What do the books say about a 4 month old baby??

Growth: baby would likely have doubled her birth weight. Well that was achieved a while ago because she was born 5lbs1oz, but at her wellness visit she was 12lbs2oz putting her up in the 6th percentile! Incredibly her height is 25.5″, which puts her leaping above the 75th percentile where we would expect her to be more or less based on Chris and I’s heights. However this means for her height-weight ratio she is in the 0.1 percentile!!! But doctor doesn’t care because she looked at her physically and said she is just fine ☺️

Motor skills: baby grab and hold things, put them to her mouth.  Aviana can grab and hold onto toys, but her ambition to grab and pick up toys waaaay too big for her is high. So she gets stressed and frustrated when she can’t put a bigger toy all in her mouth. She can put both feet in her mouth!! It’s one of her favourite hobbies – I now know where the yoga pose ‘happy baby’ comes from! (I lovvvvve that pose!)

Motor skills: baby’s head should no longer wobble and hold her head on her own, they can hold their head and chest up when in tummy time. Yes Aviana is doing all this, but her tummy time has only become better in the past week or so.

Motor skills: some babies may have figured out how to roll tummy to back. You’d have thought with Aviana hating tummy time she’d want to roll onto her back! But no, she’s not there yet. No rolling just yet!!! She is able to move around however by kicking the ground and pushing her body up moving it to the side- we wondered how when we woke up in the morning she would be at 90 degrees to how we left her. Then we watched her once on the monitor in the middle of the night. She was kicking like a crazied bucking horse!! 

Sleep: baby should be able to enjoy a full night and can typically sleep 7 to 8 hours. Baby might be sleeping 14-16 hours in 24 hours. Aviana sleeps for 11-14 hours, of which most of that is night time. She can now stay in her crib and go in and out of sleep for 11.5hrs, she started skipping her night feed for about two weeks now. I feel like a normal person again! She may wake up several times a night but gets herself back to sleep, especially now she sucks her thumb!!! We are not entirely sure how much sleep Aviana gets at daycare but they typically put her down to nap theee times a day for 20-60minutes dependent on how she does. I’d say we are exceeding in this area! 

Eating: some babies may start eating solids at 4 months. Our pediatrician said we could start purée solids. But we don’t think Aviana is ready just yet. I’d like her to be a bit more stable when sitting up. Plus it would be better to start her when I get back from my trip to Brussels. She will be 5 months then.

Communication: babies begin to notice that people respond to their cries. I thought Aviana was quite a cry-ey baby early on, but she really isn’t now. She is very chilled. She will let us know when she is wet, when she is tired her cry is very different, when she gets frustrated or bored, that’s a different cry. When she is hungry she will pull a sad face, and when she is scared she will pull a mega scream and sad face as if to say what the hell are you doing??!  (Ie loud bang, knocked herself etc). She loves to smile at people who play with her, she doesn’t giggle regularly, but she does when someone tries really hard.

Other things of note.  I’m still breastfeeding Aviana, she has days when she doesn’t nurse well because she gets distracted easily and I feel like quitting and switching to formula. But then there are the days that I love when I get to nurse and snuggle her. Pumping is also soooo time consuming. I should celebrate making it this far!!

Aviana gets called a boy 75% of the time-mostly because she has a lot of blue clothes!!! But her hair is growing, it will be a while before she really looks like a girl. Her eye lashes are getting longer by the day and if you look just at her eyes you would think they are girl’s eyes! I don’t really mind when people ask ‘how old is he?’.

Story time is becoming more fun and interesting, she currently really likes ‘That’s not my dinosaur!’, she also likes a change in tone of voice when the story is being read to her. She loves dancing with me to the nursery rhymes.

Aviana is very strong on her legs and can hold herself up standing against the sofa! 

All in all, life definitely has gotten a bit easier since she hit 4 months, and I feel incredibly lucky to have this little cutie in my life.