I'm Thankful for

Yeah, that sounds like a Thanksgiving post title, doesn't it? Thanksgiving was over a week ago you say?


Becky with Will trying to lick Jack's ear on Thanksgiving.

I feel so un-blogivated (motivated to blog) lately. I don't know why; I love blogging. I missed my "links of the week" and "what I cooked last week posts," I blame Thanksgiving for really throwing me off my schedule. I didn't even write my Thanksgiving post. Haven't been doing much blog reading lately either.

Oh well. Instead of trying to make up for the missed posts, I think I'll just resume them this week. Except "links of the week" might be more like "links from the recent past."

I will tell you what I'm thankful for though. This year, I'm most thankful for The Baby Whisperer. We started trying the "Pick-up/Put-down" method from this book again the night before Thanksgiving and it has gone really well! We had tried it before when Will was 4 months old and it did not work at all, but this time has been great.

Previously, it was normal for him to wake up 5-8 times during the night and sleep for a maximum stretch of 3 hours (if we were lucky). The first night we tried this (well, Shawn did the work), if I remember correctly, he only woke twice! Or was it once?! That we can live with. It wasn't easy by any means, but it's getting better. The first night it took about an hour and a half to get him to sleep, the second, an hour, and less from then on. Some nights Shawn hasn't had to pick him back up at all. Now it's normal for him to wake once or twice during the night (once for milk) and go back to sleep fairly easily.



Naps are a different story though. Will was a good napper before this, but he was napping in the carseat, so we had to stop that and it was hard. Naps are my territory, since I'm the one home with him during the day, and I don't deal with his crying very well. For the first few days I was doing his naps, he didn't nap at all. Or, if he did nap, it was in the afternoon and just for 45 minutes, then I couldn't get him back to sleep. One day, he was so exhausted from not napping that he fell asleep in the highchair after lunch. This does not happen, he is not a fall-asleep-anywhere baby, I was in shock.

Friday, I think I broke the nap curse. Really, I think I just figured out the right amount of time that he can handle being awake for so that he's tired enough, but not overtired. Both naps were around 1 hour 20 minutes that day!

He's napping as I type this, praying to sail past the 45-minute mark today as well! But hey, 45 minutes is better than nothing. Update: Didn't make it past 30, but I got him back to sleep for a few minutes.

Co-sleeping at 8 months?

Since I posted this about taking Will into my bed to get him to finally get some sleep, several people asked me if we're going to start co-sleeping now.



Am I wrong for feeling it's late in the game to start co-sleeping now? I feel like it's a step backwards (although I would like to go back to month 3 when he slept through the night, but that wasn't in our bed). Plus, I like sleeping with my husband. Right now, we only take Will into our bed once it's close to time for him to wake up in the morning anyway. Husband would rather do it earlier because it lets him get more sleep, but for me, co-sleeping is not very restful. I spend most of the time nursing or trying to get Will back to sleep, even when he does go back to sleep I feel his every movement, so I never get deep sleep this way.

Some evenings though, usually around 6, I feel this wave of drowsiness like I could fall asleep standing on one leg in a hail storm and right then the idea of a big, family mattress on the floor sounds like a wonderful idea.

If you haven't already please "like" my blog on Facebook.

An aside: I'm seriously thinking of moving my blog back to Blogger (I moved to self-hosted Wordpress from Blogger 4 years ago) anyone have any experience and/or thoughts? Do you love/hate Blogger? Why?

We're very feng shui these days.

This.



This is what happens when it's 5 in the morning and your baby has hardly slept all night because of the separation anxieties and your husband is more than willing to take the floor so baby can share the bed with his mama.

Yeah, so after doing our sleep plan from The No-Cry Sleep Solution
for 10 days, our 10 day log did show improvement but we decided it was a fluke. We think Will must have known we were doing the log that night so he slept extra well. Isn't that kind of like cheating on a test? Or when the patient knows he's being observed by his psychologist? Or reality TV? Tricky baby.

After doing some more reading we're thinking separation anxiety is the real problem. It's weird though because he's fine with Shawn or my mom during the day when I'm no where in sight, but at night he can cry for over an hour while Shawn is holding him. Of course when I come into the room he gets all excited and stops.

It seems to be that we're going to have to work on this issue before we can expect any changes in his sleep habits.

If my baby would sleep at night

I used to make Shawn breakfast every morning. I'm not talking cereal either. Eggs, bacon, sausage, grits, pancakes, omelets; I even tried to replicate a sausage, egg, and cheese mcmuffin once because he basically said he'd rather have McDonalds (rude, right?)
As I got into my 3rd trimester I started going back to bed after he left for work, then I quit getting up at all. Then, well then i had a baby.

There was a window of time when Will was sleeping through the night when I was going to start getting up and making breakfast again (I think I did once) but that window quickly closed. Now the longest stretch of sleep we get is maybe 3 hours at best.

Breakfast isn't the only thing I'm missing. If Will would sleep at night my house would be more organized, I'd bake bread again. Man, I used to bake bread. I would read, oh how I miss reading. I would blog more often; so many times I've started a post and put it off because my brain was too tired to process it. I would write; I have ideas galore for stories or articles I could pitch to web publications, for money. money! but I'm just exhausted. All. The. Time. If you don't get it, you've never experienced sleep deprivation. I mean, my brain does not function the way it should.

Maybe I would even do some of these crafts that I keep buying supplies for.

A place to lay your head

...doesn't have to be a bed.

Today we had a napping breakthrough!



For weeks that seem like years, I've held Will for every nap. Generally, two 2-hour naps and one 30-45 minute cat nap. While he's never been a great napper, he used to be able to nap in his crib occasionally for a decent amount of time, but it's been a while since that happened. Naps in the crib had reduced to 45 minutes and then 10 minutes. We tried different things, changing his awake time, how we get him to fall asleep for a nap. Holding him the entire time was all that worked.

One day last week, Shawn suggested we try the carseat. He's always napped well in the car. Little did he know, I had already tried it that very day. Will napped for maybe 20 minutes in the car seat, then woke up, though it could have been noises of friends' childrens coming over that woke him up, I don't know, noises don't usually bother him. So, the next day I tried again, and whatdayaknow, my mom gets her 30 minutes into his nap, sending Oliver dog into a frenzy and Will wakes up. Now you may try to blame Will's poor napping on my house being chaotic, but I assure you that is not the norm.

But then, a breakthrough!

Over the weekend, Shawn tried getting Will to nap in the car seat while I napped (in the bed). He was able to get an hour and 20 minutes! I really hoped that it wasn't just some magic thing that Shawn could do and I would be unable to duplicate it. I grilled him for information on how tired he was and what time he got him to nap. Okay, not so much grilled, more like asked.

Today, I tried again. and. Success! I got two 1.5 hour naps without holding him! I napped! I finished a book and read part of another! Baby woke up happy!



To celebrate, husband brought home baby nail clippers and Diet Dr. Pepper. Well, okay, he was going to get the nail clippers anyway because ours disappeared, but the DDP could be considered a celebration. I didn't even complain about him getting a 12-pack instead of a bottle when he should know that I will only drink a few sips a day.

(I know I said I was working on a post about breastfeeding, it is still coming, it has just taken a lot more time than I originally thought. I still have more to write and will have to edit myself, perhaps making it a 2 or 3 part post. Maybe I can work on it during Will's naps!)