Reflections of Weeks 18 - 25

Ok, a lot has happened since my last reflection. I will try to remember as much as I can without writing too much. So, with this in mind, I'll just do some highlights of the last few weeks.

Sleeping
Jack's sleeping has been GREAT! Just before Christmas I dropped the dreamfeed. I did this by reducing the feed time by a couple of minutes each night. When it got to about 5 mins, I stopped the dreamfeed. This worked really well. When I took him off, he would grizzle a bit, but I put him back to bed and he would eventually go back to sleep. Since he's sucking his thumb, I think it's made it much easier dropping this feed. He now sleeps from 7pm to about 6am (some times earlier, sometimes later).

Jack is now only having 3 naps in the day. Over the last week he has stopped sleeping for his last nap. I'd put him to bed, but he would just have a good play in his cot. So, we're down to three naps. His naps are still various lengths. Usually he'll have one two-hour nap at some point in the day.

We're still wrapping Jack. I've decided to keep it going as it's working so well. We wrap the right arm up and leave the left out for thumb-sucking purposes. He settles so well since he's been sucking his thumb.

Wake Time
I've extended his wake time to two hours. This has happened gradually over the last few weeks. He has been handling this really well. In the afternoons, he's awake for much longer than that. It's so nice having him awake for a longer period of time now. I really enjoy going out and doing things with him.

Jack has enjoyed spending time with his cousins. Matthew shared his beloved "trucks" with Jack and showed him how to play with them.


Sophie and Bethany loved playing with Jack. He was given LOTS of hugs and kisses.




Rolling
Well, one of the big events has been that Jack started to roll over. He started doing this just before Christmas. He rolled from back to front first, then from front to back. But, after Christmas, he showed no desire at all to do any rolling. After a while, he started to roll on to his tummy in his cot, which meant that we had to keep going into his room to roll him back on to his back. But, he hasn't really rolled all that much any other time. There has been the odd occasion when he's rolled from his tummy on to his back, but he always looks so shocked afterwards. I don't think he knows what he's just done. I was hoping he'd be rolling around a lot more by now, but he's not. I have to keep reminding myself to be patient and that he'll do it in his own time - it's hard to keep thinking that.

Sitting Up
The second big event has been Jack being able to sit up. On our family holiday Dave, Jack and I were at the beach. Jack was sitting in front of me, between my legs. Jack started to sit by himself. I got pretty excited, so I yelled out to Dave and my sister-in-law, Katie, to look at Jack. Just as I said this, Jack leaned too far forward and did a face-plant in the sand. Poor Jack! His whole face was covered in sand. What a bad mother I am!

After Christmas, Jack was getting pretty good at sitting up for a few seconds by himself. As each day went by, he got better and better. At the moment, he is sitting up really well. He can sit for a while by himself, but he will still fall over every now and then (so we have to make sure we don't get distracted!).

Solids
The other big event has been starting Jack on solids. Jack started really well - AT FIRST. He took the food off the spoon quite eagerly and one time, he ate all of the rice cereal in his bowl. I was pretty excited. But, he really hasn't been liking eating solids for the last couple of days. He definitely doesn't like apple. I've given it to him 4 or 5 times now and he continues to spit it out. When I gave him some solids Yesterday and Today, he was making such a fuss - coughing, whinging, yelling, - that I decided to throw in the towel. It really looked like he was protesting and chucking a tantrum. He closed his mouth and wouldn't open it AT ALL. He was being so loud that I just couldn't put up with the noise anymore.

Dave and my mum both encouraged me to have a break from it and try again in a couple of days. This was good advice. It was pointless trying to force the food into his mouth. That's not what eating should be like. I want him to enjoy it. Jack wasn't getting anything out of it and I certainly wasn't either. So, we'll leave it for now. Every now and then I'll give him some food to try, but I won't worry too much about it.

Routine
Jack is having 5 feeds a day and we're on a three-to-four-hourly routine. So, nothing really has changed.