Hi ladies ? where does the time go?
This is my last week of maternity leave. I am so unready to go back to work and leave R at nursery that I could just weep.
Am steadily plowing my way through Ferber?s ?Solve Your Child?s Sleep Problems? and am impressed by the wealth of information it contains on sleep cycles/phases/etc. for newborns through teenagers.
Mdavza, I wouldn?t characterize his approach as ?let ?em cry for hours? (or I wouldn?t be able to try it!). He says that by 5 to 6 months, healthy full-term babies are capable of falling asleep on their own (and equally as important, to fall BACK asleep automatically when they waken during the night), and his program is designed to help remove the unhelpful associations some children need for sleeping (being rocked/walked for ages, nursing to sleep ? though that?s not a big deal at bedtime IF it doesn?t affect their night wakings) by putting the child down still awake after their bedtime routine, and letting them work out for themselves how to sleep. The parents return at slowly increasing intervals (starting with 3 minutes and increasing to 10 minutes for the first three nights, and never more than 20 minutes if it takes more nights than that) to reassure the baby that they?re still here, but NOT to pick them up and comfort them to sleep. Ferber goes into a lot of detail about working gradually on both nap and night habits to maximise the baby?s sleep potential?I?ve spent my time reading and thwacking myself on the head for having let Rhys develop a lot of rotten habits. Ah well, it will all come right in the end (surely before he?s old enough to vote, right?).
We?ll be working this week on stretching out the time between night feeds, to get him down to one feed only, as Ferber recommends, and then will embark on the interval-crying process. We?ll see how nursery also affects his willingness/need to sleep more/earlier?really at the end of our ropes, as he?s still waking up 5 to 6 times between an hour?s battle to get him to bed at 10 and when he wakes up at 7.
Interesting to hear all the takes on sterilising. In Belgium, paeds kind of shrug their shoulders and say do as you like, so we?ve not done anything, really (except a good hard boil of bottles, teats, etc., when they first come out of their packaging. No problems so far. Here, most people also use bottled water rather than tap.
Also appreciating all the weaning stories ? Rhys is making a dive for things on our plates and anything in a glass, so he?ll be well ready in another month when he?s finally 6 months old! Meep, I like the ?food for fun until they?re one? mantra ? and am really looking forward to seeing how he reacts to all the new tastes!
Good job on the bottle battle, boobz. Rhys doesn?t seem to mind his formula now, but I can?t get him to take more than about 100 mls at any one feed ? so we?re still on about 8 feeds (bottle or breast) per day!
Slick, glad to hear all was okay with your friend. What a scare.
Laumiere, Rhys is of Gabe being able to sit up ? he dreams of being able to do that! It must change their lives immensely?
Jolly, have you decided what to do about your job?
Wheely, well done with the running! I?m still not able to do much with my back (which gave me some scary twinges last night after seeming to be on the mend, so I?m back to letting my mum and DP do all the baby lifting ) but am dying to get back to exercising.
Grinning, the EBM in a bottle wasn?t a roaring success (i.e., we still ended up needing to pick him up ? plus feeding him on his back led to some horrendous trapped wind and concomitant screeching).
Right. Off to play peekaboo.