This is a line from a song by Point of Grace, my favorite band throughout elementary school. This song I have always loved because no matter what stage of life we are in, it's always true.
We are going through some changes this week...something I need to get used to as a parent. It's tough when we don't know what to do because we've never been down this road before and can't totally look for advice elsewhere because every baby is different and no one knows Carly like we do. Brian and I are fairly good problem-solvers and a great team, but this particular issue has got us stumped. You see, Carly has decided that it is no longer a necessity to sleep during the day. Something that is not okay on a developmental or physical level. Yesterday she slept 60 minutes total in a 12 hour period. When she started having super long awake periods last week we thought that would easily translate into longer naps, but that has not been the case. Naps have become even shorter than they were, and already she seemed to be "world's shortest napper." All of her baby sitters and the moms that I know who also have young kids agree that she doesn't take long enough naps. But we all tossed it up to the fact that she was sleeping so long at night. Well she has cut off 2 hours of sleep each night and still isn't napping. Yesterday I bet she slept 10 hours total in a 24 hour period...maybe less. We've read and tried so many suggestions but none of them have worked. So, what do we do? I don't know.
The other thing that is difficult about the situation is that because she is awake for so long, it comes time to feed her before she has slept. So then, of course, she wants to take a nap while eating. So I can't get a full feeding in her because she is sleeping and I can't get her to sleep because she is hungry. Grr! It can sometimes take us over an hour to feed because of the amount of times I have to take her off and wake her up. I will try to put her down gently and let her finish her nap but she wakes up SCREAMING because she is still hungry. I'm sure all of you reading this have some thoughts about it or things you think we should try...but I bet you we've already tried it. ALL research that I have read points to the fact that nursing a baby to sleep is not healthy. In fact, I bet you wouldn't even be able to find a study in support of nursing a baby to sleep. Doing that creates poor eating habits, poor sleeping habits and does not encourage independence. So as nice as it would be in this moment for her to just sleep while she is suckling, it will damage her down the road.
On a happy note, she has been fun to play with this week and continues to be pretty easy to take places (expect to a sit down dinner...that is NOT fun). She is enjoying learning that she can make different sounds with her mouth and we enjoy making kissing noises to each other. Also, when we put our face next to hers and ask for a kiss she will turn her head, open her mouth and place it on our cheek. So cute! She loves it when we play with her legs and arms, asking how big she is or how much we love her and then putting her arms over her head or out to the side and saying "so big!" or "this much!" She is on the verge of giggling and has done it a couple of times for Brian. We're excited for that to happen. She has a new trick of standing ALL BY HERSELF while leaning on something. I swear...my three month seriously can stand by herself if we lean her up against something like her play gym for about 5-10 seconds. She thinks its SUPER interesting. On the one hand I don't like encouraging that but on the other I love making her happy, and standing is most certainly her favorite pass time. ;)
The "big" events that took place in Carly's life this week was that she went to the mall for the first time and entered a Walt Disney World park for the 10th time in her life. She is always happy when we are there and can usually fall asleep while we walk around. Funny thing, though, she won't fall asleep if we are just walking through our neighborhood (see...I told you we've tried everything). I guess she needs all the people to look at when in the parks.
Carly is so happy when she is on a schedule of eat, play, sleep...and sleeps well at night that way, too. I hope she chooses to get back to that sooner rather than later! We (mainly me) are getting a bit desperate for her to be back on a schedule. She just thrives on, plain and simple.
No comments:
Post a Comment