Krista Is a Mom: April 2009

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Sleeping, part 3

Molly went to bed last night at 8:30 almost immediately, and she slept until 7 this morning!!! She woke up twice, but she put herself back to sleep in under a minute both times so we did not have to go in to comfort her. Bill and I were in bed before 11 so we got a good night's sleep too. Whew! I hope this keeps up. We are going to Santa Barbara this weekend so we'll see how it goes.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

sleeping, part 2

Tonight, Molly Zelda fell asleep in less than one minute!!!! She cried, but it was for a very short time, and now she is asleep. I hope it lasts!

Sleeping

It has been way too long since I posted! For the past two nights, we have been working on Molly's sleeping. Back in November she was sleeping through the night really regularly. Since then, however, she has not been sleeping well. With Christmas travel, teething, and illness, we did not really think there was too much we could do about it. A week or so ago, I kind of started to reach a breaking point. I was constantly way too tired, and it was starting to affect my mood. (Those of you who know me well know that, at least before Molly was born, I really needed a lot of sleep. Since she has been born, I have been surprised at how little I can get by on, but the cumulative effect was starting to catch up with me.) Anyway, I talked to one of the other mommas in my group because she mentioned in passing that her daughter sleeps through the night, but it was a bit of a struggle to get her there. I remembered her saying this, and it made me realize that there is in fact something that we can actively do, rather than just passively wait for this phase to pass (most kindergartners sleep through the night, so I figured it would eventually pass, right?). She gave me a book by Richard Ferber, which has helped tremendously. He explained in the book what we were doing wrong. Letting Molly fall asleep on me, and then sneaking her into bed resulted in Molly's being startled when she awoke in the middle of the night because things were not as they were when she went to sleep. That is, she fell asleep cozy in her momma's arms, but she woke up alone in her crib. Understandably, that would result in some anxiety and difficulty getting back to sleep. So we have tried putting her down in her crib while she is still awake, and then letting her cry in increasing intervals until she falls asleep. I let her cry for three minutes on Monday night before I went in to reassure her that she was safe and that I was close by. Then I let her cry for five minutes and went in again. I was going to wait 7 minutes to go in again, but she fell asleep after five minutes. Dr. Ferber recommends that parents do this same thing when the baby wakes up in the middle of the night--no nursing as I have been doing. She only woke up once Monday night, and I only had to go in to comfort her two times, as I did when she went down for the night. Last night, we did the same thing, but instead of starting at three minutes, we started at five minutes. After five minutes, Bill went in to comfort her briefly, and then came out. Again, we were going to wait seven minutes, but she was asleep after about five minutes. The same thing was repeated around 1AM when she woke up, and Bill only had to go in one time to comfort her before she fell asleep again. Around 4AM she woke up again, but she got herself back to sleep, and we did not have to go in at all. Hopefully, the progress will continue, and she will be sleeping well through the night very soon. One interesting thing is that Molly Zelda has been sleeping on her belly now, for the first time. She gets on all fours as she is crying/whining, and she just kind of ends up on her belly. She seems to just prefer sleeping that way now.

We had a nice Easter. It was pretty low-key, but the best part of all was that I got to talk to Kelly for a little while. Yay! I miss her. She sounds good, though. We had dinner with our neighbors, which was delicious and fun as always.

Oh! and Molly has been saying mamamama and papapapa and bapa a lot. It's really cute. She says mamama when she is crying, and she will also reach for me a little bit so I am convinced that she knows what she's saying. Am I crazy? Maybe, but it makes me happy to think that she is calling for me. :)

Thursday, April 2, 2009

It seems like it has been a while since I last gave an update about what Molly has been doing. She has started to put Cheerios in her mouth by herself, which is pretty cute. Sometimes she misses her mouth altogether. Yesterday she finally started rolling from her back to her belly, which is pretty significant. I wasn't sure she was ever going to do that. She also really wants to stand all the time. She likes to hold on to something and support herself. She is becoming kind of mobile as she sits on her butt, scooting around the floor. She's starting doing this thing where she just shakes her head like a maniac, as though she's saying no, no, no, no, no, no. It's really funny. If Bill or I imitate her, she will pause, and then do it some more. Hmm...I think that's about it.

Last Friday, we went to the pool as we have been doing the last few Fridays. There was some problem with the chlorine level or something, so we all had to just wait around for a long time in our bathing suits (we ended up never actually getting in the pool). I was standing there with three other parents and babies, and by the end of the time, all the parents had pee on them. The babies just wear swim diapers, which are intended to catch poop only. So now we know that four out of four babies pee in the pool within the hour allotted to baby swim time. We are all swimming around in lots of baby pee, so I guess I'm glad for the chlorine in the pool. :)

Yesterday, our very good friend had a baby so Bill, Molly, and I all went to visit the little guy and momma. He was born at the same hospital Molly was so we decided to go visit our friends in the NICU. We have been talking about doing that for a really long time. I wanted to see the nurses and show Molly off, but I guess I have had a bit of an aversion to going back there. It was actually a little anxiety-provoking for me to walk in the hospital and go up the elevator to the delivery ward, which was on the same floor as the NICU. I know, it's a little dramatic, but that was the worst five weeks of my life. Anyway, the short visit ended up being very, very nice. We got to see two of our primary nurses. Needless to say, they were thrilled with Molly's huge-ness. She was in a really good mood so she was smiling and laughing as they both held her. As we were leaving, Bill exclaimed that we should have taken pictures with the nurses. We had our camera, but we just didn't think about it. Too bad.