Week Six
Just when you might be starting to feel a bit more confident about caring for your baby - nature has a surprise for you!
Welcome to Wonder Weeks!
As well as a physical growth spurt, common around 4-6 weeks, this week will see significant brain development underway. If your baby was born on her due date, around five weeks she will experience the first Wonder Week.
These developmental surges are commonly called Leaps. They place extra demand on the baby as they wire their brain in new ways. Often their behaviour during these times is described as The Three Cs - Clinginess, Crankiness and Crying.
Although the process can be stressful, they are followed by noticeable changes in your child. One way to think of them is as an update to your baby’s operating system. Some takes ages to load and you can’t do much until they do! All you do is wait until the restart and move towards the next one. Your baby isn’t broken, they are advancing.
Feeding
You can expect an increase in feeding during a Wonder Week. Breastmilk is brain food and babies brains will never grow as rapidly as they do in this first year. Human milk is uniquely designed for the needs of human infants. Each species of mammal has different needs to key nutrients like fat, protein and carbohydrates. Animals like cows need to get up and walk almost immediately after birth so they need to grow bones and muscles rapidly. Humans don’t walk for a whole year after they are born but they need to grow brains quickly. And breastmilk is exactly what they need to do this.
Sleep
You can expect it to be trickier for your baby to fall asleep and stay asleep when there is so much going on. Babies can seem tired but not be able to relax and drift into sleep. Your baby might sleep longer and better when they are in a baby carrier, pram or moving car as the motion seems to help them fall asleep and move from one sleep cycle to the next. All your soothing techniques can help but nothing will help every time!
Milestones
It might be a coincidence but just when being a parent of a demanding baby seems to be all give and not a lot of receive … they reward you with their first intentional smile! While reflexive moves of their mouth and face during sleep can appear from birth, the real smile you have been waiting for is when your baby looks you in the eyes and suddenly a smile appears, as if to say “Its You!” and everything is okay.
