Muddling Through Motherhood

Lately, Rowan’s night sleep has really improved. He’s been averaging 2 night feeds for quite a while, so after considering night weaning him, I decided to instead make use of an idea from Dr Jay Gordon and give myself a period of time at night where I can get a decent run of sleep, and Rowan doesn’t have milk. We decided to make this easier with a 10pm ‘dream feed’ (although he does wake a little most nights he just goes straight back to sleep). He then gets nothing but Daddy (except in case of illness) until 4am, when he can have me again and some more milk. This means that I’ve been regularly getting runs of 5 or 6 hours of sleep (I’m still waking earlier sometimes but it seems to be improving), which makes a huge difference to me.

Another improvement is in his settling. He goes down at bedtime awake more often (and even sometimes during the night - at 4am or whatever) and settles himself. Sometimes there’s a minute or two of crying, but its pretty half hearted. Tonight, due to some strangely timed naps, he wasn’t ready for bed at his normal 6pm (he was eating dinner then) and had a later bath. After his feed, some books and some Daddy time, he still wasn’t settling, so David put him in his cot, put his mobile on and left him. The crying stopped well before the mobile, and over the monitor over the next 15 minutes we heard a bit of burbling and some other happy noises, and an hour later he’s still quiet so most likely asleep! This self settling (and particularly the happy burbling) bodes well for the future!

Nap wise, we’ve managed to drop the very annoying habit of not sleeping without my nipple in his mouth (I’ve managed to unlatch / put him down gently much more lately). However, he doesn’t seem to want to nap until 11am/lunchtime, which is making a second nap late and/or difficult. Late nap means we don’t know when he’ll be tired, and no nap means a stupidly early bed. I try not to worry about it, but nap times can mess up meal times, and an overtired baby is really hard work.

Physically, Rowan’s coming on in leaps and bounds. He was crawling properly by around 8 months, and since then he’s not really stopped. A couple of weeks later he was standing, then cruising, and last week he learnt to sit from standing! This last was a huge relief as he was standing for ages, then screaming as he couldn’t get down! We’re some way off walking, but the cruising is going well, and you can see from the way he stands that he’s getting stronger, so my guess is that he’ll be really mobile by Xmas or thereabouts.

This weekend Rowan’s going to Gregynog to interview some students, or perhaps sabotage their bamboo catapaults. Sleep will be, in my estimation, limited!