Your baby’s world right now (Tiny little) feats of strength. Let’s get a little science-y for a minute. Good nutrition, including appropriate amounts of both macronutrients (carbohydrates, lipids, and protein) and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals), is important for your baby's overall development, including his immune system and brain development. These nutrients help provide cell membrane structure, regulate metabolism, and supply energy. For example, most cells in the body, especially those in the brain, use the carbohydrate glucose as the primary source of energy. Here's a brief description of how some of these ingredients work. Carbohydrates supply food energy for growth, body functions, and activity in addition to allowing protein and lipids to be used efficiently and normally. Lipids supply more than twice the energy of carbohydrates or protein to power growth and functionality. Fatty acids are one of the most abundant lipids in our body; linoleic and alpha-linolenic fatty acids are considered essential because our body cannot make them.
Linoleic and alpha-linolenic acids are building blocks for arachidonic acid (ARA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), respectively. DHA and ARA are important for brain and eye development. Proteins help develop, maintain, and repair new tissues throughout the body, including in the brain. Vitamin E is a fat-soluble vitamin; an antioxidant that is found in cells of the human body, including those found in baby’s developing eyes and brain. It is important in protecting cells including baby’s developing eyes and brain. Vitamin E is essential for structure and function of the human nervous system, retina, and skeletal muscle. Common sources of vitamin E include oil-containing grains, fortified cereals, vegetable oils, plants, and vegetables. 2’-FL Human Milk Oligosaccharide (HMO)* is a prebiotic previously only found† in breast milk. Prebiotics feed the good bacteria in the gut, where 70% of the immune system is located. And unlike other formulas, Similac has 2’-FL HMO, an immune-nourishing prebiotic that circulates throughout the body.
While breast milk is the best nutrition for your baby, if you choose to formula feed, Similac with 2’-FL HMO helps strengthen your baby’s immune system to be more like a breastfed infant’s. Similac Pro-Advance™ provides complete nutrition for your baby's first year and supports his immune system, and brain and eye development. Sleep patterns and tips at four months: Your baby might be sleeping about 12 to 15 hours total every day, including naps. He might start rolling over and waking himself up. If possible, give a few minutes to see if he will go back to sleep on his own. Keep thick blankets, comforters, pillows, and stuffed toys out of the crib. Have questions about SIDS? Learn about SIDS at the American Academy of Pediatrics. Your baby is beyond compare. You shouldn’t be concerned if your baby does something later or earlier than your friend's children. In general, by the end of his third month, here are some developments you can start looking for:
The ability to hold his head up steadily "Coo" and "goo" noises as well as other sounds Interest in reaching for familiar objects Focuses on closely held objects and follows them from side to side Things to think about now Help your 3-month-old engage with his world. You might not realize it, but your 3-month-old is becoming aware of his surroundings. Help familiarize him in some simple ways: Prop him up so he can watch what goes on around him.Put a non-breakable metal or plastic baby mirror in the crib or playpen. Show him the mirrors around your home. Rock him in a rocking chair or porch swing. As you hold him, talk softly and look into his eyes.Your baby needs some quiet time to babble, play, and explore his world, so turn off the radio, TV, or stereo. Give him different textures to feel, such as stuffed animals, plastic toys, or pieces of terry cloth or rubber. (Be sure that the pieces are not too small and that they cannot be torn off and swallowed.)
When you have your facts straight, and you have a parenting plan, you will be able to respond with confidence to all the well-meaning but often contrary or incorrect advice. So, your first step is to get smart! Know what you are doing, and know why you are doing it. During the early months of your baby's life, he sleeps when he is tired—it's really that simple. You can do very little to force a new baby to sleep when he doesn't want to sleep. Conversely, there is very little you can do to wake him up when he is sleeping soundly. A very important point to understand about newborn babies is that they have very, very tiny tummies. New babies grow rapidly; their diet is liquid, and it gets digested quickly. Breastmilk gets digested very quickly. Although it would be nice to lay your little bundle down at a predetermined bedtime and not hear a peep from him until morning, even the most naïve among us knows that this is not a realistic goal for a tiny baby. Newborns need to be fed every two to four hours-and sometimes even more often.
During those early months, your baby will have tremendous growth spurts that affect not only daytime, but also nighttime feedings as well, sometimes pushing that two- to four-hour schedule to a one- to two-hour schedule around the clock. You have probably heard that babies should start "sleeping through the night" at about two to four months of age. What you must understand is that, for a new baby, a five-hour stretch is a full night. Many (but nowhere near all) babies at this age can sleep uninterrupted from midnight to 5 a.m. (not that they always do), a far cry from what you may have thought "sleeping through the night" meant! Here we pause while the shock sinks in for those of you who have a baby who sleeps through the night but didn't know it. What's more, while the scientific definition of "sleeping through the night" is five hours, most of us wouldn't consider that anywhere near a full night's sleep for ourselves. Also, some of these sleep-through-the-nighters will suddenly begin waking more frequently, and it's often a full year or even two before your little one will settle into a mature, all-night, every night sleep pattern.
It is very natural for a newborn to fall asleep while sucking at the breast, a bottle or a pacifier. When a baby always falls asleep this way, he learns to associate sucking with falling asleep; over time, he cannot fall asleep any other way. A large percentage of parents struggling with older babies who cannot fall asleep or stay asleep are fighting this natural and powerful sucking-to-sleep association. Therefore, if you want your baby to be able to fall asleep without your help, it is essential that you sometimes let your newborn baby suck until he is sleepy, but not totally asleep. When you can, remove the breast from his mouth and let him finish falling asleep without something in his mouth. When you do this, your baby may resist, root and fuss to regain the nipple. It's perfectly OK to give him back the breast and start over a few minutes later. If you do this often enough, he will eventually learn how to fall asleep without sucking. Many pediatricians recommend that parents shouldn't let a newborn sleep longer than three or four hours without feeding, and the vast majority of babies wake far more frequently than that.
(There are a few exceptional babies who can go longer.) No matter what, your baby will wake up during the night. The key is to learn when you should pick her up for a night feeding and when you can let her go back to sleep on her own. Editor's note: Consider the more natural approach of having your baby sleep with you, where you can tend to her needs instantly and seamlessly. This is a time when you need to focus your instincts and intuition. You should try very hard to learn how to read your baby's signals. Here's a tip that is critically important for you to know: Babies make many sleeping sounds-from grunts to whimpers to outright cries, and these noises don't always signal awakening. These are what I call "sleeping noises," and your baby is nearly or even totally asleep during these episodes. I remember when my first baby, Angela, was a newborn. Her cry awakened me many times, yet she was asleep in my arms before I even made it from cradle to rocking chair. She was making sleeping noises.
In my desire to respond to my baby's every cry, I actually taught her to wake up more often! You need to listen and watch your baby carefully. Learn to differentiate between these sleeping sounds and those awake and hungry sounds. If she is awake and hungry, you'll want to feed her as quickly as possible. If you respond immediately when she is hungry, she will most likely go back to sleep quickly. But if you let her crying escalate, she will completely wake herself up, and it will be difficult for her to go back to sleep. Not to mention that you will then be wide awake, too! A newborn baby sleeps about 16 to 18 hours per day, and that sleep is distributed evenly over six to seven brief sleep periods. You can help your baby distinguish between nighttime sleep and daytime sleep, and thus help him sleep for longer periods at night. Begin by having your baby take his daytime naps in a light room where he can hear the noises of the day-perhaps in a bassinet or cradle located in the main area of your home.
Make nighttime sleep dark and quiet. You can also help your baby differentiate day naps from night sleep by using a nightly bath and changing him into sleeping pajamas to signal the difference between the two times. One way to encourage good sleep is to get familiar with your baby's sleepy signals and put him down to sleep as soon as he seems tired. A baby cannot put himself to sleep, nor can he understand his own sleepy signs. Yet a baby who is encouraged to stay awake when his body is craving sleep is typically an unhappy baby. Over time, this pattern develops into sleep deprivation, which further complicates your baby's developing sleep maturity. Learn to read your baby's sleepy signs, and put him to bed when that window of opportunity presents itself. I've yet to hear a parent tell me that he or she loves getting up throughout the night to tend to a baby's needs. As much as we adore our little bundles, it's tough when you're awakened over and over again, night after night.