Your Baby Week by Week
A 12-Week Expert Blog Series for New Families
Welcome to one of the most profound, exhausting, tender, and transformative journeys you will ever take. The first twelve weeks of your baby’s life — sometimes called the “fourth trimester” — are unlike any other chapter. They are full of wonder, full of questions, and often full of moments where you find yourself wondering if what’s happening is normal. This blog series exists to answer those questions — warmly, clearly, and without judgment.
Meet Your Guide: Roxanne Stinson
Our Vision & Mission
Our Vision
A world where every new family feels supported, informed, and deeply cared for during the most transformative season of their lives — no matter their background, experience, or circumstances.
Our Mission
To provide compassionate, expert postpartum and newborn care that empowers families with the knowledge, confidence, and hands-on support they need to thrive in the fourth trimester and beyond.
At Tender Luv Nu-Born Care, we believe that postpartum support is not a luxury — it is a necessity. When families are well-supported, babies thrive, parents heal, and the entire family unit is stronger for it.
The Purpose of This Blog Series
There is no shortage of parenting content on the internet. What there is a shortage of is content that is warm without being vague, expert without being clinical, and honest without being alarming. This blog series was created to fill that gap.
Each weekly post is designed to help you:
❖ Understand what is normal: for your baby at each specific week — so you spend less time worrying and more time enjoying.
❖ Navigate common challenges: like growth spurts, gas, cluster feeding, sleep regressions, and fussiness — with practical, actionable guidance.
❖ Track meaningful milestones: from the first real smile to tummy time head lifts to longer sleep stretches — so you can celebrate every step forward.
❖ Feel informed and empowered: not overwhelmed. Our goal is always to give you just enough to feel confident, not so much that you feel paralyzed.
❖ Connect your baby’s weekly care report: to the bigger developmental picture — so the data you receive each week has meaningful context.
How This Blog Series Can Help You
❖ Warm, Non-Judgmental Tone: No shame, no fear-mongering, no comparison. Every post is written as if we’re sitting across from you at your kitchen table — honest, encouraging, and real.
❖ Clinically Grounded, Practically Written: Every piece of guidance is rooted in current best practices for newborn care — but written for real parents, not medical professionals. No jargon, no overwhelm.
❖ Connected to Your Weekly Care Report: If you’re a TLNC client receiving weekly care reports, each blog post is designed to give context to your baby’s specific data — so your report and this guide work hand in hand.
❖ A Parenting Corner Tip Every Week: Each post includes one focused, practical tip tailored to that exact week of development — something you can actually try today.
This blog series was created and written under the guidance of Roxanne Stinson, founder and owner of Tender Luv Nu-Born Care, Inc. — a Los Angeles-based postpartum doula and newborn care agency with over a decade of experience supporting new families.
Roxanne’s journey into newborn care began long before it became a business — it began with a calling. She recognized early in her career that the period immediately following birth is one of the most underserved seasons in a family’s life. New parents are sent home from the hospital with a baby and very little else: no manual, no map, and often no village. Roxanne became that village.
Over more than a decade, Roxanne and her team have provided in-home postpartum and newborn care to families across Los Angeles, offering overnight newborn care, postpartum doula support, infant sleep guidance, and feeding assistance. She has walked alongside hundreds of families through those fragile, precious first weeks — celebrating milestones, normalizing challenges, and bringing deep calm to moments of uncertainty.
Her approach to care is rooted in three core beliefs: that every parent is already doing better than they think, that information delivered with warmth is the most powerful support tool there is, and that no family should have to navigate the fourth trimester alone. This blog series is an extension of that mission.
You're Already Part of the Family 💛
If you're reading this, you're already a Tender Luv Nu-Born Care family — and that means you have something even better than a blog: you have us, right there with you. This series was created with you in mind, as a companion to the personalized weekly care reports you receive from our team each week.
Think of each blog post as the "why" behind what you're seeing in your report. When your report says sleep is consolidating, the weekly blog tells you what that means developmentally. When feeding patterns shift, the blog helps you understand what's driving it. Together, they give you the fullest possible picture of how your baby is growing.
As always, Roxanne and the team are just a call or message away. You are never navigating this alone.
📞 (323) 304-6770 | ✉️ roxanne@tenderluvnuborn.com | 🌐 tenderluvnuborn.com
Week 1 With Your Newborn
Your newborn's first week is one of the most tender and overwhelming chapters of new parenthood — and almost everything you're wondering about is completely normal. From sleeping 16–18 hours a day to dark meconium diapers and the Moro startle reflex, this guide walks you through exactly what to expect in Week 1 with warmth, clarity, and zero judgment. You've got this, and we're right here alongside you.
Week 2 With Your Newborn
Week 2 with your newborn brings a subtle but mighty shift — your baby is starting to wake up to the world, cluster feeding may hit hard, and the evening witching hour might make its first appearance. This guide covers everything that's normal in your baby's second week, from sleep and feeding to diaper changes, umbilical cord care, and those early alert moments that feel like magic.
Week 3 With Your Newborn
Week 3 is the week many parents feel blindsided — just when things felt manageable, the 3-week growth spurt arrives, gas and fussiness peak, and sleep gets disrupted all over again. But something magical is also happening: your baby is starting to genuinely see your face, make their first soft sounds, and lift their head during tummy time. This guide covers everything normal in Week 3, from cluster feeding and infant dyschezia to their first real tub bath and those beautiful early coos.
Week 4 With Your Newborn
One month in — and your baby is becoming someone you can feel. Week 4 brings the witching hour in full force, cluster feeding into the evenings, and the one-month well visit with its first vaccines. But it also brings something extraordinary: the very first real social smile, longer awake windows, deliberate coos, and a baby who is beginning to see and respond to the world in an entirely new way. This guide covers everything to expect in your newborn's fourth week, including how to survive the witching hour and when to start a bedtime routine.
Week 5 With Your Newborn
Five weeks in and something is quietly shifting — the early intensity is beginning to give way to the first hints of a rhythm. Week 5 brings the 5-week growth spurt (yes, another one), sleep beginning to consolidate with longer overnight stretches, feeding becoming noticeably more efficient, and a baby whose smiles, coos, and visual tracking are becoming more intentional by the day. This guide covers everything to expect — including when to size up diapers and how to introduce your first sleep cue.
Week 6 With Your Newborn
Week 6 is the week most parenting books don't fully prepare you for — fussiness peaks, colic-like crying intensifies, sleep feels more disrupted than ever, and six weeks of exhaustion lands all at once. But Week 6 is also the week that changes everything: this is when your baby's first full, unmistakable social smile arrives — eyes crinkling, face lighting up, responding to yours with pure joy. This guide covers everything to expect in Week 6, from surviving the witching hour peak to understanding colic, pacifier introduction, and the remarkable developmental leaps happening inside your baby right now.
Week 7 With Your Newborn
You turned the corner. Week 7 is the week many parents first feel like they can breathe again — fussiness begins to ease, sleep stretches lengthen, and your baby's personality starts to announce itself unmistakably. Social smiles are coming freely, real conversations are emerging, tummy time is stronger than ever, and the rewards of the fourth trimester are finally starting to outweigh the hard. This guide covers everything to expect in Week 7, including why your baby may suddenly get distracted during feeds and how to keep protecting sleep gains even on difficult nights.
Week 8 With Your Newborn
Two months old — and this week deserves to be celebrated. Week 8 brings the 2-month well visit with its full round of vaccinations, another growth spurt that may temporarily disrupt the sleep gains you've been building, and a baby who is smiling freely, cooing purposefully, seeing the world more clearly, and beginning to bat at objects with intent. This guide covers everything to expect at the 2-month milestone — including exactly which vaccines are given, how to care for your baby post-vaccination, what the dream feed is and why it works, and why the fourth trimester is finally, visibly nearing its end.
Week 9 With Your Newborn
Nine weeks in, and something has shifted — the chaos is giving way to rhythm. Week 9 is one of the most rewarding weeks of the fourth trimester: sleep patterns are becoming more predictable with overnight stretches reaching 5 to 7 hours for many babies, a loose feeding schedule is forming organically, and your baby is smiling, cooing, and near-laughing in ways that make every sleepless night feel worth it. This guide covers everything to expect in Week 9 — including when it's safe to let baby sleep longer at night, how to handle distracted feeding, and the tummy time milestone your baby may be approaching right now.
Week 10 With Your Newborn
Ten weeks in — and this is the week many parents finally feel like themselves again. Week 10 brings the most reliable sleep of the fourth trimester so far, with overnight stretches reaching 6 to 8 hours for many babies, a feeding rhythm that feels natural and easy, and — the moment you have been waiting for — your baby's first real laugh. This guide covers everything to expect in Week 10, including when naps start to anchor, how to handle the split bedtime feed, why overnight diaper changes can become less frequent, and the mini push-up milestone your baby may be hitting right now.
Week 11 With Your Newborn
One more week — the fourth trimester is almost over. Week 11 brings the 3-month growth spurt arriving (or approaching), the last major feeding surge of the newborn period, sleep potentially wobbling temporarily, and a baby who is laughing, producing early consonant sounds, exploring their own hands with fascination, and pushing up confidently during tummy time. This guide covers everything to expect in the penultimate week of the fourth trimester — including how to protect your sleep gains during the growth spurt, what a "regulated" breast milk supply actually means, and why your baby is suddenly studying their own hands like they've never seen them before.
Week 12 With Your Newborn
You did it. Twelve weeks. Eighty-four days of round-the-clock love, feeding, soothing, and showing up — and the baby in your arms is proof of what extraordinary care looks like. Week 12 is the close of the fourth trimester — and this final guide celebrates every milestone your baby has reached, from that first real laugh to strong tummy time push-ups to the deep, secure attachment that is the most important thing you've built together. It also covers what to expect in the weeks just ahead: the 3-month sleep regression, when solids become appropriate, and the rolling milestone on the horizon.