Dear Emily,

**Only 4 weeks late, right?  I’ve still got to post on her baby dedication service too!! Oy ve.  Hopefully sometime soon life slows down just a bit.**

 

Well sweet girl, we’ve made it half way to a year.  Mama’s already got ideas for your 1st birthday party swirling around in her head, but in the mean time we have a lot to celebrate.  This has been a BIG month for you and I can’t believe everything you’ve accomplished.

At the beginning of the month you were strong enough to sit up straight, but had no understanding about the balance needed to stay that way.  We noticed you were wanting to sit up all the time (as opposed to wanting to stand as you have the past 4 months!) so we would sit you up in the middle of the nursing cushion with your toys when you were playing on the floor.  After only a few weeks, you were about to sit up on your own without automatically tipping over when reaching for a toy and about a week before you hit 6 months, you were able to play sitting up completely on your own.  We’re so proud of you!

We’ve been nursing some budding teeth for a few months now, but this month they finally decided it was time to make an entrance.  Starting right after the five month mark, you were hurting over them every evening (making sleeping difficult) and you wanted to nurse constantly to help with the pain.  A few frozen bananas along the way probably helped as well, and right at 6 months you finally woke up with with a little tooth sprouting out!  We’re loving that toothy little grin you give us now!

Oh!  I nearly forgot!  This month we also heard the delightful sounds of your expanded vocabulary!  We’re not nearly at the stage of real words yet, but you love to ‘talk’ to us in a language of ba-ba, la-la, wa-wa, and DA-DA!  Did we ever clap in excitement when you came up with that one!  You don’t say it TO your Dada yet, but I’m sure you’ll make the association soon.  Not that I would mind you getting Mama in as your first word!  Don’t forget who it is that feeds you and gets up with you every night, ok?

Your 6th month was also one of the crappiest you’ve had so far.  You woke up towards the end of the month with a cold and lots of congestion, and ever since you’ve hated lying down flat in your crib.  We’ve tried just about everything, but we may just have to wait out this cold.  I know you’ll be back to your normal, sleeping through the night self, soon.

I can’t believe how much you’ve changed over the past 6 months.  When we first brought you home you were so itty bitty and just wanted to cuddle all of the time, and now you’re babbling and trying to crawl and STILL just want to cuddle all the time (and Mama’s arms are getting tired!).

Finally home!

 

One through six months.

sleep training and giggles

I mentioned many moons ago that I was attempting to help Emily learn to fall asleep without props so that down the road (she was only 5 or 6 weeks) she didn’t need a soother, or to be rocked to sleep.  In some ways, I failed at this (she REALLY likes nursing to sleep), but I’m slowly trying to wean her off of that prop, and we’re working on sleep training her now that she’s 5 months.

And can I say *knock on wood* that it has been going really well?

Emily goes down within about 5 minutes now when we’ve completed her bedtime routine and finally laid her down to sleep.  Most night she’s sleeping 8-9 hours straight and her naps have gotten more consistent as a side benefit.

A few months ago (i.e before the dreaded 4 month sleep shift) Emily had been sleeping 8 hours a night consistently every night, and then all of a sudden stopped cold turkey right before her 4 month birthday.  Quite a few people have told me that their babies also stopped sleeping through the night at 4 months, so I would assume that around that age marker babies become significantly more active and have higher caloric needs and it can take a little while for baby and mom (read: milk production) to start producing more during the day.  The fact that Emily slept through the night prior to this point is through no effort on my part; she just started doing it.

Sleeping through the night seems to be an important stage in the eyes of many parents but in our household the struggle has always been getting her down in the first place.  Emily’s very first night in the world she would fuss and cry any time she was set down in her isolette beside my bed.  She wanted to be cuddled and rocked, and I think we may have gotten about 3 hours sleep total that night (none too fun after 20 hours of labour and 36 hours awake).  Little did we know that this would be the norm for our little baby.  She LOVES to cuddle and fall asleep in people’s arms.

All this to say that until the beginning of January we were spending most of our evenings nursing and cuddling her and every time we would put her down she would wake up and cry. Soon came the day that I said enough is enough and I pulled out the sleep training resources again. 

Below is the routine that has been working for us, and we usually start it between 7 & 8pm.

- Bath: Craig and Emily’s time together while I prep her room; fan and humidifier turned on, curtains closed, swaddleMe laid out on her bed, wall lights turned on (low light)
- Nurse: Usually only a quick one but sometimes she drags it out.
- Cuddle and reading: usually we’ll read Goodnight Moon, Guess How Much I Love You, or On the Night You Were Born (my favourite).
- Sit: probably the most important part of Emily’s routine; we don’t talk or rock, just sit there with her body upright until I can feel her muscles relaxing and she’s yawning and staring into space.  Takes less than 5 minutes.
- Sleep: lay her down, swaddle her while she’s lying in crib

The sitting part seems to be important for her as she gets to stay in our arms while she becomes un-stimulated, but doesn’t fall asleep there.   Once we’ve laid her down we follow the sleep training guidelines laid out in Secrets of the Baby Whisperer.

If she starts crying we pick her up only until she stops crying and then set her down again.  The first night I had to do it about 10 times at bedtime then she slept throuth the night; 4 the next two nights.  Ever since that time she will sometimes need us to go pick her up and calm her once, but otherwise she goes to sleep by herself.  Usually she’ll spend 5 or so minutes fussing or doing her sleepy moans, but sometimes she falls asleep when I’m swaddling her or once I’ve laid her down she turns her head and closes her eyes. 

As we move forward she’s needing less and less time to soothe herself and fall asleep, and luckily she’s never needed it at night.  We’ll hear her wake up, cry, then go right back to sleep.

I don’t think there’s any right or wrong way to sleep train a baby and it has to be what is right for the baby AND the parents.  Allowing her to cry wasn’t right for us, not because it is bad for her, but because she does not stop crying once worked up, and because I didn’t want to have to listen to her cry.  If a no-cry method works just as well, why not use it, right?

Anyways, like I said, there’s a million and one ways to sleep train and I know this method probably wouldn’t work for some babies as picking them up would start the whole cycle over again.  I’m just glad we didn’t need to move it to the next level!

What sleep training method worked for you?

 

Want to know the best result of the sleep training?  A happier (didn’t know it was possible) and more well rested baby!

Giggles!

our beautiful girl at 5 months

Emily is 5 months old today and I’m once again wondering where the time went.  I think I need to put some post-its around the house to remind me to savour every moment because they are passing by way to quickly. 

Craig came home a week before Emily turned 4 months, and for a while the changes around here had her a bit unsettled (I’m sure all of the Christmas travelling didn’t help much either!).  She had been sleeping through the night but she slowly lost it, and by the end of our Christmas chaos extravaganza she had gotten her naps all out of whack and some nights wouldn’t go down to sleep until 1am (!!!!?!!!).  Not so fun for Craig and I when our evening are spent cluster feeding and rocking an out of sorts baby.

Anyways, here are some new developments and photos of the girl!

After her 2 month vaccination Em had a pretty rough week, so with our Christmas holidays coming up right after her 4 month birthday, we decided to wait until after Christmas to get her shots done.  Also, because she was on the smaller side when she was born, we waited a couple of week after the 2 month mark to go for her first ones and still wanted 2 months after that.  She went on the 6th of January and here were her stats:

Weight: 15lbs 6oz  She was around 14lbs at the end of November (a month after her 2 month appt) so she started slowing down just before 4 months which the doctor told us is normal.  She is still in the 75th percentile!
Height: 67cm = 26.5 inches  She grew 3 inches in height since the last appointment and is now in the 90th percentile for her height!

Em rolled over from front to back for the first time Christmas day in front of my siblings and parents.  We all cheered for her and I rolled her back over because Craig had missed it and she did it again.  She has yet to truly roll from back to front, but she’s pretty content when she’s on her back so I have a feeling it’s laziness more than anything.  Get that girl nude though and she’s a little wriggle worm!

Em’s bottom teeth are just about to come through I think.  We’ve been able to feel the ridge of the two teeth for about a month, and the past week or so her gums there have gotten kind of swollen so I think hope some progress is being made.

Lately we’ve been making an attempt at sleep training to help Em get back on track in terms of her bedtime and sleeping through the night (she didn’t really get down for the night until 3am the other night b/c of fussiness, so Mama had had enough!), and also so that she doesn’t need to be nursed to sleep (my fault).  We’re doing the Baby Whisperer method and so far it’s been going really well.  I’ll post more later about how we’re doing it and our progress so far!

We’ve also started giving Em rice cereal once in a while at 4 months to gauge her readiness for solids, but despite the fact that she seems to really like the taste and ‘scavenges’ with her mouth for more, her tongue pushes nearly all of it out still, which is a sign that she’s not ready for it.  We’re still trying the rice once in a while, but we’re OK with waiting until 6 months or later to start solids.  We’re going the baby led solids route so Em won’t be getting pureed food for the most part.  Once we’re closer to starting solids I’ll make sure to update with some details on how and why we’re doing it!  Here’s the awesome chair strap thingy that I got that can fit over any chair (including Craig’s computer chair as seen below!).  It fits in the diaper bag so we can take it anywhere with us.

Lastly, we noticed over Christmas that Em is strong enough while standing now to completely support her own weight.  She can’t stand up on her own yet of course (but can pull herself up when you hold her hands), so it might not be too many months before we find ourselves chasing her around the house.  I might be really appreciative of having a small house with no stairs then! She’s also attempting to army crawl but doesn’t have enough arm strength yet to propel herself forward so she basically just froggy kicks the ground and inches forward that way.

quiet, baby sleeping!

 

As you can probably imagine, I haven’t been getting a whole lot of sleep the past few weeks.  I have been breastfeeding on demand and for the most part, Emily wants to eat every 2-3 hours, even shorter if I’ve let her fall asleep in my arms.  I don’t have a partner at home right now who can check on her when she wakes up from naps or in the middle of the night, so I’m what she gets and often I think she smells the milk and wants to eat whether she’s really reached full hunger or not.

My Mom gave me a copy of the book Secrets of the Baby Whisperer by Tracy Hogg, and I’ve been eating it up like manna from heaven in the hopes that I glean some good tips on helping Emily to establish good sleeping and eating habits, and to help us to reach the infamous ‘sleeping through the night’ stage as easily as possible.  Hogg is not a fan of the Cry It Out methods that you often hear so much about and prefers the philosophy of Attachment parenting (basically, being kind, loving, and emotionally available to our children helps them to form trust in the relationship as a safe place to come to and to explore the world from).  Here are some basic tips for building a secure attachment.  Just for good measure, I’m also reading The No-Cry Sleep Solution and a copy of the Sleep Sense Program that a friend gave me (although that one does support CIO in some areas, so I’ll be taking some and leaving some).

I wanted to wait until I had a good understanding of her different cries and noises before I started trying any sleep training, as I didn’t want to mistake her fussing because she’s hungry or a tired cry with the cries and noises she makes when she falls asleep.  I’ve made the mistake before of going in to feed her in the middle of the night and she was just in between sleep cycles and had let out a cry – she just continued sleeping in my arms and wasn’t even interested in eating.  If you’re struggling to understand your baby’s various cries, perhaps the Dunstan baby language could help?  I saw her on Oprah one time…

Below are just some of the methods and routines I’ve been trying out from the Baby Whisperer to get us on the path to a well rested baby and mom!  Please note that I am not trying to get Emily to sleep through the night at this point; her little system is far from being able to go that long without nursing and may not reach that point for many months.  I am simply attempting to develop good sleep routines so that we’re not having to fight to get rid of any sleep props down the road.

Routine:

As I mentioned before, the basic routine with the Baby Whisperer is Eat-Activity-Sleep-You with the entire cycle taking more and more time as the baby grows older.  With a newborn and their tiny stomach and a limited capability for wakefulness, you should be aiming for around 40 minutes of nursing, followed by around 20 minutes of cuddling or interaction (it’s easy to over stimulate them though and that can make sleep difficult and shorten their nap length) and then around 2 hours of sleep.  Now that she’s getting a bit older and a bit more alert, Emily is averaging around 30 minutes for nursing (longer if she’s been over stimulated or has gas and alternates nursing and comfort sucking) and then 45 minutes of activity time, during which we diaper change, cuddle, spend a bit of time in her swing, or just have tummy time.  Her total cycle during the day is averaging around 2.5-3 hours at this point (unless we’re travelling and visiting a lot, in which case she eats more and sleeps less to cope with the changes) and at night she’s going 4 hours her first stint then three 3 hour cycles with bedtime at around 9pm and morning coming at 9-10am.  Supposedly it’s best to think of their day and night as two 12 hour stints, so I’m trying to adjust my own bedtime and morning to better coincide with hers.

Sleep:

Teaching Emily to self soothe so that I don’t have to rock or nurse her to sleep and then TRY to place her down in her crib without her waking up is the primary goal right now.  I find that if I follow the above routine she goes down a lot better and I spend a lot less time going in to comfort her when she starts fussing.  One of the suggestions the Baby Whisperer makes is to follow the four “S’s” of sleep: Set the Stage, Swaddle, Sit, and Shush-pat.   Basically you need to make consistent the motions you go through in their room before bedtime (closing the curtains, turning on music, etc.), the swaddling process, sitting unmoving with the baby for a short period of time to calm them, and then patting their backs while Shhhhhh-ing to help them move into sleep.  If they do begin fussing or crying, you go in and pick them up and calm them again and then set them back down immediately.  You’ll have to do this a LOT at first, but you will begin to see the amount decreasing if you stay consistent with it.  Finding ways to make parenting her by myself easier is the top priority right now, so she is currently taking her naps in my bed and (most nights) sleeping in her crib.  Our room is much darker during the day than hers, and on occasion I’ve fallen asleep with her while putting her down for a nap, which has done me well in the energy department.

I’m glad I found these alternative to the Cry It Out method as I hated the idea of leaving her in her room to cry – I want her to know that I will always come when she needs me and cries!  I don’t know if this method will be the one that works for us in the process of getting Emily to learn to self soothe, so I welcome any tips or advice from those who have gone before.  It does get easier, right?  I find myself going without a lot of sleep at night because she’ll only fall asleep in my arms and rarely will stay asleep if I try to transfer her to her crib or swing if I need to get something done or go to bed myself.  Getting more sleep will always help me to be a better momma!