Baby Jett - 11 Months

Oh Baby Jett, how are you almost 1 already? I still like you more the older you get but I'm not sure I'm ready to say I have a one year old!

At 11 months Baby Jett:

Is not quite 20 lbs yet, if I had to guess I'd say he's about 19.5?  We don't have our official ped appt until the end of the month, so that will have to suffice.

Is over 30 inches.  Again, haven't officially been measured but we measured him and he's at least 30 inches now.

Still has ridiculous hair.  In the sunlight it looks uber blonde, in dark light it looks almost brown and when photographed the top of his head still appears bald because the hair is so blonde there...I'm still holding out hope that one day it will all even out and be the same color!

Still has blue eyes.

Talks and talks and talks, I can't get this kid to shut up....but he doesn't say any words really, lots of gah gah gahs and da da das and bah bah bahs and ma ma mas and every once in awhile someone will say something like 'wow' or 'hi' and it sounds like he parrots it back to you...but it's rare and it doesn't feel like he's REALLY doing it on purpose.

But he understands basic commands.  Like 'lift up your hands', 'come to mama', that sort of thing.

He can freestand for long stretches of time and can get from the floor to standing without support and can bend down and pick things up and set them back down all without any support...but he won't take steps without at least holding onto a FINGER.  He's barely using the fingers at this point but he refuses to take a step until he has a finger in his hand. I think he's building up the confidence to just plunge ahead with walking.  It feels like instead of taking one or two steps he's just going to one day start full on walking, just like he did with the crawling.

Has discovered the joy of opening and shutting doors.  He can be amused for hours with just a door.  Shut the door, open the door, laugh maniacally.  Shut the door, open the door, laugh maniacally.  Good times.

Easily gets off the bed, couch, steps, etc.  When I open the back door to the yard he now freely goes in and out as he chooses. Sometimes he just sits on the step and goes down the step, outside.  Up the step, inside.  And over and over and over again.

He's started playing with toys instead of just sucking on them.  Rolls balls and pushes toy cars, you get the idea.

LOVES stacking objects and putting things inside other things.  His favorite toys now are little stacking cubes that go one inside the other or pile on top of each other to make a tower.

He can take his shirt off.  Once the arms are out he pulls the rest of it over his head.

Makes the money sign by rubbing his thumbs against his other fingers when you say daddy or he sees daddy.  Fucking hilarious.  I think he's just doing a mini wave?  But it looks like he's rubbing his fingers together, like GIVE ME MONEY!  And he only does it with daddy!

Started throwing tantrums.  It begins already.  If he doesn't get what he wants he makes sure to let us know!

Points to let us know what he wants.  Although sometimes he seems to just want to point at everything and no matter what you hand him he continues to point at everything else.

Finally understands the concept of the sippy cup, ie. you must lift it up to get the liquid out!

Had his first real beach trip and DID NOT eat sand!

Got a 3rd tooth!  Top right tooth came through, that sucker is huge!

 Can you see the giant tooth?

Back to loving the bath.  Thank god!  That crying for baths thing was ridiculous!

Back to eating!  After what felt like forever he is FINALLY eating real food again and he'll basically eat anything.  Through the hunger strike we discovered that he likes to be fed, so we half feed him and he half feeds himself...it's a compromise depending on how tired/distracted he is at any given meal.

Is still a breastfeeding fool.  There's no possible way breastfeeding is ending at one year =)

Sleeping well!  Two 1-1.5 long naps every day and sleeping through the night for the most part.  Generally there's one feed either at 10-11ish at which point he then sleeps through until 6-7am or he starts off the night by sleeping through until about 4-5am then has a feed and sleeps for another 2 hours or so.  I'm pretty sure he's in the midst of a growth spurt as these feeds are true feeds where he hardly opens his eyes just eats and eats and eats and then is easy to put back down when he's done.

 

Why do I even still try to do these?  He won't sit still.

The Best Damn Napper on the Planet

I don't know what happened.

But Baby Jett is now an AWESOME napper.

As in he naps so damn well and so damn long that I have to WAKE HIM UP on a semi-regularly basis because otherwise he would be sleeping way too close to bedtime and way too much during the day to sleep well at night.

Let's say it all together now...WTF?!

He went from the king of cat naps to napping for 1-2 hours twice a day every day.

It's perplexing to say the least.

And I do it all wrong.

I nurse him to sleep guys.  Every. Single. Time.

Every nap, every day I nurse him until he's ASLEEP and put him in his crib.  I don't bother with the drowsy but awake baby like I have to do for bedtime.  But he happily sleeps and sleeps...and sleeps.

As far as I can tell it all started with that rose.ola virus.  He had a fever and I just thought he was tired because he was sick but he slept SO GOOD during the fever part of that virus.  THEN the rash set in after the fever disappeared and night sleep went to shit but he continued with the fantastic napping.

The transition from 3 naps down to 2 seems to have also played a part.

Suddenly 9 month old Baby Jett was The Best Damn Napper on the Planet.

So our new schedule looks something like this:

Wake at 6-6:30am (UGH, he's such an early riser now!)

First nap 9-9:30am.

Sleep until 10:30-11am...so many times I have to wake him at 11am because...

Second nap is no later than 2pm...and baby must be awake for at least 3 hours to be tired enough to nap.

Up from 2nd nap no later than 4pm though I much prefer if he's awake at 3:30.

And bedtime at 7-7:30pm

Regardless of how late he goes to bed he gets up around 6am, so I prefer the earlier bedtime because then he's getting more sleep.

But if he naps until 4pm then he's not tired at 7pm.

OMG, I NEVER EVER THOUGHT I WOULD BE A TIMED NAP KIND OF MOM.  It's so not my style.

Baby Jett led the way though...I just followed.

And truth be told it's not nearly as strict as it sounds.  Some days we still have half hour naps and we just move the nap schedule around, 2nd nap a bit earlier or bedtime a bit earlier.

These are my guidelines and rough nap times that I keep in mind but I'm not overly fussed about naps anymore.

I KNOW, what a difference 6 months makes right?  Remember this?

So, what have I learned about baby sleep?

You gotta ride out the storm and PERSISTENCE is key.

I had to keep putting baby in the crib.  Even if he would only sleep for half hour, I kept putting him in the crib instead of continuing to let him sleep on me.  Again, taking cues from Baby Jett because he wasn't sleeping for longer than half hour when I was wearing him either.

After quite a rough road with sleeping in general we've landed in a great place napwise.

I can only hope that this will continue, I can't tell you how nice it is to have an hour and a half to myself every morning, I shower, get dressed, do some chores, pick up a bit, put makeup on, blog...sometimes I even find I'm bored because I've ran out of things to do!

So we've landed here, fantastic napping...until the transition to one nap...

Baby Jett - 10 Months

First I have to record Baby Jett's 9 Month stats...for posterity sake of course!

Remember how I said I was sure he was no more than 18 lbs.

Mommy was spot on.

At  9 Months Baby Jett weighed 18 lbs exactly, still in the 18th percentile.
And is once again tall at 29.75 inches which is the 85th percentile.

And 3 weeks later at 10 months I'm sure he weighs no more than 18.5 lbs but I'm pretty sure he's over 30 inches which means WE NEED A NEW CAR SEAT.  I can't believe we need a new car seat.  Our car seat has a weight limit of 30 lbs but a height limit of 30 inches.  Crap.

At least this one lasts until he's 65 lbs!  He'll be like 8 by then =)

I feel like I've started 17 different posts over the last few weeks but have managed to post NONE of them, so it looks like I'll just summarize everything here.

Here's what's new this month.

• He waves.  He's been a 2 handed waver for awhile and he would wave for no reason but he finally "gets" waving, as in with one hand and it's when we see people or they're leaving...he really likes to wave at people's backs after they've already left.
• He dances...by shaking his head back and forth when he hears music.  Clearly he gets his dancing skills from daddy because that is definitely NOT how mommy dances.  Sometimes he sings along as well...so cute!
• He learned to go down the stairs, you know backwards as in NOT face first and throwing himself down expecting someone to catch him.  We've been working on this for awhile as there are A LOT of stairs in our house and you know...just lots of stairs in SF in general.
• He "shares".  He'll hand you things but then he wants them right back, sometimes he doesn't even really let it go before snatching it back.  But his face lights up when he offers something and you take it and say thank you.
• He has a new fake cry where he squishes he face up and squints his eyes...real cry the bottom lip sticks out, fake cry no bottom lip.
• He understands how things go IN things, so now everything goes in something, toys in his baby potty, cheerios in the bumbo, bowls in pots, spoons in drawers, booty in giant silver vase that no one would ever think to look for booty in etc etc.  I keep opening drawers to find things that definitely don't belong there and we're definitely starting to "lose" toys as they end up in drawers or cupboards or the above mentioned vase. 
• Had his first virus.  He was sick with rose.ola.  He handled it pretty well, though he was kind of miserable for most of a week, including when grandma and grandpa came to visit.
• Was the BEST SLEEPER EVER when he was sick...it was kind of amazing.  Long  1-2 hour naps twice every day and LONG stretches of sleep at night with only one waking.
• Promptly went back to SHITTY SHITTY SLEEP once he was better.  Although naps stayed awesome.  YES, NAPS ARE AWESOME NOW.  He went back to waking every 3 hours for almost a week.  But now back to one night waking again.  Sleeping seems to always be a work in progress.
• He is suddenly scared of loud noises, he bursts into tears when he's startled by loud noises now.
• Has been on a hunger strike.  He stopped eating meat awhile ago but then he stopped eating bread (which he loved) and then he stopped eating all the veggies that he used to love.  So basically he eats fruit.  Pediatrician said don't worry about it as long as he's still breastfeeding.  Just keep offering.  We waste a lot of food that he doesn't eat these days.
• He still nurses all day long, he basically never makes it more than 2 hours without at least a little snack. 
• Still only has the 2 bottom teeth...which he brushes every night in the bathtub.
• Has learned how to get under the bedskirt and has discovered the wonderland of wires we have hiding under there.

• Suddenly hates the bath.  He used to LOVE the bath...now he makes it about 3 minutes before he bursts into tears and tries to climb out...no idea what happened. 

Now get ready for the piccies of cuteness.

He is so over this laying on his back for pictures malarkey.  Good thing I only have 2 more months of these!

Just as Long on the Outside as on the Inside

As of yesterday at 4:45am Baby Jett has spent just as much time on the outside as he spent on the inside.

38 weeks 2 days.

And coincidentally to commemorate this milestone...we're in the midst of a Wonder Week.

Or at least that's what I'm pretending because sleep has SUCKED this week.  And it's easier for me to have an excuse like "it's a wonder week!" than to think he might start sleeping shitty all the time again.

We haven't regressed so far that we're back at waking every 3 hours but for the past few nights he's been waking up 2 hours after going down SCREAMING HIS FACE OFF.  I've ended up nursing him even though it's before my 3 hour mark because he's just been SOOOO upset.  Luckily this hasn't ruined all the sleep training as he'll then sleep for 4-6 hours....so....wonder week, it's just a wonder week!!!

Anyway, it's pretty crazy amazeballs how much these little people change in such a short period of time.  

Before having my own baby it sure didn't seem like that big of a deal that they go from little blobs to walking babbling little PEOPLE in less than a year...but now I get it.  I GET IT!  And OMG TIME IS GOING SO FAST!

But more importantly can you believe I could have theoretically incubated another person already?

I'm not sure which is more impressive, how much the baby has changed on the outside in 9 months or the fact that a person develops from a sperm and an egg in 9 months.

Doesn't matter because ALL OF IT IS AMAZING.

In other news, I'm going to have to write a breastfeeding post soon because when I signed on for this breastfeeding for a year thing I didn't realize that my 9 month old would be almost walking and able to nurse while standing, grab my boobs out of my shirt whenever the urge strikes him, or that he would start playing with my nipple, studying and inspecting it and pinching it!...I reserved these actions for toddlers and I WAS NEVER GOING TO BE NURSING A TODDLER!  I was always going to be nursing for at least a year but less than 2 years...which is still the goal.  But clearly I underestimated what exactly that entails.

I feel like I'm nursing a toddler already and I don't foresee this ending anytime soon.  How exactly does one stop nursing anyway?  I use my boob ALL THE TIME.  Seriously this kid rarely goes more than an hour or two without at least a quick nurse and I thought I would be weaning near the one year mark???

So many things about parenthood leave me feeling like I was SUCH AN IDIOT.  

I thought I would cosleep for a year and it would just work by my sheer force of will.  Or BECAUSE COSLEEPING IS NATURAL and all mammals do it.  I've changed my mind rather drastically on this one and no longer promote cosleeping for longer than 6 months.

I thought you could teach your kid to nap with noise by always having it noisy when they nap. Baby Jett gets woken up VERY easily these days and he's been napping on the go since he was born, which means he can fall asleep with lots of noise, but after he's been asleep for 20-30 minutes a horn honking will wake him up...your kid can either sleep with noise or they can't...just like adults.  You can't teach them this skill.

I thought babyproofing was stupid and you should just teach your child to stay away from dangerous things...I underestimated how their mobility and their cognitive abilities to understand DANGER do not go hand in hand...we've definitely had to babyproof.

And the list goes on and on and on.

Amusingly I'm assuming none of the skills and knowledge I've acquired as a parent will help me at all with Baby #2 because EVERY BABY IS SO DAMN DIFFERENT.

But I've regressed from wherever I started this post...

Oh yes, congratulations Baby Jett you've made it to your Wombiversary!  And you know Congrats to me for keeping him alive this long!

That Whole Sleep Thing

As I mentioned in my last post...Baby Jett has started sleeping better.

We didn't change anything, we didn't do anything different, we just kept doing what we had been doing since we started this whole sleep training business and one day it just clicked.

He stubbornly refused to sleep longer than 3 hours at a time for almost 2 months.  I had completely given up on him ever sleeping for longer than 3 hours, passed sleep training off as a big fat fail for Baby Jett and just decided to make the best of it ie. quit obsessing.

Our method went like this, if baby slept for longer than 3 hours then I would go in and nurse, if it had been less than 3 hours, one of us went in to soothe him with some shushing and patting, no nursing.

The only time we cheated and soothed him back to sleep with nursing was if he had woken up inside the 3 hour window and stayed awake crying for an hour and a half even with us going in and out of there at intervals to soothe...and yes that happened several times.  After an hour and a half at 3 in the morning all bets are off and you do what you gotta do to get everyone some sleep, so I would nurse him back to sleep.

We kept on like this for 2 months, with him never going longer than 3 hours and most nights waking up at least one "extra" time within a 3 hour range.  That means we were up nursing 3-4x a night every. single. night. and many nights up one more time not nursing but shushing/patting him back to sleep.

This sounds miserable but once I quit obsessing about it, quit trying to change it and just sort of accepted it as the way things were, that this was just how my kid was, I felt better about it. More relaxed if not better rested.

Then one night without warning he slept 7 hours, then again the next night and the next...for 3 nights he slept for 7 hours...I was in shock, but just like everything with babies I assumed it was just a phase.

Then he promptly went back to every 3 hours.  But it was enough for me to have hope.  Hope that one day this could be the norm.

Just a week or two later...he slept for 7 hours straight...again.

And since then he does it almost every night.

The new norm is for him to sleep 6-8 hours, nurse once at 2:00-3:00am followed by another 3-4 hour stretch of sleep and then up for the day around 6:30-7:00am.

It is now the rare night that I'm in there at 10:30pm and even if that happens he'll sleep for 5-6 hours after I nurse him at 10:30pm (almost better that way as I can actually get to bed and sleep for that 5-6 hours!)

Only downside to this new sleeping pattern is that he's a bit of an early riser now.  6-6:30 is the normal wake up time and 7:00 or 7:30 is sleeping in =)

I have no idea what changed.

But obviously Baby Jett was not ready to sleep in long stretches when we first started sleep training...and now he is.  I think it's that simple.

They say you can't force your child to eat, sleep or poop...so true.

You can't force them to sleep longer if they're not ready. 

As to the naps, I had completely given up on nap training because sleep training had been so hard and honestly hadn't worked very well.  I was basically laying down with him twice a day for naps, not the end of the world as I wasn't getting great sleep at night and it helped me at least have some down time and the baby would sleep longer if I was with him (boob in mouth!)

But one day while we were both sick and the hubs was traveling I NEEDED to lay down when his morning nap was supposed to be and he was refusing to lay down with me.  So I sang a little song, read a little story and I put him in his crib, awake.  Then I went to go lie down assuming I'd be in there at 5 min, 10 min, etc etc but at least I could lay down while he screamed and refused to nap.

To my utter shock, he cried for a minute or two AND THEN WENT TO SLEEP.  He slept for an hour, woke up briefly to cry a bit more AND THEN PUT HIMSELF BACK TO SLEEP for another 40 minutes.

What, what?!

With absolutely zero nap training Baby Jett started napping better.

Every morning he has a nap in his crib now, some days it's still only 30 minutes, some days it's an hour and 15 minutes, sometimes he wakes up and puts himself back to sleep, sometimes he doesn't.  

But we've quit fighting at the beginning of the nap which was what I was struggling with.  I found it so unbelievably demoralizing when you'd fight to get the baby to sleep for an hour and then he'd only sleep for 30 minutes.  HUGE WASTE OF TIME FOR EVERYONE.

Now if he only sleeps for 30 minutes it doesn't really matter as I wasted no time to get him to sleep.  We sing a little song, read a little story, nurse for 5 minutes and baby goes in the crib.  SO SIMPLE.

Afternoon naps I still like to lay down with him, but that's my choice and something I still really enjoy and it works for us.  The day it quits working I'll try putting him in the crib in the afternoons as well and see what happens.

So for all you mamas struggling out there with baby sleep problems, IT DOES GET BETTER!  Even the shittiest of sleepers start sleeping more at some point.

Motherhood is nothing if not a giant lesson in patience.

Baby Jett - 8 Months

I seem to have fallen off of the edge of blogging planet...I guess I've run out of things to talk about as of late!

I realize it's been a whole month since I posted anything but lately Baby Jett's been sleeping better and apparently I don't have anything to write about when sleeping isn't an issue.

So let's do Baby Jett's 8 month update.

He's still skinny, with all his clothes on at the pediatrician's office he weighs 17 lbs. 11 oz.  That's the 25th percentile...with his clothes on.  Not sure what to do about that as we're eating solids 3x a day now.

As to the solids he's eating like a champ and he's got the poop to prove it!  Ugh, I hate the new poop! Cloth diapers with solid food poop = yuck!

He will still try anything that you put in front of him but he definitely has some preferences.  He loves pears, strawberries, asparagus and carrots and he's not a huge fan of meat or eggs.  Who really needs protein?  Oh right, the baby does!  I've been giving him almond butter to try to get some protein and healthy fats into him.

We've tried most of the most common food allergens and so far so good, no allergies as of yet...you know other than the milk protein thing, which I STILL have not tested.  I just can't bring myself to do it, I don't want my baby's belly to hurt!

His personality is really coming through, he is...ahem...determined.  Some might say stubborn, we're putting a positive spin on it and using words like determined and persistent.  But holy shit this kid is PERSISTENT.

When he wants something he NEEDS it and puts in A LOT of effort to get it.  He's actually becoming quite the accomplished climber this way.

I put stools and laundry baskets and whatever else is in the room in the walkway in front of the cat food to keep him away from it but NO OBSTACLE WILL KEEP HIM FROM THE CAT FOOD.  He goes up, over, around or just pushes the damn thing out of the way to get there.  I am both proud and annoyed that he JUST WON'T GIVE UP.

He has 2 very stubborn parents...I see many fights in the future for all of us...sigh.

He "talks" to the cats.  One day I noticed he seemed to be whimpering a lot, I thought he was FINALLY going to cut a tooth as he was just generally really fussy, a few days later he wasn't fussy anymore but he was still whimpering.  Then I noticed WHEN he was whimpering...when the cats are around!  He whimpers at the cats, he's mimicking their meows!  CUTEST THING I'VE EVER SEEN.

AND

Sleeping is getting better!

Sometime in the last month he just started sleeping more.  I think he just wasn't ready before and now he is.  He's done 7 hour stretches several times and when he doesn't do 7 he still does 5 or 6 most nights.  It's not perfect and there are still nights where he's up every 3 hours, BUT IT'S GETTING BETTER.   We're down to only doing 2 feeds at night MAXIMUM, which means that some nights we only have one middle of the night feeding and that I've actually slept for longer than 3 hours in a row!

Truth be told I don't necessarily feel more rested.  Sleeping in longer stretches is overrated.

Boo.

He's also started napping better.  Again, it's like he just wasn't ready before and now he is.  I've put him down awake in the crib for morning naps and he puts himself to sleep for an hour or more.  IT'S CRAZY AWESOME.

He got his first cold this week.  He made it 8 months without being sick and luckily even this was pretty mild, with just a slight fever and a runny nose, but he gave it to me!  First time I've been sick since he was born too!

And then there's the standing.  Standing, standing and more standing.  His favorite thing in the world is to pull himself up, find something to pick up, bend down pick it up, stand back up then bend down and set it back down and stand back up and REPEAT SEVEN MILLION TIMES with different objects.

He's also a huge fan of pulling everything he can reach off the pantry shelves, just so it's on the ground and he can bend down and pick things up and put them down again.

He also does this with the tupperware shelf.

Ok, he does it with ANY shelf he can reach.

He also opens and closes drawers and cupboards and anything with a handle!

And last but not least he STILL HAS NO TEETH.

I'll leave you with these piccies.

 Right after taking this picture I turned to set the camera down and he basically dove head first off the chair.  Luckily I was there to catch him, but this kid is fearless!

 Enjoying a plum in the park.  I brought cut up pears for him to eat, the plum was for me but once I took a bite he wanted it for himself and he basically devoured the whole plum!

 First time in the swing!

Watchin some Baby Mozart.

 Just grabbing a cold beer out of the fridge after a long hard day of standing...and squatting...and standing some more.

Baby Jett - 7 Months

Ok, 7 months, we're 7 months already!

This has been an active active month for Baby Jett.

• He started crawling...
• ...and climbing...
• ...and pulling to standing.  This baby is on the move! 
• He also sits up completely unsupported now which seems unremarkable with the crawling...but it happened at almost the same time as the crawling and is still new this month. He literally one day was a wobbly little baby and the next day was a moving, climbing, trying to walk almost toddler.  It's been non-stop every since!
• He slept through the night, if 6 hours counts as through the night, exactly once.

Little update on the sleeping, as of Jett turning 7 months yes he only slept 6 hours once, BUT THEN, this week he slept 7 hours in a row for 3 NIGHTS IN A ROW!!!!  And is now back on his every 3 hour schedule, BUT IT HAPPENED and I have hope that he will do it again now.

• He continues to sleep in 3-4 hour stretches...sleep training did not work as well as I had hoped.
• He continues to suck at napping, though every once in awhile he'll sleep for an hour or an hour and a half in his crib.
• He started solids.  He loves food, give him anything he'll eat it.  We've gone the Baby Led Weaning approach and so we just give him french fry size pieces of food and he goes to town!
• Weighs 16 lbs. 6 oz...that's the 10-25th percentile...he's kind of skinny, the pediatrician recommended feeding solids more than once a day so we've bumped it up to at least twice a day that he gets real food now.
• Height 27.75" which puts him in the 75th percentile.  Tall and skinny.
• Is one busy little baby, we now have toy boxes set up in each room and we just plop him down in front of his box and he happily sits there pulling toys out, putting toys back in, crawling away from the toy box as soon as he sees a cord, or a cat, or the cat food, or anything dangerous or heavy or sharp or something to pull himself up on and we just pick him up and sit him back in front of the toy box and he starts all over.  GOOD TIMES!
• Still loves his baths.
• Is chatty, he blows raspberries and babbles incoherently.  But says 'mamamamama' when he's upset, SUPER CUTE.
• Is in 6-9 month clothes, except pants he's in 9-12 month.
• Is such a social butterfly!  He loves other people and other babies and is so content when he's around others.  He is such a showoff when we take him to hang out with friends or have people come around.  Over and over again I hear "what a good baby you have!  He's so happy and content!"  Of course he's upset as soon as we leave and he's overtired from all the showing off he's been doing, but it makes me happy that he's so content and unafraid of others!
• Still has blue eyes, they haven't turned gray like I suspect they will yet.
• His hair is half light brown and half blonde.  All the original baby hair is light brown and everything new growing in is blonde, it's like a patchwork quilt of brown and blonde.  I'm very curious to see what happens with his hair in the coming months! 
• He "waves" with both hands...I don't think he knows what he's doing, but it's super cute, he looks like he's a bird trying to fly.
• And he still has NO TEETH.  I'm perplexed by the lack of teeth, surely they should be coming in soon, no?!  He doesn't seem to be teething any more than normal, no extra drool or fussiness...who knows when those bad boys are gonna show up!

 

 

A comparison of 1 month to 7 months.  Such long legs!

 And a demonstration of our standing.  The crib has been lowered ALL THE WAY to the bottom to keep him safe because the moment he wakes up be it after naps or in the middle of the night he assumes this position.

And this one just because it's cute! 

And what Baby Jett is doing right now as I type this:

 

On The Move

Yesterday Baby Jett decided he's had enough of this baby business and that it was high time he made the move from being immobile to mobile.

At just past 6.5 months Baby Jett started to crawl.

One minute he couldn't crawl and the next he could...it was that simple and that quick.

We now have a mobile baby.

Gone are the days of sitting him down and leaving the room, knowing he can't move himself into a dangerous situation.

Gone are the days of sitting him down in the hallway outside the bathroom while I take a quick shower.

Gone gone gone.

My days are now being spent chasing after him as he hightails it around the room to chew on cords, run into corners and pull books and other heavy objects down onto himself.

Even though he has been on the verge of crawling for the last month and a half somehow I still thought I had more time.

More time to consider what will and will not need babyproofing.

More time to take long showers while the baby hangs out in the hallway.

More time to do other things during the day besides chase after a busy baby.

But what's done is done, we now have a crawler.

In other news, not only did Baby Jett decide to start crawling yesterday but...

Wait for it...

....a little bit more.....

HE SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT!!!

I can't tell you for sure that there's a correlation between the crawling ie. expenditure of energy and the sleeping...but I AM CONVINCED that one is directly related to the other.

He went down at 7ish.

I fed him at 11ish.

Already that's 4 hours if you do the math!  Already I was proud of him for sleeping such a long stretch.

Then I went to bed...

AND HE SLEPT UNTIL JUST AFTER 5AM!!!

That's 6 hours guys, SIX WHOLE HOURS of uninterrupted sleep!

Ok, that last part is a little bit of a lie, I did not sleep the whole 6 hours all the way through.  I woke once at 3am because DUH, THE BABY SHOULD HAVE BEEN AWAKE BY THEN, but as I lay there thinking the baby was going to wake up ANY SECOND NOW I fell back asleep and didn't wake up until 5am.

Both times I woke up and decided the baby was obviously dead because MY BABY DOESN'T SLEEP THAT LONG.  Thankfully I was wrong (it took a few minutes of staring at the monitor to determine if he was breathing or not for me to actually believe I was wrong) and he was just SO TIRED from all the crawling that he needed to SLEEP!

I have my fingers and my toes crossed that this is the new trend and he will continue sleeping better now that he's mobile.

Hopefully this concludes my sleep saga...I will update you tomorrow and let you know if he repeated this AWESOME new sleep pattern.

Everyone cross your fingers for us because MAMA IS TIRED AND SHE NEEDS HER REST NOW!

How We're Doing

We're doing alright...now.

Remember when I mentioned Jett going through his 26 week developmental milestone?

Yeah, so that happened, there was lots of crying in the middle of the night, not a lot of sleeping...

...and I was so rundown I ended up with shingles.

That's right guys, SHINGLES!  Like what OLD PEOPLE get!

I thought for sure Baby Jett was going to end up with Chicken pox, but SOMEHOW we avoided that disaster and he stayed healthy.

Shingles + Bad Sleeper = Fun Times

Luckily the hubs was here to help out and I am now on the mend.

And Baby Jett FINALLY settled into a bit of a sleep schedule.

It took 3 weeks of training (Yes, that's 3 WEEKS, not 3 days) and we are nowhere near sleeping through the night but it's better than it was and IT'S PREDICTABLE.

Our new nighttime schedule looks like this:

7-8pm - Baby goes down with minimal crying/fussing (Yay!)

10-11pm - Baby wakes and I feed him and then I go to bed.

2-3am - Baby awake again, I feed him again.

5-6am - Baby awake one more time and we bring him to bed where he nurses and sleeps in the bed with us until he's up sometime between 7:30-8:30am.

It's not ideal.

It's essentially still 3 feeds in the night.

And he doesn't go longer than 3.5 hours EVER.

Didn't you all imagine that after finally giving in to CIO that my baby would be sleeping through the night?

Baby Jett had other plans.  My willful willful baby was having none of that.

But I only have to get up for the 2am feed and Dom only has to get up and get the baby to bring him to bed for the 5am snuggles.

So I'm getting 3-3.5 hour stretches of sleep and I'm getting more than one stretch.

Can you believe it took 3 weeks to land THERE at THAT?!  Up 3x a night!!!

Our next step is to try to eliminate the 2am feed so that he feeds at 10-11pm and then not again until 5-6am...god knows how long that's gonna take.

But the positives to where we are at now are that:

a) He goes down at 7pm.
b) I don't have to go to bed when he goes to bed.
c) He no longer pops awake in the middle of the night and stays awake for an hour...this was the last bit of training that was taking the longest, most nights he was awake for at least an hour in the middle of the night.
d) He still sleeps in until 7-8am (sometimes longer!) even though he's going to bed so much earlier.  I was very nervous about putting baby to bed earlier and him getting up earlier.

In case any of you were wondering, this is NOT the norm for sleep training, for ANY version of CIO.  Baby Jett just happens to be in the 5% of babies that it takes longer than a week to "train"...yay for us!

So that's us...still not sleeping great.

And don't even get me started on naps...no improvement there either unless you count the 2.5 hours he'll sleep with my boob in his mouth...which worked out great when I was trying to nap and heal from the shingles, but is not desirable in the long run.

In the meantime we're THIS CLOSE to crawling...and spending a lot of time doing baby yoga.

Downward Facing Dog

And with one leg extended.

Not sure what to call this one!


And one with Mommy!

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

I want to tell you guys that my baby is sleeping like a pro now.

I really want to tell you that.  REALLY want to tell you that.

But I can't tell you that because that would be a BIG FAT lie.

That's right...10 Days into Operation Let's See Just How Stubborn My Baby Really Is and things are still really rocky.

We'll see some progress and then have a bit of a regression and then progress again...

But so far we still have lots of crying in the beginning...19 minutes last night...and we still have at least 3 wake ups and we're still topping out at 3 hours for the longest he'll sleep.

Sleep lady attributes the regression to mommy taking over while daddy was away...those were rough nights...and the fact that we've now entered Wonder Week 26.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

Raise your hands if you thought CIO versions of sleep training were supposed to be quick.

Yeah...me too.

My kid is a Leo...and he has two really stubborn parents...we knew he was bound to be stubborn but COME ON!

We're powering through in hopes that after he gets past this Wonder Week craziness he'll start to go down more readily and will stay asleep a bit easier (or at least put himself back to sleep without waking everybody up!).   

By the way he's still a craptastic half hour napper as well...just in case anyone thought maybe this night sleep training would somehow carry over into his day sleeping...it hasn't

It's awesome. 

There's a lot of this going on for naps these days.

 

And the sleep saga continues...

It Takes 6 Nights Apparently

Night 6 was the winner guys, Night 6!

When my pediatrician recommended we CIO (yes, literally every professional I spoke to recommended CIO, even the crunchy granola attachment parenting SF hippies who at 8 weeks told me I just had to grin and bear it recommended CIO at this point...that's how bad our situation was) she made it seem really simple.  Like there will be crying on Night 1, crying on Night 2 and by Night 3 you'll be all sorted out.

The sleep lady didn't make it sound THAT simple, but she also implied that it would be fairly quick and easy.

This is not quite how it has worked out for us and if you're thinking about CIO please know that it will probably take longer than 3 nights!

Night 5 particularly was ROUGH.  There was several episodes of crying in the middle of the night in which baby was awake for an hour.  This is when you hang your head in shame and think OH GOD IT'S NOT WORKING!

But here we are on Night 6 of Operation Get My Baby to Sleep By Letting Him Scream 2013 and finally FINALLY we had a really good night last night.

The GREATEST IMPROVEMENT is that we're able to get him down for the night in his crib and he'll sleep for 3 hours without a peep.  This takes a bit of crying still but with less and less every night.  He started out with 40 minutes of crying on Night 1 was down to 15 minutes by Night 4 and last night he only cried for 8 minutes and was OUT.

This means that I can actually DO things in the evening, I don't have to rush around in the half an hour he'd sleep in his crib and then go to bed with my baby at 9:30pm anymore!

Hip Hip Horray!

The next best thing is that last night he was also able to put himself back to sleep WITHOUT US for his middle of the night wakings.  He woke twice outside of feed windows and we just watched him on the monitor to see if he was going to get himself all riled up and need some comfort or settle himself...within just a few minutes he was BACK TO SLEEP.

Relief guys, RELIEF.

We did one feed at 12:30am, ONE FEED, this from the baby who used to nurse all night long.  He goes 6 HOURS between feeds at night now...and my boobs have adjusted accordingly.

When he woke at 5:30am we decided that since he did such a good job and he'd skipped his 2nd feed window and there had been basically no crying all night that we'd just bring him into bed with us for morning nursing and snuggles rather than attempt interval comforting even though this was a bit earlier than what I'd prefer to bring him to bed.

He went back to sleep easily with us and up for the day at 8:20am.  This is the one area of sleeping that I feel we really lucked out...we have a late riser.  There have only been a handful of times HIS WHOLE LIFE that he's been up before 7am and his norm is between 7:30-8:30am.  I feared putting him to bed so much earlier with the sleep training would force him awake early but that hasn't been the case!

So...sleep training is working!

Now the next step is US sleeping more as when baby wakes up...even if it's only for 5 minutes...we wake up as well (we're hyper aware of sounds from the monitor right now with this being so new to us) so we're still only getting about 3 hour stretches.

Unfortunately Dom is off today and will be gone for 2 nights, that means I have to do THE WHOLE NIGHT BY MYSELF!

EEK!

If we have more nights like last night that will be no problem but I can't bring myself to believe he'll be so accommodating so I'm gearing up for a rough night.

AND this will be my first time in 6 months sleeping in a bed ALL BY MYSELF!  No husband, no baby...just me...I'm not sure I'll be able to sleep! 

Wish us luck that last night continues to be the norm so that we can move on to Nap Training.

And some proof that my little drool monster bears us no ill will...

 

And On To Night Two of CIO

It still wasn't that bad and he still slept better than he has been but...

...it was a littler rockier.

He did not take long to put down at 7:45pm, maybe 10 minutes of fussing and a bit of crying and then he did his usual trick of only sleeping for half an hour.

Dom calmed him down then he took another 10 minutes to settle back down.

Then he only slept for 10 minutes.

Dom calmed him again and it took another 10 minutes to settle back down.

Then he slept for an hour.

Dom calmed him again and it took 20 minutes to settle back down.

Then he slept for 20 minutes.

At no point was there ever really any HARD crying, it was a lot of fussing and whimpering, then silence, then more fussing and a little crying, then silence, you could hear him struggling to put himself to sleep.

Then finally FINALLY at 10:40pm he really settled and slept for 3 hours.

Then we fed.

Then he slept for 2.5 hours.

Then just like the night before he was awake for an hour between 4:30 and 5:30...ish.

Then he slept for 3.5 hours.

And up for the day at 8:45am (you don't know how happy it makes me that my baby is not an early riser, mama and daddy do not do well with early mornings =)

We made a little boo-boo at 4:30am in that Dom rushed in there before I even woke up and it was in the "feeding window" which means it should have been me in there at letting him nurse.

But after Dom went in there...you sort of have to see him through the cycle, you gotta get him to calm down and fall asleep on his own, you can't introduce the boob in the middle of it otherwise that's reintroducing boob=sleep, which is what we're trying to break.

So...he skipped his 2nd feed, I pumped at 5:45am because my boob was rock hard and making it impossible to sleep and at 7:15am I went and got him even though he was fast asleep I brought him into bed for some nursing and morning snuggles...which sleep lady said was fine to do!

All in all you can see his big chunks of sleep were 3 hours, 2.5 and then 3.5, SO WE'RE DOING BETTER.  I even got to enjoy at least the first 2 stretches of sleep since they started so late in the evening.

But I feel like crap this morning.  

That's right, even with longer stretches of sleep, I'm exhausted.

It is SO SO DIFFERENT to get up and down several times a night rather than just whipping your boob out for a feed.  I can only hope that I get used to this in the same way that I got used to sleeping for 2 hours at a time all night.

But I'm happy to see babykins learning to put himself back to sleep, I think he'll be getting more restful sleep this way rather than always having to resort to the boob.

And with any luck he'll be able to settle earlier in the evening and get an even longer stretch of sleep since I now know he can survive without a feed for 6 hours.

BTW, my boobs hate this new schedule we have going.  They are so used to a baby who feeds all night long that they gear up for it in the evening.  I do the last feed at 7pm and by 9pm I can already feel my boobs getting heavy and full.  I pumped the first night but all I got was 2 oz. even though you could feel how heavy my boob was...for some reason pumping is difficult for me in the evenings!  It really doesn't produce much, takes forever and all I get is foremilk.

Yesterday I skipped pumping in the evening (because all the pump parts were in the dishwasher!) and did it at 5 in the morning instead but just to relieve some pressure, so again I got 2 oz. of foremilk.

What the heck am I going to do with 4 oz. of foremilk?!

Anyway, to those of you whose babes always sleep for longer stretches through the night, do your boobs get used to this?  Do you always wake up engorged?

And we continue on to Night 3 which is supposed to be the "good" night before a possible regression.  Fingers crossed everyone gets some good sleep in tonight!

I Laugh In The Face of CIO

Guys, it wasn't that bad.

I didn't even cry.

And it worked...at least for night one.

I actually want to laugh at myself for how stressed I was yesterday.  

Here's the deal...I left the house.  I was not here for the actual crying it out portion of the evening BUT it only lasted 40 minutes.  

He cries for 40 minutes to be put to sleep on a normal non-CIO sort of evening.  Which I find hard to listen to, but that's the point we were at, so this wasn't that different!

I was expecting him to hit the full 2 hours and have to call the whole thing off...I thought he would be more stubborn!

After he went down for the night IN HIS CRIB it was 8:40pm and he didn't cry again until 10:30pm.  That's right 2 hours in his crib with no mama next to him, no intervention to keep him asleep whatsoever.

That was already amazing, as I came home at 9:30pm so Dom and I actually had some alone time to catch up on some of our shows!

At 10:30 he was easily calmed by Dom going in to talk to him...and he put himself back to sleep.

At 12:30am he woke up for a feed and went back to sleep.

HE THEN STAYED ASLEEP UNTIL HIS NEXT FEED AT 4:15AM!

Yeah...one night and he already got a 4 hour stretch in. I was amazed!

After the second feed I set him back down and he started crying just a few minutes after I left him.  In Dom goes and settles him easily again with words and some light touch...and then baby stayed awake until 5am...and then put himself back to sleep!

At 7am I thought he was up for the day so I went to get him and brought him back to the bed with us for what I thought would be morning snuggles and giggles.  But he had other plans and wanted to nurse...and so did I.  So we nursed for a bit and we all slept for another hour and half together in the big bed.

I'm pretty sure that last part isn't allowed...but we'll see what sleep lady says about it after I update her this morning.

It was not a restful night AT ALL for us as we were up and down a lot and just generally I was sleeping VERY light because the baby was in another room and it was just...different to be listening to him over the monitor rather than having him next to me.

In the morning Baby Jett was exactly the same baby as he was the day before, all smiles and giggles and happy as can be...he seems to bear no ill will towards his parents for making him cry...was I really afraid of this?  Yes, I think I was.  I was convinced he was going to hate us the next day...I guess that's giving my baby adult emotions that he doesn't yet have.

To which I say, Thank God!

I will continue to update everyone as we continue along this path, as there generally seems to be regressions along the way and you know at some point I have to be able to put him down like this myself as the hubs travels again next week!

But for right now after NIGHT ONE of CIO, we're fine.  Baby Jett is fine and Baby Jett SLEPT.

And the saga continues into NIGHT TWO...

When All You're Left With is CIO

Seriously.

The Baby Whisperer ie. the sleep consultant I paid lots of money to get my baby to sleep says that we're there, we're at THAT point. 

The point of desperation when there's no other option...it's time for CIO.

I really didn't want to be here.

I honestly thought that the sleep lady would magically be able to fix the situation for me without the crying.  I REALLY THOUGHT THAT.

I may have been envisioning her with a magic wand.

You know...like this!

 source

It turns out she does not have a magic wand and that no amount of money thrown at this problem is going to make my baby sleep without crying.

Shit.

But you see, we're at the point where baby cries no matter what.  Except for the magic boob technique, ie. nursing, Baby cries to be put to sleep, baby cannot be put to sleep for naps or at night without crying.  IT SUCKS.

Her CIO method is the nice version, the come back into the room to shush and pat and offer kind words (mommy and daddy are right here, but you need to learn how to sleep on your own now etc etc) for 1 minute after letting them cry for increasing intervals, starting with 5, then 10, then 15 and staying at 15 minutes and the whole thing has a cutoff of 2 hours.

I think it's called the Interval Method.

Her method also allows us to not necessarily end co-sleeping but to see where he sleeps best.  He gets thrown in the crib until he learns to sleep (3-7 nights apparently) and then we bring him back in the bed to see if he starts waking up all the time again.  If he doesn't we can keep co-sleeping if we so choose, if he starts waking up to nurse every 2 hours again...it's time for baby to move to the crib.

While I'm terribly displeased about the lack of magic wand, the Baby Whisperer did have some insights into how we got here and was finally able to answer Where Did We Go Wrong?  

The answer?

It can all be contributed to that whole colic/dairy fiasco of weeks 6-12.

I knew that wasn't over and was gonna come back and bite me in the ass.

If you've ever had a baby with colic you know that YOU WILL DO ANYTHING TO GET THEM TO SLEEP, that means LOTS AND LOTS of bouncing and rocking and LOTS AND LOTS of motion in general.  They don't get put down like ever because they'll scream and they get held to sleep a lot because you know...they'll scream.

So, basically, baby got really really used to motion putting him to sleep and even after we got over the colic...we kept bouncing.  We kept rocking.  We kept using motion to put him to sleep.

BECAUSE IT WORKED.

And because we didn't know any better.  FIRST KID ACCIDENTAL PARENTING.  

I knew, I KNEW, that we had to quit using motion to put him to sleep at some point and I was trying to gradually reduce the motion, but Baby Jett was putting up quite a fight and had resorted to screaming at us the moment we tried to start putting him to sleep and basically forced us to continue to bounce him...BECAUSE IT WAS THE ONLY WAY TO GET HIM TO SLEEP.

And now we're here.  Baby Jett has not learned how to put himself to sleep and he has not learned how to put himself BACK to sleep when he wakes up...so he nurses, he nurses himself back to sleep all night long.

And desperation for sleep both for him and for me has led us to CIO.

We start tonight.

I'm leaving the house.

To cry into a glass of wine while my husband tortures our son into sleeping.

Wish us luck.  I know he won't remember a moment of this but my heart is in knots.  

I'll update after the guilt has subsided.