Athene Numphe

Last Saturday night (so not last night, but the Saturday night a week before), while we were getting Little Prince ready for bed he asked to sleep in his room. He’s asked a few times before but it was always on weeknight and Darius and I didn’t want to try it then. But since it was on a weekend, we figured why not?

Back in the Fall we got a king sized bed for our room, so we moved our queen to the guest room and the (very old, OMG why do we still have this college futon???) full mattress to Little Prince’s room. Since then we started doing the occasional nap in there, with more frequency since the new year started.

Nap time, aka Help, my arm’s stuck

Even with that, it was still a total shock to me that he was insistent in wanting to sleep in his own room at night. I was so not ready for it. I’d slept next to him for over 2.5 years and I wasn’t sure if I could handle it. But as Darius reminded me, the point of Attachment Parenting is that the child feels secure in their independence and will take the steps when they are ready. So we put him to sleep in his own room. And I fretted a bit that night. Around 1 or 2 AM I heard him crying out and found him at the top of the stairs, so I brought him back to our room because I’m just more comfortable on my bed.

Since that night he’s slept in his room the first part of the night and at around 1 or 2 in the morning I’ll wake up and notice him next to me and then fall back asleep. The only exceptions to this were Thursday night and last night when he asked to sleep in mommy and daddy’s room. He also asked to nap in our room on Saturday. I think the novelty of his own room is wearing off a bit. But since he’s still falling asleep in there, I think we’ll keep putting him to bed in there (except when he’s insistent about being in our room).

I must say that as much as I miss him a bit sometimes, it’s nice to have our room back in the evenings and for falling asleep (especially since I know he’ll be in at some point before the morning). We can put our clothing away after we fold it. We can read in bed with a low light on. Hey, I’m even writing this post in bed right now on my laptop (Darius is “breathing heavily” next to me).

It’s funny, I always thought we’d have to do the move his mattress away from our bed, then move it against the wall, then slowly move it toward his room thing. And here he goes and is just ready to have his own space.

Originally published at my baby blog. Please leave any comments there.

Well, it looks like we’re actually on the path to a nice natural slow baby-led weaning.

6 months or so ago Little Prince was still breastfeeding/taking milk at daycare a good 8-10 times a day. I’d say 3 months ago it was still 6-8 times a day. Now we seem to be down to about 5 times a day. He’s also eating more, which is probably partially just growing up and partially getting in his molars with canines not that far behind (oh our night times are fun these days!).

About six months ago Darius and I encouraged a bit of night weaning using the Jay Gordon Method (modified). Instead of picking a middle of the night 7 hour stretch, we picked from when he fell asleep (usually around 8:30-9) until 2am to be the time that “milk was asleep.” It hasn’t always been easy. Sometimes, like when he’s sick or teething, we add a few more sessions back in. But most of the time this gives Darius and I a bit of evening time to ourselves and at least a few hours for me of uninterrupted sleep (before we started this, Little Prince was waking up every 2-3 hours to nurse… the joys of reverse-cycling). Sometime around the holidays I noticed that sometimes 2am was more like 3am, occasionally even 4am. But there would be a long long feed or three before it was time to get up for the day. Just recently I realized that the number of feeds overnight has seemed to drop to a 2 or 3am feed and then a 5 or 6 am feed. We’ve generally dropped a night session. I was going to start encouraging this in April (after the March craziness died down), but it looks like LP is starting to do this on his own.

Back in late January or early February, Little Prince’s awesome daycare teacher informed me that he was not drinking all the milk I was sending with him each day; he was starting to ask for water instead. So I started sending about 6oz instead of 8oz. Yesterday I found out that he’s not even drinking all of that. So now I’m going to start sending about 4-5oz. It was funny because she seemed so remorseful when she told me, but I was super excited that he was making this choice on his own. I think next month I’m going to ask them to always offer him water first instead of milk, because I plan on stopping pumping at work around LP’s second birthday. While we still have some freezer stash left, it’s not what it once was and I’m definitely pumping less milk than I was three months ago.

A few weeks ago I noticed that over the weekend (when Little Prince use to nurse about five times from when he woke up until when I put him to sleep), he had dropped the mid-morning and mid-afternoon nurse.

Ever since I started work, when Little Prince was 11 weeks old, we (almost) always had a reconnecting nursing session when we saw each other again. When he was a little, little one, this was a 45-60min nurse-nap session. As he’s gotten older, it’s been more like 10-15 minutes. In the past few months it’s been “Couch, mommy, more milk…more milk, other side.” He says it “meelk” which is super cute. But in the past week or so he mostly hasn’t asked for milk when I’ve gotten home. It’s kind of bittersweet for me, because I liked that reconnecting moment. That time where I could put aside my work day, relax, and become mommy again. But I’ve been getting a huge hug from him instead, so it isn’t all sad.

Of course I still breastfeed him when he gets hurt or surprise-hurt. Sometimes he even says “hurt, ouch, milk” through his tears. I guess I’m doing (mostly) don’t offer, (mostly) don’t refuse. I still offer at bedtime and weekend nap time. And sometimes I’ll try distraction/other food/water push off to see if he’s more interested in that.

As for going to bed at night, I still offer every night and he still nurses in bed, but sometimes he doesn’t fall asleep from it. Lately he’ll alternate asking for milk and for water. Sometimes I think water is a distraction/I don’t want to go to bed technique. And the whole daylight savings time thing really threw us off. Still, I guess it’s time to start figuring out how to get him to fall asleep on his bed and without milk, other than walking him, which always works but I really don’t want that to be the only way he’ll ever fall asleep.

Originally published at my baby blog. Please leave any comments there.

Well, I guess I can’t think of my Little Prince as an infant anymore. He is 100% a toddler.

When LP and I walked into daycare on Tuesday, the director looked up and said, “LP’s mom.” At first I was worried something was wrong, but then she told me that he’s progressing so well that they wanted to start transitioning him from Infant C to Toddler 1 (the 18-24 month room). She wanted to make sure that I was okay with it. I asked if she thought that he was developmentally ready and she said that he was. So I said Ok. I brought him into the Toddler 1 class and he immediately seemed comfortable there. He’s been in class with some of those children before so it’s not all new to him.

I had two thoughts going through my head the whole time:
1. My little baby is growing up so fast!
2. Aww yeah, my kid is developmentally ahead of the other kids in his age range. My kid’s so smart ~does the Cabbage Patch arm thing~

Apparently he loves being in the Toddler room. He didn’t even want to go into Infant C at first this morning. They work on things like drinking from open cups and standing diaper changes and even some potty training (if the child is ready for it). And he’ll even be getting some Spanish. I’m so super excited for him.

Of course on the flip side, we also got the 18 month sleep regression early; joy of joys.

Also over the weekend we went to a local church that had a large number of pumpkins. We picked out a large pumpkin (and two small ones).

Originally published at my baby blog. Please leave any comments there.

I usually try to blog (when I get the chance) about the good stuff going on. But I want to record about the past two night.

A bit of background:
From about 3 months until about 11.5 months, LP’s sleep habits were 1-2 naps at daycare, then a 30-60 minute nurse-nap in my arms when I got home from work. Somewhere around 11.5 months he started to transition to one longer nap during the day at daycare, a short nurse with me when I got home (no nap), and a bedtime of about 7:30pm (although he still wakes every two hours or so to nurse). For a long time I was okay with this, but I’ve started to think about trying to get more sleep. So I’ve been reading and slowly implementing some of the ideas in The No-Cry Sleep Solution. I really like this book as it talks about everything being a process, reminding the parents to give it time, and offering a bunch of different ideas to slowly implement as it may work for their family (or not).

So now we have a nighttime routine. It starts around 7:15 with a bath (either a “full” bath with hair and body washing or just a “play” bath), then I put him in an overnight diaper, Darius puts him in pajamas, I help him “brush his teeth” and then nurse him until he’s almost totally asleep, but try to pop him off the breast before he’s fully asleep. Generally this works really well and he’s totally out and I can leave the room by 8-8:15. Then the rule is if he wakes before it gets dark out, he’s mine to nurse back to sleep, but any waking once it gets dark until we go to bed is Darius’s turn. Then once we go to bed, he’s mine to put back to sleep with nursing until he wakes up (usually between 6:45 and 7:15am) or I wake him up (by 7:30am).

Last night as we were giving LP his bath, I mentioned to Darius that things were going really well in terms of getting LP to go to sleep easily. Famous last words, right? Last night he did not fall asleep while nursing for about 10-15 minutes. In fact, he did not want to go to sleep at all. It was back like it use to be when he was excited or animated or we missed the “sleep-window” and he got overtired and refused to lie down and go to sleep. And I found myself getting more and more frustrated with LP. Didn’t he know that I had other things to do after he went to bed? That there was stuff in the kitchen to clean, cat things to take care of, and items to prep for the next day? That I wanted, maybe, to spend some alone time with his father? Of course he didn’t know that but as the minutes ticked by I got more and more angry and more and more frustrated. I tried to keep it in. To project calm. I asked Darius to come in and try to walk with him for a while while I calmed down, but LP started screaming “mama” so that wasn’t working. I tried again, but eventually realized that I was so angry I almost wanted to harm my own child. So I called Darius in again and let him know that I needed just five minutes to walk away so I could calm down and not be angry at a little person who was obviously overtired and upset about something. After I was able to calm down, I came back upstairs and got LP into my mei tai. I then spent the next I-don’t-know-how-long walking around the bedroom with him, singing to him, and rubbing his back, while he kicked, flailed, screamed, and tried to get away from me. Eventually he fell asleep. A while later I was able to put him down on the bed, still asleep, and had a bit of time alone with Darius to talk about what happened and why we both reacted the way we did, watch tv, and take care of paperwork before we went to bed. I was worried that LP would wake up super early in the morning cause he went to sleep so late, but he woke around his normal time.

Tonight was also bad. Did the same routine as always. He looked like he was going to nurse to sleep no problem…but all of a sudden it was rolling over and giggling and everything just like last night. This time I sat up with him tight in my arms and held him, rocked him, and sang to him ,while giving him the option to nurse if he wanted to. Eventually he was crying, but starting to be calmer, but then throwing his head back upset again. So I laid him down on the bed and nursed him. Then he rolled away from me with his eyes closed, rolled onto his back, rolled back onto his side and was fully asleep.

I have no idea why there’s been a change in the past two nights. Maybe the pre-bedtime time has been too stimulating? Or it’s very possible that he’s teething and/or hit one of those major cognitive/developmental milestone weeks. Whatever it is, I’m glad that tonight was easier than last night. Here’s hoping tomorrow is even easier.

Next morning update: At 2am last night I woke up and LP was starting to roll around. I put him to my breast like I do. He sucked for maybe a minute the rolled away from me onto his bed. He rolled onto his back and proceeded to vomit straight up into the air so it came right back down onto his face. I sat him up and he threw up twice more before I could get him off the bed. I gently woke up Darius who dealt with LP's bed (so thankful for waterproof mattress covers!), while I dealt with the mommy and baby clean up. It then took another hour or so for LP and I to fall back asleep, but this time there was no screaming or crying. He's nursed a few times since and seems to be doing better. It's going to be a LONG day for me! Also now have random mommy guilt that I was angry with my child who was sick but I didn't know it.

Originally published at my baby blog. Please leave any comments there.