Remember the aquarium? That was the beginning of the end of her evening Screamfests. THANK GOD!!! Since then, she’ll get a little cranky when she gets sleepy, but it’s nowhere near what it was. A week later, we even got her naptimes down. Before, she’d only sleep in the car seat for any length of time without fussing too much. Some days, the only thing that would get her to sleep was if we put her in the car seat in the bathroom and ran the tub. The sound of the running water soothed her. Rocking her in the bathroom was the only thing that would work at the height of Screamfest 2005.
One thing that’s really helped is that I’m trying to put her on a schedule. Basically, we’ve read the books and we’re taking from them what we feel would work for us. For example, this book says that babies should never be awake more than 2 hours at a time. Abby’s typically asleep within an hour and a half, but she’ll only nap for about 45 minutes at a time during the day, so she takes 4-5 naps. Her short naps give me enough time to pump, wash and fill bottles, and maybe eat. When she wakes up, she’s usually all smiles and coos now too. A couple times a week, though, she’ll take a good couple-hour nap. There have been a few rare times when she’s been up longer than 2 hours, and she becomes so cranky. It’s a vicious cycle. She’s tired, but she can’t sleep, so she becomes cranky. The crankier she becomes the more overtired she becomes, and the harder it is to fall asleep.
I’ve also been scheduling her feedings based on this book (great book, by the way). She says that babies Abby’s age don’t need to eat more than every 2.5-3 hours, but they shouldn’t go more than 3 hours during the day. She also suggests “cluster feeding” in the evenings (feeding her ever 2 hours), and doing a “dream feed” around 10-11pm (or as long as I can stay up). Before the dream feed, I change her diaper to wake her up just enough to eat. Supposedly, this should get her to sleep through the night. HAH! For quite a while, she was waking up around 2-3am, 5-6am, and finally 7-8am when she’d wake up for an hour before nodding off until 9-10. Feeding her every 2.5-3 hours has helped during the day, though. Before, I’d feed her when I thought she was hungry, so I started keeping track of it. She was eating about 1.5-2 ounces every hour or two, and now she’s consistently eating 3-4 ounces at a feeding.
This week has been a different story, though. She had been doing so well. When she was younger (like it’s been so long ago!), she was so noisy and twitchy while she slept. It didn’t seem to wake her up, for the most part, though. We actually took her to the doctor because I was worried about her breathing. It seemed that was the cause of it. Of course, she was fine and the doctor told me it was completely normal. She’s since quieted down. For some reason, though, this week Abby’s been waking up around 3am, and she’ll startle herself awake every few minutes. FOR THE REST OF THE MORNING!! Until about 6:30am, when she’ll let me know she’s not going to be sleeping any more. I also had a couple days earlier this week where she would not nap. I would finally get her to take a nap if I lay in bed with her and nursed her. Ironically, getting her to sleep in the evenings has been relatively easy. Sometimes I’d be so tired I’d nap with her, and others I’d get up once she was asleep. Mercifully, that only lasted a couple of days. In fact, it coincided with her learning to roll over.
Watching her roll over is the cutest thing. She’ll rock for a while trying to get over, and she’ll push with her head the way she wants to roll. Once she finally starts to roll, she goes soooo slowly. I feel like I’m watching her in slow motion. It’s funny because I’ll be cheering her on, and once she rolls she’ll look at me like “what’s the big deal?” She doesn’t seem impressed. Lately, she’s been scooting a lot when she sleeps too. She’ll start off in this position.
And end up like this:
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