Jonathan is giggling more and more. I love it.
Tummy time has ceased to be the cue for baby meltdown. The other day I let Jonathan play on his tummy, propped up so he could look out the window into the back yard, and he was perfectly happy until he happened to roll over onto his back. Then he cried. :)
We’ve started working more aggressively on night-time sleep issues. Jonathan had been sleeping with us, but he had started waking up every two hours or so and wanting to nurse. At 17lbs, this was ridiculous. So now we’re putting him down in his crib, and when he cries in the night I get up and pat his back and give him his pacifier and (most of the time) he’ll go back to sleep for another few hours. I hope that in a few weeks he’ll figure out that he doesn’t need to wake up at all except for the one mid-night feeding. I do still think he legitimately needs one feeding during the night, since he goes to bed at around 8 or 9pm and doesn’t actually get up until 7am or so.
I’m also working on setting up a nighttime routine…something along the lines of changing his diaper, nursing him, then rocking him in a modified cradle hold and singing a certain song until he’s asleep or almost asleep, then putting him in his crib. I think that just maybe he’s starting to get the idea, since when I see him starting to be sleepy during the day I use the same cradle hold and song to put him down for naps and they seem to be going pretty smoothly so far…we’ll see.
Does anyone out there have great ideas for getting a 5 month old to sleep through the night? Just please don’t be like the physician’s assistant last week, who told me to put him down in his crib while awake, and certainly don’t give him a pacifier or nurse or rock him to sleep. I have a sneaking suspicion that she doesn’t have children. :)
1 comment:
Hi Emily -
17 pounds, my goodness! I don't think Emma hit that until she was around 10 months. Regarding sleep stuff, two books that you might want to take a look at are The No-Cry Sleep Solution, by Elizabeth Pantley and Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth. They have different approaches - the first is a very gentle book that I think requires more time and patience, but involves a lot less crying. The second isn't a full "cry-it-out" sort of thing, but it is a firmer approach that needs a greater willingless to let the baby cry. The first is what I tend to see recommended in AP-type circles, and the second is what is highly recommended by my Mom's club... Both are supposed to have a lot of good information about sleep cycles, sleep cues, and what babies need, sleep-wise. You might want to see if you can get them from your library system and see what you think and what sounds right to you.
We really aren't much of an example in the sleep department - since Emma had such a hard time with solids until she was about 14 months I let her night nurse for a long time. I didn't stop night nursing until she was probably at least 18 months... but I was lucky in that once she was about 5 or 6 months, I stopped waking up when I was nursing her - both of us could literally latch on and nurse in our sleep! I think if I hadn't started doing that, we would have had a pretty hard time. As it was, it really wasn't that big of a deal for us to be nursing every 3 hours or so. I really do wonder what it will be like this next time around though!
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