A sleeping baby

Last week I gave in and called a sleep consultant recommended by a friend. C's day sleeps were varying between intermittent to non-existent, and to get her to sleep was requiring more and more effort. With a recurrence of the lower back/pelvis pain I lived with for most of my pregnancy, patting her to sleep on my shoulder was simply becoming unsustainable.

Stacey came and spent last Sunday with us, from 11am until 7pm. Her method did involve a bit of crying, but also listening to the type of cry to make sure it was angry/frustrated rather than distressed. She also helped us figure out two different schedules, one based on a 5.30am wakeup, one based on a 7.00am wakeup. As C's wakeup time was so variable, and some days have to incorporate kindy pick-ups/drop-offs, I had not been able to figure out a schedule that could incorporate all these things.  My wishlist was for C to wake around 7:00, take at least two day naps, self-settle during the day, and maybe space out her day feeds a little.

All I can say is that Stacey's method works.

For comparison, here is C's day last Friday (pre-Stacey):

4:15am - woke, yelled, had milk
6:30am - up for the day
7:30am - more milk
8:30am - spent 15 minutes in bed before waking, after 20 minutes of patting
9:15am - breakfast (solids)
9:40am - 20 minutes of patting and crying, did not go to sleep
10:40am - milk
12:00pm - lunch (solids)
12:30pm - another 30 minutes of patting and crying, did not go to sleep
2:40pm-  milk
3:15pm - finally had a 45 minute sleep!
5:00pm - dinner (solids)
5:20pm  - bath
5:40pm - milk and bed
6:45pm - awake again grizzling
7:00pm - more milk
7:15pm - asleep

And here her day a couple of days ago (post-Stacey):
7:00am - awake, milk
8:00am - breakfast (solids)
8:30am - 15 minutes settling in cot (talking, grizzling - no crying)
8:45am  - 2 HOUR NAP! (including re-settling herself partway through!)
11:00am - milk
1.30pm - 40 minute nap (in car - also something that never used to happen)
2.30pm - milk
4.00 - 4.25 - unsuccessful attempt to settle (grizzling in cot)
5.45pm - dinner
6.10pm - bath
6.40pm - milk
7.00pm - asleep

Actual day naps! Self-settling! Sleeping 12 hours overnight!

It's not perfect - I haven't yet persuaded C to take a late afternoon nap and she really needs to, as every day since Stacey came she has been up from about 2:00pm until bedtime, but we will work on that. A lot of the time she also seems to want milk more frequently than the every four hours that the schedule calls for, but that is ok.

Crossing all fingers, toes and other random body parts that this continues...

The wisdom of Google and a pink koala

Three days ago baby C had her first go of pumpkin. She was initially surprised then quite enthusiastic, especially when given the spoon and allowed to smear it on her face. E was excited beyond measure; for some reason giving the baby proper food has loomed large on the list of things she wants to do as a big sister. We dispensed the first serving mid-morning and then sat C in the highchair with us at dinner that night and I had one of those heart-melting moments looking at my little family all sitting at the table together. We repeated the exercise the next day, but replaced one lot of pumpkin with a serving of baby cereal.

The two nights following pumpkin and baby cereal were two of the worst nights C has ever had. Up every two and a half hours on the dot - you could have set a clock by her. Seemingly starving each time, wanting 40 minute feeds.

Now it might be a case of "getting what you Google" but when I asked he who knows everything "can starting solids make baby sleep worse" various websites assured me that it can if the baby is less than six months old or for some other reason has trouble digesting the new food. C was 22.5 weeks old as at the first serve of pumpkin. She is interested in our food, has good head control, can sit easily in a high chair (with a bit of padding) and has more than doubled her birth weight. I genuinely thought she was ready, although she was not quite six months. (And we started E much earlier and she was fine, and what kind of second-time parent would I be if I didn't endlessly compare my children?) Anyhow, yesterday I decided that it was worth reverting to milk only to see what happened, and last night was significantly better. Still multiple wakings, but much quicker feeds and a decent uninterrupted stretch.

But her day sleeps? Well, they are pretty dreadful. The only way she has ever gone to sleep during the day has been by being patted into oblivion on someone's shoulder. Then, if you are lucky and time it right ,you can sneak her into bed. Where she might stay, or she might not. Later the patting has been taking longer and longer, and she has been increasingly easy to disturb either on the shoulder or whilst being put down, or she just wakes a very short time later. Clearly she has no idea how to put herself back to sleep once she wakes up and ideally we need to find a way of putting her to sleep that involves her falling asleep in her cot rather than in someone's arms. And because C is the poor second child, even sticking to the minimum required for E's weekly routine, C gets dragged out and about a lot, which means she is often tireder than ideal by the time we are somewhere she can sleep. All of this I know, and none of this helps me figure out how to fix the situation.

After various further consultations with Mr Google yesterday I reluctantly chose one of the 600 self-settling techniques that he offered me and we attempted it this morning. It was the kind that advocates putting the baby into bed "sleepy but awake", leaving them to it and going in and out to whisper mindless platitudes and give quick pats if the baby yells, all of which is  eventually supposed to result in the baby giving up and going to sleep. We tried it, for about 35 minutes, whilst C got more and more upset, and ended in hysterical crying. Either she is too stubborn or I am too soft, but I then picked her up and patted her to sleep on my shoulder. I then tried to put her down and she woke up. So I picked her up and patted some more. And then put her down. She stayed down for about 10 minutes and is now up again and on my lap, having had a grand total of about 35 minutes sleep (plus 35 minutes of crying, plus 20 minutes of patting).

All of which is why I am now walking around with a pink koala shoved down my shirt, because a "comfort object that smells like Mum" is Mr Google's next suggestion. Stay tuned for the results... or for my next physio bill brought on by endless rounds of patting a 7.5kg baby on my shoulder.

Quiet days

I need to re-learn the value of the quiet day. The one where you hold the baby while she sleeps. Venture out from the house only for walks and to the local shops. Sit on the grass in the sunshine while the baby plays on a rug. There is a certain slow pleasure in that kind of day but we've had a lot lately and I enjoyed not having one yesterday. As a result C did not sleep enough during the day which meant she did not sleep enough during the night, and so I got to enjoy her company at 9.45, 1:00 and 3:00. And indirectly in between whilst she was grizzly and only sleeping lightly. Eventually I gave up and stuffed in earplugs, figuring that I would hear her if she gave a proper yell, seeing as her head was about 30cm from mine.

(The alternative explanation is that the night time wakefulness is the beginning of the four month sleep regression, the possibility of which has me quaking in fear. E regressed in spectacular style, going from 8 hour stretches at about three months to not getting night times back together until she was nine months old. I much prefer the theory that if I am vigilant about day time sleeps that the nights will take care of themselves. Or something).

At least I mainly managed the necessary quiet time whilst C was sick. E brought home a cold from somewhere which she quickly passed on to C who quickly turned it into bronchialitis (inflammation of the bronchial tubes, apparently common in babies). After several days of snottiness and a persistent low grade fever I took her to the GP who surprised me by dispatching us to PMH for a check. They seemed less concerned than the GP and sent us home with an information sheet. Several days later we were back at the GP because I could feel the breath literally rattling in an out of poor little C's chest. The GP announced it was now a secondary bacterial infection and so C has had the dubious glamour of completing her first set of antibiotics before hitting four months. They were effective however - 48 hours of them got rid of all the snot and yuckiness in a most impressive manner.

Today is Tuesday which means D has scooted off to kindy with E. I will attempt to practice what I preach. We will walk to mothers' group. Sit in the sun. I shall not attempt to clean the house, or deal with the magic mountain that is my laundry basket, or cook food. I will hold C until she is properly asleep then sit by her basinette so I can pat her when she stirs. That's the theory anyhow...

Goodnight, goodnight ...

... we wish. Bedtime is turning into a marathon. E either doesn't have a sleep during the day, in which case she is grouchy all afternoon but crashes at 6:30. If she has a sleep she still goes happily to bed at 6:30, but then takes hours (literally, see the conversation I had with her at 8:30 the other night) to drop off. 

She's not unhappy when she's in bed and awake, just lies there chatting away to herself, but 9:00 or later is definitely too late for a not quite two year old. Last night it would have been close to 9:30 and she then slept really late this morning - I eventually woke her at 8:00am. Today she had a day nap that started at 2:00, and I woke her at 3:15, thinking that maybe a short-ish nap would be ok. We also extended her bed time a bit tonight, starting stories at 7:00. 

The result? She's still in there, talking away.

I really really really don't want to give up the day nap. Two seems too young to be up all day, and I'm too selfish to manage without a bit of a break. At the very least she has to have some quiet time in her cot, in which case I can't stop her falling asleep if she wants to. But I also want some evening time to ourselves, and the prospect of occasionally going out and leaving her (asleep) with a babysitter.

The trials and tribulations of toddlerhood...

The sleep saga continues

Since she was about 9 months old, Little E has been a pretty good sleeper. She sleeps through the night. She self-settles. She's been on one day nap since she was about 11 months old, currently of about two hours duration.

But for the last week or so it's been taking her an inordinately long time to fall asleep at night. During the day she puts herself to sleep with minimal fuss, perhaps 10-15 minutes of talking to herself and then she's out. All of a sudden, at night, without anything else having changed, it's taking more than an hour (previously she took half an hour or less). She wakes up at the same time in the morning, just an hour shorter on sleep than previously. She is then grumpy all morning and needs to have her nap an hour earlier, making for a very long afternoon. This evening I put her to bed an hour earlier, thinking that maybe I was letting her get over tired. That was an hour and fifteen minutes ago, and she's still in there, in almost complete darkness, chatting away.

Any thoughts?

Some variety for the sausage roll fiend

I've written before about Little E's penchant for sausage rolls. Oh ok, penchant is a bit classy, it's more like an addiction. (So far at least) she has never turned them down, and lately all kinds of things I never would have predicted have been shoved away, smushed, dropped on the floor, met with a raspberry, or her old favourite "no more!"

Anyway, a while ago, Lovely Friend E gave me her recipe for vegetarian sausage rolls. I suppose given they contain no meat they don't really need the "sausage" ... perhaps "vegetarian rolls" is a better description? I digress. It took me a while to get around to making them as we were working our way through the veal and pork stash in the freezer. These ones are predominantly mushroom, capsicum, onion, oats and cheese, flavoured with tomato sauce, sweet chilli sauce and soy sauce. Little E has finally started doing what I would describe as a proper "toddler nap" - two and sometimes more hours in the middle of the day. It is really wonderful and please please may it continue. It gives me a chance to eat, read, clean, cook, potter in the garden and even have a semi decent sleep if I need to. Today it gave me a chance to whip up a batch of these little goodies.

Little E is still asleep so I don't know if she will like them but I just had four with salad for my lunch and they are yummo! I was worried the sweet chilli sauce would be too spicy for a toddler but it doesn't taste hot/spicy at all.

Here is the recipe for anyone who is interested:

Vegetarian Rolls

Ingredients

1 cup of finely chopped onion (I used half a cup and added a couple of cloves of finely chopped/crushed garlic)
1 finely chopped red capsicum (medium size)
6 finely chopped button mushrooms
1/2 cup rolled oats (I used quick oats)
1/2 cup breadcrumbs (I doubled the oats and omitted these)
1 cup grated cheese (I used half cheddar and half parmesan)
1 tablespoon milk
1 tablespoon soy sauce
3 or 4 tablespoons sweet chilli sauce (I used 2 tablespoons of this and 4 of tomato sauce)
3 or 4 tablespoons tomato sauce
3 eggs

3 sheets of square frozen puff pastry

A little extra beaten egg for brushing

Poppy/sesame seeds (optional)

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 200C and take the puff pastry out of the freezer.

2. Finely chop the onion, capsicum and mushrooms and crush the garlic (if using).

3. Mix the eggs, milk, soy sauce, tomato sauce and sweet chilli sauce together in a small bowl.

4. Stir together the chopped vegetables, oats and cheese. Then add the egg mixture and give it all a good stir. The mixture will look quite wet but don't worry because the oats will absorb most of the moisture as it cooks. If you think it looks really sloppy you can add a little extra breadcrumbs or oats.

5. Cut each square of puff pastry in half so it makes two rectangles. Using one rectangle at a time, put a line of filling down the middle. Then wrap each side over and gently press down to seal.

6. Brush each roll with beaten egg and sprinkle with poppy seeds or sesame seeds.

7. Carefully cut each roll into 8 small rolls. Arrange them on a greased baking tray. After 15-20 minutes hopefully you should wind up with something like this:

Enjoy!

 

Will wonders never cease?

It's a two-nap day!

I am doing a victory dance (albeit the quiet kind that involves sitting at a computer drinking tea).

Image from http://data.whicdn.com/images/9300562/eugene2_large.jpg?1304116217

Morning Interlude

I am not sure I approve of a 9:30am nap (even it is is following a 5:15am wakeup) as it will probably mean that all sleep for the day is over by 11:00am. Or if I can possibly persuade Little E to have any more it will be just as we're ready to go to playgroup this afternoon. But I do approve of the opportunities it allows:

Perfect for a day when the weather gods conspired against us and denied us our morning walk.

Happy Friday to all near and far!

Today is the morning that follows one of Those Nights

Screaming and Panadol and refusals to sleep from 11:00pm to 1:00am. A return to midnight milk to wash down the Panadol. After five minutes or so of frantic sucking Little E looked at me, somewhat perplexed and said "no mo?" And I thoguht "too right there's no more, you're trying to have dessert only six hours after you had dinner and the poor boobs aren't used to it anymore. They thought they didn't have to come up with the goods for another 18 hours. So yeah, there's no more. Sorry about that." But she still decided that chomping away even if there wasn't much there to chomp on was worth it for another 20 minutes or so, until I had had enough and took it away. Whereupon she screamed some more. I was so cold from what felt like hours of sitting by the cot patting and sssshhing and sneaking to the door only to have the protesting start again that when it finally ended I needed a hot water bottle to defrost with.

Blah. So this morning is the morning after all that. Where despite D's generously letting me sleep in a bit, although I'm sure he didn't really get much more sleep that I did, I am sitting here feeling tired and grumpy and unenthused about the whole full time mothering thing. And playing on the computer whilst E variously grizzles on the floor next to me, torments the cat and dumps folders full of paper on the floor. And I keep swearing I would stop playing on the computer whilst she is awake and needing my attention. Blah. Am going to go attend to those scattered papers and stop being a bad mumma.

Hello, neglected blog

Not quite sure what happened here. Part of it was that D was on holiday for the whole Easter week and I became various kinds of lazy.  E and I also got a round round of colds for the month which did not inspire me to spend time after she went to bed writing.

As well as writing lazy, I became was parenting-lazy. I let D change all (well, most) of the nappies. Every second day, after I fed E, I poked D out of bed and got back in it myself for another hour or so (the other days it was his turn to sleep in). While we played in the garden, I let D get up and chase after E when she ventured out of sight. I let him read her book after book whilst I read the paper. His holiday was my holiday as well, and, I have to say, it was great. The two of them seemed to enjoy it as well.

Some other stuff that has happened over the last couple of weeks:

1. E had her first chocolate on Easter Sunday. She was curious about it, but not enraptured.

2. E decided that if she was going to bed at 5:30pm she was going to wake up at 5:00am. Not cool. So we spent four or five days pushing her bedtime back a bit. She now goes to bed at between 6:30 and 6:45pm and sleeps until about 6:00 or 6:30am (if we're lucky).

3. We are in the process of cutting out E's morning milk feed, leaving only the bedtime one. We've reached the point I thought we'd never get to: the thought of stopping breast feeding entirely saddens me. Much as I enjoy the little person E is becoming, I selfishly want to hang onto the times of day when she is mine alone. However, she is a stubborn little one year old and shows no inclination of stopping the milk feeds by herself. I think if we left it until she was a stubborn two year old it would be much harder. So far cutting out the morning feed has been quite painless - D gets up when E does, and shovels porridge into her quick smart. I don't appear until after her little tummy is full. It seems to be working so far.

4. E is much more articulate. A few days ago she used two words together for the first time: "mo boo?" ("more book?") Her favourite phrase is currently "no mo!" ("No more!") It's usually accompanied by a vigorous hand push of the offending bowl. D also taught her that tigers, lions and cheetahs all make growling noises. When asked "what noise does the *insert animal* make?" she replies with a fantastic, French-r-rolling growl. She has such a sweet, high little voice.

5. She's also much steadier on her feet. She needs a hand to hang onto when stepping over the door sill, and wobbles about in sand, but for everything else she's very quick and sure. She hasn't resorted to crawling in a couple of weeks.

5. We've started doing looooong early morning walks a few days a week with two of the other playgroup mums and their bubbas. We've been heading out at about 7:30 and not getting home until about 10:00, having incorporated a playground or two and a cup of caffeine. We take plenty of snacks for the babies and they babble away to themselves and each other and are remarkably tolerant of the extended periods in the pram. The cool mornings are lovely and so is the exercise.

And that's where we're at folks! I hope everyone had a happy Easter and a bit of a break too.

An ordinary day was followed by a not-so-ordinary night

... and not in a good way. E went to bed  last night without fuss. At 3.15am I heard her talking and grizzling and complaining, enough that I thought it worth getting out of bed to check on her and give her a quick pat, then back to sleep for both of us. Obviously no one told her that was the plan. 15 minutes later I was still patting and she was still talking and wiggling, with no sign of impending sleepiness. I decided that my being there was just making her more wakeful and she could sort herself out. 

E did not agree. Grizzling turned into full on roaring. After 20 minutes I gave up and went back. She was scrunched face down in a corner of the cot, screaming as loud and as fast as she could manage. When I picked her up she had one fist jammed as far back into her little mouth as she could get it and was absolutely rigid. And hysterically inconsolable. Ten minutes of pacing, cuddling,  patting, talking, singing did made absolutely no difference. She was every bit as upset as when I went in there. Either her teeth hurt her so much that my efforts to comfort her meant nothing, or she was absolutely distraught that I had left her alone in the dark when I knew she was awake (never mind that I often do this at bed time and she grumbles a little bit but generally falls asleep within 5-10 minutes). Her first two molars are coming through, and have been making her miserable for the past fortnight, nasty little blighters, so it may well have been that. Or something else entirely, who knows.

D helped me prise her away from my shoulder, forcibly held her clenched little fist away from her mouth and jammed the Panadol syringe down her throat. She spluttered, swallowed, and went right back to screaming. During our laps of the house she did point at the couch where she often has morning milk, and the feeding chair in her bedroom. I was hesitant about letting her have milk given we haven't done a middle of the night feed in about three months, but in the end felt too terrible about the state she was in, and the idea that I was witholding the one thing that I thought would almost certainly give her some comfort. It did. Magic milk. It's moments like those I am eternally grateful she still feeding, albeit only twice a day. Unfortunately it wasn't magic enough to put her back to sleep. After half an hour I prised her away, to be met with more screaming, whereupon I clamped her into a cradle hold and rocked and sang at the top of my voice. It worked, thank goodness. After ten minutes she calmed down enough that I could put her into bed and after another 5 minutes of patting she was asleep.

So 90 minutes after my first stumble into E's room for a "quick pat" I stumbled back to my own bed, wondering what had happened and really really really hoping that it was a very unusual and not-to-be-repeated event. Fingers crossed.

Postscript on Friday morning: Thursday night was fine, not a squeak, and a 6:30am wakeup, hurrah!

An ordinary day

I heard E squawking twice during the night, but nothing worth getting up for. By 6:10 she was definitely awake, and she and I got up and sat on the couch for milk, with Sunrise for company. Milk is still exciting enouggh, particularly now that it only comes twice a day, that the TV is worth ignoring. I suspect those days are numbered. We then returned to bed for a three person cuddle and chat, before we all got up and had breakfast.

After D left for work E and I played a bit and read some books. She was a bit grumpy and bored so I decided we better get out of the house. We had library books that were due back and so drove to Floreat Forum to give them back. E has developed an intense, although variable, dislike of the car. Sometimes it's fine, sometimes it deserves back arching, screaming, toy throwing. Today was the latter rather than the former and I was very glad the drive was only a five minute one. Once at the library she was perfectly happy, and very interested in toddling around pulling books from the boxes and dropping them randomly on the floor before progressing to the next box.

We were out of nappy wipes and I decided that the cheapness of the things at KMart justified the 15 minute drive to Innaloo. I really need to change the car toys over; the drive there was not a happy one. Neither was the trek around KMart, although as it transpired, that was probably because my little bottomless pit was hungry. After she spent most of it trying to stand up in the trolley, we stopped for morning tea. She was delighted when presented with a banana ("minga minga minga!") and devoured the whole thing in about three minutes. She then gobbled a cheese stick, a packet of baby rice cakes, and a handful of grapes.

Then home. After five minutes of extreme protesting and toy throwing E passed out in her car seat. She gets such a glazed look in the two or three minutes before she falls asleep in the car. At the moment I'm quite happy for her to sleep in the car as it involves her falling asleep easily and quietly without screaming or really any effort on my part, and , touch wood, I can almost always get her from car into her bed without trouble. I used to worry that letting E fall asleep in the car was lazy and that more importantly it was preventing her from learning to fall asleep on her own, but now it doesn't seem to disrupt the times she falls asleep at home during the day, or her night sleeps, so I'm willing to take the benefit without worrying about it.

While E slept I tried to nap. I've had a cough that I can't shake and I was feeling not so flash this morning so I read and dozed for about half her nap. I then made her lunch, and made and ate my lunch before she woke. Her lunch was boiled egg, which she loved, and loved eating outside. She sat in her high chair and stared at the bottle brush tree saying "bu bu bu" which I think is "bird bird bird" because we could hear birds singing there. 

After lunch more playing, some laundry, and some sand pit time. Mum came over in the middle of the afternoon which was great as she hadn't been here on her own during the day for ages. She also entertained E whilst I started our dinner, as well as E's dinner. Very nice to not have to do it with one hand whilst balancing E on the other hip!

Then I dispensed dinner for E, with News Radio for company, then cleaned up. A nice aspect of her being so much steadier on her feet is that when she gets covered in food I can stand her at the outside tap to wash her hands. 

After dinner it was bathtime. We had a few very unpleasant bathtimes last week that involved inexplicable screaming and demanding to get out, but the last couple have been good, lots of laughing and splashing and playing with new birthday bath toys.  The post bath nappy is usually an easy one, E tends to be relaxed even though she is generally tired, and I know she's going to bed soon so I make an extra effort to cuddle and tickle and talk and sing so she goes to bed happy. Putting on pyjamas can also be a bit fraught lately, but tonight was easy, so they went on quickly and we then had a few happy stories, and then milk, and then bed. Her current pyjamas are long arm/long leg suits with feet and white with red spots. Although E has been wearing big girl clothes during the day, when she is back in her jammies and falling asleep having her milk she is my little baby again and whilst I sometimes resent having to get up for the morning feed, I don't think I'm going to be in any hurry to stop the night time one any time soon.

Today I am grateful for ... a return to self settling

So grateful.

Twelve uninterrupted hours.

Please let it continue.

Amen.

To see who else is grateful this weekend, visit Maxabella's Grateful Saturday.

The sleep saga so far

Little E has been what could fairly be described as a variable sleeper. At six weeks she was sleeping from 10:00pm to 4:00am and we were so impressed by this that we decided D should go back to work when she was seven weeks old rather than the planned 10 weeks, saving the rest of his long service leave for later.

At 13 weeks I gloated about the fact that she had repeatedly slept for 8.5 hours uninterrupted at night. At this stage, so long as she was wrapped up like a little caterpillar and had something interesting to stare at whilst dropping off, she would self settle without too much fuss.

Then at about four months came the great swaddling drama, combined by the move into her big cot and own bedroom.This heralded a return to night feeds and throughout this period we toyed with ditching the dummy. I think once we had eventually gotten rid of it, she was self settling during the day but often being fed to sleep at night, and certainly when she woke in the night as I was usually too tired and impatient to attempt anything else.

At about seven months E learned how to crawl and fairly rapidly how to pull herself up in her cot. She also became enormously clingy, screaming every time I walked out of her sight. Her ability to self settle evaporated and the only way I could get her to sleep at all, day or night, was feeding to sleep. She was waking up and getting fed once, and more often, twice, a night. At one stage D started going in to her the first time she woke up to see if she could be put back to sleep without milk. She could, but it was taking an hour or so at a time. We got lazy and went back to feeding to sleep. After a few weeks of this I persuaded E that rocking to sleep was okay (by her at least, I had doubts about the wisdom of starting it with a heavy little lump of a baby!) It was short lived and we were quickly back to feeding to sleep.

Over the last week or so, feeding to sleep has been less successful - E has either been waking up after 15 or 20 minutes, or just not falling asleep at all. At night she was invariably falling asleep whilst having her milk but then waking up after one sleep cycle or less, extremely angry. Yesterday I decided enough was enough and we would see if she could re-learn how to self settle. She didn't have a morning nap and by lunch time was good and tired. It took 35 minutes of screaming, but she did then sleep for 65 minutes.

At night she had her milk but did not fall asleep. She yelled for 20 minutes, then passed out. She did not wake up after one sleep cycle. D and I went to bed at about 9:00, not having heard a squeak out of her. She grizzled a little at about 11:00, but not enough that we got up. A bit after midnight she was properly awake. I went in, gave her a quick pat and said "it's still night time, sleep now, go back to sleep" and then left. She yelled furiously for 7 minutes, and that was it. At 5:30 we heard her talking to herself briefly but ignored her. At 6:45, D got up and had a shower. At 7:00am E was still out cold and we decided to wake her up, in the hope of reinforcing the idea that 7:00am is a good wake-up time. It was the first night since she was about four months old that she hasn't had a night feed.

This morning at about 10:00, after a lovely big play in the park, she put herself to sleep after 7 minutes of crying. I am feeling cautiously optimistic. At least, as Mum reminded me, until something changes again...

Image credit: http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/lka0012l.jpg

Shhh, shhh...

... the baby's sleeping.

And she was not fed to sleep.

A few weeks ago this would not have been worthy of note, but ever since her uber-clingy phase started Little E has either been fed to sleep, or has screamed the second I walked out of the room and has not slept.

Not that, in other circumstances, starting a rock-to-sleep routine with a baby verging on the 9kg mark would seem like a good idea, but currently the fact that she fell asleep without being attached to mummy feels like an accomplishment!

Swim swim swimming = sleep sleep sleeping

Hurrah for Beatty Park and its fantastic water-shooting-flowers and raining mushrooms and gentle slope entry and dozens of happy children.

Yesterday was a new record of the worst kind: a no-nap day. As in NO naps. Not short naps. None whatsoever. Today was not perfect sleep-wise, but coming off yesterday as a starting point anything was going to be better!

I am probably jinxing this by writing it...

There was movement at the station...

for the word had got around, that Little E had taught herself to crawl!

I am gradually realising that, whilst I look forward to all the baby milestones, and of course celebrate them and tell E how clever she is, many of them do have their downsides. The downside to this one being, that in combination with her other new skill (pulling self to standing), she is near on impossible to put to sleep.

I mean, why would you go to sleep when you could alternately crawl around your cot (talking/grizzling/crying depending on how long you have been in there) or sit/stand in your cot, hanging onto the bars like a little prisoner (accompanied by more grizzling/crying)? Why would you want to lie still for someone to pat you to sleep? It would be much more fun to turn bedtime into an extremely drawn out production. If you did all of this often enough, someone would probably decide that the only way to make you sleep was to feed you to sleep, theorising that they will just deal with you probably forgetting that you could ever self settle, later. The magical "later", when babies sleep and all things are easy...

Trials and tribulations of travelling

We bought a portacot yesterday, beacuse D's work is sending him to Bunbury for a week at the end of the month and Little E and I are going with him. I thought it would be a good idea to get E used to sleeping in said cot before we go. Yesterday afternoon I set it up and stuck her in it with a bunch of toys to play with and she thought it was great. (I also thought it was great as I set it up next to the piano, which meant I got to play the piano for a bit without an excited baby on my lap alternately struggling to thump the keys randomly and with all her strength play too, pull the lid closed on both our hands, and pull pages out of the folder of sheet music).

Today I moved the cot into the spare room, waited until Little E seemed tired, put her in her sleeping bag, handed over Pooh bear and walked out. She screamed. And screamed. And screamed. At.the.top.of.her.lungs. As though someone was torturing her. She normally manages a bit of grizzling and fussing at nap time, but this was quite impressive. I sat in the lounge room alternately calling myself a mean and nasty parent and thinking that I was glad I tried it at home, during the day, rather than in a hotel at night. I sat on the couch staring at the clock. She screamed for 12 minutes (the magic figure that Save Our Sleep claims babies of this age should scream for before you go in to comfort them or they fall asleep). There was then abrupt silence. After another minute I very cautiously stuck my head around the door. She was fast asleep, looking completely angelic and peaceful.

I still can't decide if it's mean and nasty parenting or a necessary stop on the sleep road.

Crossing fingers and toes and all other appendages

I don't know if I dare type it, but I think we are back in a routine. Little E has now had four "good" nights in a row, a good night being one in which she only wakes up once, at about 3.30am, for food rather than for no apparent reason. She has her last feed of the evening at about 8:00 or 9:00, meaning I get a solid six or seven hours sleep before the middle-of-the-night meal, plus another two or so hours before our little alarm clock decides it is morning. I have to say it's not as impressive as the routine she had going at three months old, but I can certainly live with it!