The Fourth Trimester, Part One
Recreating the womb in the first three months after Hase's birth
By Alex on July 22, 2019
As new parents, we’ve been hearing a lot about the idea that there’s actually a ‘fourth trimester.’ The concept is that when a baby is born, he is really not ready for the outside world in a developmental sense. It takes roughly three months for him to get used to life outside the womb. For parents, much of this time is spent soothing the baby by trying to recreate a womb-like environment with swaddling, white noise, and gently bouncing or rocking him to sleep.
This felt pretty much true for us, especially in retrospect. While I’m not sure exactly when things changed, we are definitely past the fourth trimester now. Hase wants to soothe himself to sleep rather than having us do it for him. Bouncing on the yoga ball is no longer the panacea it once was. To commemorate this milestone passing, here’s a bunch of photos from Hase’s first three months of life. I’m going to post them in three parts (one for each month) to avoid inundating your inbox with baby photos.