Naomi is nearly one! I am not sure I am okay with this! I keep joking that if I let her turn one that it is only the first step in letting her turn 18 and I am definitely not okay with that!
As if she needs to rub in the fact she is growing up, she has just grown out of most her clothes and so I had to mover her into the next size up (thankfully she has some beautiful clothes now!) and last week she learned to walk.
Then she started dropping naps, now she's a big girl she doesn't need two naps a day!
Then she stopped asking for breastmilk so much.
Why do they think it is okay to set the pace, it is just too fast!
Showing posts with label Naps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Naps. Show all posts
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Friday, 15 July 2011
The ongoing sleeping trauma
I have realised that since my husband went away (so far it has been 4 days) I have lost count of the number of times I have had to persuade Naomi to be asleep.
Be it for naps or for night time sleeping, my little girl doesn't want to do it! I can spend easily 30-40 minutes getting her to go down for each nap and although night time tends to be a little easier she has taken to waking up. Often.
For the first several weeks of her life she was amazing sleeper, she even slept through for about 3 weeks when she was only about 10 weeks old. We used to joke that we wouldn't know what to do if we had a "real" baby. And that's the rub, we don't!
We go on holiday shortly and don't think it is fair on Naomi to change things before we go, and then obviously we won't change things on holiday and when we come back we want to give her a couple of weeks to settle back in, but then we have decided we will do some "sleep training". I have mixed feelings about it but we can't keep going the way we are and as a result I am counting down the days!
I know it is a controversial subject but the bouncing/rocking/wearing out my knees/wearing out my back/having no energy left just has to go. I cannot do it any more, this has been made all the more obvious to me while hubby is away, making my child sleep actually makes me want to break out into tears, and sometimes I do cry about it, so it is time for a change.
I just hope I can hold out that long, 6 weeks and counting!
Be it for naps or for night time sleeping, my little girl doesn't want to do it! I can spend easily 30-40 minutes getting her to go down for each nap and although night time tends to be a little easier she has taken to waking up. Often.
For the first several weeks of her life she was amazing sleeper, she even slept through for about 3 weeks when she was only about 10 weeks old. We used to joke that we wouldn't know what to do if we had a "real" baby. And that's the rub, we don't!
We go on holiday shortly and don't think it is fair on Naomi to change things before we go, and then obviously we won't change things on holiday and when we come back we want to give her a couple of weeks to settle back in, but then we have decided we will do some "sleep training". I have mixed feelings about it but we can't keep going the way we are and as a result I am counting down the days!
I know it is a controversial subject but the bouncing/rocking/wearing out my knees/wearing out my back/having no energy left just has to go. I cannot do it any more, this has been made all the more obvious to me while hubby is away, making my child sleep actually makes me want to break out into tears, and sometimes I do cry about it, so it is time for a change.
I just hope I can hold out that long, 6 weeks and counting!
Friday, 8 July 2011
Well that has been a terrible day
Today went badly. It might be the worst day I can remember since I became a mummy.
We started with vomiting which meant that we had to cancel the coffee with another mummy friend and baby group, having just got her over a viral gastroenteritis I didn't feel it would be wise to start turning up to places with babies. After the weekend we had last weekend, it also meant a trip to the doctor, mainly to put my mind at ease.
The day continued with a complete and utter disregard for napping, at 12 noon I made her nap by putting her in the sling, but this left me attached to her and meant I could do none of the things on my to-do list (one of which was drink water, though I forgot to do that rather than being quite that disabled) and meant I got very little rest even when I was sitting down. She woke at about 1pm which meant that having woken at 8am and being only 5 months old she had already not napped enough.
Come 2.30 she was knackered again, so despite it not being that long I start the process of getting my very tired baby to nap, though apparently it is not as easy to do that as you might like. I tried for 2 hours before I gave up, although in that 2 hours I shed many tears and got frustrated with everything. In the morning she had been sick on her pram and because she hadn't napped in her cot in the morning I had been unable to "deal" with that, so I couldn't even fall back on my take-her-for-a-walk-in-the-pram back up napping technique. I cried down the phone at my Mum, I texted my husband who was in meetings most of the afternoon, I complained on twitter then wished I hadn't for people didn't say *exactly* what I wanted them too (I don't know what I wanted them to say, mind you, and having reviewed the responses they were all completely appropriate! I complained on facebook. At times I put her down in her cot, came downstairs and cried as I listened to her cry through the monitor. At times I tried to comfort her with a cuddle or with her dummy.
In the end, my husband finished his meetings and phoned me, he was coming home (I love my husband's job, super-flexible doesn't even describe how flexible it is!), all I had to do was survive another 20 minutes and he would be here to help.
When he got home, everything got a little easier and everything certainly felt much easier. What a shame that he leaves for Dublin on Monday where he will be working for 6 days :-(
We started with vomiting which meant that we had to cancel the coffee with another mummy friend and baby group, having just got her over a viral gastroenteritis I didn't feel it would be wise to start turning up to places with babies. After the weekend we had last weekend, it also meant a trip to the doctor, mainly to put my mind at ease.
The day continued with a complete and utter disregard for napping, at 12 noon I made her nap by putting her in the sling, but this left me attached to her and meant I could do none of the things on my to-do list (one of which was drink water, though I forgot to do that rather than being quite that disabled) and meant I got very little rest even when I was sitting down. She woke at about 1pm which meant that having woken at 8am and being only 5 months old she had already not napped enough.
Come 2.30 she was knackered again, so despite it not being that long I start the process of getting my very tired baby to nap, though apparently it is not as easy to do that as you might like. I tried for 2 hours before I gave up, although in that 2 hours I shed many tears and got frustrated with everything. In the morning she had been sick on her pram and because she hadn't napped in her cot in the morning I had been unable to "deal" with that, so I couldn't even fall back on my take-her-for-a-walk-in-the-pram back up napping technique. I cried down the phone at my Mum, I texted my husband who was in meetings most of the afternoon, I complained on twitter then wished I hadn't for people didn't say *exactly* what I wanted them too (I don't know what I wanted them to say, mind you, and having reviewed the responses they were all completely appropriate! I complained on facebook. At times I put her down in her cot, came downstairs and cried as I listened to her cry through the monitor. At times I tried to comfort her with a cuddle or with her dummy.
In the end, my husband finished his meetings and phoned me, he was coming home (I love my husband's job, super-flexible doesn't even describe how flexible it is!), all I had to do was survive another 20 minutes and he would be here to help.
When he got home, everything got a little easier and everything certainly felt much easier. What a shame that he leaves for Dublin on Monday where he will be working for 6 days :-(
Thursday, 7 July 2011
Dummies...
As far as I am concerned this is another of those "must-do" topics if you have a parenting blog of any description. Unfortunately it is difficult to do such a topic without sounding like you are better than everyone else (in my opinion) and so in case I inadvertently come across that way, please know that I very much do NOT consider myself better than anyone else, in fact, normally quite the opposite.
Before Naomi was born, when we didn't know whether she was a boy or a girl and when we still called her Allsort, hubby and I discussed dummies and decided that we weren't 100% keen on the idea but that it did feel like it might save our sanity somehow. So we went out and bought two dummies, just in case they might help.
When Naomi was born we didn't put it in her mouth, we put my boob in her mouth and then I went up to the ward and she cried and she cried and she cried. I fed her. She cried. I changed her. She cried. I burped her. She cried. I cuddled her. She cried. The ward staff changed her, burped her and cuddled her and yet she cried and cried and cried some more!
The midwives asked me if I had a dummy and I did, so we tried to put it in her mouth. She cried, if anything louder than she had before. We gave up on the dummy idea and just dealt with her crying.
Thankfully, the crying was short lived (not that it felt that way at the time) and after only one or two days she became one of the most content babies I have ever met (though when she does cry she does it loud, I think she likes to make up for all the quiet time!) so the dummy kind of got forgot about.
Then it got hard to put her down to sleep, it was taking hours (literally) each night to get her to settle and hubby and I were slowly but surely losing our sanity! So out came the dummies again. We got into a routine whereby you could rock her to sleep and put her down, then if she woke up you put the dummy in her mouth and it would help her go off again.
For quite a few weeks this did result in, what was affectionately known as, the dummy run. That slightly annoying part of the evening where she was asleep but where she cried when the dummy fell out and you would have to run back up the stairs and re-plug her! Because of this I was quite pleased when this phase ended and she kind of gave up on the dummy herself. It did mean it was harder to put her down in the first place, but at least once she was down you could walk away and know she would be alright for a few hours.
Then it seemed she wanted the dummy back again, so for the past several weeks we have put her down and if she has woken put the dummy in her mouth which has helped sleep come back. It normally fell out after about two minutes and she didn't care which seemed ideal!
Now though, we seemed to have entered a new phase, one which I am finding more than a little frustrating. Now she seems to expect the dummy when you lay her down, her wee mouth opens in expectation, however, when you put it in her wee hand comes up and pulls it out of her mouth. That would be okay but she does not yet possess the manual dexterity to replace the dummy so begins to cry because the dummy isn't in her mouth, all this despite her being the reason it is no longer there! This phenomenon resulted in me being awake for 60 minutes in the middle of the night, she didn't need fed and fell asleep almost instantly when I rocked her, but then would wake up when she pulled her own dummy out her own mouth. Roll on the next phase!
Before Naomi was born, when we didn't know whether she was a boy or a girl and when we still called her Allsort, hubby and I discussed dummies and decided that we weren't 100% keen on the idea but that it did feel like it might save our sanity somehow. So we went out and bought two dummies, just in case they might help.
When Naomi was born we didn't put it in her mouth, we put my boob in her mouth and then I went up to the ward and she cried and she cried and she cried. I fed her. She cried. I changed her. She cried. I burped her. She cried. I cuddled her. She cried. The ward staff changed her, burped her and cuddled her and yet she cried and cried and cried some more!
The midwives asked me if I had a dummy and I did, so we tried to put it in her mouth. She cried, if anything louder than she had before. We gave up on the dummy idea and just dealt with her crying.
Thankfully, the crying was short lived (not that it felt that way at the time) and after only one or two days she became one of the most content babies I have ever met (though when she does cry she does it loud, I think she likes to make up for all the quiet time!) so the dummy kind of got forgot about.
Then it got hard to put her down to sleep, it was taking hours (literally) each night to get her to settle and hubby and I were slowly but surely losing our sanity! So out came the dummies again. We got into a routine whereby you could rock her to sleep and put her down, then if she woke up you put the dummy in her mouth and it would help her go off again.
For quite a few weeks this did result in, what was affectionately known as, the dummy run. That slightly annoying part of the evening where she was asleep but where she cried when the dummy fell out and you would have to run back up the stairs and re-plug her! Because of this I was quite pleased when this phase ended and she kind of gave up on the dummy herself. It did mean it was harder to put her down in the first place, but at least once she was down you could walk away and know she would be alright for a few hours.
Then it seemed she wanted the dummy back again, so for the past several weeks we have put her down and if she has woken put the dummy in her mouth which has helped sleep come back. It normally fell out after about two minutes and she didn't care which seemed ideal!
Now though, we seemed to have entered a new phase, one which I am finding more than a little frustrating. Now she seems to expect the dummy when you lay her down, her wee mouth opens in expectation, however, when you put it in her wee hand comes up and pulls it out of her mouth. That would be okay but she does not yet possess the manual dexterity to replace the dummy so begins to cry because the dummy isn't in her mouth, all this despite her being the reason it is no longer there! This phenomenon resulted in me being awake for 60 minutes in the middle of the night, she didn't need fed and fell asleep almost instantly when I rocked her, but then would wake up when she pulled her own dummy out her own mouth. Roll on the next phase!
Tuesday, 28 June 2011
Radio Silence Ending!
So sorry for my radio silence this last week, I was just enjoying having my friend to stay far too much and then we were visiting family and before I knew it I had hardly posted anything in over a week!
So, while "normal" posting about various parenting issues will recommence tomorrow, I thought I would just do a wee post saying that I just cannot believe how much Naomi is progressing and changing just now!
She is discovering her feet at the moment, I love how much entertainment can be got from just lying on your back holding your toes! Tonight she found her right foot for the first time (she had the left one down a few days ago) and I loved the look of surprise on her face "What, you mean I've got one over here too!?"
I also love watching her take *everything* in, she can sit for ages just watching stuff, anything, although her favourite seems to be to watch me cook! But anything will do, a bit of clothing, another baby, a toy, anything!
She is eating well now, she knows what it means when the bib goes on and the pot of food is there, she waits in anticipation of the contents and so far we haven't really found anything she doesn't like, though broccoli is a definite favourite.
She is definitely growing as a result of all that food, I have just done another round of clearing out her clothes to get rid of the things that don't fit, I could swear it was only 5 minutes since I did that last! I'm going to take her to baby weigh-in clinic in a couple of weeks, though I am expecting her to have put on a fair bit.
Even with her sleep she is learning all the time. She is much better at settling when we put her down in the evenings now and although she still wakes often in the night it does seem to be getting a little easier to settle her then too. She is starting to get the hang of napping too, with more and more worthwhile naps taking place in her cot (rather than the pram or the sling)
I already feel like my little girl is growing up to fast and she is only 5 months old! Can you imagine what I'll be like by the time she tries to go to university?!
So, while "normal" posting about various parenting issues will recommence tomorrow, I thought I would just do a wee post saying that I just cannot believe how much Naomi is progressing and changing just now!
She is discovering her feet at the moment, I love how much entertainment can be got from just lying on your back holding your toes! Tonight she found her right foot for the first time (she had the left one down a few days ago) and I loved the look of surprise on her face "What, you mean I've got one over here too!?"
I also love watching her take *everything* in, she can sit for ages just watching stuff, anything, although her favourite seems to be to watch me cook! But anything will do, a bit of clothing, another baby, a toy, anything!
She is eating well now, she knows what it means when the bib goes on and the pot of food is there, she waits in anticipation of the contents and so far we haven't really found anything she doesn't like, though broccoli is a definite favourite.
She is definitely growing as a result of all that food, I have just done another round of clearing out her clothes to get rid of the things that don't fit, I could swear it was only 5 minutes since I did that last! I'm going to take her to baby weigh-in clinic in a couple of weeks, though I am expecting her to have put on a fair bit.
Even with her sleep she is learning all the time. She is much better at settling when we put her down in the evenings now and although she still wakes often in the night it does seem to be getting a little easier to settle her then too. She is starting to get the hang of napping too, with more and more worthwhile naps taking place in her cot (rather than the pram or the sling)
I already feel like my little girl is growing up to fast and she is only 5 months old! Can you imagine what I'll be like by the time she tries to go to university?!
Friday, 10 June 2011
Top Seven Ways to get my child to sleep
The fifth installment in my "Seven top Sevens". Today we concentrate on methods of getting Naomi to nap/sleep!
1. Rocking
2. Singing
3. Going for a walk in the pram
4. Going for a drive in the car (although my one needs to be knackered to get this to work, would normally be more useful for getting her to cry!!)
5. Putting her in our Close baby carrier
6. Praying - hard!
7. Getting hubby to do all of the above!
1. Rocking
2. Singing
3. Going for a walk in the pram
4. Going for a drive in the car (although my one needs to be knackered to get this to work, would normally be more useful for getting her to cry!!)
5. Putting her in our Close baby carrier
6. Praying - hard!
7. Getting hubby to do all of the above!
Friday, 3 June 2011
To Cry or Not to Cry?
That is the question.
Naomi's night's continue to be unsettled, though she has gone back to waking only once or twice a night, which for her age is pretty good, it just feels horrific because she gave us 3 or 4 weeks of sleeping through the night which led us into a place of false security.
On top of that she seems to be taking longer to settle at nights. We normally feed to sleep and then put her down, sometimes she wakes during the transfer but a quick bounce from her mummy sees her back to sleep and off we go. Recently though she has been waking up during the transfer and then needing bounced/rocked/sung to for 30 minutes or so before she goes down. Last night it took 2 hours! This saw her Dad and I sitting down for a few minutes before 10pm came round and exhausted we went off to bed!
This then brought up the subject of controlled crying and more to the point should we or shouldn't we. My husband and I are probably both of the opinion that it will need to happen at some point, though I am more inclined to say she is too little now. What, though, are the alternatives. We can continue to bounce her as much as she needs which may drive us to the point of distraction, though might preserve our sanity by saving us from the tears. Is there anything else, though?
I got quite annoyed yesterday having had a moan about things then having lots of people tell me how they got their little ones to sleep but no-one taking into account that Naomi is her own wee self and not a carbon copy of their babies. People told me to have a routine, this annoyed me because we have one. People told me to keep her up in the day, despite the fact that not napping got us into a terrible pickle with crying for hours on end for other reasons. People told me to do controlled crying straight away and others told me to wait.
I get annoyed not because people offer me advice, however, but because there seems to be so much conflicting advice and even evidence, and no clear answers whatsoever. My husband and I are exhausted and we need to get this sorted and yet no one is even able let alone willing to help us with anything definitive.
Did/do you do controlled crying? What age was your wee one when you did? How do you preserve your sanity throughout the months of sleep deprivation?
Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net
Naomi's night's continue to be unsettled, though she has gone back to waking only once or twice a night, which for her age is pretty good, it just feels horrific because she gave us 3 or 4 weeks of sleeping through the night which led us into a place of false security.
On top of that she seems to be taking longer to settle at nights. We normally feed to sleep and then put her down, sometimes she wakes during the transfer but a quick bounce from her mummy sees her back to sleep and off we go. Recently though she has been waking up during the transfer and then needing bounced/rocked/sung to for 30 minutes or so before she goes down. Last night it took 2 hours! This saw her Dad and I sitting down for a few minutes before 10pm came round and exhausted we went off to bed!
This then brought up the subject of controlled crying and more to the point should we or shouldn't we. My husband and I are probably both of the opinion that it will need to happen at some point, though I am more inclined to say she is too little now. What, though, are the alternatives. We can continue to bounce her as much as she needs which may drive us to the point of distraction, though might preserve our sanity by saving us from the tears. Is there anything else, though?
I got quite annoyed yesterday having had a moan about things then having lots of people tell me how they got their little ones to sleep but no-one taking into account that Naomi is her own wee self and not a carbon copy of their babies. People told me to have a routine, this annoyed me because we have one. People told me to keep her up in the day, despite the fact that not napping got us into a terrible pickle with crying for hours on end for other reasons. People told me to do controlled crying straight away and others told me to wait.
I get annoyed not because people offer me advice, however, but because there seems to be so much conflicting advice and even evidence, and no clear answers whatsoever. My husband and I are exhausted and we need to get this sorted and yet no one is even able let alone willing to help us with anything definitive.
Did/do you do controlled crying? What age was your wee one when you did? How do you preserve your sanity throughout the months of sleep deprivation?
Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net
Saturday, 14 May 2011
Nap Rehabilitation
So, my little girl doesn't do naps! She falls asleep alright but wakes up as soon as I put her down, or on the rare occasions she does let me put her down (or stop pushing the pram if she has fallen asleep there) she wakes up after about 10-15 minutes.
Her Dad and I decided enough was enough, she was becoming a COMPLETE nightmare at the end of each day because she was just exhausted and so just cried for about 3 hours till we put her to bed!
The nap rehabilitation, as I have dubbed it, has been going okay. To start with we let her nap for as long as she could lying on us/being held by us. We didn't even try to put her down, just so her wee body could get used to the idea of resting. Once that was in order we have now moved on to trying to get her to stay asleep for a little longer in the pram or even better in her cot (although I am not always at home, so the pram is just as good in many ways!).
We had already had some limited success with putting her down on a blanket on the floor (easier to negotiate as there aren't things to wake her up by lifting her over the sides of the buggy/cot) but generally she was only having one “good” nap each day and it still didn't feel enough, though perhaps over the last few days she has been doing a bit better.
Today, though, she has amazed me. This morning she fell asleep in the pram on the way to a friend's house and she stayed asleep for 2 hours!! Then after an hours playing she fell asleep again, I woke her up after an hour as I thought it was getting silly! She then played happily at a baby group before falling asleep again (as I write this she has been out for about 25 minutes!)
I worry now though that she won't sleep at night, it is increasingly becoming an issue that she wakes in the night, and I am not really sure what the cause is, so I don't feel particularly equipped to deal with it! My leading theory is currently teething, but time will tell!
Do you have any napping tips? We will gladly hear them!
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