However, over about the last 6 weeks or so, this has been getting more and more unfeasible as he doesn’t pay attention when feeding in public, and, as I am discovering, hasn’t been napping as much as he needs to.

Now don’t get me wrong, I certainly wouldn’t have done the first 4 months with him any differently – I still believe he needed the frequent feeding and the cuddles to get the milk supply sorted / introduce him gently to this scary world – but as I observe my increasingly tired and grumpy baby and get up for the 5th/6th/7th time since I put him to bed, I begin to wish I had introduced a little structure a little earlier.

The catalyst for all of this has been his increasingly fragmented sleeping.  Its killing us all, and as I start to observe Rowans behaviour more closely (watching for sleepiness and overtiredness) I begin to realise that he’s been getting more and more overtired, with crazy shouting and mad hyper bouncing at times.  Before I started paying attention to all this, he was having 2/3 naps a day – but of only around 20 minutes each, which I now realise was nowhere near enough.

This is, I think, rebounding on his eating as I’m finding it hard to know when he is going to be in the right frame of mind to pay attention to his dinner and actually eat something.  We’re baby led weaning, so it requires his active participation, and he needs to be awake and alert for this – which when I try to get him to eat, he seems not to be!

So, we’re trying to change this.  In part I don’t like it as it isn’t what I wanted to do, but I’m not one of these people who makes a decision and sticks to it against anything.  If its not working, we find out what’s wrong and we fix it – even if the change I need to make sticks in my throat.  We will be aiming for 2-3 naps with a duration of at least 2 hours, preferably 3-4, at roughly regular times.  I know we won’t be able to manage this in his (or our) bed all of the time because we both love his activities and for my sanity at least, we’re not giving up all of them, so this will be subject to review once our term-time schedule starts come september.

Its going to be hard to get him to stick to this at first, as he doesn’t seem to know how to nap for a long time (although sometimes we’re lucky) and we’re trying various techniques.  I’m not going to write about these until we’re somewhat further down the line, as we’re in experimentation stage and I don’t know what is going to work yet.

Anyway, wish me luck, its going to be a hard few weeks (or maybe months)

He can sit up pretty well – even straight up now, although he still likes to fall forward onto his head, or flop to the side when he’s trying to do something

He sleeps like a baby (badly).  I sometimes get annoyed when people ask me “Is he sleeping through yet?” as I know many babies never sleep through.  At the moment, he wakes up who knows how many times during the night.  I think this is primarily because he’s too busy being a little baby and enjoying himself during the day to remember to get his fill of milk.  I don’t think the little food is helping either as he seems to have got a bit of wind during the night, so I need to remember to wake up and sit him up to let him get a bit of a burp – not easy when we feed him lying down, with both of us asleep!  On a side note, if we weren’t co-sleeping, I wouldn’t be coping at all.  I do, however, reserve the right to complain just occasionally when I’m tired, even though I have no intention of trying to do anything about it.  If he needs to eat, he needs to eat, whether its 2pm or 2am!

He likes to giggle.  If you hold him up close and pretend to chomp on the gap between his head and neck, Rowan will grin, and if you keep going, squeal with delight.  His beloved Aunty Jenny started this, and we just love the reaction, so we do it a bit   Incidentally, he likes it on his tummy too.  Raspberries on tummies and cheeks work pretty well too, but not as well as the sort of chomping motion!

Rowan has started eating his solids.  We had intended to wait until 6 months, but as we are doing Baby Led Weaning, and it makes sense to me that his ability to eat the food will keep track with his readiness for it, we offered him food every so often, and at about 23 weeks he decided he wanted to actually eat it.  He’s been getting better every day, and now feeds himself 3 (very small) meals most days.  We’re definitely getting an interesting new nappy experience though.  We are also only offering fruit, vegetables and the odd rice cake until 6 months though, when it will be a free for all (except salt and honey and nuts)

He is the best and most wonderful baby in the world!  But of course its my job to think that.