Sleep Solutions

We have finally achieved a nighttime routine that gets Hadley to bed relatively early and helps her sleep longer!

The first two nights we were home from the hospital, Hadley had her days and nights mixed up, so we were up with her until around 4:30 in the morning each of the first two nights at home. After the first two nights, she got a little better, but still would not let us put her down until around 11pm. We were struggling to stay up long enough to get her to sleep! So we started looking at sleep books early. I bought two books--"The No-Cry Sleep Solution" by Elizabeth Pantley and "The Sleep Lady's Good Night, Sleep Tight" by Kim West.

We are not following either book to the letter, but we have selected a few of the methods suggested in the books and made them work for us. We've learned that it is mainly about establishing a routine (something I am admittedly really bad at--but I am learning too). It is actually working! We start our routine around 7 or 7:30 every night and usually have Hadley put down by around 8:30. Then we usually feed her again right before we go to bed, and she usually sleeps from 4-6 hours. Sometimes she wakes up more often to eat, but she goes right back to sleep.

So here is what has worked for us:

Early on, when Hadley was about 2-3 weeks old, we started to do things to help her establish the difference between night and day. So, in the daytime, we opened the blinds, turned on lights, and talked to her and played with her. Around 7 or 8pm every night we would start to quiet her down by dimming all the lights in the room we were hanging out in and turning the volume down on the television. We would hold her, but would not really play with her or talk to her (other than as necessary to calm her down if she got fussy). That helped her start to sleep better at night, but she still was not getting to bed until around 11pm.

The next step was to establish a bedtime routine. We just started doing the routine this month, but so far it is working wonders. Around 7 or 7:30 every night we feed her a bottle. Then we give her a bath (if it is bath night), change her diaper, put on her pajamas and lavender lotion, and swaddle her. Then we sit in a dark room and play lullabies. We play the same 4 lullabies every night, and we play through them twice before we put her down. Oh, and she demands that we actually sing along to the lullabies--no sing, no sleep!

I am just amazed at the difference we have seen, so I thought I would share the solutions we have found. Now, if I could just get her to take a nap in her crib for more than 5 minutes during the day . . .

mommy-daughter outing!

Emily and Molly, Amanda and Hadley, Laine and I all took a trip to the Mall of Georgia this past Wednesday. Fortunately for all of us, the little ladies were on their best behavior (for the most part) and we were able to find nice quiet spots to feed them all when need be. The older ladies of course enjoyed an excuse to get out of the house and socialize with other adults! It was funny to see the differences in the three girls since they are each almost exactly a month apart (and all born on Wednesdays!): Laine was 14 weeks, Hadley 10 weeks, and Molly 5 weeks! Laine was of course the most alert and awake of the three, but luckily for all of us she was entertained by all of the new lights and noises and was a pretty happy baby (until the ride home... sorry Emily).

Here are some pictures of the lovely ladies (and a few of their lovely mommies!). Sorry some of them are sideways... I couldn't figure out how to rotate them on here!

Random Things . . .

We have discovered that Hadley is very prissy. She just smiles and smiles in the mornings when we put lotion on her and dress her up.

Hadley's belly is getting so big that when she is lying on her back, it sticks up in the air further than her head. So when we give her a bath, I am always afraid when I wash her belly that the water will run down into her face.

A Boppy is good for bottle feeding too, it's not just for breastfeeders.

Is breastfeeding one or two words? I see it both ways and don't know which is correct, so I have just been alternating the way I write/type it every time.

We`are trying very hard not to encourage finger/thumb sucking, so we have been putting the mitten cuffs on Hadley's onesies over her hands at night. Well, she does not ever like any of our little "plans" for her. We knew we were in trouble when the nurses at the hospital where she was born said she had a lot of "personality". She has learned how to get her fingers out of her mitten cuffs, and we have woken up several times the last few nights to the sound of her sucking on her fingers. She still won't take a passy except in the early evenings when we are holding her, so now I don't know what we will do. Any suggestions?

Hadley does not stay on her back well when we put her down to sleep. She usually immediately rolls onto her side. We have been using a sleep positioner to keep her on her back, but when we had to incline the mattress because of her reflux, she was sliding down and I was afraid she would get stuck between the two positioners. So, I was looking up solutions on the web. I found a few solutions: (1) the Tucker Sling (which is basically akin to tying your baby to the crib), and (2) one website actually suggested a blanket wrap method where you wrap your baby's arms a certain way and then tuck the blanket under the crib mattress--which basically constitutes tying your baby to the crib. So, what I gathered from the web research was that it is okay to tie your baby to the crib, but don't EVER let your baby sleep in any position other than on her back. Maybe I'm crazy, but that just does not make much sense to me.

I asked the pediatrician about this, and she gave us a couple more solutions, which were actually helpful--(1) roll up a blanket and put it in the shape of a U underneath the crib sheet so that it catches the baby's feet and she doesn't slide down and (2) just put her down on her back, and then don't worry about which way she turns. What we actually ended up doing was taking one of the positioners from our extra sleep positioner and placing it at the bottom of the sleep positioner she is sleeping on--similar to the "U" blanket solution the pediatrician recommended. Soon she (hopefully) will be too long for this to work as a viable solution anymore, and then I think we will just put her down on her back without the positioner and I will try not to worry about it. But in case anyone else was wondering about this issue, I thought I would share the results of our research.

That's all my random thoughts for now--next post will be a little more coherent.

--Amanda

Time has flown by...

So, I cannot believe how fast my weeks are flying by...I think it is going be even faster than they did when I was pregnant! Andrew is about 15 weeks old (3.5 months in my head), and I swear he looks more like a little boy each and every day!!! I am not sure if I have shared the fact that he is in daycare full time, and ladies, if you have reservations about it, believe me it is going to be really beneficial. I think pretty much since the first week of being there, we have been there for about a month; he has been sleeping through the night. And I am not just talking about 6 hours, I mean sometimes close to 12 hours straight! Man that sold me right there :) Had I known, I would have started daycare earlier and just hung out there with him until I was ready to go back to work.

I do miss him a lot, but I know this decision was the best one for me and my family. Our time might be limited with him, but we get good quality time. And he always saves his best laughs and smiles with us first thing in the morning when we sneak in there to wake him up...yes ladies you heard that right, we are waking him up! Not to mention he is learning to be more social not only with children, but also with other adults. I love that he recognizes me, and knows my voice now, but I want to teach him that mommy isn't the only person he can trust. I heard that around 3 months old they go through a period where they become very clingy, and I hope by introducing him to daycare a couple of weeks before he was three months old kind of eliminates that issue.

I do have some advice to those of you that do daycare...What I would recommend is that on your first day, make it a "trial" day (if they don't offer one) and try dropping off around 10ish. I made the mistake of going around 8 and that is right smack when everybody is just arriving and there was a lot of crying babies. The next time I dropped off later and it was much easier on both of us. I had two days that I hung out there before my first real day at work. I was able to hang out with him for a couple of hours and just get used to all the new sounds and activities.

My second piece of advice is try looking for a daycare close to your work vs being close to your home. There is definitely a benefit for being close to home, because the responsibility is equal among parents for drop off and pick up...but I have found in my situation it is much better the opposite. True Joey doesn't have to worry about if he works late who is going to pick up Andrew, which is a good thing since he has a job that it could become a problem. And I have to always leave the house first and it adds more time exclusively on me for travel. But since I am only about two miles away from daycare, I have the opportunity to drop by during lunch daily if I choose to. I usually will work through lunch at my desk, and then go visit him for about half an hour. Sometimes I get to feed him, other times we get to play and other times we just snuggle. Plus since it is close to my work, if we have a problem, and we run out of diapers or clothes during the day, I can run and pick something up during lunch, drop it off and say a quick hello and make it back to work on time...Just some things to think about.

I will leave you with a picture I captured during lunch one day of Andrew ACTUALLY enjoying tummy time!

mel

snow baby!

It's been a while since I posted, and fortunately that has a lot to do with things finally going pretty smoothly in our household. And speaking of households... we're also about to buy our first house! We close on the 26th of this month and then have all of March to get things moved in and situated. We're very excited but I am not looking forward to the prospect of moving again so soon. I feel like we just got settled into this apartment!

On the baby front, things are great. She gets more and more fun and changes so much every day. I can't believe she's 3 months old already! She's gotten really good at holding her head up, pushing up onto her legs, sitting up (with help, of course)... but we're still waiting on the rolling over milestone. (She's very jealous of Molly the prodigy!) For the most part she has been a very easy, happy baby. She's been sleeping well at night- almost 9 and a half hours one blissful night last week, but usually at least 6 or 7, then another 2 or 3 after she eats. And I just LOVE being the recipient of big baby smiles! The past few days she's been a bit more difficult, but I think she is just going through a growth spurt (wanting to eat more, sleep longer during the day, and wake up a little more at night, plus being more fussy than usual).

Here are some recent pictures from our blizzard here in Athens and a visit from Laine's aunt Tricia (my youngest sister)! We didn't spend too much time out in the cold, but we at least had to take advantage of the photo op!

1 month!

I can't believe it's been 1 month already!!! (yesterday actually) I got this idea from a friend of mine. I plan to take a picture of Molly on the 13th of every month next to this stuffed bunny. That way we can track how much she grows!!! I kind of wish I had done it weekly but I know myself well enough to know that I would not have succeeded. I'll probably need help remembering to do it once a month anyway!!!






-Emily

The things they don't tell you....

If your baby spits up and there's blood in it...don't freak out! This morning when I went to get Molly out of her crib, she had spit up and there were flecks of blood in it. She didn't have a fever and seemed to be in a pretty good mood. We called the doctor's office and the nurse on call called us back. She didn't seem too concerned but said she would have the doctor on call call us, which happened to be our pediatrician. For the next 30 min, Molly continued to spit up and it was kind of spit-up color and brown mixed together, like she had vomited. Finally I talked to our doctor and he said this is common with breastfed babies. (would have been nice to know!) That often your nipples crack and bleed, we know that's true!, and because of that the baby can ingest some of the blood which is then spit back up. He said any mixture of brown or black in the spit up is fine, as long as she's not spitting up just blood (like bright red). But she might have an upset tummy as a result.

It's like they think we know all of this stuff coming into Motherhood. I wish I had been told these 'commonalities' before I experienced them!!!

-Emily