The End of Tracking for Logan

Both Allan and I have been big fans of the online Trixie Tracker. We started tracking pumping, feedings, diapers and sleeps when Logan was just over one month old until he was 7 months. Allan and I have decided to stop tracking but it's helped us in so many ways -so here's a post dedicated to our tracker and six months of data collection.

Reason's why we loved our tracker

-Allan could check from work how our day was going

-I could see that the hard work put into sleep training was paying off; I needed all the motivation I could get!

-Even though it only took a few minutes a day people thought I was a supermom when they saw our site ;)

-When Grandma and Grandpa babysat I could look at the last few days of data and say with great accuracy what to expect from sleep, feeding and diapers ('He had a good nap this morning so he'll likely take about an hour and a half nap around two, around 6:30 he'll want to cuddle and might sleep for thirty minutes...') Truly data driven parenting.

-The first three months are fuzzy in my mind. It's nice to look back and see that we got through it!

-We've passed on the site info to friends who have new babies so they can see what the patterns look like and what to expect

-I love analyzing data and this gave me a little project :)

Sleep!

One of the reasons why we are stopping our tracking is that Logan now consistently sleeps through the night. He now doesn't even wake up at night for soother. The best thing that we did was switch to feeding Logan large volumes of milk four times a day (8am, 12pm, 4pm, 8pm) and then decreasing his night feedings. This had a immediate effect on his sleeping pattens and made going out on outings more predictable.

Month 1

Month 6

Pumping
Okay, all male relative have permission to skip this section.
Giving Logan breast milk was very important to me for many of reasons. Before having Logan I thought I could breastfeed if I just stuck with and got help from my doula. I went to the breastfeeding classes at the hospital and read up on it and thought I could do it no problem. But I found it awkward, painful and stressful. I could do it with Allan's help but I was afraid of being at home with a hungry baby and not being able to get him to latch by myself. We had a chat with our doctor who basically said 'having a baby is stressful enough. Any breast milk you can give your baby is a special gift -it doesn't matter how he gets it.' And so I pumped for four months and Logan did not have any formula until he was three months.

Anyone who has pumped breast milk knows it's time consuming -the whole process and sterilizing afterwards...maybe twenty minutes or so, compared to one minute to make a formula bottle. The first month I was pumping five times a day, often when Logan slept. If you look above at Logan's sleep pattens this didn't leave a lot of time for me to sleep. I think this whole thing shows how determined I was and it's something that I'm happy I could give Logan. Would I do it again if I have another baby? Probably not. LOL

Solids

According to our tracker Logan has tried over forty different foods so far!

Diapers
Did we ever change a lot of dirty diapers at the very beginning! Since the start of tracking we have recorded 832 diaper changes. Only maybe fifty were cloth diapers but I am happy to say that amazingly Markham composts their diapers.

Good bye, Trixie Tracker!

We love you!