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!

Half a Year Already

For the first time since Baby Jett was born I'm like OMG MY BABY IS GROWING UP SO FAST!  There's something about 6 months that's like WOW, TIME IS FLYING.

But I'm loving it!  No sad face.  No tears.  I love this kid more the older he gets =)

Yay for 6 months!

• Weight approx 16 lbs. we don't have our real ped appt until next month.
• Still has pretty blue eyes though I think they're turning a bit grey...like daddy's.
• His hair is light brown and is FINALLY growing in up at the top so he doesn't look like he has a receding hairline.
• His eyelashes have turned dark...no more blonde eyelashes.
• Though he has been teething for 3 months he still has no teeth...not even any buds.
• While we sort out sleep we put solids on hold, so he's still an exclusively breastfed baby.
• He's still a Craptastic sleeper.
• Wears 6-9 month clothes, pants he wears 9-12 month.
• Loves the cats and I mean LOVES the cats.  Squeals with delight when they lay down on his mat with him, he "pets" them by gently touching the fur and then squeezing really hard until the cats run away...yet they keep coming back for more.
• Changing diapers and putting clothes on this kid is now a workout and takes half an hour because HE WILL NOT STAY ON HIS BACK.  He rolls over the moment he's placed on his back...I've become an expert at putting a diaper on him while he's on his hands and knees in the crawl position.
• Sleeps in his crib.  BIGGEST CHANGE THIS MONTH.  I'm happy with this.  I thought he would stay in the big bed for a whole year...but 6 months will have to do!
• Sits unassisted but when he gets too excited by a toy in his mouth he has a tendency to topple over.
• Loves his jumperoo and will happily play in it by himself for half an hour.
• Thinks us singing to him is the funniest thing in the world...I try not to be offended but I'm pretty sure he's laughing AT me not with me.
• Is still enthralled with watching us eat and drink...as soon as nap training is over we're starting him on solids.
• Will put absolutely anything in his mouth, most amusingly at baby group he sucks on the other younger babies hands and feet.
• He can mimic other babies.  He has learned how to rock in the crawling position from another baby and is attempting a crab crawl that he learned from another older baby.
• Tries to climb on everything.  If you're holding him and he sees something he'd like to climb on he will practically dive out of your arms...he appears to be more of a rough and tumble kind of kid than a watch and observe one!
 

 

How he'd prefer to have his picture taken...

 

Is only sitting here nicely because daddy is making funny faces above my head.

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...