Sleep success!

Way back when, I promised that if I ever solved our co-sleeping and breastfeeding to sleep dilemma, that I would post about it on here. Well, I am quite thrilled to say that we have.

We ended up doing a form of cry it out. I know, I'm a horrible mommy blah blah blah. Whatever. Anyway, I got a book called Sleeping Through the Night by Jodi Mindell. We mostly followed the advice in the book, but tweaked it a little for our specific situation and child.

The first few nights were tough but then it got easier. she goes to bed around 7:45 now and fusses for a few minutes, then conks out. We do a bed time routine and I read her the same story every night and Josh sings to her. So that has become her bedtime cue, instead of nursing being the cue.

The first couple weeks, she still woke up at night a lot and I would bring her to bed and nurse her. Then we gradually started encouraging her to stay in the crib. If she woke up, first we would wait to see if she would put herself back to sleep. If not, my husband would go in and rub her tummy and sing to her. It was key that he went in, not me. If I went in, she expected to nurse and then became inconsolable if I didn't nurse her. Sometimes the singing puts her right to sleep, other times she had to cry some to get back to sleep.

Once she was going to bed in her crib and sleeping relatively well, we then tried to stretch how long we can get her in the crib. So we would say, tonight she has to stay in the crib until 2 am, even if she cries some, and that really worked for us.

She is now sleeping all night in her crib and many nights, we do not hear her wake up at all. She still cries every now and then around 2 or 3 am. My husband goes in and sings to her until she falls back to sleep.

My milk supply had to adjust, and I had some very uncomfortable mornings between 5-7 am. I ended up waking her up to nurse a few times. If I did that, I brought her to bed with me for the rest of the morning until we got up for the day. My supply had adjusted now, but I still am very full by around 7 am and the first nursing of the morning can be a little painful.

Now we are working on napping. She is used to nursing to sleep for naps too, and I really want to get her to nap on her own consistently. That way, if she is with a sitter or we decide to put her in daycare, she can still nap. She has one nap around midday. We are having some success with getting her to fall asleep in the crib, but she is not sleeping very long. I remind myself that this is how the nighttime sleep situation was at first too. I felt like that would never get better, but it did. So nap time will get better too...I hope.

Sleep training has not been an instant fix. It has been more like 2 steps forward, 1 step back. But the key is that we are making progress and we are all much happier and better rested--my husband, me and Iris too.

My baby is one

I don't know how this happened. Where did a year go?

Iris is running around all over the place and always smiling and getting into stuff. She imitates everything we do. If I check my watch, she checks her "watch." If I lick my finger to clean her face, she cleans my face. If Daddy makes a lewd gesture--well I guess he better not do that anymore.

She is not speaking much yet, but I definitely think she is saying "mama" or more like "mamamamama!" But I can tell that she is understanding so much more of what we say. It's fascinating to watch her language comprehension skyrocket.

Iris loves music now. Whenever she hears music--from a toy, a radio, even a cellphone ring--she will start to dance and clap.

Walking in Her Big Girl Shoes

Sleep, Teeth, and a Big Move!

So, I am still not getting any sleep. We are still co-sleeping and nursing to sleep--because Iris has been teething non-stop for the last two months! I am ready to tear my hair out. And when she teethes, she gets sick. Two weeks ago, it was coxsackie virus. This week, it's a cold. So I haven't had the heart to try and change our sleep routine. Sighhhhhhh.

Speaking of teeth, I guess these are her canines coming in? They seem to be a lot worse than the incisors were, because she is up all. freaking. night. She has THREE coming in right now, and I'm sure number four is not far behind. You suck, canines. Or molars. Whatever you are.

Anyway, our big news is that we are moving to beautiful Asheville, North Carolina! We are very excited and I think it will be a great change for Iris too. The neighborhood we are moving to is a lot more kid-friendly and there are two playgrounds within a couple of blocks. And I think I will get very toned pushing a 20 pound kid in a stroller up those mountain roads.

Of course, I'm not too excited about the actual moving with a baby part. We'll have to see how that goes...

10 months

Wow, I haven't updated in forever. I spend all day chasing Iris, and I hardly get any time to sit down and blog anymore!

Iris is an expert walker these days. When she sees a person she likes, she follows them, which is funny when it's some random stranger. If you open a door, she has to walk through it or she gets mad.

She points at objects and says "Ba!" (or "Ga!" or...well, you get the gist). We try to ask her "Where's Mommy" or "Where's Daddy," and have her point. She gets it right some of the time, but I'm not sure she has made the connection yet.

We are still nursing and it has gotten a little more complicated now that she is so interested in the world around her. She latches on and off a billion times. She has also learned that if she pulls my shirt down, she can get to the nipple any time she wants, which is rather embarrassing. I try not to flash people in public, but I can't make any promises these days. Warning: You may see my nipple. You'll get over it.

9 months

It's hard to believe Miss Iris has now been here in the world longer than she was in the womb. At her nine month check-up, she weighed 20 pounds even and was around 27 inches long. She has 6 adorable teeth!

These days, she does not even sit still to eat. She has learned how to climb up stairs and giggles when I follow behind her, as if I am chasing her. I don't let her try to climb down yet, even though she wants to, because it's scary how absolutely fearless she is.

A big milestone--she has taken her first steps! She can stand unassisted now (although sometimes she ends up crouching like a sumo baby) and take up to four steps, wobbling around like a drunken frat boy and lurching to hold on to something before she falls.

Some other new talents--she claps and waves back at us. She is eating lots of solids now and will pretty much eat anything, although she hasn't quite figured out chewing yet--she ends up storing pieces in her cheeks and then spitting them out on her unsuspecting parents.

One not-so-great milestone--lots of whining and tugging at my clothes.

Sometimes she doesn't seem much like a baby anymore--more like a tiny toddler. I can't believe how close her first birthday is getting. People always tell you they grow so fast. I guess you don't realize it until it's your baby--but it's true!

Co-sleeping is my frenemy

When Iris was a newborn, co-sleeping saved my sanity. But now, I think it's driving me to madness.

As a newborn, there was only one way I could reliably get her to sleep--nursing. Some babies will sleep in a swing or go down drowsy, but Iris has been a boob girl right from the start. The problem came once I got her to sleep. She is such a light sleeper that if I tried to lay her down in the bassinet, she would wake up and cry and we would have to start all over again. Every night, we would repeat this until around 2 am, when I would finally be able to get her down. But I was not getting enough sleep this way--I spent the first month of her life feeling like a zombie, desperate for sleep that never came.

Here's where co-sleeping came in. I soon found that if I nursed her to sleep in the side-lying position, she would fall asleep and I didn't have to move her. Even better, I could rest or drift off to sleep while I was nursing her, instead of sitting hunched over the Boppy glaring at the clock. When we started this routine, I finall felt like I was getting enough sleep to function at a reasonable level. Sure, Iris was still waking up every two hours, but at least we could both fall back asleep pretty quickly.

So co-sleeping was a lifesaver for us for a while. I figured we would keep doing it as long as it was working for us. Well, it's not really working anymore.

Iris is getting bigger and stronger. That means less room for me. That means harder kicks in the middle of the night. And the less space we have, the more we wake each other up. When she gets up, turns over and falls back asleep, I wake up--if she were in a crib, I would sleep through these stirrings. When I want to change positions in bed, it's like a stealth operation because she is still a light sleeper and the tiniest thing can wake her up. Plus, I just want my freaking bed back. I spend all day with her nursing or climbing on me or whining at me. I would like some space, at some point, that does not involve immediate proximity to a nine month old.

I'm not sure what we're going to do though. I don't see how I can transition her out of our bed without some kind of sleep training and listening to her cry. And if she continues to wake multiple times every night, am I going to have to get out of bed and get her back to sleep? Won't I just end up a zombie again like before? Stay tuned, folks.