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;

OMG, we have a REAL baby!

I don't know if this happens to all new moms, but lately the fact that we have a real live baby, and yes we are really living this life, hits me like cold water to the face.  He does all of these famous baby things, like sitting up, shaking rattles, smiling and babbling, grabbing my face, hugging/kissing, etc.  He's starting to show preferences and opinion.  Sometimes he doesn't want to play in his jumper, he'd rather roll around on the floor.  And sometimes he wants be held and bounced.  Sometimes he is thrilled to be kissed on, and other times he just wants that object 6 inches out of reach and could care less about me. 

All of these things make him more and more of a real person to me.  Our relationship is awakening by leaps and bounds this month.  As Gail put it, my heart is "tied to his."  I miss him when he goes down for the night and it will be hours before I see him again (I don't miss him much during his 30 minute daytime naps...).  I love seeing him hold a toy close to his face, analyzing and calculating.  Then just a second later, wave his arms wildly and suddenly topple sideways. 

Despite the many times he's given me hope of his naps lengthening, he still takes only 30 minute naps for the most part.  He usually wakes up smiling, so I am assuming he's getting enough rest.  So it may be til he's 12-18 months til he starts taking long ones.  I'm finally beginning to accept it and realize that the occasional 2 hour nap does not indicate the breaking of a new normal.  Sheesh.

Nighttime sleep is mostly good.  We have improvements to make, and we've started using that darned ol' sleep training to get there.  After cereal, a bath, and one last feeding, he is either zonked and I can put him in his crib immediately or I rock him for a few minutes first.  We shoot for between 7:00 and 7:30 bedtime.  He goes down really easy, and life would be a dream, but 45 minutes later he winds up.  Ryan would go in there and burp him and calm him down for a second, and then we'd let him cry himself back to sleep.  It is tortuous.  The first night was an hour and a half, with Ryan going in there periodically to turn him over, rewrap him, and give him back his pacifier.  The second night we were encouraged when he cried only 45 minutes.  The third night, he cried for 6 minutes.  Fourth night, for 2 minutes.  We thought we were home free on the 5th night, but he cried for an hour and a half again.  We realized I had forgotten to give him his acid reflux medicine, so we got him up and let him stay up so we could wait the allotted amount of time and then feed him one more time and put him back to sleep.  That was last week.

This week I'm working on being  ALOT more consistent.  I'm taking Weissbluth's advice finally (he has always been right for us, I don't know why I try to experiment a bunch before realizing this again and again).  After 4 months, babies can start adjusting their sleep rhythms to a clock schedule (before 4 months, its best just to watch and respond to their drowsy signals--but have a set bedtime always!)  The past 3 days, Declan wakes between 6:15 and 7:30 (I'm bad, I should be waking him up at 7!), he takes his first nap at 9-9:30am, then 11-11:30am, 1:30-2:00pm, then 4-4:30pm.  And of course bedtime is 7-7:30.  Sometimes I'm tempted to put him down early if he's being a grump, or keep him up if he seems more wakeful, but I am curious to see how a fairly rigid schedule works for him since we've never tried it very consistently so I'm standing firm!  Hopefully between that and the sleep training, he'll stay down after bedtime until his feeding around 2:30am.  And okay, a small part of me still hopes his naps will suddenly grow longer with routine...

I've changed up his feeding routine, too.  I was totally over-zealous with the solid foods thing.  He keeps them down so well and enjoys the cereal so much (plus the whole novelty of it) that I jumped ahead and gave him 2 feedings a day as cereal when you're supposed to start out with one.  I justified it because we started solids kinda late -- at almost 5 months.  I didn't really tie it together because it was gradual - his feedings grew shorter and fussier, but oddly, he wanted to eat more often (I still don't really understand that).  So last week I stopped giving him his mid-morning cereal and just kept the evening feeding.  Within a day, his nursing sessions were more prolonged and relaxed.  His "I'm hungry" and "I'm full" signals are not ambiguous anymore since instead of fussing 30 seconds into the feeding, he will nurse good and then stop, smile, and if I offer him more he will either do so or push away.  So I'm super happy with that.

He's still dealing with the reflux.  Last week I reached 4 weeks of dairy elimination and took him off of the Prevacid to see if things had improved.  After being off of the medicine for a day, the symptoms came rushing back and it was clear that dairy was not the culprit.  I am changing pediatricians, so maybe we'll get some fresh ideas and a GI specialist referral.  Our other pediatrician is an excellent and qualified doctor, it's just that he makes me feel stupid.  He's kinda snippy.  When I felt the Zantac was not working for us, I asked him about what I should do.  He just said, "Take him off of it."  And I was like... well, what about the reflux?  I felt like I was having to drag information out of him.  Anyway, I've always kind of thought that, and that last experience was just enough to make me think we might do better with another doctor.

Doing better all the time, for the most part.  Gotta go make some supper.  Another day gone, but it was a productive one (c:

5 Months Old: Cereal, and of course Sleep

Declan turned 5 months old last Thursday.  It's hard to believe he's already this close to 6 months!  We started him on rice cereal on November 6, 10 days before he turned 5 months old.  He loved it and he did so well! 

 

  He's sleeping better, going to bed at 7:30pm, getting up between 3 and 4 to eat, then going back to sleep until about 7:30am.  The past few mornings he's woken up with smiles and coos.  His naps are getting longer, too.

In the past week, he's gotten better at rolling back to front.  He seems to do well with both right and left rolling.  He'll sometimes sit up on his own for several seconds, but he usually gets interested in his feet and leans so far forward that he topples over.  So he's close, but not quite sitting up yet.

We've got two toys that he can bounce in.  A saucer-thing, and a Johnny Jump Up.  Once he started using these (the saucer at 4 months and the Johnny Jump Up at 4 months, 3 weeks), his core and leg strength developed rapidly.  Within days, he went from being slumped over in the saucer seat to sitting up straight and bouncing vigorously. Jumping is such a favorite activity now that he squirms when you hold him until he's standing in your lap and he'll jump, jump, jump, jump....

Day 1 in the saucer - needed a blanket for core support.

A month later - confident, strong, and loving it!

His hair is thinning out a lot, but he's still got some patches of really long, dark hair, and it's curly!  Under the dark hair, he's got some blond/light brown, thicker hair coming in.  I noticed a little bit of cradle cap about a week ago.  I put some tea tree oil on it, which I do not recommend.  I do think it helped, but the smell was so potent that I think it bothered him and I couldn't get it out without washing his hair - even still it filled his nursery and may have given him a headache - it gave me one!

Vocally, he's a little chatter box.  He'll babble, "Gah gah gah mmmmbah! Grrrrrr-aaaaaaaa-mmm Mam!"  He's also taken to grabbing our mouths and faces (sometimes gently, sometimes notsomuch), and he'll pull our faces to him so he can plant his open-mouthed baby kisses on it.  He's often very aggressive and serious about these kisses and they are accompanied by some growls or "mmm"s.  And I love, love when he wraps both of his chubby little arms around my neck and squeezes.  What an awesome kid!

We've introduced him to some loud noises lately.  I make his rice and oatmeal cereals at home with our Ninja blender.  I thought since I was going to be doing it every 3 days or so, he should be comfortable with the sound.  It took some holding and reassuring words, but he is now adjusted to it and it doesn't phase him.  Today I decided it was time that he got acquainted with the vacuum cleaner - especially with his growing independence and mobility - I will need to vacuum more often!  By counting to 3 before turning it on each time, he grew comfortable with it within a few minutes.  By the time I was vacuuming the 2nd room in our apartment, he was playing happily with his toys and ignoring the machine.

Mom says she thinks he's more into his toys than my siblings or I were.  He does love them and will play with them for much of his wake time.  Some of his favorites are a beanie giraffe that my boss' family gave him, a squishy red truck from work, toys attached to his saucer, a crinkly basketball, and a little music machine that my mom and sister brought him on their last visit. 

This past weekend, we noticed him getting his knees under his body and scooting backwards.  Maybe my mom's prediction is right - crawling by Christmas?