Daisy is 6 months old! She is just so much fun. Here are some updates on how she is growing:
17 pounds! She has gained 10 pounds since birth. Since starting solids, she has had a major growth spurt. Must be all those mangoes, bananas, and pumpkin (her favorites).
We have started sleep training. Before I get into it, let me say that let this not be a place for debate as to what method of sleep training will scar your baby more. I welcome tales of what works for you though, I could use all the help I can get! Anyways, we have completed a week and a half of the Ferber method and I have decided that we need to try something else. Our experience went like this: We were in a three night cycle. The first night would be just awful. Lots of crying (from mom and baby), and eventual sleep, with just as much waking up in the night. The second night would be a little better, crying but not as much, but still just as much midnight wakings. The third night, there would be little to no crying, but all the nighttime wakings. Then it would start all over again, even though we were doing the same thing each night. At the same time, her naps were getting worst. They went from 40-60 minutes to 20. No good. Obviously, this hasn't been working. Right now I am doing what we did before I started sleep training-putting her through her bedtime routine, then rocking her to the point of intense drowsiness, and putting her in her crib. I don't mind that method of getting her to sleep at all-I love cuddling her. I started looking into different methods because she wakes up a lot in the night, and I would like for her to start sleeping more consistently through the night. I realized the other day that with pregnancy and having a baby, I haven't had more than 4 hours of sleep at a time in about a year. I am really ready to sleep through the night, and I hope daisy is too. Moms of the internet, what worked for you?
Daisy LOVES solid food. She loves trying new things, and she is just so fascinated with what we eat. She really seems to enjoy sitting in her little chair with us at the dinner table, eating food like us. I look forward to when she gets teeth, so we can start giving her little pieces of our food.
Daisy has a new game, where she just HAS to get our hair in her mouth. She loves it. She lets out a screech, opens her mouth, and lunges forward until she has two fists and a mouth full of my hair or Jordan's beard. It's pretty funny, as long as her nails are trimmed and she doesn't get the tender temple hairs.
Case in point
Unfortunately with solids come lots of poop. The next picture contains poop, so beware.
(There are a lot more pictures after the poopy one, so maybe scroll fast if you have a weaker constitution?)
That is her worst blow out to date, after I had rinsed most of it off. I just had to document how high it got up her body. We have many baths and wardrobe changes in our home. She also has started to try to escape diaper changes...so I clean her changing table a lot these days.
Daisy is a pro at sitting up now, and she loves it. PHOTOBOMB:
Daisy also LOVES her dad. I am so so glad. I was worried that Daisy would be anxious around Jordan because he travels so much and works such long hours, but nope. She loves him. She is always excited to see him when he comes home, and I love seeing that. Our daily routine usually ends with me making dinner while Jordan plays with Daisy, and then while I clean up, he gets her ready for bed. I don't mind cooking and cleaning the kitchen each night because it gives Jordan a little more time to spend with his baby girl.
Daisy also has become increasingly interested in my phone. Here she is trying to get her mouth on it.
Daisy also enjoys running errands with me, especially since she is now being carted around in her stroller, or as I am sure she refers to it, her chariot.
Daisy remains, as ever, our happy, delightful baby girl. She always has a smile and a laugh for her momma and poppa, and we love her so much. Being a mom just keeps getting better and better, even with the lack of sleep and perpetually stained clothing.
I need more info before I can offer advice for sleep training. :) What's her sleeping schedule now? How many naps a day, how long awake between naps, how long are the naps, what time is bed? What are her eating habits? Breastfeeding, formula, how much if you know, how often? Also how much solids does she eat a day? Is she teething or anything else going on? I obviously don't know it all, but we did a lot of trial and error and now M is a champ sleeper so I might be able to help a little, hopefully! :)
ReplyDeleteMarisha, I would love your advise. Here are the answers to your questions:
DeleteShe usually takes 3 naps a day, with 2 hours in-between each nap, and a half hour adjustment (sometimes she is tired after 90 minutes instead of 2 hrs)
Her last nap ends around 4, and her bedtime is 7, though sometimes she isn't asleep until 8. She will sleep for 4 hours, and then after that wake up every 1 1/2-2 hours. That is the part I want to fix. Up to now I have been nursing her back to sleep when she wakes, but I am trying to weed those out by just rocking her back to sleep instead of nursing her. She still needs my help, but now she doesn't expect as much food, which is kind of an improvement.
She breastfeeds every 3 hours (when she wakes from a nap) and has one solid meal a day, usually about 2 or 3 ounces in addition to breastmilk. I don't know how much she eats when she nurses, but I do know the most she has ever had from a bottle has been 6 ounces, so probably somewhere in that neighborhood.
She isn't teething that I know of. Lots of drool, but no bumps in her mouth, and no increase in irritability.
I really do appreciate your input-I didn't expect this to be as complicated as it is! Thanks Mishy!
The best advice I received when we were trying to get Eleanor to sleep through the night is to give her a bottle of water instead of milk. She would fuss and scream when she wanted her 3am milk time, and our efforts with a pacifier were ridiculous. She would throw impressive tantrums. But the water worked. It was soothing enough to help her go back to sleep, but not good enough to keep waking up for.
ReplyDeleteOk, so take everything I say worth a grain of salt or whatever that saying is. This is what worked for us, no promise it'll work for you or if you even want to try it. That's your call, but it sounds like you're doing everything pretty similar to us.
ReplyDeleteWe followed the every 2 hour rule until M was about 8 months, so that's good. Her first nap of the day was always more at 90 mins than 2 hours like you said, and then the rest of the day every 2. I also never let her sleep longer than 2 hours, but it sounds like that isn't really happening with you.
Her bed time at 4 months old was around 10. Some might say that's too late, but it worked for her. We randomly were out late one night and didn't get home until 9:30 and by time I got her to bed it was 10. I thought she was going to be up all night, but she slept through until 7 or 8 which was a huge improvement for us. So we started doing bed time at 10, and she slept through every night. Then slowly we started moving it back and she got into a 8-9 oclock bedtime by 6 months. Just depended on when her last nap was for the day.
She always sleeps better when she's not over tired, like yesterday even, she fought one of her naps so bad that when she finally crashed she only slept 20 mins, woke up screaming because she was still tired, and when she went to bed, she woke up a few times. It was totally because she was over tired, so I'm a firm believer in naps and I fight her to the death to make her nap. :) We plan everything around naps and I mean everything. It's insane but she now sleeps 13 hours straight. Anyways, back to you, sorry. That was just added to give you hope, she will sleep through the night, hopefully soon!
So if I was you, I'd give her one more short cat nap around 6 if her last nap was at 4, like 30-45 mins (wake her up if needed), and then put her to bed around 8:30-8:45. That's what we did for a long time, and then when she started giving up that last nap we moved her bed time up.
I'm all for rocking, paci's, sound machines, whatever you need to get her to sleep. Oh we also swaddled until she was 7 months.
If she's waking up to nurse for comfort, I'd give a paci. You do not want your boob to become her paci which alot of people in my mommy group have trouble with now with our 9-10 month olds. Not fun!
If she's waking up to feed, I'd give her an ounce or two of water. (You should ask your doc but mine ok'd water at 6 months) Supposedly if you give water in the night the baby won't want it and will figure out it's not worth waking up for water. We tried this a few times and it didn't work for us, but maybe it would work for you.
I don't know how you feel about formula... so take this for what it's worth, and I know some will disagree, but I swear that she started sleeping longer the night I gave her formula as her last bottle of the night. We did a combination of breast/formula for other reasons but I would usually nurse her to sleep, and then one night I just couldn't/didn't want to and asked David to take over. So he made her a bottle of formula and she ate a full 6 ozs as her last meal and slept like a baby.
I hope something in there helps! If something didn't make sense just ask. Good luck and let me know how it goes. Sleep training is not fun and it's always changing. I was giving M one solid a day up until 9 months and then she started waking up at night again to eat and so I had to really up her food. Now she eats 3-4 purees and a bunch of finger foods and now she's back to sleeping through the night. Good luck!
First time mom talking and I asked a bunch of people before we came up with what we do... so take this for what it's worth (read: not much), but at 3 months the getting up all night was killing me because I don't sleep well on my own and would never fall back asleep til she was ready to get up again.. ugh.
ReplyDeleteSo we had Cary get up with her at night and give her a bottle (only for the one 3 am feeding) and we don't warm it up or make it particularly great. Then we slowly weaned the botttle from 5 oz down to 2 and she'd fall asleep. Then she was sleeping through the night, til the next growth spurt. After that one the only solution was more food. I worry I'm feeding her too much but that girl acts like she's starving and will nurse every 2 hours otherwise... so our schedule now includes 2 or 3 meals of solid food, she still breastfeeds 5 or 6 times a day (not sure how much she gets), we try for 2 naps--that's where I really need to get tough and improve, and then at 8 we give her a bath, pajamas, swaddle, read, breastfeed and she's out for the night. She's usually down around 8:30-8:45 but we adjust it earlier if she hasn't had a good nap or is just cranky.
Generally, what helps the most is the bedtime routine, her being full, and me not getting up with her at night on the rare nights she wakes up, otherwise she starts waking up at night again. That might not be do-able with jordan's schedule, and I worried about it being hard on Cary and school, but it only took a week, so it might be worth the try.
So I realized I posted this on the wrong blog post...oops. Here it is in the right place.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the sleep goes I can completely understand where you are coming from. Lily only started sleeping through the night a few weeks ago (at 13 months). We tried so many times to sleep train and it would work for a bit and then a cold or something would come along and it would all get messed up. The cry it out method worked for us. My mom suggested to me when I was having trouble with this at first: try it for naps first. I don't have a schedule with Lily and put her down when she starts acting tired. So when she is acting tired during the day I would put her down. The first few days were the hardest but she went down eventually and now there is no way she will rock to sleep for her naps. She still whines herself to sleep a lot of the time but I know and she knows she needs to sleep. We started bedtime after she got the hang of naps. It worked for us and maybe it will work for you too.
You probably won't lose your cuddle time with her. Since Lily started to put herself to sleep she is much more cuddly during the day.