Perish the Thought!!

I hardly ever wake Sadie up from naps, but as evidenced below-- I did break that cardinal rule. I love to watch her going from the deep sleep state to her jovial self. She's such a wonderful little baby! I love her!!


I guess I was taking a lot of nap videos on Sunday. This is Sadie after her afternoon nap (above is her morning nap). We love going to get her up after she's moved so much in her crib because she always looks so proud of herself. And there's so much to be proud of, Sadie. :)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Family Naptime: We took a long nap together this weekend. I think there was a good 45 minutes when we were all alseep. This was definitely one of my favorite moments of the weekend. Sadie was so content in the crook of mark's arm. so sweet.

Sadie looked on while I did the dishes this week. I'm loving her new chair we got Sunday...I can plop her almost anywhere! This chair is also supposed to develop her sitting skills. I tried to train her to use her burp cloth to dry dishes, but alas, I'll have to wait a few more years for a sous dishwasher.

We finally weighed Sadie. The last time she weighed in was at her 2-month appointment; she was 12lbs. On Sunday, at 4 month and 2 days, she was 16lbs ...quite big indeed! This happy girl likes to eat. She still seems long to me, and we'll find out at her appointment next week just how much she's grown.

Skills

The talented little Sadie scooched (is this a word?) her way around the crib last night. This was taken at 5:15am...after she had slept for a blissful 9 hours!!! We didn't swaddle her arms, which meant she could suck on her hand to pacify herself (possibly why she slept longer?)...it also meant that she was able to use her arm strength to rotate 150 degrees in her crib...the crib bars stopped her from doing a complete 180. She looks pretty happy about it too!

Burka Baby...

Burka Baby-- I was wondering why Sadie had been sleeping so long this afternoon (she had a 3 hour nap)...only to discover that she was super cozy with the swaddle over her face. I don't know if you can tell in this shot, but she was also sucking on her fist. This is a new trend for Sadie in the past couple weeks-- having any blanket or cloth in her mouth or covering her face. The suffocation factor worries me. But don't worry-- I checked that she was breathing before I took this, and uncovered her face after. It was just too funny not to document it.

Hello world! I just got up from my nap and I'm ready to play!



Here's a video of Sadie sucking on her new giraffe blanket. She loves to suck on this as she's going to sleep in her carseat:



Talking with Mom, sucking a cloth...and being cute:

Small Moments

I just peeked in at Sadie napping. She had quieted down, so I assumed she had fallen asleep. But to my delight, she was wondering up at her butterfly mobile -- laughing and smiling. Being a mom has some precious moments.

Sleepwear

Above: All bundled up and ready for sleep
Below: Don't I look so fabulously snuggly in my sleep bag?

The Luxury of Sleep

So, little miss was such a good sleeper the first 3 1/2 weeks of her life. She slept a lot during the day and 4-5 hour stretches at night. Quite blissful, I know. But then, she decided she wanted to cry when we put her down. So she cried and cried. We tried the 5 S's (Swaddle, shushing, Swing, hmm- what were the other two?), but she still wouldn't go down from about 9pm-2:30am, and that is way too long for little miss to be awake. When she did get down, her sleep was very restless. I was getting very grumpy and exhausted- hence why I haven't posted since the weekend.

So we got this book 2 days ago from the library: Happy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child (thanks sooz!) And we've been trying things from it for the last couple days, and it's worked...well, at least it did last night!

The book says that if you have an "easy baby that stops being easy"---the chief culprits could be irregularities of sleep schedules, nap deprivation, and too late a bedtime. So, here's a list of what we tried from the book to get her back to easy:

• Putting her down after her 6-7pm feeding (we were putting her down after her 9-10pm feeding, but she wouldn't go down).
• Being consistent. They say either let her put herself to sleep after you do some initial soothing, or soothe her all the way into her deep sleep---but choose one method and stick to it. So we decided to let her fall asleep on her own after we did initial soothing. This means that you have to let her cry at some points for up to 5 minutes. The first night she cried and it took a while to get her down. However, last night we soothed her, put her down with her eyes open, and she fell asleep. She just did this again after her 7am feeding. She was yawning and seemed sleepy. So, I soothed her, put her down with her eyes open. She had her eyes open for about 20 minutes, but I just peeked in and she was sound asleep--no crying, not even a peep.
• Read her cues. Is she tired or hungry? I think our little one was super tired, but we kept feeding her, even after an hour+ of solid feeding. We misread her cues.
• Don't let her go for 2 hours without sleep. Babies 1-4 months old shouldn't be up for more than 2 hours at a time. They say start soothing her to sleep after 1 1/2 hours of wakefulness, so they will be asleep before they've been awake for more than 2 hours.

Sadie has started to be a lot more social (as of last week). She returns your smile some of the time, and likes playtime. So I found it interesting that this book ties sleep issues to a babies' social development. She wants to play, so she fights sleep, if it means more play time.

Well, I know that a child's development is in constant flux. And I know that she may seem like she's on the right track now, only to have a horrendous night of sleep tonight or tomorrow. I am going to revel in the fact that I got 7-8 hours of sleep last night, and that I will post on this blog and take a shower before 10am--that's progress.

Today is a good day.

Freedom!

As I was struggling to go to sleep last night to the sounds of a baby, I was struck with joy. I could finally sleep however I wanted! Bliss! Being pregnant, they tell you not to lie on your back and that ideally you need to sleep on your left side (for some reason it's better than the right- I never had clarification on why). My left hip became bruised and sore after all that left-side action (the joys of pregnancy). Then after having Sadie by c-section, it was uncomfortable to sleep on my stomach for a while. Then last night I did it-- I made it back to my ideal sleep position, on my belly. It was a point of joy in my sleepless night.

Here's Sadie being super cute: