Thursday, October 9, 2008

A step forward in the 'strangers' department, and a step back in the sleep department.

Well, N. seems to be doing much better with strangers these past few days, provided they keep their distance. He even was chatty with a rather imposing man with a dark beard yesterday. I'm keeping optimistic that he'll get used to my mother first, then with everyone else, during the wedding and all the travelling and partying that will come with it.

Developmentally, he seems to be doing really well. He loves to play with his toys, and passes them from one hand to the other really easily. Tummytime is always fun for him, and he's so interactive now, it's so much fun for me and for Hubby. He's also mastered the art of rolling from his back to his belly, which is the problem.

Unless he's almost asleep, if we put him down on his back, Pop! he's back on his belly. The thing is, he can't sleep on his belly (hasn't figured out how), and doesn't seem to have the hang of flipping onto his back when he's in the crib. This means two things:

1. Daytime naps are a thing of the past, at least in the crib.
2. If he wakes up overnight, he flips over, then he really wakes up, and can't go back to sleep.

The past few nights have been tough. He's waking up at least once, sometimes twice, and needs a little bit of nursing to get back to sleep. I know, I'm probably promoting a really bad habit, but I haven't had to get up at 1AM and 4AM in the longest time, and it really sucks. Last night, I did manage to get him to sleep without the boob at 1:45AM - I had to flip him to his back twice in a 6 minute period, but he found his thumb, gave it a few good sucks, and was back to sleep. (4:30AM was another story).

One of the things that our pediatrician said was that sometimes babies stop sleeping as well when they're ready to start solids (ie they need that extra little bit of food to tank them up). It also could be teething, but I'm pretty sure it's not, and I'll get to that in a sec.

So, we decided to start with the rice cereal, fully realizing it'll take a few days before he's getting enough of it to make a difference. Yesterday evening, we mixed up a serving based on what the box said, and boy howdy was it liquidy. But, we decided to go for it, and it was a huge success. He really seemed to like it, and it only took about two minutes before he figured out what that spoon was for and was grabbing it to put it in his own mouth.

I think he was a bit hungry, so I'm going to try today after he's had a really good feeding.

Now, the reason I don't think it's teething is because he wakes up happy. Absolutely no sign of any discomfort. The whining starts when he's on his belly and can't flip over. Plus, he had a real episode of teething pain the other night, when he cried and cried and cried until we held a frozen teethie in his mouth long enough for the numbing to take place. It was horrible and stressful, since he hasn't cried like that since he was two weeks old, but he eventually fell asleep and woke up happy as a clam the next day (after sleeping for 8 hours).

I'm trying to encourage him to flip over both ways as much as I can, and he seems happy with the whole process, even if he can't do it when he needs to yet. And, surprisingly, I'm not doing too bad with the "up once a night" thing. I mean, he's my boy, he needs me, and who am I to begrudge him 20 minutes?

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