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Thursday, March 15, 2012

Big Boy!

Today Harrison had his 4 month appointment.  I had my reservations about bringing him to his appointment alone again, his 2 month appointment was a NIGHTMARE.  Capital letters.  He screamed from the moment we walked into the exam room until we were back in the car.

We attended our ECFE class this morning so I had every expectation that he would either sleep through the entire appointment or be a big bear. It went a million times better than last time.  He smiled at the receptionists, smiled and giggled with the nurse, and was all-out belly laughing by the time the doctor came in. He was so friendly to everyone he saw.  Harrison's measurements were taken and he is now 14 pounds 9 ounces (25th percentile) and 26.5 inches long (92nd percentile...WHAT??)  His doctor was amazed at how much he's grown in length, over 3 inches just in the last two months.  --Apparently that growth spurt I mentioned previously was legit.--

His doctor also gave us the thumbs up to start solids.  Harrison is obviously growing well considering the height growth, but he's not putting on much weight (only 4.5 pounds since birth) because of his mobility and activity level.  He is essentially burning off all of the calories he's taking in.  In addition to his formula we can now give him whatever solids he likes (starting with the more gentle fruits and vegetables).  I had always been under the impression that you were to start with rice cereal for its hypoallergenic properties, but apparently this isn't really the case anymore.  I'm so excited to finally bust out the baby blender my sister got us for Christmas, let the experimenting begin!!

In other news, we decided to start sleep training Harrison a few days ago.  While he was going through his most recent growth spurt he developed some pretty bad sleeping habits.  Since he previously slept through the night every night, we knew he was capable of it and were hopeful that it wouldn't be too bad.  One thing I was seriously concerned about was putting him in his crib while he was awake.  Every night since he was born he has either been rocked to sleep, or left to fall asleep in his swing and then transferred to his crib.  The second concern: the hairdryer noise.  Harrison is used to falling asleep with the hairdryer CD, but we obviously don't have it playing in the bedroom once he's in his crib.  We discussed the need to have the environment he falls asleep in be the same if he were to wake in the middle of the night.  Lastly, now that Harrison is rolling over I've been a paranoid mess about him being swaddled at night. So out went the swing, out with the hairdryer, and out with swaddling his arms.

Tuesday night was our first night of sleep training.  We decided to go with the Ferber method of progressively waiting, simply because it was the one I was most familiar with.  I don't like to refer to it as "cry it out" because I definitely have my maximum that I will let him cry, I do not believe in just letting him cry forever.

Night 1 consisted of:  First wait:  3 minutes, Second wait: 5 minutes, Third (and subsequent) waits: 10 minutes.  10 minutes was even pushing it for me, but I decided to go with the flow and see how it went.  We started at 8:00pm after his bath, bottle and lullabies.  He was finally asleep at 8:45pm.  Longest 45 minutes of my life.  Every time I went in to soothe him my heart just broke when he would reach up for me to pick him up.  Ugh, it still makes my heart hurt.  The last 10 minute wait had me in tears with a nauseous stomach while Daniel tried to reassure me that we were doing the right thing.  I then had to go into the bathroom, shut the door, and turn the shower on to drown out the crying.  Every fiber of my being was telling me to run in there and pick him up.  That being said, he did fall asleep.  He slept until 2:30 am where I had to do one 3 minute check.  He fell back asleep and slept until 6:30 am (pretty typical for him).

Night 2:  Harrison was put in his crib at 8:15.  Nothing.  Not a peep.  I can't tell you what torn feelings I was experiencing from this.  A) "Our baby is a GENIUS!!" B) "Oh my God, what if he flipped over and can't breathe?!" It took everything in me not to go in there just to check that he was okay. (I know this anxiety is a little irrational, simply because he is no longer being swaddled and is able to lift his head with his body 90 degrees, and can roll over both ways....but still.)  45 minutes later, still not a sound from him.   When we finally went in to go to bed ourselves an hour after putting him to bed, there he lay: flat on his back with his arms above his head.  Out cold. He slept until 7:15 with no waking up.  There was a serious feeling of "This is a miracle!" to finally have a solid nights sleep again.  The two weeks without it were a definite reminder of how spoiled we were in the first place.

  Here's hoping that Night 3--and of course the nights to follow--are the same!

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