9 Months Old: It Feels Like We Have Arrived

So much has happened with Declan over the past few months.  And apparently there was a lot going on with me and I haven't had time to update my blog and tell the world.  Declan started crawling at 7 1/2 months, and days after, started pulling up and cruising too.  It all happened so fast!  Maybe that's why I'm busier...hmmm...

Teeth Update
He has had 2 bottom teeth for a while now (I may have already blogged about that?) and he's just started working on his two uppers.  The gums have been swollen for a day or two and I just noticed before I put him down for his nap how red one of them is.  He is still all smiles though.  Teething has never been hard for him.  I blamed a lot of his extra fussy times on teething and we often gave him Tylenol when he probably didn't need it.  "Teething" has never disrupted his sleep, thank God.  I like to think that it's because he's rested and we've trained him well how to sleep.  I'll get to that later though... you know I will.

Talking
He vocalizes a lot, saying "ma ma ma ma" and "ga ga" and more recently loud squawking.  Still working on "da da."

Personality
His sense of humor is coming out.  He likes to make us laugh with his funny faces and playing, "Nighttime, Daytime!" and "Where's the Baby?"  He gives me hugs a lot, and sometimes open-mouthed kisses on the cheek.  He's stingy with hugs when it comes to other people, though.  I think the only other people he has shared them with are Ryan and Aunt Ruthie.



Feeding
The past two weeks I have relaxed a lot on what I give him to eat.  I was following the 4 day rule: introduce a new food and wait 4 days before introducing another one in order to check for allergies.  Thankfully, we haven't had any allergic reactions despite my sudden lack of carefulness.  I am still not giving him any nuts, honey, and we're avoiding eggs, although he does get it in breads and probably other things I don't think about.  I'll ban those until he's a year old.  Anyway, so he's pretty much eating miniature versions of what we're eating.  I'm trying to give him lots of practice with self-feeding.  It's kinda tough though because of the mess (c:  Oh well.

I am still nursing him 4-5 times a day.  He's become very difficult to nurse and doesn't seem interested most of the time.  It started out as him stopping to give me a hug or smile at me.  Then it went to stopping to make a funny face or trying to get into a crawling position while still nursing.  At the back of my mind I wondered if I should discourage these interruptions, but we were both enjoying them and laughing so much that it became one of our favorite parts of the day.  I asked other moms what they thought and nobody seemed to think I should stop him, so I let it go on.  Now, he's wanting to switch so frequently or crawl off and play, then get upset when I assume he's done, that it's become a hassle.  I've started to think that maybe he's not getting enough.  I would be more worried, but I was planning on weaning him at 1  year.  I know they don't often wean themselves before 1 year, but it wouldn't be hard to head that direction if I wanted to.  We'll keep trying for 3 more months though.  Any thoughts on this?

Acid Reflux and Chiropractic Treatment
I'm so happy to report that his reflux has not made a comeback at all.  There were a couple of days in which he was extra fussy and spitty.  I still don't know what that was about - could have been a relapse.  I was very grumpy and got depressed during that time, not knowing what to do next if the reflux was back.  Thankfully it only lasted a couple of days.  Maybe it was something he ate, maybe he was overtired, maybe we'll just blame it on the mysterious "catch all" - teething.  He had more vertebral sublaxation than normal at his previous visit 10 days ago, but he had fewer at his appointment this morning.  Dr. Adams said it was probably due to his pulling up and plopping on his bottom that was throwing his spine out of whack more than normal.  Anyway, it was a good report today, and I have a happy baby to go along with it so... yay!  We go again in 2 weeks.

SLEEP!
And now, my update on  his sleep.  I save the best for last (c:  It has taken a long time for us to get over the overtired hump.  It's a crazy uphill battle, but we're there, finally.  More often than not, Declan takes two 1 - 1.5 hour naps a day, and he's now sleeping 12-13 hours a night.  Last night he went to bed at 6:30pm, woke up around 5am to eat, and went back to bed until I woke him at 7:45 (not sure how much longer he would have slept).  I am pretty sure that's a new record for him.

After all of the frustration and going back and forth, what ended up being the best things for us was:

• The Nap Hour - leaving him to sleep, cry, or play for an hour at naptime no matter what - no exceptions.  Naptime is at 9am and 1pm (biological sleep windows for most babies age 4-8 months).
• Inadvertently teaching him to self-soothe.  I was still rocking him to sleep a couple of weeks ago when he started to squirm and fuss in my arms every time I started rocking.  This got frustrating for me so I just started to put him in his crib when this happened.  To my surprise, he'd go to sleep minutes after I left the room.  So I started to skip the rocking and just put him in his bed.  He usually cries for a few minutes and goes to sleep.  I saw an improvement in both the length of his naps and his nighttime sleep once I did this.
• Choosing an appropriately early bedtime - His sweet spot is between 6:15 and 6:30.  It's not too early or too late.  The night goes smoothly and I usually have to wake him the following morning to maintain our schedule.  

Starting tonight, we're going to work on sleeping through the night.  He's still taking one feeding, but it's moving later and later most nights.  And he's skipped it a few times, so I think he just needs a little nudge to get him sleeping 12-13 hours straight.  I'd let him sleep longer but I think we're already pushing the limitations of his diaper... (c;

STTN: The Loaded Question

"How is your little one sleeping?"

Is it just me, or when this question is asked amongst new moms it's almost like a test.  Sleeping through the night (STTN).  It's like the ultimate trophy for new moms.  If you've got it, you must be some kind of awesome (in other words, some kind of heartless woman who can let their baby cry it out -- aka I'm jealous of you now).  If you don't, you must be exhausted, you poor thing!



I avoid asking the question because I am afraid of my tendency to spew advice before it is asked for.  I'm in an awkward place where I don't have credentials or experience -- let alone a perfectly sleeping baby --  to give me any right to go telling other moms what they could be doing better.  I just have a passion, an awesome book, some reading I've done on the Internet, and a bunch of experiments I've run on my own kid.

Anyway, that's my disclaimer, and this is just my opinion.  I think it's awesome if your baby sleeps through the night.  I wouldn't mind it if Declan decided to start doing it tonight.  He used to for 11 blessed weeks.  I took them for granted... but that's beside the point.  I was very thankful to learn from Weissbluth that it's perfectly healthy and normal for babies 6 weeks - 9 months to have 1 or 2 night feedings.  What a load off!  That made me kinda realize that there is a lot of pressure from the American culture to get your baby sleeping through the night as soon as possible.  It's a big challenge.  Sure, I'd prefer that he slept 10-12 hours straight instead of waking up about 7hrs in to eat, but knowing that he's not "behind" really makes it not so bad.  At least for me.

Hoping it takes the pressure off of you.  If your baby is waking once or twice to eat and going right back to sleep, you've got it good.  Realize that the pressure you might feel is coming from our demanding, competitive culture, don't let it bother you if your baby isn't sleeping through the night.  Just my two cents (c:

******Update********
When Declan was about 9 months and 1 week old, I used extinction to eliminate the night feeding.  It took about 4 nights of consistently not going to him, or having Ryan go in to check on him if he was really worked up), and he then started sleeping 11-13 hours straight through pretty consistently.  Every so often he'll fuss in the night - sometimes all-out cry.  This is usually because he is overtired from a couple of non-routine days.  Other times I have no idea why he does it.  Usually if I wait 10 minutes before going to him, he goes back to sleep for the rest of the night.

7 Months Old: All But Crawl

We're 7 months into this deal.  In case you haven't noticed, I've been making an effort to note the developmental advances he's made and record some of the things I want to remember about him at each monthly milestone.  It's already fun and eye-opening to look back at how he has changed.  I don't have a real baby book, so I'm sure one day I'll find some way to preserve these entries.

At 7 months old, he's not quite crawling.  Since the week before Christmas he has been experimenting with getting up on his knees and rocking back and forth.  More recently he spends most of his tummy time like this, whereas before it was pretty infrequent.  As of last Friday, I saw him go from this position to sitting.  I wasn't expecting this to happen before crawling, but I'm so glad because most of the time he prefers to sit instead of be on his tummy.  So now he has the ability to do it without my help (c: 

In addition to that skill, he's shown a lot of interest in pulling up.  He tries to pull up on our dining room chairs, the couch, his crib, dresser, or changing table, and of course reaches for our kneecaps when we get close enough.  He's gaining strength and confidence to make his limbs do what he wants them to.



Vocally, he's still a chatterbox when he gets going.  He likes to repeat, "RaRaRaRaRa" among other things.  He has taken to squealing/screaming/screeching/chirping really loud.  So loud and repeatedly I sometimes want to apologize to our downstairs neighbors who have two babies.  Usually the outbursts are with joy, but he sometimes uses them to express frustration.  Like if he's sitting in his high chair while I get his food ready and he's getting impatient.  One of the funniest things he does is clench his gums, open his eyes really wide and raise his eyebrows, and hold his breath while he turns red and clenches his fists.  I have no idea what this is about... I think he just likes the look of bewilderment on my face when he does it.

Over Christmas I transitioned him back to 2 solids feedings a day.  I know that what time of day he eats what doesn't matter to him, but I like giving him fruit and cereal in the morning and veggies in the evening (c: The fruits he has tried are just bananas and plain applesauce.  He usually eats those with blended up oatmeal.  It has taken longer than I thought it would, but he has come to love these.  The veggies he has tried are carrots, green peas, green beans, acorn squash, broccoli, spinach, and most recently, avocado.  I have some yellow squash in the fridge that he'll try next.  When he tries something new, it's always with a grimace and a gag, at least on the first few bites.  The only exception has been spinach.  Surprisingly, he took to that like it was his everyday favorite from the first bite.  He'll eat it cold, too (ew!).

This month I have finally managed to make myself stick to a schedule (mostly, anyway) when it comes to his sleep.  I would have thought, knowing myself and how I like to make lists and schedules, that this would have happened on its own long ago.  The problem is that even if things are going good, I have to wonder if a change would make it even better, so I change it up.  And we get thrown off.  So the past few weeks this is the schedule I've been keeping.

6:30-7am - His wakeup.  If he wakes up earlier he has to stay in bed til then.  If he is still asleep past 7:15 or so I wake him up.  The vast majority of mornings he wakes around 7am though.  I give him his medicine first thing.

8:00am - Nurse

8:30am - Fruit and Cereal

9:00am - Nap#1.  Finally these are stretching out to be an hour or more.

11:30am - Nurse

1pm - Nap#2.  Ideally, an hour or more.  Unfortunately though this one is still often short (30min).  I have been letting him cry for up to an hour.  Once he went back to sleep for another 45 min.  It's really frustrating when this one is short because a third nap comes at a really awkward time and can interfere with his bedtime.

3:00pm - Nurse

4pm - Variable Nap#3

6:00pm - Medicine

6:30pm - Nurse

7:00pm - Veggies

7:15pm - Bath

7:45pm - Nurse

8:00pm - Bedtime

Then he'll usually wake up around 2 or 3am for another feeding.


There are still improvements to be made.  His naps are still too short, and his bedtime is still too late.  This isn't just my opinion - short naps are indicative of over tiredness.  His bedtime was earlier - we tried for over 2 weeks to get him to go to bed at 7.  The problem was not getting him to sleep, it was getting him to stay asleep.  But I know that those wakeups that came after the earlier bedtime are also an indication of not getting enough sleep.  I know it sounds crazy.  But babies his age need at least 14 hours of sleep, and he's only getting about 13 on good days.  It doesn't sound like a big gap, but that hour or more that he doesn't get every day is what is causing the problems that we're having.  Most people don't realize how much sleep babies actually need.

I found a Godsend, Weissbluth has a blog.  While he can't answer all of the questions himself, there are a lot of moms on there who are extremely helpful. 

Babies Declan's age who are successfully on the Weissbluth method go to bed before 6pm, have 1 or 2 wake ups for night feedings, sleep until 6-7am, and take 2-3 solid (1-2hr) naps per day.  The bedtime is early, and yes, it does limit what we can do in the evenings a lot.  Our church meets at night.  We had determined a long time ago that Sunday nights would be an exception, a night where he could stay up later.  But now I'm wanting to get back into doing the Women's Bible Study on Wednesday nights, as well as Zumba on Thursday nights.  So it is a conflict.

I am having to remember a few principles.  One is that it is important to protect the sleep schedule.  Now that he's older, I don't have to be home all the time.  The time between his 2nd nap (once he drops the 3rd nap) and bedtime will be a great time to get him out of the house, but we'll need to be back in time to get him in bed.  The second principle is one that my Great Grandmother taught me - to give them the first year.  As a mom, you really give them more than that, but it is helpful for staying strong and justifying your "strange behavior" to others when they don't understand why you don't want to go out after 6pm.  I have been accused of "not living."  That's not it at all.  It's just that I am giving Declan the first year.  I'm trying to set him up to be well-rested, comfortable, secure.  I'm trying to give him good sleeping and eating habits that he will hopefully carry for the rest of his life. 

Anyway, I have a small soapbox for this.  Maybe I'll express myself fully in another entry.  For now, my little boy is asleep and I should be too.  Goodnight (c: