Wonder Weeks

bellie1223

EJ is eight weeks, and has been fussier than usual tonight; as I'm feeding her again for the second time in an hour and going on two hours or more of rocking just trying to get her to sleep, it occurred to me that she's been fussier the last three days. So then I Google wonder weeks and find that eight weeks is the one they discover patterns and that sleep disturbances are common.

What do you all think about wonder weeks? It totally makes sense to me that they would be crankier during a time of learning and growing, but what doesn't make sense is that they would be so predictable. We always hear that babies develop on their own schedule and hit milestones at different times so why is this any different?

Ceridwen77

The wonder weeks are typically said to occur around certain weeks, not exactly during that week. For example, wonder week 8 can occur +/- a week. Your baby at 8 weeks is actually in his/her 9th week of life. Developmental milestones do occur around the same time for babies and I definitely see my LO going through changes this week (8th week of life).

ETA wonder weeks are actually calculated from full term births as well. So if your baby was 3 wks early your week 8 wonder week would occur around 10wks (11th week of life) - so you can see how developmental differences are taken into account.

gumby22c

To be honest I'd never heard of the wonder weeks until after Z got here. But I have noticed that he's is generally more fussy and doing some of the things described during the wonder weeks right on par. He's going to be 9 weeks tomorrow and I definitely think we are in the middle of the patterns one now.

But as the PP poster mentioned, it's not exact and will vary when babies go through these WW. Sometimes babies are just fussy.

cdepperschmidt

Makes so much sense! Yesterday, for the first time my almost 8 week old was literally distracted by the things around us while nursing. His sleep has also sucked the last two nights.

angelinthepit23

My cousin just told me about WW and warned me of this one. I sleep with the tv on so I have enough light to change LO. I'm in the process of moving everything for feeds/changes to his nursery so I can take him into a darker room for his bottle diaper change. Finally bought a nightlight the other day. I'm hoping it gives off enough light that I can see but not engage LO.

MargaretC5

With DS I was really interesting in the WW book. As I started reading the book, it repeated itself a lot. In the beginning almost any week can be a wonder week, because as the PP mentioned there is some differences in when the WW occur. I love the concept, but I think the book is poorly written (I ended up just reading the summaries at the end of each chapter).

bellie1223

@MargaretC5 yeah that's kind of what I was wondering too, if the book was worth it, I was only reading the website and there's not a ton of information there because they want you to buy the book. It's probably there, I didn't explore a lot but also wondering what kind of science is behind the whole thing.

angelinthepit23 said:

My cousin just told me about WW and warned me of this one. I sleep with the tv on so I have enough light to change LO. I'm in the process of moving everything for feeds/changes to his nursery so I can take him into a darker room for his bottle diaper change. Finally bought a nightlight the other day. I'm hoping it gives off enough light that I can see but not engage LO.

I keep a dim light on in the nursery across the hall--it gives off just enough light that it is still dark in our room where I feed her (she sleeps in a pnp next to my bed right now) and is bright enough I can see for diaper changes in the middle of the night. This way I don't have to be turning any lights on or off --our house is set up so the doorways are right across from one another.

CheeseSticksfor4

We are currently in a WW ourselves! My 8 week old has never really been a crier since birth. The past three nights all she's done is cry! I'm going to have to read up on these WW.

rachswi

I think Zeke must be in a wonder week. (7weeks old yesterday)... Since we got back from his grandma's he's been sleeping less and less (especially at night. My lovely 5-7 hour stretches have been reduced to 3-4 and he's waking more frequently). He's so fussy because he's tired but will not go to sleep/stay asleep.

Does the wonder week last a full week or is that anybody's guess/different for each kid?

dramaphile

rachswi said:

I think Zeke must be in a wonder week. (7weeks old yesterday)... Since we got back from his grandma's he's been sleeping less and less (especially at night. My lovely 5-7 hour stretches have been reduced to 3-4 and he's waking more frequently). He's so fussy because he's tired but will not go to sleep/stay asleep.

Does the wonder week last a full week or is that anybody's guess/different for each kid?

Going by the chart on the app, wonder weeks can last from a few days to multiple weeks. The 8 week wonder week looks like about 1.5-2 weeks long.

rachswi

dramaphile said:

rachswi said:

I think Zeke must be in a wonder week. (7weeks old yesterday)... Since we got back from his grandma's he's been sleeping less and less (especially at night. My lovely 5-7 hour stretches have been reduced to 3-4 and he's waking more frequently). He's so fussy because he's tired but will not go to sleep/stay asleep.

Does the wonder week last a full week or is that anybody's guess/different for each kid?

Going by the chart on the app, wonder weeks can last from a few days to multiple weeks. The 8 week wonder week looks like about 1.5-2 weeks long.

*insert crying emoticon here*