Autumn – Month 6
Wow! 6 months. People always said it would fly past and it didn’t with Austin, but boy has it done with Autumn. I suppose having two children makes time go at double speed. But here we are at this big milestone. It feels like it was just a month ago that we were in the height of summer with this amazing little newborn. Now we have a chunky baby, with opinions and an awesome personality of her own.
Autumn had her first time away from Mummy and Daddy. She stayed with Nanny and Grandad for a couple of hours whilst I got my hair done. My Mum said that she was really good, but she could tell that she missed me. She fed really well and had a nice long sleep at Nanny and Grandad’s house which was lovely to hear.
Sleeping
She’s still a creature of routine with her naps but the morning and afternoon naps have got shorter. Towards the beginning of the month, she started dropping some of her morning naps to just 45 minutes and by the end of the month, both her morning and afternoon naps were just 45 minutes long. Her lunchtime nap is generally at least an hour and a half to two hours. We’ve had to adjust our trips out a little as she gets upset if she doesn’t get her lunchtime nap now.
Here’s her schedule –
Wake up – between 6 – 7 am
1st nap – 8:45ish for around 45 minutes
2nd nap – 11:30ish for around 2 hours
3rd nap – 3:30ish for around 45 minutes
Bedtime – 6:30 pm
That being said, on the days we go out, she generally just goes down to sleep about 2 hours after she last woke up.
She’s now 6 months old, so she can go into her own room, but we are going to wait until after Christmas as I’m not ready to say goodbye yet. It’s lovely in the morning when she wakes up all smiley and happy and then our little boy comes in and climbs on the bed to say good morning to her in her cot.
Feeding
I started the month combi feeding by formula and expressed milk, but then switched to purely feeding formula. She gets an 8 oz bottle at 7 am, 11 am, 2:30 pm, 6 pm and 10 pm. She usually gets close to finishing all the milk, with around ½ an oz left.
We started weaning her at the 6-month mark, but she hasn’t been very interested in the food at the moment. I’ve tried her on baby rice, carrot, butternut squash, sweet potato and parsnip, but she isn’t quite ready. So from here, I’m just going to offer her a small amount of food every couple of days to see if she shows any signs of eating it. At the moment, she is clamping her mouth shut and turning her head away, so she is indicating that she isn’t ready. I don’t want to pressure her, so we’ll just continue to offer it and if she refuses that’s fine.
Nappies
We’ve moved into purely using size 3 nappies. We definitely have a lot fewer poonamis, due to the bigger nappies. We are also finding that we have fewer leaks overnight as well. We do change her nappy when we feed her at 10 pm which I think helps with this.
Mental Development
Autumn has come on leaps and bounds in this area. She’s really interested in toys and how they work. She’s got some highchair toys and she loves to spin and twist the parts on them. She’s also got some hanging toys when she is in her big cot which she loves to reach out and touch and try and pull down.
She clearly remembers people’s faces. She’ll give me the biggest grin when I come into her eye-line. She is the same with people she recognises. For people she doesn’t know, she is intent on staring at them as if she is taking in all their features.
She’s started blowing raspberries, which is very cute. Well, until she wakes up at 3 am and starts blowing them and laughing…
We always use the main bath to wash her in now and she absolutely loves splashing about in there. It’s a bit shocking when she splashes water on her own face, but she doesn’t cry.
Physical Development
She loves jumping. If she’s on your lap, she wants to be held up to jump, if she’s in her Jumperoo, she’s having the best time. Even if she’s sitting on your lap, she is trying to scoot herself forward. I wonder whether she’ll be a bum shuffler when the time comes.
I had her weighed at 5 ½ months and she was 15lbs 1 oz. She’s now outgrown her 3 – 6 months clothes and so she’s in her 6 – 9 month clothes. Although she’s still quite light, I think she is quite long as it’s full-length clothes like sleepsuits and trousers that don’t seem to fit that well. Wish us luck with the weaning and whatever else comes in the next month. See you next month.
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