if not predictable, she is certainly creating a few patterns and kind of rhythms that we are coming to understand, which of course will change next week. But she’s, yeah, she’s happy and she’s interesting to engage with.
And like I said, the smile is on its way, I feel. I lay her down on her play mat yesterday and she looked up at all the dingly danglies and her face lit up and I swear there was a smile. But we’ll find out in the next couple of weeks.
I will put my money on it that by this time next week, you’ll say, I definitely saw a smile. I’m quite sure that it’s a smile. Maybe it wasn’t, but quite sure it’s a smile.
So that’s gorgeous. I love it. We’ll enjoy her and yeah, and we’ll chat again next week.
Thank you. Thanks for chatting. Thanks, Julia.
Thanks to everyone who joined us. We will see you the same time next week. Until then, download ParentSense app and take the guesswork out of parenting.
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