Watch Me Grow - Twenty One Weeks

Kaitlin is one smiley girl lately.

She's always been a pretty happy baby (even though you might get a different impression due to all the whining I do about naps) but she is even more smiley and giggly. And I say "giggly" lightly - if you count a screeching-half laugh-half cough situation a giggle, then yes, she is very giggly.

Big new this week, I was able to get her to sit up by herself for a few seconds! She was leaning over on her hands/arms, and only last for about 10 seconds before she toppled over - but it counts! She is getting to be so strong, it's amazing. She is now reaching for EVERYTHING. Toys, blankets, cups, hair, your nose - anything you are holding she wants to hold too. She is still in the swaddle but slowly weaning herself off of it. Many times for naps and especially at bed time she gets one or both arms out and falls asleep on her tummy. The tummy sleeping hasn't done much for the length of her naps, but she is able to sooth herself a bit better that way.

I took her to the Drs on Friday to get a weight check again (the pediatrician even said - Wow! You guys must love coming to see us!) but they had me a little concerned at her last check up so I wanted to go and hopefully get some good new. And good news we got! She is now in the 19% for weight (was previously at 15%, not 20% like I thought) and weighs in at a whopping 13lb 7oz. The doctor was very happy with her weight gain and wants us to keep up the good work. Considering feeding Kaitlin is sometimes like trying to heard cats - ie, she wants nothing to do with it and only wants to play and look around - I felt pretty good. Next month we start solids!

Watch Me Grow - Twenty Weeks

If I thought nineteen weeks was exciting, twenty weeks proved to be even more so! Kaitlin has almost mastered rolling from back to tummy and then back again! We worked on it a lot last week so that she would be able to roll back at night on her own. I started clapping and making a big deal when she rolled from tummy to back. I don't know if that helped at all but she seemed to get it. It takes her a little while each day to remember that she knows how to do it, but she's getting here.

In addition to rolling all over the place she has gotten really good at holding objects in her hands and shaking them around. She still doesn't have a ton of strength in her hands but she can hold onto rattles and small or soft toys and pass them from one hand to another. She is also reaching for toys and even wimpers when they are out of her reach and she can't get to them. Her hand eye coordination is really taking off!

Another thing that I noticed this week is that she really concentrates on figuring objects out or when grabbing them. When she is in the jumperoo, for example, she concentrates really hard at reaching for the figurines and moving the rattle. It's like you can actually see the wheels turning in her brain trying to figure out what each one does. It has been fascinating to watch. A lot of times I'll just sit there next to her in silence and watch while she does her thing - it's like I'm learning right along side of her!

We have continued with the cry it out method at night and I have to say that it is getting much better! She only had one set back this week where I went into her room after I put her to sleep. She was crying really hard and not at all like her tired-I-need-to-go-to-bed-cry, so I checked on her. Turns out she had another soiled diaper. Once she was changed she settled herself quickly. It takes her about 15-30 minutes to get to sleep, sometimes she cries and sometimes she just fusses and talks to herself before settling down to sleep. All in all - still a big success!

Letting our baby cry it out...and a book review

It started innocently enough. The day we came back from our summer vacation Kaitlin woke up soon after being put down to sleep for the night. She woke up crying which was pretty unlike her. I ran up to her room to see what was the matter, soothed her for a few minutes and then went back downstairs. The next night it happened again. And again. The next night? Multiple wakings in a few short hours. It only got worse from there. I thought she might be going through a growth spurt as she was also waking up several times a night to eat, rather than the one time per night that she used to wake up. Fast forward six weeks later and this was no growth spurt. It routinely took us two to three hours to get her to finally fall asleep at night. We would start  by putting her to sleep around 6pm and she would finally be asleep for the night around 8pm or later. I would rock her to sleep, with the pacifier, and lay her down in bed when she was about 95% asleep. I thought this was letting her fall asleep on her own - after all she wasn't 100% asleep when I put her in her crib. But after five, ten, fifteen up to thirty minutes later she would wake up crying. I found it easier to run up the stairs and try and sooth her with the pacifier as quickly as possible rather than leave her to cry - sometimes if I caught it just right she would seamlessly go right back to sleep. But most of the time she wouldn't.

At this time she also started waking up 2-3 times per night to eat. Since she is a breastfed baby I know it is normal for them to still wake several times a night at her age to eat, and I am fine with that. The problem was each time she woke up she slept for shorter and shorter lengths of time after going back to sleep. And she didn't eat a full meal every time she got up. Sometimes she had a four course meal and sometimes she just had an appetizer. This led me to believe that she wasn't actually waking up every time because she was hungry - she was getting used to waking up and getting attention, so she continued to do it. She started waking up for the day at 4am and wanting to play. Not cool kid, not cool.

It also started effecting her naps. It always took me a while to get her down for a nap, but once she was asleep she would be down for 45-60 minutes, if not longer sometimes. But then she started waking up 10 minutes into her nap, crying, and I found myself bounding up the stairs just as I did at night to try and sooth her immediately. I knew this couldn't continue. It was getting worse and I knew I was contributing to the problem. But what could we I do? I thought she was too young to cry it out and truthfully I was scared. She has a set of lungs on her and she is incredibly stubborn. I was terrified that she was going to scream her head off for hours at a time and I knew I wouldn't be able to handle it.

Two weekends ago, after we finally got her to go to bed after a couple hours of this game we played, Brian and I were getting ready to go to sleep. It was about 10pm and I was looking forward to getting a few hours of sleep before she woke up. And then we heard it. She was awake and crying. We looked at each other with dread and wondered why on earth she was waking up at this hour. I knew that if I went in there to sooth her things were going to just get worse and worse. There was no need for her to wake before midnight for a feeding or to be changed. She was waking up out of habit and out of depending on us (ie, ME) to sooth her back to sleep. I just laid there in bed. I couldn't bring myself to go in her room. Brian looked at me and I said, "Don't go in there, she's just going to have to cry". I'm sure he did a little happy dance inside because he has been wanting to let her cry it out since day one.

So we sat there and let her cry. I turned the volume off on the video monitor and tried to ignore it the best I could. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes passed. Still crying. I could tell that it was her tired-why-am-I-not-asleep-anymore cry, not a cry meaning she needed help or was in pain. Fifteen minutes passed. And then...it went quiet. I quickly looked at the monitor to make sure she was OK and what did I see but our baby sound asleep. Sixteen minutes. That's how long it took for her to cry herself back to sleep. Once she was asleep she stayed that way until 2am, which was pretty late for her first night feeding (she had been waking up around midnight or 1am for her first feeding with the second one a few hours after).

Armed with this one small victory we decided to let her cry it out at bedtime the next night from the first time we laid her down to sleep. No more sprinting up the stairs for me. Once we put her down to sleep that was it. I had read Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth several times before but didn't really pay attention to the cry it out information. I didn't want it to come to that. I wanted Kaitlin to have good sleep habits before it got to the point of having to let her scream her head off in order to fall asleep. I had always thought if I had to let her cry it out then I was failing as a mother. I was failing at giving my child the proper tools to let her fall asleep on her own. And to a degree I was right. I was failing at this one thing - running up the stairs to sooth her immediately and to give her the pacifier (which was becoming a nuisance because she would cry as soon as it fell out - the very reason I wanted to avoid using a pacifier in the first place) was teaching her the wrong way to fall asleep. My intentions were good but the results were bad. It turns out letting her cry it out was the proper tool that I was missing.

That second night we let her cry it out I had read all the information by Weissbluth about crying it out in his book. I felt prepared now that I had a plan, we were going to follow his "extinction" sleep plan, and I even felt good about having her cry it out. We had gotten to a bad place and in order to make sure it didn't get even worse we needed to act fast. Our pediatrician had advised that sleep habits are more solidly formed by month 6. We still had time to change Kaitlins (and my) bad habits before they became a more permanent - and hard to resolve - issue. Of course, I wasn't looking forward to the crying part, I was dreading it in fact, but I had to remind myself that letting her cry was teaching her how to fall asleep on her own. She was capable of getting to sleep on her own - she had done it before and at a much younger age when it is usually hard for babies to do so. I knew she had in it her, we just had to get her back to that place.

Not only did I want her to get a full night of restful, uninterrupted sleep, for her own good but I also wanted my nights back. After Kaitlin went to bed was the only time in the day that I had to myself. I wanted to spend it eating dinner with my husband and relaxing, or doing work or writing for this blog more than once a week. Selfishly I wanted more time for myself. When she was waking up several times over the course of two or three hours I was never fully able to relax until she hadn't made a sound for over an hour. I could never really relax, always checking the monitor to see if she was starting to wake up, checking to see if I had to get ready to run up there.  I am fully aware that I helped create the situation and that I was making it more stressful than it probably had to be. I was also aware that it now needed to stop.

Weissbluth offers three different sleep training methods - no cry, maybe cry and let cry. No Cry meant (duh) that you didn't let the baby cry at all when getting him to go to sleep. This usually involved a family bed and/or other methods to stop the baby from becoming upset and crying at bedtime. This was the solution that he least suggested, though he does offer some information about it. Maybe Cry basically uses the Ferber method of cry it out (gradually lengthening the time you let the baby cry before checking and consoling). He mentions that this method is "easier" in terms of not having to hear  your baby cry for long periods of time, but can be harder in the long run and take longer to get lasting results. Let Cry meant that you would let the baby cry as long as it took for him to fall asleep. Kiss the baby goodnight, shut the door and don't go back until morning (or, until they needed to eat during the middle of the night, of course). I knew in my heart of hearts that the Maybe Cry method would not work for us. Kaitlin was already depending on us too much to fall asleep. I knew that if we kept going in there to console her she would just get more and more worked up. So, we went with the Let Cry method.

That second night I was nervous but had to act confident that we were doing the right thing. If she could sense that I was unsure or nervous she would pick up on it right away and we would be off to a bad start - babies have that weird sense about them. So we gave her a bath, fed her a bottle and then laid her down to sleep for the night. She cried for nineteen minutes. Nineteen! That was all! Nineteen minutes was what I was scared of all this time. The next night she cried for eleven minutes, the following night she didn't cry at all. Sure, it still took her a little while to settle herself and she fussed here and there, but soon enough she was sleeping peacefully and it didn't involve any sprinting up the stairs. We were finally making progress.

*I would like to add that we had previously let her "cry it out" here and there. On multiple occasions, when I was too fed up to sprint up the stairs again, we would let her cry. And boy did she cry. I never let it go longer than 20-30 minutes, finally caving in and going up there to settle her. Why letting her cry it out suddenly seemed to work better I don't know. Maybe it was her age, maybe it was my confidence, maybe it was dumb luck. Whatever it was I am grateful it happened*

Unfortunately, just as we were making progress we had a few setbacks - two steps forward, one step back ay? Right after we got her to be able to settle herself and go to sleep fairly easily, my mom came to town for a visit (who wouldn't want to play with Grandma all the time??). Also around this time Kaitlin decided that she only wanted to nap for 30 minutes at a stretch during the day, if she even fell asleep at all. Sleep promotes sleep and trying to get an overtired baby to fall asleep easily at bedtime is no easy feat. On top of all that Kaitlin also figured out how to roll over in her swaddle, and was starting to escape the swaddle more easily. There were a myriad of issues cropping up around the same time and we faced a lot of challenges. One night while my mom was babysitting she cried for a solid half an hour before she fell asleep. The next night, after two failed attempts at napping without a swaddle (and going six hours without sleeping in the morning) she cried for a solid hour - and I mean she screamed her head off. It was torture. This was the nightmare that I was envisioning cry it out would be for us. After an hour I finally went up to her room, sleep training be damned. I couldn't stand it. As soon as I got up there I realized that she had a soiled diaper - something that makes her scream during the day as well. Once she was reswaddled and changed she fell asleep in a matter of seconds (no doubt because she was exhausted from all that crying). 

Since those two setbacks though we have steadily been making progress again. Over the last four nights it has taken Kaitlin about 15 minutes to settle herself to sleep. Sometimes she cries, sometimes she talks to herself and blows bubbles, sometimes she just wiggles around trying to get comfortable. She also wakes up less during the middle of the night - now only once or twice and just to eat - and is able to settle herself back to sleep then as well. Sometimes it takes her a half hour to get back to sleep, but I don't go back in there to help and she eventually puts herself down. 

Despite the hiccups over the weekend, I still strongly believe in the cry it out method because we have experienced its successes first hand. And we are only at the beginning of the training. I know there will be more hiccups along the way - teething, crawling/walking milestones, sickness and growth spurts are all bound to mess up our daughters sleep. And there will be times when she really does need attention and to be comforted in the middle of the night. But I finally feel like I have a solution that works - and will continue to work for us - as long as we follow it properly.

Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child was a great book and I fully recommend it. In the beginning I found it really wordy and scientific - there are dozens of examples regarding studies and facts and figures about sleep and children/babies. I found it hard to read when I first got it because I was looking for fast, quick information and I feel like you have to dig around a bit to get the info that you really need from this book. But the information is there - and there is lots of it. I find myself referencing different chapters as different situations or problems come up, and even rereading the whole book just for a refresher when I feel myself going off course. The book offers a lot of information for parents of colicky babies as well, which I have heard is very useful. And - even if the cry it out method didn't work for us - I would still recommend this book to all new parents simply because it offers a lot of in-depth information about how babies sleep and the science behind it, which is pretty fascinating. One of the first things I learned from this book is that, for babies, sleep promotes sleep. The more sleep a baby gets the more her/she will sleep. Is your baby overtired? Put them to bed early - sometimes as early as 5pm if needed - and they are bound to sleep longer. This was one of the first things I started doing with Kaitlin at around 8 weeks old when I first read this book. I moved her bedtime from around 8pm to 6pm. I was worried that she would be wide awake at 3am but wouldn't you know she still slept until her normal wake up time of 6-7am. That simple change added two hours (on average) to her daily sleep totals, which was huge. Weissbluth explains that different parts of a babies brain holds the information on how to sleep during naps and how to sleep at night, so you have to train each one differently. I could go on and on, but really you're better off hearing it from the man himself :)

As I write this tonight I am writing it in peace. Kaitlin put herself to sleep after about fifteen minutes of wiggling around. It has been quiet in our house since 7:15pm, I have a glass of wine in my hand and I feel confident again as a parent. I know that we did - and are doing - the right thing for our baby girl. And because of that we are all sleeping a bit better at night.

Now naps - that's still a whole other ballgame :)

Watch Me Grow - Nineteen Weeks

Week nineteen was full of excitement! My mom was down to visit and Kaitlin loved having her Grandma around! We started to get some more giggles out of her and she started talking more while she is pushing up on her tummy. She also started to scoot her butt up and move her legs around while on her stomach - is this a precursor to crawling?!?! Yikes!

It was also exciting because we started letting her cry it out at bedtime. I'm going to write a separate post on our experience but let's just say I am now a believer. 

Kaitlin also rolled over in her crib at bedtime while swaddled. We are still using velcro swaddles so this is scary because she can't use her arms to help roll herself back over or push her chest up. We tried going swaddle free on Saturday (might as well just rip the band-aid off and go cold turkey, right?) and that was a HUGE mistake. Personally I just don't think she's ready to be unswaddled yet, even though she is turning over. Of course I want to do what is safest for her but at the same time she can't calm herself enough to fall asleep without the swaddle. Her arms and hands are all up in her face and she hasn't figured out yet that sleeping on your stomach is amazing. She missed two naps on Saturday morning and was exhausted after being awake for six hours. But she would.not.stop.crying. And she wouldn't put her hands down and go to sleep. I finally caved and swaddled her and then she fell sound asleep for two hours.

So now I am working on slowly getting rid of the swaddle. Surprisingly, when/if she breaks one or both arms out of the swaddle when she is asleep she is fine - she doesn't really wake up that much more than when she is swaddled. The problem is getting her to go to sleep with her arms out - which so far has been a failure every time. I am trying different things now like leaving one arm out and one arm swaddled so she can get used to it, before moving on to leaving both arms out. I am also trying swaddling her with her arms at her face so she can at least try and self sooth but not have her arms flying all over the place. 

I know the biggest challenge for me is being consistent (which clearly I am not, as you can see above) and listening to her cry. I know that she needs to learn how to fall asleep without the swaddle as soon as possible. But it's hard being the only one at home during the day and listening to her cry because she can't sleep, and seeing her tired eyes. I cave too easily.

The only other solution I can think of is to try going swaddle free at bedtime (as opposed to starting with naps like I have been) and letting her cry it out. To me this just seems cruel! And I don't want her to get scared when she is stuck on her stomach and not have anyone come and help her.

Has anyone done this before? Am I crazy to think that letting her cry it out at bedtime without a swaddle is a bad idea? I need to find a solution quick - so we can all get back to sleeping better - and safely!

Watch Me Grow - Eighteen Weeks

My little girl turned the big 1-8 this weekend. Luckily it was just eighteen weeks - not eighteen years. The thought of that gives me a heart attack. So lets not talk about it ok? Ok good, thanks.

I mentioned in The Fourth Month post last week that she's started rolling over. She celebrated her four month birthday by rolling over three times that morning. And she hasn't stopped since. Pretty much any time I lay her down on the ground now (or in her crib - oy!) she immediately tries to roll over - and she usually succeeds. She is constantly on her belly now and she can stay there for up to ten to fifteen minutes! Then she usually gets a bit frustrated and hasn't learned how to roll back to her back yet (consistently that is, she's done it once or twice by accident) so I have to help her. And as soon as I turn away she is back on her belly again!

This is much of what our morning looked like while I was trying to get some photos! Silly girl :)

The Fourth Month

Yesterday Kaitlin turned four months old.

I know I say this every month (ok, ok - every week) but how has it been four months already? It goes by too, too fast.

Kaitlin had a big month. She learned how to (FINALLY) roll over - in fact she celebrated her four month birthday by rolling over three times yesterday! I got her first real giggle out of her last week (and have heard lots of "half" giggles since then). She is reaching for and holding toys, sitting up in her bumbo and jumping like a rockstar in the jumperoo. Her leg strength amazes me. I know every mom says this but she must be the strongest four month old around.

She found her feet and learned how to blow raspberries. The amount of drool coming out of her mouth has increased ten fold. She started sitting in the big kid stroller seat and has started "talking" a lot during the day, and not just when she's tired anymore. All of these amazing things in just one month!

Her sleep is still a bit wacky, although for the last week she has finally started sleeping 7-9 hours in a row again (it only took 6 weeks to get back on that schedule) at night, for which I am grateful. After a pep talk from our pediatrician yesterday I am going back to nap and sleep basics. Once again I had found myself doing too many things to try and get her to sleep - I have to remember less is more.

the many faces of KLC, part 3

Our little girl is growing up to be a tall girl! She measured in at 25" yesterday and is in the 90% for height at her age! Her weight is still on the low end, only measuring in the 20%. The doctor wasn't concerned about her height/weight ratio just yet but would like to see her pack on some more weight before she starts solids (how is she old enough for us to be having the conversation about solids?!) These days she is pretty distracted while eating - pausing to look around, give me a smile or just plain take a break. I am trying to figure out if my supply is low (one bad thing about breast feeding is you never know how much they are getting to eat) or if she is just a slow, slow eater and needs more time to get all her calories in. I am trying to increase my supply just to make sure I have enough of what she needs. I'm increasing the amount of water I drink, calories I eat (ok, ok - I'll have another cookie!), adding more pumping sessions a day and am going to try a couple old wives tales - like eating oatmeal and drinking a beer. Hopefully with all these little changes we can get our girl up to a good weight at her next check up so we can start with solids!

A few more things I have learned...

Get Involved

Over the last couple of months we have been getting out and visiting with friends who have babies and attending a moms group at one of the local hospitals. I never realized how important this was until I started getting out there. It is so, so important to have a network of friends and other moms in your situation who can relate and offer some advise or just an ear to listen. The moms group that I am a part of also has a Facebook page where people are constantly asking questions, venting their frustrations and offering things to do and organizing meet ups. It is such a great feeling to be part of an online community (as well as a real life one) with a bunch of people who are all in the same boat as you. I think many times we as new parents, and especially as stay at home moms (and dads), we tend to block out the outside world in search of the perfect nap schedule/feeding habits/whatever-the-problem-of-the-day-is and think that we are the only ones having these problems. In reality there are dozens, if not hundreds, of people going through the same thing. It's nice to connect with those people every once in a while - if only to confirm that no, you are not crazy :)

Write Everything Down

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I have a terrible memory. Ask me what I did yesterday and you'll probably get a blank stare. I know it involved a lot of diapers though. My memory was pretty crap before I had a baby and now you can just forget about it. So in addition to keeping track of Kaitlins eating, pooping and sleeping habits (yes, I am STILL recording all of this information) I have learned to write down as many memories as I can. That is one reason why I love having this blog. Ten years from now I won't remember exactly when she first rolled over or flashed me that first non-gas-related smile, but thanks to this blog I will. When I was pregnant I had the foresight to order a journal to help me write down these memories. This is the one I settled on because it wasn't daunting. It is so much easier to write a sentence or two each day rather than try and come up with a lengthy entry. I highly recommend it for all new moms (and dads!) and the best part is it keeps records for five years! I can't wait to have show this to Kaitlin when she is all grown up.

There is no definitive answer

In parenting there are SO many questions that I ask myself each day. Some of them are relatively easy - Does she have a dirty diaper? Is it time for a nap? Is it time to eat? Many of them though, are not. Why is she making that grunting noise all the time? Why didn't she sleep for longer than 30 minutes? Should I get rid of the swaddle? What's the best way to do x, y and z? I could go on and on. I have plenty of parenting books, am glued to parenting blogs and websites and ask my fellow mommy friends a million questions. And yet, I have found, there is no definitive answer for every question. Because each baby is so different, what works for one might not work for yours. And because each parent is different, what worked for one might not work for you. As much as I want this parenting thing to be black and white, cut and dry, I am slowly learning that it is not. Talk about 50 shades of grey. So I take the advise that I get from all the books, blogs and parents that I can get and try a few of them out. Some of them work, some of them don't. And at the end of this parenting gig (is it ever really over?) maybe I'll write my own book. But I can't guarantee it'll work for you ;)

Watch Me Grow - Seventeen Weeks

On Saturday Kaitlin turned seventeen weeks old, and week seventeen was a big one!

She's been a busy girl, last week she learned how to...

1. ROLL OVER!! WHOOHOO! After 9 weeks of trying she finally got there! Granted, she's only done it once, but I'll take it! She finally got enough momentum to get her whole body flipped from back to front. Her arm was still in the way but she didn't let it bother her this time, she pushed herself up with her one free arm and up she went! I, of course, was shouting and laughing and celebrating and she just looked at me like I was a crazy person (as she usually does). So, it's just happened the one time, but now we know she can do it!

2. Grab at the hanging toys on her play mat - this is also an exciting one, because it means that her hand-eye coordination is getting better. Previously, when she was laying on her play mat, she would bat at the hanging toys but not really connect with them and most of the time she just laid there and stared at them. Last week she started intentionally grabbing at the toys and even playing with them! One of them is a rattle and she grabbed ahold of it and was shaking it back and forth, staring at it intently. I did my little happy dance in the corner this time so she wouldn't look at me funny.

3. LAUGH - this might be the most exciting one of all, the one I have been waiting for! Kaitlin loves to look in the mirror and I show her her reflection a couple of times a day. I also talk to her while she's looking in the mirror, asking her who she sees (even though she has no idea that the person she is looking at is herself). This time I did it while making some really funny faces and voices and I got a giggle out of her! Most of the time when she is trying to express that she's happy she lets out a little screech with a smile. She time I managed to get a big smile and a little giggle - I instantly turned into a puddle on the ground. I got a couple of giggles out of her and then she was over it. I tried later that afternoon (and every day since then) to get more giggles out of her but so far she's been keeping quiet. I can't wait to hear more!

With all of these developments this week she has been sleeping a lot better at night, which I am thankful for. We are still having a hard time getting her to fall asleep at night, but once she is out she is asleep for 7-9 hours at a stretch. She has her FOUR MONTH check up this week (!!!!) and another round of shots. I can't wait to hear what the doctor has to say and I have about 9405894852098 questions for her, so it should be a good visit!