Six Hours for Six Weeks Old
Erik turned six weeks old this past Sunday. He celebrated by sleeping for six hours at one stretch that night! He hasn’t done six hours any other nights yet, but has done 4 or 5 hours several times now — which is still a great improvement for me over only three hours from the start of one feeding to the beginning of the next! He is nearly 12 lbs now — we weighed him last Friday and he came in at 11.75 lbs, so 12 lbs is coming very soon. The 3-6 month onesies are starting to fit well and the 0-3 month sleepers will be packed away soon. He will still be able to wear his 0-3 month pants/shorts for a while yet — his legs are very short compared to his torso. 
He’s also filling up his little bassinet pretty well. I wouldn’t be so concerned about this except for the fact that it has thick fabric sides, and although he can’t roll over yet, he can scoot to the edge somehow and also kind of “flip up” onto his side. I’ve found him with his face rather close to the side too many times for comfort. Our original plan was to keep Erik in our room until he could mostly sleep through the night if possible, since he will be sharing a room with Madeline and we don’t want to keep her up with his screams when he wakes up to eat. It’s also a lot further to have to go to the other bedroom to get him as opposed to just picking him up from the bassinet at the side or end of our bed.
There just isn’t room for anything bigger in our room than his bassinet, so my first solution was to buy a cheap replacement to use until he is sleeping longer — one with mesh sides so that if he scooted up against the side he could still breathe. I found something on craigslist for 10 bucks that I thought might work, but Tony objected to the idea of us cramming yet another baby item into our small house with its limited storage space. So, Tony thought we should “hack” our current bassinet to make it more breathable.
We went to wal-mart last night and purchased some mesh-type fabric. With this, we can make a “window” on both sides of the bassinet for breathing. And by “we” I mean Tony, because I don’t trust my sewing ability enough to undertake such a project. There are bars on the sides of the bassinet, so the fabric/seams don’t have to be structurally supportive. But the design of the bassinet’s removable fabric cover is a bit tricky, so it’s not a simple project.
We didn’t get very far on the actual sewing last night, but I am sure we’ll have some proud pictures of Tony’s bassinet hacking to post soon. I can see it now– the next hit show on one of those home channels will be “pimp my bassinet.” 