Tooth #6 (and Possibly #7)

Today I discovered that Noah has cut his sixth tooth, the other top middle tooth (his left one).  So luckily he won't have a snaggle-tooth.  He might have an ENORMOUS gap though, because the two teeth look really far apart right now.

I believe he is soon going to cut his top left tooth beside the middle teeth.  That tooth is RIGHT there, and since he seems to be on a teething spurt, hopefully it will come out soon.  He seems pretty miserable the past couple of days.  It's hard to know for sure where the misery is coming from, though.  There are so many possibilities at this age.  Teething, overtiredness, frustration (because he keeps doing things he's not allowed to do), separation anxiety, hunger... it's really hard to tell what the culprit is.

My mom bought me some homeopathic teething drops, which I gave Noah 20 minutes before I nursed him (they're supposed to be given away from meals).  I doubt I'll be able to tell if they're working or not.  But he IS playing happily in his jumperoo right now.  And that is a rare occurance these days.

Separation Anxiety

(Noah is about 8 1/2 months old)

I can't remember exactly when Noah's separation anxiety started.  I think it was one of those things that gradually crept up on me.  I do know it's been going on for at least a month.

It started out with some fussing if I put him in the playpen, or if he was on the floor and I walked into the kitchen.

It has progressed to full blown, red-faced screaming as he sadly jumps in the jolly jumper while I shower with the curtain open talking and singing to him as the puddle on my floor gets bigger and bigger.  Lesson learned.  Do not attempt a shower unless he's taking one of his half hour naps.

I can't do anything.  I can't do chores.  I can't make myself something to eat.  I can't even stand up when we've been playing on the floor without him crying and trying to climb my legs.  As soon as he senses I'm about to walk away - even if it's to somewhere nearby where he can still see me - he starts crying.  And the shower thing: I was about 5 feet away from him, looking at him and talking to him, but he apparently knew that I was otherwise incapacitated and couldn't pick him up.  Because normally he loves his jolly jumper.

I do all my housework while Justin is home so he can be with Noah.  Justin isn't always enough for Noah, though.  Sometimes he just needs his Mama.  For example, after his last nap today he woke up crying, as he almost always does.  Justin went and got him and he was okay (not great).  But as soon as he saw me the big pouty lip came out and the eyes welled up and he reached for me.

Just now I went to the kitchen to check on dinner.  We have an open concept house, so I'm still visible when I'm in the kitchen.  Justin was with Noah in the living room, but Noah started whimpering and crawling after me.  When I came back I sent his wheely giraffe toy rolling across the floor to him.  He usually loves that thing, but he knocked it over, pushed it to the side, and crawled into my arms.  "I don't want no stinkin' giraffe, I want my Mama!"

Last week sometime he woke up really early from a nap (after about 20 minutes of sleep, including the time he spent in my arms).  I had just finished making a really nice lunch, and I was frustrated because so many of my meals have been interrupted by having to hold him because he's upset.  So I got Noah from his crib and put him in his jumperoo.  Clearly he could sense that I was frustrated, because he started wailing.  Justin picked him up and tried to calm him down but the wails and crocodile tears continued until I took him in my arms.  This was perhaps not an issue with separation anxiety, but instead an example of how intuitive Noah is, and how sometimes only Mommy will do.  Even when it has nothing to do with boobs.

It's not ALWAYS like this though.  I'd say 30% of the time he's happy enough without me right next to him.  But 70% is a lot of the time.  I can hardly go to the bathroom.  Noah has to come with me and sit on the floor playing with something. 

The playpen?  Forget it.  Not unless I want an automatic meltdown.

It's hard to be a SAHM in a remote little town where there's nothing to do and nowhere to go and be totally glued to your kid for his every waking minute.  And my husband is gone A LOT. 

I'm not going to lie.  About 20% of this post is flat-out complaining.  Being a SAHM is not always easy.  I'm not going to say that I'd rather be a working mom - I wouldn't.  But it's not easy to be alone all day everyday with a cranky baby who needs to be right next to you every second, especially when you don't get to see your husband - or any other adult - much (or at all) several days in a row (like last week) and the previously-mentioned baby barely naps.

The other 80% of me feels very tolerant of this behaviour.  It makes me feel loved, and important.  Noah obviously knows that I am his most important caregiver.  I nurse him all day, I put him to sleep every single time he sleeps, I bathe him every single time he has a bath.  Noah knows that without me, he'd be screwed.  He loves me.  In a funny way, I feel that the separation anxiety means that he appreciates me.

Furthermore, I am fairly certain this is not "put on."  He is literally feeling anxiety.  That's not fun!  I had bad separation anxiety when I was about 4 years old, and I remember it very vividly.  I remember being terrified when I didn't know where my mom or an adult was. One time I ran to my neighbours house panicked because I couldn't find my mom. It turned out she was just upstairs blowdrying her hair, but I was crying and yelling for her and she couldn't hear me so I was convinced she had left the house without me.

Another time we were being babysat by this woman and she left the house and went to the neighbours for some reason.  I was so scared that there was no grown up around so I ran outside and went down the driveway to find her. She ended up getting me in so much trouble and I had to sit in a chair facing the corner.  Needless to say, she never babysat us again. It still makes me feel anxious inside when I think about it! I remember how scared I was running down the driveway to find a grownup and then I got in trouble for it.

So I try not to get annoyed at Noah's separation anxiety, even though it's crippling my life. Because it's obviously very real to him, and I don't want to cause him extra anxiety by acting frustrated or ignoring his cries.  Hopefully he will get past this sooner rather than later.  In the meantime, any coping suggestions are more than welcome!

Baby Proof

As anybody with a mobile baby knows, baby proofing is an ongoing process.  You don't get it all done at once.  Or, you don't if you have a fairly large 6 bedroom, 2 bathroom house.  We started 3 months ago when Noah perfected his army crawl.  And we're still going.

Yesterday we baby proofed our downstairs. Our main floor is mostly baby proofed, but there's no TV except in our bedroom.  Now that high school basketball season is upon us, I'm spending many long days alone at home with Noah (this is a post on it's own).  When my husband leaves before (or just after) Noah wakes up in the morning and gets home after Noah goes to bed (or just shows up for 30 to 60 minutes sometime in there), I need to be able to watch some TV or something some of the time that Noah is playing.  We live in a tiny farm town 25 minutes from the real town (we're looking to move back, but that is ALSO another post of it's own), so it's not like Noah and I have anywhere to GO unless we want to make a full day of it and use my parents' house as a home base for feedings and naps (seriously, running to the mall turns into a 6 hour long affair).  Furthermore, I can't clean my house or anything, because Noah has such bad separation anxiety (also another post on it's own).  So we need somewhere else in my house that we can go besides the main floor.

Despite the fact that Noah has been on the go since 5 1/2 months, our downstairs was NOT baby proofed.  There were visible cords everywhere that he was always yanking at. There were deathtrap coffee tables that he could maim himself on. Whenever we were down there I was constantly pulling him away from things, so he was getting frustrated and I was getting frustrated.  Needless to say, we didn't spend much time down there.

After yesterday, it's about 90% baby proofed. We put a walk through gate up at the bottom of the stairs, since Noah is a stair climber.  We got rid of the dangerous coffee tables; they have found homes in our various extra bedrooms.  We put outlet covers in the empty sockets, and moved furniture around so that all but one of the plugs with cords coming out of it are covered.

We have three problems remaining.

One is the outlet that has this tall lamp plugged into it. I don't know how to cover the lamp and the outlet. We put a couch in front of the other lamp and outlet, but the location of this lamp doesn't really allow that to happen. And it really is the best location for the lamp, lighting-wise.  So far Noah hasn't gone to play with it.  We'll see.


Another problem is that we have a low entertainment unit, so Noah can pull himself up and reach and touch the TV.  The big, expensive, 50 inch LCD TV.  Not something you want a baby pawing at.  We need to find something that lifts the TV up higher so Noah can't grab at the screen. Or we need a new entertainment unit. But getting one tall enough and safe enough would be really expensive.
 
Finally, we need to install cabinet locks on the entertainment unit doors. Noah opens them and pulls out all the wires and chews on them. Not good. We have the locks, but we have to screw them in the doors, so it'll take awhile to do it.
 
I've been wanting to babyproof the downstairs for a long time now, but the way my husband is I actually have to say "We are doing this now.  Let's go."  Saying "We should go babyproof the downstairs" is apparently just a suggestion intended to be ignored.  About 10 times.  And I couldn't do it myself because a lot of the furniture that needed rearranging was WAY too heavy.
 
So now our upstairs and our downstairs family rooms are baby proofed.  So Noah and I have more than one big play room to spend our time in, which helps with the stir-craziness.
 
A baby proofed house is not nearly as pretty.  Our house used to be so immaculate.  We had the right furniture, the right accents, the right decorations, the right arrangements.  Now everything is shoved to the side or put away to accommodate our little Monkey. 
 
I'm not complaining.  I love having the "problem" of our house being less attractive than it used to be because we're blessed to have a baby.  In fact, I think it's ridiculous that some people inwardly judge me for accommodating Noah in all areas of my house.  So many people think you shouldn't have to adjust your entire lifestyle to fit your child.
 
However, I don't think our once immaculate, tastefully decorated house will show as nicely as it would have 9 months ago!

Tooth #5 and Sleep

Not that the two are related.

I forgot to mention that Noah was, in fact, getting his top right middle tooth.  Back in my 8 month post I said that I thought he was getting it, and I didn't follow up.  He did get it right at the 8 month mark, so he now has 5 teeth. 

I'm hoping his top LEFT middle tooth won't be far behind.  Two top teeth would look very cute.  One top snaggle tooth... not as cute.  lol :)

I have to say, Noah often seems to be large unaffected when he's actually cutting teeth.  Maybe he's just used to it because he's gotten so many teeth, but I don't necessarily notice a huge increase in gnawing or crankiness - definitely not and increase in night wakings (incidentally, research shows that frequent night wakings are almost never caused by teething, but by other issues that just happen to coincide with teething... whether or not parents agree with that is a different story).

Speaking of night wakings, can I just say how glad I am that we (well, I) used CIO to teach Noah that he can fall asleep again on his own?  Last night before I went to sleep I went in his room, like I do every night.  Sometimes I fix his sleep positon because he moves all over the place and I don't like going to bed when his face is buried in the corner of his crib. I've never actually seen him do anything in his sleep other than roll over or kind of shift his body a bit, so I never knew how exactly it was that he would migrate all over his crib.  I mean, the child is an acrobat and can do everything but walk, run, and jump without assistance.  But I just always wondered how he would move around SO much if he was sleeping.

So I was in there, staring at him.  He was lying on his tummy, like always, and I was considering dragging him down to the bottom of the crib again because I was envisioning him burying his face in the corner of the crib within the hour.  He seemed restless, though, so I was hesitating.  Suddenly he SAT UP.  I dropped to the ground so he wouldn't see me (thank goodness for bumper pads - which are breathable, by the way). I peeked a few times and he was just sitting up, looking around, not making a peep.  Then he just slumped forward and went back to sleep.  Folded in half.

I'm so glad to know that if I hadn't done what I did (by letting him CIO to discover that he doesn't always need me to help him fall back asleep) I would still be putting him back to sleep a million times a night.  It just reinforces that it was the right thing for us to do.  Not that the sleeping through the night thing hasn't been reinforcing it.  But it was nice to see Noah sit up, be awake, not make a sound, and just fall back asleep again.  On his own.

I'll Take More, Please

Yesterday I was going through the check out at Wal.mart.  Noah was sitting in the front of the cart leaning over and pressing the buttons on the ATM swiper machine.  The cashier, a teenage girl, said "They always find the buttons right away."  I laughed and "Yep, and they always know what's electronic and what's not and they go right for it."

She asked "Is he your first?" and I said "Yes."  She then said, "And your last???" in such a tone of voice as if she thought she knew that was just what I was thinking to myself.  As if having Noah as my first child would deter me from wanting anymore children.

I very quickly corrected her: "Nooo!! Definitely not! He's wonderful!!  I couldn't ask for a better baby!"

It really made me realize how many people are out there that complain about their children and make comments like that (like "if Suzy was our first child, she would have been our last!!" etc). Too many people just don't appreciate what a blessing children are, and how incredibly lucky they are to have them.

This complaining about children is apparently so common that this teenager would assume that a young mother with a curious (and adorable) baby would want him to be her last baby!

I made sure she knew that he is awesome and I feel I am incredibly lucky to have him as my child.  I should only be so lucky as to have another one like him.  And another one.  And heck, I wouldn't mind at all if God threw in a fourth as a surprise tag-along miracle.  Four was our original goal.

Stair Climber

Noah is 8 months and 6 days old

Today while we were visiting my parents, Noah climbed up the stairs.  It was his first attempt at stair climbing EVER and he figured it out in about 5 seconds.

I cannot believe this little rascal!

They Grow Up So Fast

Noah is doing all these things that it doesn't look like he should be doing.  He's tall (but skinny) for 8 months, but he still looks too small to be doing all the crazy stuff he does.  For example:

-He's a speed crawler and just takes off on his own out of the living room down the hallway and goes into bedrooms and closets and bathrooms on his own.

-He is always pulling up to stand using anything he can.

-He'll pull up on the couch, turn his body, reach his hand over, grab the coffee table, and cruise over to the coffee table.  He also has an extremely long reach to grab anything on top of said coffee table.

-He'll stand up by using just the wall as support - nothing to actually grab onto.  Then he'll just turn around and keep one hand on the wall and check out what's going on around him.

-He crawls over to the windows and pulls himself up so he can stand there watching the world go by.

-If I'm on the couch and he's really hungry he'll pull up to stand and then list his legs and actually try and climb UP the couch.  All while whining.  It's hilarious.

-He'll pull up to stand just using one hand on one leg of the jumperoo.  Then he just hangs out there.

-He can balance himself when he's just sitting in a squat, ass to ankles.

-About a week ago he was playing with Justin on the floor.  He was standing up, squatting down, stand up, squatting down while they were playing.  He was sitting in a squat, and then just pushed up with his legs and stood up without holding on to anything.  He just stood up!  On his own!  He put his hand on Justin's leg to steady himself once he got up there, but it was crazy!

-He doesn't even need anyone spotting him as he travels throughout the house, even though we have all hardwood and ceramic floors.  I mean, we need to make sure he doesn't get into anything dangerous, but he almost never falls down.

All these things are things he's been doing since no later than 7 1/2 months old.  He just seems too young and small to be doing all this!  I can't believe how fast he's growing up.  It's so much fun, though.

I hardly ever post pictures, but I'm going to bombard you now!  Here are some from when he was 7 months old.

Climbing under the coffee table:

Crawling on the table at Josiah's baptism:

Everytime I put him in the pack 'n play he refuses to "play."  He just wants to get out:

This is how we find our monkey after every nap (and now in the mornings).  Look at that mischevious face!:

Little stinker:

Playing:

Whaaat?:

What a flirt:

Happy kid:

Checking out the world:

"Oh, hey Mom":

"I need a new bib, this one's wet":

Here, he's 8 months old:

Trying to escape from jail:

This is a terribly framed picture that Justin took, but his face is cute and it demonstrates his squat... although he's hanging on to something here:

If it sounds like I'm bragging about my child, I absolutely am!  I think Noah's the bomb.

Puffs

I gave Noah sweet potato flavoured Puffs today.  It was his first finger food.  He really liked them, but the poor kid couldn't figure out how to get them into his mouth!  He would get one in his fist and then bring his fist to his open mouth and try and try to eat the puff that was clenched tightly in his fist.  He would look so confused by the whole thing.  His hand would be covered in slobber, and he just couldn't figure out that he needed to open his hand to get the puff in his mouth!

I don't know what I was expecting?  A perfect pincer grasp from an 8 month old boy who has never been allowed to handle tiny objects?  lol

We'll work on it.  Behind Daddy's back, because he doesn't want him to eat Puffs.  But it really is the perfect (ie. non-messy) way to teach him how to feed himself and develop fine motor skills.  And they have vitamins in them:)

I May Have Spoken Too Soon

I may have spoken too soon.  Last night Noah woke up and cried for a couple of minutes at 8:30pm, and cried off and on for about 10 minutes at 10:40pm.  Then he suddenly woke up screaming at 5:10am.  That one caught me off guard, and because of the time I got him up and fed him.  He was very very sleepy after that, but not fully asleep.  I put him in his crib and went back to bed myself.  I left the monitor off because he needed to stay in bed until at least 7am anyway, and I CAN hear him from my room when he gets loud, even though the doors are closed and we both have loud fans on. 

I didn't fall back asleep, and at one point (about 6:20am) I turned the monitor on to see what was going on.  Noah was crying.  I thought he'd just been having a hard time falling back asleep for the last hour, so I went in there to try and rock him to sleep, which didn't work.  I put him back in his crib, because I wasn't going to rock him in the dark for half an hour, at which point he would probably eventually fall back asleep since he got less than 10 hours of sleep last night and had been up since 5:20am. 

He started crying, of course.  Then after about 5 minutes he stopped and was just sitting in bed playing.  Eventually he folded himself in half and fell asleep.  He was in a sitting position and just leaned forward and put his face on the mattress and fell asleep like that.  That was about 6:50am.  He slept like that until almost 8.

I was thinking we may need to start swaddling again, but honestly, we can't swaddle him forever.  It has to stop at some point, and whenever we stop it we're probably going to have this issue of early wakeup times.  He has to learn to sleep until a proper wakeup time.

I'm sure he'll get it eventually.

Swaddle-Free?

I think we may just be swaddle-free.  Last night went well.  Noah went to sleep between 7:15 and 7:30.  I I didn't hear from him until 6:10, when I fed him.  Like usual at that time, he was awake after nursing.  I put him back in his crib and he stayed there pretty happily until 7:15, but he didn't fall back asleep.  I don't know for sure if this is because he wasn't swaddled, because that does happen occasionally even when he IS swaddled.  I guess we'll see what the pattern is over the next few days. 

Tonight Noah did wake up after an hour of sleep and start crying.  It only lasted a couple of minutes, tops, but now he is in the weirdest positon in his crib.  He seems to always end up with his head pressed against the bars of the crib.  Last night when I checked on him around 3am he had his head pushed up in the corner of the crib and his face was about 1cm from the bumpers.  Thank goodness we have breathable bumper pads!

I think I may do the occasional swaddle, still.  When we need him to nap in a pack 'n play it is extremely hard to get him in there when he is swaddled.  I think it would be nearly impossible if he wasn't.  And Christmas time is going to include several pack 'n play naps.  So I may need to keep the swaddle in our reptoire until then.

Attempting a Swaddle-Free Night

(Noah is 8 months and 2 days old)

Swaddle-free naptimes seem to be going as well as can be expected for Noah.  I've been starting to feel guilty for having him all wrapped up while he migrates around his crib at night, sometimes getting himself in less than desirable positions that seem hard to get out of with no arms.  He really really loves to sleep on his stomach, and every single time he has an hour long nap it's been because he moved to his stomach at some point.  He sleeps on his stomach even though he's swaddled, which makes me feel bad for him.

I've been so hesitant to take him out of the swaddle at night because he's been sleeping so well.  When he wakes up during the night he'll usually just lie there awake and then eventually fall back asleep.  After he nurses he is almost always awake, so I just lay him in his crib (swaddled) and he eventually drifts off to sleep.  I am extremely worried that since he's not swaddled, he won't just lie there, he'll stand up.  He's in a sleep sack, but he stands up no problem in his sleep sack.

I don't want to have to do CIO again, but I know my son and I know that's the best way to "teach" him not to do ridiculous things like that that interfere with his sleep.  I'm thinking that just reswaddling him won't be the best solution to the standing up problem, because I obviously can't swaddle him forever.  So AT SOME POINT he will have to learn to not stand up in his crib as soon as he wakes up when he's not swaddled.

Maybe I'm borrowing trouble.  He could be totally fine tonight.  Besides the freezing cold hands he gets when his arms are free all night long.  Anybody have any tips for that?  His hands are like little icicles when he's not swaddled at night!!



Sidenote:  Justin just told me that they discovered a planet out in space (not our solar system) that is bigger than Jupiter.  I said "So what?"  He said Jupiter is the biggest planet in our solar system.  And again, I said, "So what?"  He told me that you can fit 1320 Earths in Jupiter, that's how big it is.  And they found another planet out there that's bigger than that.

My swaddling "issues" suddenly seem very small.

lol

8 Months Old!

I can't even believe my baby is 8 months old. He's been outside of me for as long as I knew he was inside of me (I found out I was pregnant on July 19th and he was born on March 18th - his EDD was March 29). Where oh where has the time gone??

Here's what Noah is up to at 8 months old:

-He weighs 18lbs 12oz (less than 50th percentile)

-He is 29.5 inches (about 95th percentile)

-He is 10th percentile for weight for height... just a little stringbean.

-He wears 12 month and 18 month clothing.

-He wears size 3 diapers (most Pampers BabyDry).

-He has 4 teeth, three from when he was 5 months old and one he just got in the past week. I think he may be working on his top-right-middle tooth, too. We'll see!

-He is still exclusively breastfed (except for solids at dinner; he still has never had a bottle), and he is getting to be a very cuddly nurser again.

-He eats about 4oz of solids before bedtime, but during the rest of the day it's just breastfeeding. He has finally ingested a small amount of liquid (1/3 pear juice, 2/3 water) from a "sippy cup" (a silicone spout sort of thing, not a true sippy cup). He's usually not that into it, though.

-Most solids still constipate him. So far the only safe foods are pears, prunes, peaches, and butternut squash. Peas, carrots, rice cereal, bananas, apples, apples and apricots, sweet potato, and sweet potato and turkey all constipate him. It's very frustrating, because it takes forever to unplug him again, and it makes it very difficult to introduce new foods. I think the fact that we keep having to switch back to strictly pears and prunes is starting to make him a bit pickier. He was at a point where he loved everything we offered him, but I don't know anymore.

-We just started Oat cereal in hopes that it won't constipate him.

-He's going to sleep at night usually between 7 and 7:30.

-He sleeps amazingly well at night after a very short bout with CIO. He pretty much sleeps 10 to 11 hours straight (with an outside range of 9.5 to 11.5), nurses, and then usually goes back to bed, depending on how long that stretch was (if it was 11.5 hours, he usually won't fall asleep again). He is usually awake when I put him back in his crib, but that seems to be the only time during the day and night that I can lay him down in his crib, walk away, and he'll often drift off to sleep, even if it's 45 minutes later.

-Bedtime routine is boob, solids, bath, boob, bed. He falls asleep nursing nearly every night.

-He has 2 or 3 naps a day.

-His normal awake time is about 2.5 hours.  Sometimes as short as an hour and 15 minutes, and often he has a stretch of 3 hours or more in the evening.

-His naps are still crappy most of the time. In an entire week he maybe has 2 or 3 naps that are about an hour long. The rest are all 30-40 minutes.

-He's still rocked to sleep with a soother for all his naps. I've tried letting him CIO for naps, but the crying is usually much worse than it was at nighttime when we used CIO, so I don't feel he's ready to go to sleep independently for all his naps.
-He is still swaddled at nighttime, but we recently have stopped swaddling for naps. I think it's going okay.

-He sleeps on his tummy even when he's swaddled.  I thought this was just the worst thing until I remembered that when I used to sleep on my tummy (before being pregnant and nursing... I haven't slept on my tummy in a very very long time) I would always sleep with my arms straight down at my sides.  So it's not like it's uncomfortable.

-Everytime we go to get him out of his crib he's standing up waiting for us. It's one of those things I always dreamed of about being a mom:)

-He crawls on his hands and knees exclusively. He started doing this right at 7 months, and had ditched army crawling completely by 7.5 months. The only time he'll army crawl is if he's trying to get under something that's too low to crawl under.

-He pulls up to standing using everything (even just a flat wall) and can sit down again on his own. His crib is on the 2nd lowest setting. He no longer needs someone to sit behind him when he's standing in case he falls, because he pretty much never falls. He doesn't even lean on the things that are supporting him. He just needs a hand on something to steady himself.

-He can just sit there in a squatting position, not holding on to anything.

-He can stand on his own - without holding on to anything - for a few seconds at a time. His record is about 5 seconds. This is by no means something he has mastered, though.

-He is understanding object permanence and looks for dropped objects.

-He has seperation anxiety and stranger anxiety. Fun fun!:)

-If he wants to be picked up and you are across the room, he will whine and crawl over to you and use your legs to stand up until you pick him up.

-He gives me lots of kisses everyday. He's started to "talk" while he does it, I think because when I kiss him I often am going "Muah, muah muah, muah." He's started to open his mouth, plant it on me, and go "Ahhhhhh." He doesn't kiss anybody else, usually, but yesterday he gave his friend Aubrey (3 weeks older) a kiss on the cheek, "Ahhh" and everything..

-He likes to sit in the bumbo on the kitchen counter while I cook.

-He babbles lots and sometimes purposefully imitates the sounds we make ("bat"). His most common sound is "Dada."

-He laughs his head off when Justin turns the ring stacker upside down, spins it like a top, and says "BING!"

-He doesn't get his soother much during the day, so he's falling out of love with it. When he does get it during the day, he plays with it more than he sucks on it.

-He still does the head-tilt thing, but it's becoming less frequent than it was a month ago.

-He loves our cats, but they do not love him. It makes me not love them.

There it is!  Happy 8 months, my sweet little Noah!  The past 8 months have been the best and happiest 8 months of my life.

Gluten Wars

Today my dear husband and I fought.  Over what I consider to be the most ridiculous thing.

Back story.  As we all know, Noah gets constipated from nearly everything.  As a result, he has been off rice cereal (since it has a reputation for constipation) for over a month.  He hasn't had any other type of cereal because his father is incredibly stubborn.  He wishes we all ate a paleo diet (meats, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, AND THAT'S IT).  He hates grains, and he especially detests gluten.  He saw rice cereal as a compromise, since he didn't even want Noah to eat that.  But he wouldn't let me feed him the "Add Water" kind because of the extra milk ingredients in it.  I had to get the "Add Breastmilk or Formula" kind.  (I'm not sure what all the cereals are like in the U.S. because my friend goes across the border to buy hers - way cheaper - and the ingredients are different even though it's by the same company.  But here in Canada those two kinds of cereal have vastly different ingredients).

Well, perhaps it was a compromise, but it was an unsuccessful one, since Noah couldn't tolerate it.

I have gone along with this gluten-free thing for awhile, but Noah has not been getting the additional iron he needs because he is exclusively breastfed (no formula) besides the dinner of fruit and vegetables he gets at night.  The iron in breastmilk is the best absorbed iron you can get from ANY source - including meat.  About 50% of the iron in breastmilk is absorbed and utilized by the baby, as compared to 4% of the iron in formula.

That's great.  But once the baby starts eating solids, the iron is breastmilk is no longer as well absorbed because it starts to bind to the molecules in the solid food.  So while I'm not totally on board with the whole BABY NEEDS MORE IRON AT 6 MONTHS thing, I do agree that sometime in the second half of the first year baby should start to receive more iron supplementation.

Noah is 8 months old.  So I do some more research on the benefits of continuing to keep him gluten-free for awhile longer.  I see none.  There ARE benefits to being totally gluten-free, but I have no intention of keeping Noah gluten-free his entire life (if it were totally up to my husband, he would be, but it's not).  So I may as well introduce it now in a controlled setting.

So yesterday I decided - and informed Justin - that I was going to start Noah on Oat cereal.  It's not as high in gluten as wheat, but it will provide extra iron and possibly not make Noah constipated like the rice cereal.  Justin disagrees with the idea.  I tell him I don't care.  He says "I really don't have any say in this, do I?"  I say "No."

End of story?

Not quite.

Today I go out and buy the Oat cereal (and the only option is the "Add Water" variety).  And some Sweet Potato Whole Wheat Puffs.  And some vegetable Mum Mums.

Justin looks in the grocery bags and discovers these purchases. 

He pretty much acts like he wants to divorce me.

He fails to notice (or care, once it's pointed out to him) that I purposefully did not buy anything with any SOY ingredients whatsoever, since soy is like majorly unhealthy (it's not even allowed to be sold as a type of baby formula in Australia), and basically like giving my baby boy an estrogen supplement.

My husband is usually very happy and friendly and smiley.  But he stopped talking to me for awhile tonight.

And just to rub it in (not intentionally) he had to FEED Noah that dreaded gluten-containing, milk-ingredients-containing Oat cereal.

Honestly, this "fight" was going to have to happen at some point, whether it's at 8 months or 12 months.  No matter when I introduced gluten, it was going to cause a commotion in our house.

Hopefully it's worth it and Noah doesn't get constipated.

Sending Mixed Signals

I think Noah is sending me mixed signals.  Last night I swaddled him for bed and he didn't make a peep for 11.5 hours.  Now I'm not so sure he wants to be unswaddled after all.

Make up your mind, child!!

Still Swaddling the CuddleBug, and Tooth #4

De-swaddling didn't go so well for us today.

Granted, it went way better than the first day of our last Operation NoSwaddle (which, coincidentally, coincided with the last time Noah was teething... so weird).  This time I just put him in a sleep sack for all 3 of his naps. He went to sleep okay for all of them. His first nap was normal, about 30 minutes long.  I thought we might be in the clear.

His second nap he slept 10 minutes - INCLUDING the time he spent in my arms. He had been up for awhile, so I let him CIO after he woke up.  I don't usually do CIO during the daytime.  In fact, I never really have.  But I'm never sure what to do during the day.  At nighttime I now know he won't cry for too long, and that he's actually tired and will fall asleep on his own.  Naptime is another story.  He's a chronic short napper anyway, and he seems more than happy with his 30 minute naps (I'm not, but I've learned to live with it).  So when he wakes up even earlier than that, I never really know what to do.  I always get him eventually, because I don't like him to CIO in the daytime, especially when I don't actually know if he's tired or not.  Anyway, after this nap of only 10 minutes, I let him CIO basically by default.  He started crying, and I waited to see if he would calm down and go back to sleep.  Then because I waited, I didn't want to go in there because I didn't want to teach him that if he cries for a long time Mommy will eventually come.  It would be terrible if that lesson spilled over into nighttime.  Even though the research says that daytime and nighttime are controlled by different areas of the brain and have nothing to do with each other, really, it still worries me.  So I defaulted.   He cried for 25 minutes, and it was awful.  He was SCREAMING, and he was all over his crib, standing up, sitting down, rolling around, standing up again, just screaming.  Seriously, it was terrible.  But I'm fairly certain he was just mad, because he would bury his face in the mattress and be quiet for 10 seconds and then start screaming again (I was watching through the crack in the door).

After 25 minutes of wailing he went back to sleep for 40 minutes. But then he woke up crying and crying again and I didn't have the heart to put him through that again, so I got him up.

Then his third nap he woke up after 10 minutes AGAIN.  I just got him that time. It was 5pm and I didn't want him to take forever to fall asleep and then go to bed late because his nap went to late.

He was in a mood the whole rest of the day after that CIO nap. I discovered that he's cutting another tooth. On his bottom to the right of his middle teeth. He already has had the matching tooth on the other side for over 2 months, so I've been wondering when this one will come in. I discovered that it's cutting at the grocery store, of all places. So for dinner he had pears and prunes laced with Motrin and Tylenol.   Yes, just pears and prunes.  That's all he's had for days.  We're still waiting on a normal poop. It's been weeks.
So I think we might stick it out with no swaddle for most of his naps, but I'm still swaddling him at night for now.  I was hoping to just put him in the sleep sack tonight, but I can't have him be exhausted from not sleeping during the day OR at night.


On a much more positive note, Noah has been SO cuddly the past few days. SO cuddly. Lots of hugs and kisses and just constantly climbing into my lap whiel we're on the ground playing.  Plus, each day we've had about 3 marathon cuddle/nursing sessions.  Noah is still nursed pretty much exclusively, we just add in a meal of solids at nighttime before bed.  During the day I usually nurse him when he's wide awake, not to put him to sleep, so he eats for MAYBE 10 minutes and then he wants to be on the go and play. But everyday for the past few days he's just laid there in my lap, awake, cuddling, suckling, staring at me, and playing with my face.  He's not even eating, he's just suckling with no swallowing.  He touches my nose, and I say "Nose!" He touches my mouth and I say "Mouth!"  I nibble his fingers and he smiles and laughs.  I started being able to say "Where's Mommy's nose??" and he'll grab or touch my nose. I don't know if it's just a coincidence, but he does it about 75% of the time that I say "Where's Mommy's nose??"
 
I love that he's just about 8 months old and we're having these long cuddle sessions.  Especially since at about 4 months he became a very distractable eater, and generally only nurses for about 7-10 minutes at a time.  I know he's not actually eating for most of the time that he's lying there, but I don't care. I adore the cuddle time.  I like the cuddles I get during the rest of the day, because I do get lots of hugs and kisses and cuddles.  But there is no other time during the day (unless he's sleeping) that he would lie in my lap, quiet and still, for half an hour.  And I'm getting 3 of these cuddle/nursing sessions everyday lately!  I love it.  LOVE it.

The End of Swaddling?

I know, I know, he's almost 8 months old, you can't believe he's still swaddled.  Neither can I, frankly.  But when we tried not swaddling just before 6 months it was a disaster.  I swaddle weaned him and everything - it took forever, but I thought things were good.  Then it all went to hell in a handbasket so I started up again.

However, I think Noah is ready to be done with his swaddle. Last night he was screaming (he usually doesn't cry very hard now when he wakes up at night, but it was pretty hard last night) for like 7 minutes and when he finally quieted down he was turned around at the bottom of his crib lying on his tummy with his head smushed against the rails.

In his swaddle.

Sleeping, of course.

Eventually he rolled onto his back and his head was bent completely sideways to his body because of the sides of the crib. I moved him back to the middle of the crib, and when I went to check on him at 3am or something he had his arms out of his swaddle and was turned around, scrunched up on his tummy at the bottom of the crib again. I don't know when he got his arms out because he didn't do any crying after the first 7 minutes - maybe just a short fuss - but his arms were free and he was very far from the position I had moved him to around 9pm.  Furthermore, he didn't wake me up to eat until 5:45am even though he went to sleep at 7pm.  He was awake playing in his bed for awhile before he woke me up, because when I got him he was standing at the side rails and his lovey was thrown in a different place than it usually is.  But he probably wasn't awake for any longer than 10 minutes.

He's sleeping on his tummy even while he's swaddled a LOT lately. And then last night he freed himself and slept over 10.5 hours without needing me.  So maybe he's ready to be unswaddled. 

The only problem is the sleeping transfer from my arms to the crib when all his limbs are splaying out everywhere... doesn't seem like it will be very successful.

I will report back.

Odds and Ends

(Noah is 7 months 3 weeks old)

-Today I was eavesdropping on Noah and his Daddy while they played with Noah's bat.  Here is part of their conversation:

Dad: "Bat."
Noah (staring at Dad): "Bat."
Dad: "Bat."
Noah: "Bat.
Dad: "Bat."
Noah: "Dat! Bat! Dada. Dat! Ah Dat! Ba Bat."

Today was the first day Noah purposefully copied something one of us said.  It was so cool.  He was watching Justin's mouth so carefully, and slowly figured out how to say exactly what Justin was saying.  Amazing.

-Today we also had "sippy cup" success for the first time!  Granted, it's not a true sippy cup.  I threw out the packaging, but it's a Nuby 3 Stage something-or-other... a no-spill soft-spout thing.  It's an 8 oz cup with handles on either side (that are removable) and it comes with a normal shaped nipple that has teething nubs on it as well as a silicone "spout" sort of nipple.  I actually really like the nipples because the baby can control the flow pretty easily compared with the other types of cups and nipples I've tried.  To be fair, I did, in fact, have to bribe Noah to drink out of it using juice.  I bought Heinz Pear Juice, which was just pear juice concentrate and water, no added sugar.  I mixed it 1/3 juice and 2/3 water, and gave it to Noah.  When he first got the liquid in his mouth he was disgusted.  He shuddered and pushed the cup away.  Then he tasted that it was a little bit sweet, and he immediately lunged for the sippy cup and actually actively sucked on it.  Over the course of today I've offered it to him on several different occasions and he's actually ingested about 2 ounces!  Once he gets really good at it I'll try plain water again.  But the juice bribe definitely worked!  Yay!!

-Noah's night time sleep continues to be very good.  He gets up very little compared to how often he used to wake up.  I don't go in to get him unless he's been sleeping for about 10 hours (then I feed him), and he doesn't even CRY very often anymore.  He might fuss for a couple of minutes once in awhile, but it's very short lived.  Even though I don't soothe him when he's "crying," he now spends far less time crying each night than he did when I was catering to his every beck and call.  His wake up time is a lot later now, too.  He wakes up, fusses a bit, goes back to sleep, wakes up, fusses a bit, goes back to sleep... He'll do this until about 12 3/4 hours after he originally went to bed.  Before I let him CIO for a couple of nights he was always getting up for the day after a maximum of 11 hours after he went to bed.  And he was getting far less sleep during those 11 hours, too.

-His napping is still totally hit or miss, but he's getting more sleep at night now so it's hard to complain about that.  2 days in a row he only had 2 half hour naps all day, but today he had an hour nap and 2 half hour naps.  Like I said, hit or miss.

-Yesterday I got Noah to sleep for a third nap, but about 30 seconds after I left his room he woke up fussing.  I let him fuss, thinking he might go to sleep on his own, like at night.  The fussing stopped after a minute, but I could tell by his cooing over the monitor that he was not going to go to sleep.  Then suddenly he started screaming.  I wasn't sure what to do at first (I still fumble around with what to do during daytime... I don't really want to let him cry at naptime when he's not as sleepy as at nighttime because I think it would go on for longer), but after about a minute I went into his room and he was out of his swaddle, standing up, hanging on to the tall end of his crib.  He was SCREAMING, I think because he was stranded!  He's still getting the hang of sitting back down after he's pulled up to stand.  Poor baby!

-Today he figured out how to plop back down onto his butt after he pulls up to stand using the side of his pack 'n play.  I can't wait until he can figure out how to do that in any situation.  Our entire upper floor is all hardwood and ceramic tile, and we spend all our time up here.  Noah stands up using everything - the baby gate, the dining room chairs, the couches, the coffee tables, the window ledge... I have to watch him like a hawk to make sure he doesn't just let go of what he's hanging on to and crash his head into the hard floor!

-I think I have neglected to mention that right at 7 months on the nose Noah started giving me kisses.  Only me, not Daddy or Granny or anyone else.  He opens his mouth wide and just lays his slobbery lips over my mouth or on my cheek.  It absolutely melts me.  I feel like he just loves me when he does it.  It's very obviously a kiss, and he often does it when I say "Kisses!!"  or purse my lips at him and say "Muah!"  Or I'll be kissing his cheek and he'll open his mouth and turn his head so his mouth is over mine.  OR I'll pick him up and he'll hug me tight around the neck and then plant his open mouth on my cheek.  Seriously, it makes me feel like I'm going to burst.

-Finally, today is one of those days where I just feel so blessed.  Today I feel so overwhelmed with how lucky I am that God finally gave us our beautiful, adorable, happy son.  He is so smart and so strong, and I am so proud to be his Mama.  I always feel blessed to have him, but today that feeling is just stronger than it is on other days.  My house is messy, my dishwasher needs emptying, my floors need swiffering, I put pajamas back on after my shower, and I'm not sure if I even brushed my teeth today.  But when I was snuggling and rocking my sleeping Noah, I had to resist the urge to squeeze him and hug him as tight as humanly possible because I was just overwhelmed with how in love I am with him.  He is such an amazing miracle.  And DANG good looking, to boot!

Now I'm off to go hug the crap out of him!

Dada

Today (7 months 3 weeks), Noah really started saying "Dada."  He doesn't seem to be saying it in actual reference to his Daddy, but he was saying it A LOT today.  He has said "Dada" and "Dad" on many different occasions, but today was the first day it was constant, consistent, and crystal-clear.  It was quite adorable.

He also said some other words today - not that he knew what he was saying.  In and amongst his baby babble, he said "What!" and "Not yet!"

Who knows, he might start talking before his cousin Elijah, who is a full year older than him and STILL not talking!

Lol, probably not.

Oh, and the new sippy cup... so far it's not happening.  He likes to hold the handles, but if he ends up with any liquid in his mouth, he is quite disgusted.

"I'm doing the right thing, I'm doing the right thing..."

Last night... night 6??...  was not as stellar.  It wasn't terrible, it just wasn't as seemless as the nights we've been having.  Noah kind of cried off and on from 3:20am until 4:10am, then cried again at 5 for a short time, and then I fed him at 6:15.  The crying wasn't terrible.  I would check on him during the quiet moments and he'd be lying there looking like he was sleeping.  So he was obviously just trying to work something out.  I don't know. 

I didn't get much sleep last night because my husband woke me up snoring at 12:30am, after I'd only been sleeping for 2 hours.  I had forgotten tot ake a gravol, so I couldn't fall back asleep until 3am.  Then all the crying started at 3:20.  Luckily after I fed Noah at 6:15 we went back to bed and I slept until 8.  I think I got about 4 or 4 1/2 hours of sleep.

Today Noah only had 2 half hour naps.  I asked Justin to put him down for his third one and Justin sucks at it, so Noah never ended up going down.  He woke up from nap #2 at 2pm and went to bed at 7.  5 hours of awake time.  That's a lot.

Tonight I had to call my mom to make myself feel better.  I nursed Noah to sleep, like always, but when I put him down he woke up right away and started crying.  My first instinct was to pick him up and soothe him back to sleep.  But I am very afraid to do that anymore because Noah seems to get very addicted to me putting him to sleep in the middle of the night.  So I hid, and then crawled out of his room so he wouldn't see me.  He didn't cry very hard, and it ended up only lasting 5 minutes (and it was off and on the whole time), so I know I made the right decision.  But I was still feeling guilty.  Even though I know this is the best thing for Noah, so that he has the skills to fall asleep on his own, I still feel guilty letting him cry.

I just keep reminding myself that it'll be far easier to do this now than to try and start it when he's a year or a year and a half old.  The earlier you start, the easier it is.  And it's a very good thing for him to have healthy sleep habits and the ability to fall asleep on his own.  I'm doing him a favour.  I'm not torturing him.

I have to keep repeating that to myself.

Another Great Night and a Great Day

Noah had another great night last night.  He slept 10 hours straight, nursed, and went back to bed for another couple of hours.

He great day today, too.  He woke up at 8 (7, new time), and had good naps. 40 minutes, an hour, and an hour. We had a very busy day.
 
We were planning on going to church and everything was all ready, we had our bags and carseat by the door and were just waiting for Noah to get up (never would I EVER wake up Noah if he was going to have a long nap). Well, Noah woke up about 8 minutes too late for us to make it to church on time. And at my church you can't just sneak in the back, because my church fills up from the back to the front. So unless we get there early, there are no seats at the back. My family has always sat at the very front of the church my entire life.  Every Sunday.  Even though we were often 5 minutes late. But I'm not doing that a) with a baby who I don't want to stick in the nursery for the entire service, and b) being 10 minutes late.

So we skipped church for the billionth time in the past 10 months (since I got injured and was bedridden at 30 weeks pregnant). But since we were all showered and dressed and packed up already at 9:30, I decided we were going to DO STUFF. I ran to the pharmacy to pick up prescriptions, and then we headed into town.
 
We went to the Wal, where we got about 50 jars of baby food.  They were on sale. Seriously, with all those and everything we already had we could stock a whole baby food section. We also picked up some more mesh feeder bag things, since Noah loves them (he will sit in his high chair for an hour munching on something in there. It's especially helpful when he's grumpy), and we bought a new kind of bottle/sippy cup that maybe he will like more than the bottles and sippy cups we already have. Probably not. But we bought some pear juice for when I'm ready to have him try, since I'm pretty sure we're going to have to bribe him to like sippy cups through using juice.

Then we went to visit Justin's Nona Anna at her old people's rez. It is like a 6 star hotel there. Very nice.

Then we went to my parents' for Noah to have a nap (which was a little over an hour long - also very nice). They weren't there, which was for the best because we had a lot more to do in town and it would have been harder for us to do if they were home. I have a hard time taking Noah away from them because they adore him so much.
 
After his nap we went to Tonnie Bogs (yeah that's not the real name of the store... I think it's only in Canada though) to buy some more sleepers (we don't have enough that fit him right now) and a snow suit. We got a 12 month snow suit, but there's no way it will fit him all winter. It fits him perfect right now. There was no 18 month suit though, unless we wanted to pay $70. Which I was definitely not doing.  We'll just keep the tags on this one until we actually have to use it, and if we end up having to get an 18 month one it will be at a time when they're probably on sale.

Then we went to Justin's Nona Maria's, where Noah made $20. Nice.

I should mention that Noah cried for both of Justin's Nonas. We tried to just get him used to them from afar, and he was more than happy to do that. But once they tried to hold him he was crying within 30 seconds. We tried more than once. Too bad, so sad.
 
After Nona Maria's we went to Justin's parents' house. You may ask, "Why don't Justin's parents have their mothers over so that you can see everyone at once instead of going all over tarnation with a 7 month old?"

"Because," I will answer, "Italians are stupid."

Seriously. So stupid.

So we went to Justin's parents and Noah had a nap in the pack 'n play that they finally bought when he was 7 months old (another example of stupid Italians being stubborn, thinking that I should pack up my own pack 'n play that I use everyday everytime I want to "swing by" their house). It took over 20 minutes for me to get him to sleep because the people don't own a fan - WHO DOESN'T OWN A FAN? - and Noah has a difficult time falling asleep without white noise. My fault. I ended up having to nurse him to sleep. But he slept for an hour.
 
He woke up at like 5:45. So late!! Then he played for awhile with his Nana until we made the trek home at about 6:45. It was actually a pretty good visit. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I enjoyed myself.

So because he woke up so late, he didn't get to bed until 8:15pm, which is 9:15 on the old clock! And he was HAPPY as a clam all day long and all evening long. He showed everyone the tricks he mastered right after the last time he saw them (hands and knees crawling and pulling up to stand).  Then tonight he was splashing up a storm in his bath (I was soaked) and didn't whine once the whole time. He usually has a period of whining during his bath these days, but not tonight. He was pretty hyper.

Now I'm home and I'm going to relax with my husband and eat ice cream. Ahhhhh.

Night 4

Total Success.

I didn't want to call this post "CIO Night 4," because... drum roll...

Last night Noah didn't cry at all. 

He was asleep at 7:30 and didn't cry once until 6am.  I got him up to nurse him (I'm fine with feeding him after 10.5 hours, that's a long time for a 7 1/2 month old to go without food), and after that he was awake.  I put him back in his crib and went back to bed and he didn't cry or make much noise at all.  I dozed until 8:10 and then decided we should all get up.  I could hear Noah making little noises, but he must have fallen asleep in those 2 hours because he was still fully swaddled at 8:10.  There's no way he would have lied there for 2 hours quietly and not broken free of his swaddle.

I did hear him making little whining noises 2 or 3 times during the night, but they maybe lasted 30 seconds.  They were just little noises like he used to make back when he was STTN, before he needed me to help him fall back asleep everytime he slightly woke up.

This morning he had another good nap of an hour and 15 minutes.  I heard him sneeze and cough at the time he would normally wake up (after 30 or 40 minutes) but he fell back asleep on his own.

Yay for Noah.  And yay for me.  I feel like a new woman.

CIO Night 3

Last night went pretty well again. Noah was asleep by 8:10pm (we've been pushing it later and later for a month because of the time change coming this weekend), and he didn't cry until 11:30. I actually wished he would have woken up at the beginning of the night like he always does to get the first cry over with then.  Instead I was awoken for it.  Boo.

At 11:30 he cried for 10 minutes, that was it.  Then he cried from 3:45am to 4:15am, but again I didn't go in there. He can definitely go longer than 8 hours overnight without a feed, and he started crying at only 7.5 hours between feeds so I didn't want to just use the boob as a crutch to fall back asleep.

Then he cried again at 6:45am.  At that point I figured he had gone 10.5 hours between feeds and was probably quite hungry.  I was pretty sure he wouldn't go back to sleep if I didn't feed him, so I did.  He went back to sleep until 8:45am.  I went back to sleep until 8:30.  Glorious.


I think Noah woke up and cried for a very short amount of time on a few other occasions during the night, but I don't remember because I didn't turn and look at the clock or anything.  And honestly, the crying last night was not nearly as intense as it was the first night or even the second night. And Noah is happy and cuddly again today.

Yesterday, the first day after I fully committed to CIO from the beginning of the night, Noah had 2 long naps of about an hour and 15 minutes and one short 30 minute nap.  Today he's had one 35 minute nap and one nap that was an hour and 40 minutes.  He hasn't napped that long since a freak nap he had in his swing up at the cottage at the beginning of July.  And like I said, it was a freak occasion.  His longest nap is always an hour and 20 minutes MAX.  He never ever sleeps longer than that, and even that is a rare occasion in our house.  I don't know if it's because of the CIO at night or just a coincidence. 

Again, I'm not looking forward to tonight because I really do hate listening to Noah cry and I'm pretty sure we're not done with that yet.  Justin will be home tonight instead of off coaching, so there will be someone there looking at me with puppy dog eyes and making me feel guilty... not helping!!

Behaviour after CIO

I feel compelled to mention Noah's behaviour today after letting him CIO for 20 minutes last night.  A lot of people are totally against CIO, and I am not totally comfortable with it either.  I don't like having to let Noah cry by himself when I know I can soothe him.  I'm only using it as a last resort and for Noah's own good, because his sleep was going to hell in a handbasket. (If he was only getting up 2 or 3 - or even 4 - times a night, I would not be doing this).

A lot of opponents to CIO claim that it causes damage to the parent-child relationship and results in a detached baby.

Noah was anything but that today, after letting him CIO last night.  He was very cuddly and happy (cuddly, not clingy), and napped better than he has in a couple of weeks.

I don't necessarily think that's a result of CIO, but it certainly proves those individuals and groups wrong.  At least in my case.

And so far tonight he's been asleep for an hour and hasn't cried once - very out of the ordinary.  Maybe he's a fast learner! :)

Could It Be?

(Noah is 7 1/2 months)

Last night I called my mom during bedtime routine and gave her all the facts of our situation in one neat package:  Noah's sleep has been getting progressively worse; he seems to have learned he only wants to sleep in my arms; he's getting up at least 4 or 5 times a night, often more, but now he's sick.  Last night I let him CIO at 4:30am and it seemed to "work" for the rest of the night.  It's hard to know for sure after only one time and the "rest of the night" being only 3 hours.

I asked what she would do if it was her kid who was sick but had gotten into the habit of waking up a billion times a night just wanting to be held - and sometimes not even that. Would she let him CIO even though he's sick?

She said yes, do it right away when he goes to bed when you know he's dry and fed and not in pain (because I had given him solids laced with Tylenol and Motrin at dinnertime). Noah always wakes up screaming about half an hour after he falls asleep at the beginning of the night. ALWAYS. Sometimes several times. Whether he's sick or not. If I nurse him for 10 minutes, he gets up about 20 minutes after I put him down. If I nurse him for 20 minutes he gets up about 10 minutes after I put him down. He always does this and then I have to go rock him back to sleep. I've always found it to be a pain, but obviously I would rather spend a few minutes rocking him and comforting him than listen to him cry.

EXCEPT that he has now gotten into the habit of waking up all the time, not just at the beginning of the night. So I took my mom's advice and let him CIO when he woke up 25 minutes after I put him down (he had conked right out and went totally limp and slack after only 4 minutes of nursing!! Yay for having that time not sitting there in the dark!!).

The night before when I let him CIO at 4:30am it took 30-40 minutes for him to stop crying. Last night it only took 15-20 minutes. He did wake up and cry several more times over the course of the night, but for hardly any time at all and just went back to sleep quickly on his own. He went to sleep at 7:45pm and at 5:15am when I heard him whining I got him to nurse him. Not for his benefit, because I'm pretty sure he would have gone back to sleep in a couple of minutes on his own. But my boob (I only nurse from one side at night) was getting really full, and I didn't want to not be able to sleep because I was engorged.  Depending on how full my boob is tonight I may not get him up to nurse. He doesn't actually need it at night, we've just been in the habit because it's the easiest way for him to fall back asleep.  I really think he could easily go straight through the night with no nursing if I just "ignore" him when he cries from now on.
 
I know this probably sounds horrible, but I really am doing this for his own good. It's not good for a baby's brain to sleep the way Noah has been sleeping. He doesn't sleep at night OR during the day. When is his brain supposed to do everything it's supposed to do when he's sleeping if HE'S NEVER SLEEPING long enough?

It is so hard to listen to him cry and I wanted to go pick him up so bad at the beginning of the night because I knew that he would quiet right down if I did. But I also knew that if I did that, he would keep crying all night long, and that crying for a short time at the start of the night is better for him than crying off and on all night and getting less sleep.
 
I never thought I'd let Noah CIO because it bothers me so much.  My heart pounds, I'm sure my blood pressure raises, and I feel so stressed out.  Emotionally, I feel like a terrible parent.  Logically, I know I'm not. 
 
Before recently, Noah's sleep problems were never bad enough that I had to resort to CIO.  He'd have bad nights, but he'd also have good nights.  Sure, he was never as good as he was between 2 and 4 months, but I just figured it was an age thing and he'd get better.  Instead, things have been getting worse and worse for a long time.  It was time to do something about it, for both of our sake's.
 
The other "kinder" versions of CIO don't work for Noah because when he sees me he just freaks out more and cries for longer. So I can't go in there and "reassure him".  He'll cry for hours if I do that.  I've tried.
 
He seems to be getting it though, because he cried way less last night than the night before. I guess we'll see how it goes tonight. Maybe I'll call my mom again so I won't go rushing into his room, since I almost need to be physically restrained from doing that.  He really needs to learn the tools to soothe himself to sleep. I'm not doing him any favours by doing it for him 10 times a night when he so very clearly is getting worse and worse at it.
 
If Noah can learn to sleep better this way, then it's worth it.  I just might die a few years earlier from the huge amount of stress it puts on me.  lol.

When Will It End??

Last night was hell, once again.  Most nights are not good, with me getting up 4 or 5 times a night with just one baby.  It's enough to make me rethink when I want to have another child.  5 year age gap, anyone??

But last night we seemed to hit a wall.

Between 8pm and 1am Noah got up 7 times, and then I stopped counting.  After 1 am he wouldn't stay down longer than 10 minutes. By 3:30am I had only gotten a maximum of 30 minutes of sleep, and the whole thing was ridiculous. Noah is sick AGAIN (frickin church nursery... we were only in it for 10 minutes!!) but it wasn't too too bad last night (today, on the other hand, has been awful).  However, by 3:30am I was pretty sure that was no longer what was keeping him awake. He was just crying and crying and a lot of the time it didn't matter if he was being held or not. Several times the only thing that would calm him down was my boob. Then he'd seem pretty asleep so I'd put him down in his crib and within a few minutes he was crying again.

I had fed him twice, changed his bum so he wasn't wet, tried him swaddled and unswaddled, checked for a fever (nothing even close) and given him motrin in case he was in pain. Nothing worked. As the night went on things just got worse, and it seemed like he was just getting in the habit of only sleeping in my arms. Not Justin's, just mine. Except that I tried lying down with him in my arms and he only slept for 30 minutes - and fitfully, at that.
 
As I've mentioned, this problem has been building and getting progressively worse for a long time now.  I can't remember the last time Noah had a good night, or the last time he even slept 4 or 5 hours straight.  Then last night was just so bad. There was NOTHING I could do. At 3am I put him down and when he started crying at 3:08 I decided to let him CIO (cry it out), as hard as it is to listen to him get absolutely hysterical.  I figured this was the best decision for Noah, given the circumstances. 
 
Justin woke up and he hates listening to Noah CIO - understandably.  I hate it as much as he does.  But Justin doesn't have to deal with all the sleep problems.  He pretty much sleeps through everything.
 
When he woke up concerned about the crying, I told him "There's nothing I can do, I've been holding him all night. He's not hungry, I've fed him twice.  He's not wet, I changed his bum.  He's not in pain, I gave him pain meds.  He doesn't want to be unswaddled, I tried that. He just needs to cry."  Justin understood that to mean that HE should go try, and he just made Noah worse.
 
I was SO mad because Noah was lying there for 10 minutes crying and then Justin went and "rescued" him (hardly!) so it was all for nothing. Justin also unswaddled him, thinking it would help, and it didn't.  Then he wouldn't stop crying with Justin so I had to take him, reswaddle him, and put him to sleep again anyway. I told Justin that under no circumstances is he to get Noah again tonight. There was nothing wrong with him except a sniffly nose, and I'm truly doing what I think he needs me to do. I don't WANT him to CIO, but I honestly thought that even though Noah gets hysterical when you let him cry, that CIO might just be the best thing for him because he seems to have "learned" that he should only sleep in my arms. And that is not good. He was not resting.
 
So by 3:40 he was asleep again and at 4:30 he woke up crying (probably the longest chunk of sleep he had had the whole night), and I HATED doing it but I just let him cry. I checked on him from the doorway a couple of times when he sounded really really frantic (most of the time he was crying he sounded like someone was trying to cut his limbs off with a rusty butterknife, but occasionally it got even worse so I checked at those times). After a little over half an hour he stopped. After that there were a few bursts here and there but I never went to go get him for the rest of the night. He fell back asleep on his own.
I HATE CIO, but I really felt like it was my only option last night.  I hated feeling like Noah was lying there screaming feeling abandoned, but I've tried the other versions of CIO before where you go in and check, or pick up put down, or whisper reassurances, or gently touch him so he knows he's not abandoned, but all those methods where I make myself visible to him only made things worse. One time he screamed for over 2 hours while I stood by his bed and tried pick-up-put-down. Seeing me just fuels his cries.
 
So I laid in bed with my heart pounding, wanting to cry myself, and FORCED myself not to get him. It seemed to have worked a little, because he didn't wake up as often after that. I guess we'll see what happens tonight. When he gets up for the first time tonight (like, soon after I put him down) I might let him CIO then and see what happens. It seems like we've reached the point where me getting him everytime he cries is making him cry ALL THE TIME, so I'm desperate for him to learn how to sleep properly again.  But I don't know if I'll have the willpower to not go in and soothe him.  I absolutely hate listening to him cry.  But getting up 15 times a night isn't okay, for me or for him.  And it's just getting progressively worse as time goes on, so I have to do something different.

I'm exhausted. I don't even think I got 3 hours of sleep last night.  And Noah is sick (part of why he was getting up so often last night) and miserable from lack of sleep.  He only had 3 naps today and they were all less than 30 minutes.  Two of them were just 20 minutes.  So tonight is probably going to be a complete gong show. 
 
I want to cry just thinking about it.

Some 7 Month Pictures

These pictures are a couple of weeks old, but I thought I'd post them.

You caught me Mom!!

Now I'm gonna get you!!!

Playing with my table:

Doing my bear crawl/trying to stand up with no help: