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.

Breastfeeding - 9 Months

As promised in my last post, here's an update on breastfeeding at 9 months.

In a nutshell, we're still breastfeeding A LOT at 9 months.

I started out this nursing gig ready to go the whole nine yards, nursing for at least a year but weaning sometime before 2 so that we can get preggers again and start the whole thing over.  I realize one can breastfeed and be pregnant at the same time but I have NO desire to do it...only one baby using my body at a time please!

Breastfeeding has gone relatively smoothly for us.  I had WAY too much milk in the beginning that caused infinite amounts of stress as it took Baby Jett FOREVER  to learn how to deal with the forceful letdown and the gobs and gobs of milk that would spray into his mouth like a firehose.

But it was never painful (other than those first few days as the nipples adjusted!), we had no latch issues and I've never had supply issues...unless you count TOO MUCH as a supply issue.  So, all in all breastfeeding has been a pleasant experience for me.

At 4 months the boobs finally got the message that my ONE baby did not need enough milk for THREE and really eased up with the milk they were producing.

My letdown however never eased up at all and I can still spray milk across the room. Luckily this isn't a problem for a 9 month old...he doesn't seem to mind gobs of milk spraying down his throat anymore.

So for 6.5 months Baby Jett was exclusively breastfed, I don't even think he had water until 6 months.

Just before 7 months we took the leap and began introducing solid food into his diet.  And now at 9 months he is up to 3 meals and one snack of solids a day...but he still enjoys some boob every hour or so, SERIOUSLY.

Even after the introduction of solids he continues to rely heavily on breastmilk for nourishment as well as comfort.  Some days I feel like I nurse him more now than before we started solids.

For instance, it's 10:30 in the morning as I'm writing this and I have nursed him 4 times already this morning.  Yeah...we do a lot of nursing.

I am eternally grateful to the boob and feel very blessed to be able to breastfeed my baby...I don't know what I would do without it.

There are so many circumstances in which the boob is MAGIC.

Baby only slept for half an hour and needs to sleep more?...boob him.

Baby is being picky and won't eat any of the solids he's offered but is still obviously hungry?...boob him.

Baby falls down and bumps his head?...boob him.

Baby getting shots?...boob him.

Baby won't calm down for any number of different reasons?...boob him.

I have discontinued the use of the boob to PUT my baby to sleep as that was causing all sorts of problems, but to put him BACK to sleep?  Still magic.

Ok that's a lie, I just put him down for a nap an hour ago with my boob...but as long as he's not waking up after half an hour anymore I think it's OK!

As I said in my last post I honestly can't imagine in just 3 months weaning him off the boob, so more realistically I'm thinking breastfeeding will continue until 18 months?  But hopefully still less than 2 years! 

 I used to be able to nap with him NOT attached to my boob, he was just a few weeks old here...

 Not anymore!  But look how big his head has gotten!

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.

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.

From Bad to Worse...Where Did We Go Wrong?

Just in case anyone thought (like me) that things would just improve on their own...they have not.

I made a sleep log last night after spending AN HOUR AND A HALF bouncing my baby to sleep.

Yes, bouncing my almost 6 month old for hours like he's a newborn...we've regressed so so far.

Would you all like to see my sleep log? 

It's scary...are you ready?

Anyone who's complaining about their baby waking up 3 times a night will immediately start thanking their lucky stars that their baby is ONLY waking up 3 times.

Baby Jett woke up 7 TIMES last night.

And went 2 hours as a MAXIMUM.

Here goes:

10:05:  FINALLY DOWN FOR THE NIGHT AFTER LOTS OF BOUNCING AND FAILED PUT DOWN ATTEMPTS.

11:48pm: Awake!  Nurse.

12:27am: Asleep.

1:03am: Awake!  Try not nursing, try some shushing and patting, all to no avail, give up and nurse.

1:12am: Asleep.

1:41am: Awake!  Nurse for 2 seconds.

1:42am: Asleep.

2:00am:  Awake!  Nurse for 2 seconds.

2:03am:  Asleep.

3:23am:  AWAKE!  Try not nursing again, shushing and patting, nope...back to nursing for 2 SECONDS.

3:25am: Asleep.

4:17am:  AWAKE!  Nurse for 2 seconds...do you see a pattern here?  I think he might need to suck to sleep.

4:18am: Asleep.

5:50am:  AWAKE!  Here I get desperate for him to not wake up for the day so I'm quick to whip out the boob, I don't even bother with other attempts because nursing works and I don't want to get up at 5:50am.

5:54am: Asleep.

7:30am:  Awake for the day.  All smiles and giggles and chatty.

Sounds like a restful night, DOESN'T IT?

We're like a week into nights like this.  I'm a zombie.  And alone, husband is traveling.

You name a sleep trick and I've tried it.  I even put him down in his crib last night (after spending half an hour trying to get him back to sleep after he went down at 7:30pm for A NAP apparently) sleepy and not crying, I went downstairs to watch the last 5 minutes of a show and he BAWLED his little brains out.  He went from happy and content and sleepy to HYSTERICAL in less than 5 minutes.  He spent the next 2 hours fighting sleep and constantly checking on me to make sure I didn't leave him again.

I feel completely lost as to what to do from this point, especially being this tired where I don't have the emotional control to follow through with anything.  I will basically do anything to make him sleep, especially as the day wears on and I get more and more exhausted, even if that means he's back in my arms for naps.  I'm just too tired to deal with the screaming.

Sleep deprivation is no joke.  It's wreaking havoc on all facets on my life.  Dom and I are constantly fighting.  I'm on edge and crying over anything.  And I'm so so skinny, I'm literally wasting away, no matter how much I eat.  And I'm wishing I could give someone my baby and they could bring him back to me when he learns how to sleep.

So we're calling in a professional.

That's right I AM PAYING SOMEONE to fix my baby.  It's bloody expensive...and it better damn well work.

I will keep you all posted!

And just because he's so damn cute even if he won't let me sleep...here's a picture of Baby Jett at his first swimming lesson.

The Night Time Nurser

From discussing baby nap sleeping to baby night sleeping.

The naps are getting better guys, SO much better.

MOST days he manages a 1-2 hour nap followed by half hour naps for the rest of the day.

But I'll take it because I believe he'll gradually continue to take longer naps and squeeze a few short ones out of the day...no need to rush, as long as I see it improving I'm fine to let it happen on it's own.

Now...on to nighttime sleeping.

Here's my situation:

We co-sleep.  I loved co-sleeping when it helped us get more sleep and we both stayed in bed all night without getting up.  Even if he fed often it wasn't that disruptive.  BUT something has changed recently and more often than not nighttime feedings are followed by a screaming baby who requires a burping, which means...I have to get up out of bed.

If I have to get up out of bed for nighttime nursing then the baby might as well be in his own bed.  The ONLY benefit to baby sharing the bed is never getting up in the middle of the night.

Ok, there's the suppressed fertility as well, but I'm not looking for (or holding out hope for) baby to sleep over 5 hours...if I can get a night with more than one 3-hour stretch I would call it a success.

So not only are night nursing sessions not working anymore but Baby Jett also likes to feed EVERY HOUR from about 4-5am onward until he either spits up because he's been eating so much or it's time to get up for the day sometime between 8-9am.  No amount of shushing and patting from me will convince him that he wants anything other than MORE MILK MOM!  If he doesn't get it we get more crying!

We used to survive the night with NO CRYING whatsoever which was part of why I loved co-sleeping so much.  But NOW THERE'S LOTS OF CRYING.

Something isn't working anymore.

One thing I've learned as a mom, if something isn't working and you are resenting it...CHANGE IT!

So something has to change.

While here in Oregon where we have no crib Dom has started taking baby downstairs to sleep with him on the couch from about 6-7am onward because BABY DOESN'T NEED TO EAT EVERY HOUR and what do you know, when baby isn't next to me he sleeps just fine and doesn't wake up to eat.

So, NEW GOAL for 2013 is get baby to sleep in his crib for at least part of the night.

Here's where I need some help...

I've tried to start this several times.  I want to put the baby down in his own bed to start the night and then bring him into bed with me after his first nighttime feeding, keep him there through the 2nd feeding and then stick him back in his own bed again after the 2nd feeding with the hope that if he's not next to mama he won't keep waking up thinking he's hungry because 2 feedings at night should be plenty.  And OMG what if we had 3 hours between each feeding?!  Or dare I dream for more?!

But BABY WILL NOT STAY DOWN at the beginning of the night until mama is in bed with him.  I've tried moving his bedtime earlier and I've tried moving his bedtime later trying to figure out if he just wasn't ready for bed yet or if he was overtired etc etc.  But no matter when I try to put him down he will continue to wake up every 15-30 minutes until I finally give up and take him to bed with me and lay down next to him.  Often it doesn't even require anything more than that, no extra nursing or cuddling there's just something about mama being in the bed with him that finally settles him.

I both love and hate this at the same time.

I love the silent still sleeping baby next to me when I go to sleep.  

I hate that I don't have any evening time to myself, or with my husband, because he needs constant attention until I go to bed.  I am starting to resent this part thus...time to change it.

To add insult to injury he's also not improving the night time feeds.

Last night I don't think I even had a 2 hour stretch.

IT WAS BAD.

So, somebody help me!

How do I get my baby to fall asleep and stay asleep NOT in bed with me?!?!?!

We have a bedtime routine that starts after his last cat nap of the day.  We take a bath, we put jammies on, we have a little play time to get any extra energy out, we read a book or two, we nurse and then we wait for signs of tiredness, yawns, rubbing eyes or fussiness and then we put him down.

What we get is a baby who thinks this is just another nap and we're back in the bedroom trying to get him back to sleep after half an hour.

Things we've tried to get him to stay asleep:

Daddy putting baby to bed.
Mama nursing him to sleep in the big bed and then sneaking away.
Swaddling.
No swaddling.
Belly sleeping both in crib and in the big bed.
Bedtime anywhere between 7 and 10pm.

I need help.  What do you guys do to get your baby to fall asleep at night?  And how do you get them to STAY ASLEEP???

I should add, Baby Jett is right around the 4 month sleep regression age if you adjust his age from his early arrival.  He also has just learned how to roll from his back to his belly.  I know that 4 months sucks for baby sleeping and I know that new skills can disrupt sleep, PERHAPS that is all this is and next week he will go back to normal nighttime sleeping or maybe next week he will go down in his crib.  Either way I'd love baby sleep solutions anyway!

Because All I Can Talk About is Baby Sleep

Well kids...It finally happened.

My baby slept through the night.

Don't get too excited...sadly I'm talking the "technical" sleeping through the night, not what most of us consider through the night.

That's right folks...he slept for 5 WHOLE HOURS...in a row.

I woke up at 2am and thought my boob was going to explode.

It was amazing.

I lay there torn between desperately wanting some relief for my boob and wanting to wait and see how long the kid would sleep if I left him alone.

Luckily it was obviously my mommy radar that woke me up because about 2 minutes after I awoke the kid started squirming for some food!

As exciting as this all is, it's unfortunate that I did not get the same 5 hours of sleep as he went to bed at 9pm and I went to bed at 10pm, but I'll take the 4 hours!  

Can you believe I haven't slept longer than 4 hours in a row in the 4.5 months that Baby Jett has been alive?

And can you believe that was the first time that my boobs have EVER gone 5 hours without feeding the baby?

This 5 hours thing was awesome for more than the fact that it's a milestone of "sleeping through the night", I also seem to have unlocked some baby sleep secrets that actually worked!

I've discussed Baby Jett's odd half hour napping and how he takes like 7 million naps a day because he only naps for a half hour and he wants to nap an hour and a half after he awoke from his last half hour nap.  I've also discussed my frustration with trying to get him down for the night, in that he seems to think 7:30 is just time for another nap and he won't REALLY go down for the night until 9-10pm.

Well, yesterday I did a little experiment.  

I kept him up after he woke up for the day for a full hour and a half, whereas usually he's down an hour after he gets up.  Then I kept him up for 1 hour and 45 minutes to 2 hours between each nap, which drastically reduced our naps from 6 down to only 4.  And finally I didn't put him down for bed until 9:00 which was 2 hours after his last nap ended at 7:00pm.

AND IT WORKED.

Not only did he take an hour and a half nap for his first nap of the day (followed by some 30-40 minutes naps) but he also SLEPT FOR 5 HOURS immediately after I put him down for the night.  Had it not been so cold I COULD HAVE PUT HIM TO SLEEP IN HIS CRIB and he would have slept for the 5 hours...I know this because my husband is gone and there's lots of room in the bed and I wasn't touching the baby for that 5 hours!!!

Please...everyone hold the applause for Jesica finally getting her baby to sleep without snuggling into her boob...I know the rest of you figured this out when your babies were like 6 weeks old and I feel like I'm late to the baby sleeping party but I have to repeat it again tonight before it's real!

The Boobs Revisited

I'd like to revisit the status of my boobs.

When last I left you here these babies were producing...and spraying....milk like there was no tomorrow.

And they were big.  Full D's.  That was big for me folks, I know some of you have like HH's or some other crazy letter with your new mama boobs, but D's were big for me!

Everyone told me that things would calm down and settle somewhere around the 12 week mark.

Well 12 weeks came and went and we were STILL making enough milk for me to provide for my own baby, pump 5 oz bottles even after a feeding and also donate to several women in my midwife group who didn't produce enough milk.  

I was convinced it was all a bunch of crap and that I was just going to make tons of milk forever.  I was going to be like the Mother Teresa of Nursing and just continue to donate milk to women with low supply everywhere.

And then FINALLY somewhere around Week 16, 4 months in to this whole breastfeeding thing, the boobs got the message that I didn't give birth to triplets and relaxed.

It was such a subtle change that I wouldn't have noticed it except for the fact that my brand new bras suddenly didn't fit.

I found these really pretty nursing bras whist in London and bought them in D's.  I tried them on, amusingly spraying everywhere all over the dressing room while trying them on and they fit beautifully.

source

Two weeks later after we'd returned home my beautiful new bras suddenly didn't fit anymore.

Sad face.

So, here we are 4 months of nursing and my boobs have shrunk back to their pre-pregnancy size of 34C and they are now just kind of always full of a certain amount of milk.  Engorgement is rare and deflation is rare, they are just sort of always semi-full , so much so that I have a lot of trouble remembering which boob baby last fed on.  Before it was easy because one boob was huge and the other was not, now they always feel the same!

Annoyingly, pumping now only gets me 3-4 oz. and that's every drop and takes half an hour.  I used to be able to pump 5 oz. in 20 minutes and that was with me choosing to stop the pump because pumping is tedious and boring, not because my boob was done giving milk.  

In hindsight I should have built up more of a freezer stock in those first 4 months...but they would of been tainted with dairy...so nevermind!  Advice to new mamas though, build up your freezer stock before your milk regulates!

I already miss my D cups.

So there you have it, oversupply or not, things DO eventually regulate in the milk department!!!  How long did it take some of you other new mamas???  Longer than the 3 months they promised?

Milk, Milk, and Even More Milk

We all know and worry about low milk supply issues.

And while pregnant we all hope and pray that we will be able to breastfeed our children successfully and not suffer from said low supply issues.

But have any of you spent any time worrying about having TOO much milk?

I didn't even know such a think existed and if I had given it any thought it wouldn't have seen it as a problem.

And anyone who suffers from low milk supply can't see how it's a problem.  Because how can having TOO much milk be a problem?

Well...it's a problem.  And one that I don't hear discussed very often.

It turns what is supposed to be a calming soothing experience into a form of torture for your baby known as WATERBOARDING.

If you couldn't guess I have an oversupply issue.

And we're all drowning in a sea of milk over here.

You see, my body is convinced that it produced twins and has enough milk to feed those twins...and maybe a few other babies as well.

Do you know what happens when you make too much milk?

You have a crazy quick FORCEFUL letdown in which you milk comes shooting out of BOTH BOOBS regardless of which one the baby is on and tries to drown your infant.

My midwife compares it to having a firehose shoved down your throat.

DOESN'T SOUND CALMING OR SOOTHING DOES IT?

Well, my baby doesn't think so either.

In fact there is A LOT of coughing, sputtering, spitting up and burping every time we nurse.  Which is still roughly every 1-2 hours during the day!

IT'S ROUGH.

Baby latches on smoothly enough, but as soon as I feel that tingling of the letdown, off comes the baby choking and gagging on the firehose of milk while my boob sprays him and whatever else is in front of me with a geyser of milk.

I then have to somehow cover my geyser with a towel (without pushing on my nipple because I WANT the geyser to gush out into the towel to get rid of the excess milk and pushing on the nipple will staunch the flow) and soothe and burp the crying coughing gagging baby.

Really it requires 3 hands...at least

After the geyser is down to a trickle it's back to latching and sucking for awhile and then OH RIGHT THERE'S ANOTHER LETDOWN and we do it all over again.

Everyone INSISTS that around the 3 month mark the excess milk will start to calm down and my body will adjust the milk according to what baby actually NEEDS...and not try to feed all the babies in San Francisco.

I'm waiting patiently.   But in the meantime...

There are several "remedies" to this oversupply, all of which we've tried, but we're still drowning.

I feed on only one boob for 3-4 hour blocks of time, once we get close to that 4th hour the boob FINALLY feels like it's emptying and baby can nurse calmly without coughing and gagging.  But then the next feed is onto the heavy full boob and we start the routine all over again.  

I feed in positions in which gravity is NOT helping the milk flow.  Lots of getting baby latched and then leaning back so that the milk has to flow UPHILL.  We also do a lot of baby in sitting positions rather than laying positions so that he can better deal with all the milk.

Sidelying also works really well as the excess milk just flows out the side of his mouth and he doesn't have to try to gulp it down.  We both end up in a puddle of milk when sidelying but nighttime feeds are actually the easiest!

I'm also drinking peppermint tea everyday as peppermint is supposed to naturally help lower one's milk supply...so far nothing, but we're only 1 week in to Operation Peppermint.

Anyone else out there dealing with an OVERSUPPLY issue?  And if so, what did you or are you doing about it?  Anything work?  Or do I just have to give it more time?

And please no one tell me to try pumping as I do pump occasionally but anymore and it is only going to increase my supply!

Oh, and look who smiles finally!

Baby Jett - 1 Month

One month down.

Some days all I can think is...why did we want kids so bad again?

And other days I think...wow, what a cute kid we made!

This month has been one of the most challenging of my life and I have trouble understanding those who have nothing but good things to say about the first few weeks of their kid's life.  The good is of course the healthy baby, but OMG the whole experience of a newborn is nothing like I imagined.

I know there's a learning curve involved but one month in I'm still having trouble figuring out how to "do" things around the house, as well as all the other errands I used to do like grocery shop etc etc.

It's absolutely exhausting getting absolutely nothing done everyday.

Everyone says that you should really soak up and enjoy these early newborn days because they change so fast and that you'll never get that time back again.  And just like I'm not supposed to be doing I spend a lot of time wishing away these early days and waiting for the day when baby is a bit more...interesting.

I can't help it guys, I know it's so close.  I have friends with 3 month olds and they are doing SO much more than Baby Jett...I can't wait.

All that being said Baby Jett has GROWN.  He's like a giant baby now.  He weighed in at a whopping 9 lbs. 3 oz today at his one month appt!

I can't believe that some people give birth to babies this big...he seems so huge to me.

My little newborn baby on Day 2 weighing in at 5 lbs. 6 oz. 

My giant one month old weighing in at a whopping 9 lbs. 3 oz. 

At one month...

...I'm still busy drowning my baby in my oversupply of milk at each and every feeding...the pediatrician insists this will calm down in another few months but in the meantime I can spray milk across the room, or more importantly ALL OVER THE BABY.  He gets a milk shower at least once a day.  Did you guys know your boob could literally SPRAY milk?  It's fascinating.

...Baby Jett is getting better at dealing with the milk drowning...I mean FEEDING.  He takes more breaks for burping rather than gulping furiously to try to swallow it all as quickly as he can and that seems to make the whole ordeal more manageable.  We still have some exorcist style spit ups...but thankfully they are down to once every few days.

During the day he feeds quite a bit, usually once every 1-2 hours and most nights he's really good about sleeping for 3 hour stretches with a 4 hour thrown in every once in awhile...those nights are heavenly.  But some nights he sticks to his daytime routine of feeding every 1.5-2 hours...those nights are hell.

...Baby Jett will not take a pacifier.  We didn't introduce one until this past week and he was really uninterested in it.  He's not much of a comfort sucker, if he starts sucking on his hand it's because he's hungry and that paci just isn't gonna cut it!

We also introduced a bottle this week, which means I attempted pumping this week.  He accepted the bottle just fine which made daddy happy but mommy really hates the pump and with the oversupply issues I've already got going on pumping is only going to be happening once every other day or so...and still only to appease daddy.

...Jett LOVES baths.  He gets very chill and mellow and just seems to really enjoy the sensation of the warm water.  We take baths together once every 2 or 3 days.

...he's a grunter.  Oh my how he grunts!  It's particularly annoying at 3am...so much grunting!

...has become a bit of a barnacle.  He used to let us put him down to sleep...now it's hit or miss. Sometimes you can put him down and sometimes he won't sleep unless someone is holding him or laying with him on their chest.  I ALWAYS attempt to put him down and even let him fuss for a bit before I go pick him up because I don't want him to never sleep on his own, but sometimes the only thing that works is to hold him...and I must admit when I'm exhausted and can't get the baby to sleep on his own, it's a great excuse to lay down with him and take a nap with him on my chest.

Overall I have to say that we've been blessed with a pretty easy baby...but I'm still looking forward to the days when he can actually interact with us!