Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

 

Babby was five months yesterday. Time flies when your baby is waking up screaming in the night multiple times every night. I took him to the doctor the other day to see if the fussiness and tendency to screech like a kettle while holding one ear was due to an ear infection. It was not. His ears are fine. Must just be teething.

Getting big!

It’s been a big month for Babby – he has perfected his ability to locate sounds, so he is very good at turning his head to catch sounds. The last couple of weeks he has been causing a fuss when we take away something he is playing with – a mile stone I really could have done without for a while longer. He can sit by himself for a little while if we sit him forward propped on his hands like a frog, but after a while he’ll start to topple sideways. Babby also achieved a long-desired goal this month: he has, on several occasions, successfully gotten his toes in his mouth, after months of trying and failing. We were very proud.

His grabbiness has increased and he likes to yank my hair and take off my glasses and turn them around so the earpieces are pointed directly at his corneas. He bites everything, including my chin and his Daddy’s nose. He has met a squeaky toy named Sophie the Giraffe, and he now plans to marry her. He spends a significant chunk of the day making out with her.

"Do you mind? We're kind of having a moment."

 

He has discovered his penis, which has added a new challenge to diaper changing. Obviously we don’t want to discourage him from exploring his own body, but diapers still have to be changed. We try to give him a bit of time with himself before prying away his hands so we can actually fasten his diaper. I live in fear of the day when he will grab his penis before I have had a chance to wipe the poo off of it. So far I have always beaten him to the punch.

We are going to start our no-cry sleep training, so I followed the author’s advice and took a log of his sleep patterns/daily routine. I’ll take another in 10-14 days and we’ll see if there has been any change.

Sleep Log:

9:30 am – awake for the day.

-Play on mat, nurse, fuss, etc.

11:30 am – first nap – fall asleep nursing.

12:00 pm – awake again!

-Nurse, chew on fingers, “talk”, smile at Mommy, play peek-a-boo, listen to music, play in exersaucer, fuss, go for a walk, fuss.

3:15 pm – second nap – fall asleep nursing.

3:45 pm -wake up screaming, get stuffed into snow suit, nurse back to sleep.

4:00-6:30 – sleep for bizarrely long time. Mommy, in a fit of freedom, sweeps and mops bottom floor, washes dishes, cleans the sink, calls her mother.

6:30 pm -wake up.

-Play, sit in Mommy/Daddy’s lap while they watch Jeopardy/eat, play in Exersaucer, nurse

9:00 pm – bath, books, booba and bed, all a little late because of the prolonged nap in the magic suit.

10:15 pm – finally fall asleep after alternately screaming and nursing for nearly an hour.

11:30 pm – wake up screaming, get stuffed in snow suit, fall asleep nursing.

1:15 am – wake up, nurse, got back to sleep

3:15 am – wake up, nurse, go back to sleep

5:00 am – wake up, nurse, go back to sleep (wait, what happened to the 4 am scream-fest?)

7:00 am – wale up, nurse, fuss, nurse, go back to sleep

8:30 am – up for the day

Total Nap Sleep: 3 1/2 hours (higher than his usual 2-3 hours).

Total Nighttime Sleep: 9 1/2 hours

Total Sleep in 24 h: 13 hours

So, we are now introducing the following sleep plan:

Step 1: Associate sleep with music/lovey. PH is going to try and buy the seahorse after work today. We’ll see if it exists in the Toys R Us Express by his work. The music-box lamb is just too sprightly for bedtime!

Continue sleep association for 5-7 days.

Step 2: Begin prying Babby off of the breast just before he falls asleep. PH may have to camp in the den on the futon the week I work on this, because I think it will result in more disruptive nights, since I’ll probably have to do the pry-off thing multiple times each session before he actually goes to sleep.

Reassess in 14 days.

Changes already instituted: adding nightly bath to bedtime routine (yes, his bath time is getting much better!), have do-whatever-it-takes attitude to get Babby to nap during the day to prevent being overtired (hence the return of the snow suit!).

I’ll let you know how it goes!

Update: Sleep Log Numero Dos