Reflections of Week 13

I've been encouraged to do some weekly reflections on our life with Jack. I thought this was a good way for me to record all the little things that are happening throughout the week, as it is very easy to forget things in the busyness of life. You may not be all that interested in this, so no need to read it.

Things seem to be a lot more stable at the moment. Jack is a gorgeous baby. He smiles and giggles quite a lot. He is also a loquacious little baby – love it when he talks. He's also very alert and stares around, taking everything in.

Sleeping
Jack has gone back to sleeping through the night (yay!). He goes to bed around 7pm and between 9.30 – 10.30pm I give him a dreamfeed. So, he's STTN about 7 hours from his dreamfeed. Once he's sleeping through the night consistently for 2 weeks, then I start to drop the dreamfeed. He is waking up early in the mornings, though. I usually get him up at 6am. Sometimes, he sleeps til 6.30 – 7am, but not consistently. I'm trying to think of how I can get him to sleep til 7am, but I can't really think of anything. I figure that he'll get there as he gets older.


His day naps are still short, although he seems to be sleeping better. Once I stopped stressing about it, I was able to see that he's getting enough sleep (around 4 – 5 hours) each day. He has longer sleeps in the mornings. The last few days, he's been sleeping 1 ½ hours in the mornings, followed by 60 – 30 minute naps for the rest of the day. Even though each day is different, things definitely seem more settled. I still get frustrated when he doesn't sleep for very long or for not as long as I expected (or wanted) him to. I'm getting better and less frustrated, but it's certainly something that I have to keep praying about.

He is so much better at settling himself to sleep now. For the first four weeks, we would pat him to sleep. After that, we starting using the dummy, but we ditched that (as I've already discussed). Since then, we've been putting him down and letting him CIO (cry it out). For our own sake, we'd put the oven timer on for 20 minutes. Usually, he'd fall asleep before the 20 minutes ended (unless he was overtired). Recently, he hasn't really been crying when he's been put to bed (finally! You get sick of hearing them cry after a while) and when he does cry, it's because he's very tired. Now, we don't even bother putting the timer on as we know that he'll fall asleep quickly and on his own.

I think we'll need to move him to the cot soon. We've got him in a cradle at the moment. He fits alright in the cradle, but he's putting his arm through the gaps and falling asleep with his little arms hanging out.

Wrapping
I'm still wrapping him, but I think I'll stop it soon. I'm still not sure about it. He likes to suck on his hands/thumb (when I get him after he's been sleeping, the wrap is soaked from his sucking on his hands), but I'm not sure if he'll wake up from moving his arms around. I'm thinking of using a grobag as sometimes he kicks his blankets off. We'll see...

Hand Sucking
As mentioned above, Jack's become a real hand sucker. There doesn't seem to be any consistent time that he does it. Although, he definitely does it after he's woken up and sometimes when he's going to sleep. But, he also does it when he's hungry and when he's playing. He manages to get his thumb in his mouth and either sucks or chews on it. It doesn't seem to be something that he has to do at the moment. I think once his coordination gets better (coordination is very important to Dave), he'll probably start sucking on his thumb more.

Wake Time
I've been giving Jack 1 ½ hours of wake time, although some days it's less than that. This seems to be working well. If he's up for too long, he usually want settle when it's sleep time. He just keeps crying. If this happens, we give him the dummy and that gets him to sleep.

He spends most of his wake time on the play mat or in his bouncer. He's a pretty active baby. He kicks around A LOT. He seems to really enjoy using his legs. He is much more confident in the bath - he kicks around like there's no tomorrow (if you're a fan of Seinfeld, then think of Elaine dancing and that's what Jack looks like in the bath). The other day he was on his side, which I think is one step closer to rolling.

He's getting better at being on his tummy. He can be quite content on his tummy for a few minutes now. He holds his head up and looks around.

He really enjoys it when you sing and talk to him. He will giggle and smile at you, and then talk back. I know when he's in a happy mood when he starts smiling and talking to me as he finishes feeding. This has got to be my favourite time of day. He just lays in my arms, looks up at me and chats away.

We've been reading to him as well. He seems to enjoy sitting on our laps and it looks like he's following the story.


Routine
I've gone back to putting him on a 3 hourly routine. This seems to work better with his shorter naps. I don't really have set times each day as he wakes up at different times (sometimes 6am, sometimes 6.30am and sometimes 7am). I've decided that time he wakes up in the morning will dictate the routine for the day. I've read that you should have the same wake time each morning, but I've found it difficult to get that to happen in reality. I was trying too hard to get Jack to have his “proper” wake time at 7am. This was making me frustrated, so I decided it wasn't worth the frustration. Whatever time he woke up, that will be the start of the day. I'm sure he'll get more consisten tas he gets older.

Outings
Jack goes really well when we're out. We went out to dinner for Dad's birthday last Saturday night and he slept in the pram the whole time. We went back to mum and dad's house after dinner for birthday cake and we put Jack in his little Phil & Teds portable cot (one that fits in his pram). He didn't really settle, so I gave him the dummy and he went back to sleep. Other times when I'm out, I put him in the Hug-A-Bub and he sleeps well in that.