Little Miss at 10 months

Posted by Caroline Elliott

LM 10 mths old Our little lady is 10 months old and boy is her development just whizzing now. She seems to master a new skill every couple of days at the most and is growing up in front of our eyes with her little personality blossoming too.

As always I just think she is so gorge!

So, what is she up to? Well in my last post about her I said how she was starting to crawl, and well now she is seriously crawling! Although she would still prefer to try and walk she will crawl to get where she wants to go. Monkey wasn’t a crawler at all so I do love having a crawly baby – though I do feel like I need to have eyes in the back of my head as she can really go some distance.

I also need to have eyes in the back of my head as she has now well and truly mastered the pulling herself up on, oh, just about anything she can grab.

Combined with the crawling and we find her in some interesting positions. Including trying desperately to grab my laptop (which she adores bashing)…

I have actually just moved my laptop out of reach here as she was already grabbing the side of the screen when I found her and legged it over. I have previously found her fallen forward onto the toy box having half pulled the laptop off the table. I really should find a new home for it I think!!

Another day, after playing with banging some bowls and tins I nipped off and came back to find her climbing on one of the bowls… cheeky madam.

Then Daddy sent me this shot when I was having some time “off” with a friend. He was helping Monkey use the loo and came back to find the madam in the kitchen playing with hoover and brush… start them cleaning young eh? 🙂

So she is everywhere getting into everything now, aaargh! Though I do love it when I find she has pottered off somewhere and is investigating a toy box or examining a book or something. We do have to be very careful about what is within reach though!

She is so controlled now at not only getting up but also gently lowering herself back down to the floor…. that is unless she wants to practice her latest skill which is standing unaided. She only started that this week but she is getting so so stable now and honestly she is so proud of herself! She can spend ages pulling herself up, standing with no hands, falling on her bottom and repeating, all with a huge grin on her face. So cute 🙂

There has been some nasty face-plants though so she had a teeny cut on her lip and a bruise on her forehead poor thing. Feels horrible to not quite catch her in time but I guess she has to learn and she is definitely getting better at falling backwards rather than forwards now!

She now has 7 teeth (love her toothy grin) so we have started the teeth cleaning routine. She hated it at first but after a couple of days she got used to it and is now really good at having her teeth cleaned. We made up a little teeth clean song when Monkey was little which we now sing to both of them which I think does help.

We need to clean her teeth though now as she eats basically what we eat all of the time and I am so pleased to say that at the moment there is very little she doesn’t like, and she adores fruit, unlike her fussy big brother. Her breakfast every morning is strawberries and blueberries and maybe some mini shredded wheats or something similar and she tucks in like mad. Mealtimes are such a messy affair though so I am constantly washing all in one bibs and scrubbing the highchair and floor to get all of the crumbs, rice, bits of fruit, etc. Let me tell you standing barefoot on a half eaten blueberry is not a nice feeling!!

I think her reflux is improving (touch wood, fingers crossed, etc, etc.) We have been giving her ranitidine religously since her last flare up and she has been fine… but as we were running out we thought before getting more from the drs that it was worth seeing how she got on without it for a few days. It has been a few days and so far so good so we will see how she gets on over the next week or so. We do have a little left still if we need it but it would be nice if we don’t need to medicate her really!

Her sleep has been all over the place lately and I think it may just be because of all the development and the fact she just wants to crawl and climb and stand constantly. She is such a fidget pants that I think she really struggles to calm down at nap time. I had about a week of her only napping once a day and was convinced she was dropping a nap… but then we had a terrible terrible night on Thursday with her screaming constantly, which is very unlike her as she has always slept well at bedtime. It took hubs well over an hour of singing and rocking her to sleep before she would stop fidgeting and waking herself up. Since then she has been a bit more normal with naps, still a bit fussy but she is napping better. So we shall see what happens this week I think!

What else is she up to? She now waves a little and it is so cute though she seems a bit surprised by what her hand is doing! Another little development is that she is really aware of people now. She very much wants Mummy all the time and if someone else is walking her round then she will make a beeline for me. But she also gets upset when other people leave. She balls if we stand and watch Daddy leave in the morning, and when Nanny & Pops took monkey out she did the same! So cute bless her she just wants to be involved with whats going on and clearly doesn’t want to be left behind!

Other firsts this month have been her first ride in the supermarket trolley – which she adores and it does make life easier in the supermarket not having to hold a basket and push a buggy – and her first proper shoes! Now she is standing and walking so much whenever we go anywhere I thought it was time for some proper supportive cruiser shoes rather than just pretty flimsy ones. She has been barefoot most of the summer as she hates wearing shoes and tends to kick them off (we have lots of single shoes now as she manages to kick them off without me noticing and I can never find them again!!) but she is going to have to get used to it and her new ones are at least a little harder to kick off.

She is such a smily, happy little lady in general and is a joy to be around. She adores playing peepo, going on the swing, being tickled and loves watching her brother laugh – just seeing him chuckle is enough to give her the giggles. She melts our hearts every day with her gorgeous smile and the way she beams at us when she is happy. She can of course be hard work but she really is so lovely and I love watching her grow into a little person.

This year is going very very fast all of a sudden!

Stealth Shuffling & Sleep Regression at 8mths

Posted by Caroline Elliott

We have been having a bit of an interesting time with our Little Miss of late. In many ways she has settled down, her teething and reflux aren’t bothering her quite so much and on the whole she is a very happy, sunny, smily baby and she can be a joy to be around. But she has reached a point where she very much wants to be on the move and that is making things interesting.

For quite a while now she has been really content to sit and play with toys. Honestly it has been amazing as Monkey never really did this. She focuses so intently on toys and can sit for ages and entertain herself while I play or craft something with Monkey or potter about with some jobs.

Now though, she so wants to explore wider surroundings. She is desperate to crawl and making slow progress towards being able to, with lots of rolling onto her tummy and pushing up. She also has quite an amazing skill, the stealth shuffle.

I mentioned a while ago that she liked to bum shuffle in the bath and she now does that in front of her eyes. But the interesting thing is that it is very difficult to detect her movement. She leans forward and sits back up and twists and turns around but seems to be in the same spot… but then all of a sudden she is on the over side of the room and we weren’t really aware of the move happening!

Nanny & Pops looked after her today and even they remarked on it. Our little stealth shuffler!

It won’t be long until she crawls either so we need to be even more vigilant about what is on the floor or within reach of little arms. A whole new world 🙂

Blurry shot… but you get the idea!

She is also moving around in bed a lot too and as a result we are struggling a little at nap times and bedtime which, to be honest, is driving us potty. We sleep trained quite young and she has been a fantastic sleeper, as long as she is tired and nothing else is bothering her. But lately even when she is tired and we can find nothing else to be the matter she is miserable about going to sleep and gets very very unhappy.

She also moves herself all over the cot and we come to check on her and find her rolled over, turned sideways, back to front, legs stuck through bars and all over the place. I won’t go into details but it has been stressful and there has been lots of rocking to sleep at a loss of what else to do sometimes.

I’ve read that 8 month sleep regression is common, though again it wasn’t something we experienced with Monkey,and are hoping it is just a phase! Anyone else been through this?

Once she is asleep she still sleeps well and wakes up very happy… we are just at a bit of a loss as to how we can help her remember how to fall asleep in her bed again!

Little Miss is 4 Months old!

Posted by Caroline Elliott

After the difficult early weeks the time really does fly with babies! We are at 4 months already and they grow and change so much in these first months don’t they? She is 13lb 1oz, still on the 25th precentile line for weight, but she is tall/long and at 36cm she is on I think the 91st percentile line for height! She is a gorgeous little girl but is still quite challenging at times.

So what is she up to?

Feeding and Pooing

We are still using the lactose free formula at the moment and for a while after we stopped the gaviscon, all seemed well and her movements got a bit easier. Lately though she has been constipated again a few times and we are at a bit of a loss as to why really. The other thing is that she doesn’t poo in her nappy. Ever. She will only poo with her nappy off and generally with a bit of help – bicycle legs and lifting of legs. It is a situation which started out of necessity and then became normal and now we are remembering that it isn’t normal, and we certainly weren’t expecting to be doing it at this point. We had thought that by removing the gaviscon her movements would be better and we wouldn;t need to do it anymore, but it hasn’t happened the way we thought it would.

As she is 4 months she should be growing out of her lactose intolerance in theory so we have just bought some normal formula and are going to try her on that. the Lactose free formula can cause constipation so we are hoping that a change in formula will solve all of our problems. FIngers crossed she doesn’t still have a problem with lactose and it works, otherwise we will be of the the GP again! Sorry if TMI about her bowels but it takes up a lot of our attention at the moment!

Sleeping

She still sleeps really well after her sleep training a couple of months ago, which is brilliant. Her little body clock is pretty rigid at night and she goes down at 7 almost every night, regardless of what has happened! Whether she wakes up in the night is more variable, sometimes she lulls us into a false sense of security, sleeping through til anywhere between 530 and 630am or about a week, and then suddenly waking up famished at anywhere between midnight and 3 am for a few days. Because of the varing sleep patterns we still have no daytime routine to speak of (aaaah) though I am very much hoping that a pattern may settle too. We are very much baby led on routine fronts because I just don;t understand how you can force a baby to sleep at certain times or wake up at certain times. I just don’t get it. I wish I did but I don’t. Monkey’s routine fell into place around 4 1/2 mths and I am hoping hers will too. Because she sleeps in her cot we rarely see her asleep but a couple of times this month she has dozed off on me after a difficult afternoon (and once after her jabs :() so we have some shots of sleeping so peacefully!

For the most part we get it right and we put her down at the right level of tired and she goes off to sleep without a peep. other times we get it wrong and I hate it as I am convinced she is tired, only for her to ball. Sometimes she wants to go to sleep after being awake for an hour and a half, other times she will be awake for a good few hours, fussing intermittently but definitely not ready to sleep. I don’t cope well with the sound of babies crying, makes me feel like an abject failure to be perfectly honest so I really look forward to the day when we have a routine so it is a bit less guess work! Teething is playing a role in this but more on that below.

Playing

She loves lying on her playmat and batting at her toys. Her favourite is a pink Jellycat Octopus which we were sent to review before she was born. Monkey was too big to get much enjoyment out of it at the time, but she loves it! She loves her playmat more now too and chuckles away at the flashing lights and dangling butterflies above her head.

She also has a slightly random sense of humour. One thing guaranteed to make her chuckle is Bing Bunny. It is one of her big brother’s favourite TV programmes so it is on pretty regularly, anf well, she loves it, chuckles away at it. Makes me feel like a terrible mother introducing her to TV so young but , ah well I suppose!

chuckling away at Bing Bunny

So far not so random I know, but the other thing almost guaranteed to make her laugh is the pink soap standing on the bathroom sink. Every night after her bath, Monkey has his and often she and I will come and stand in the bathroom to chat to Daddy & Monkey. I stand opposite the sink and she chuckles away for ages. At first we thought it was the taps, being all shiny and sparkly, but nope. Turns out it is the pink soap that makes her chuckle away! See, random eh?

Giggling at her favourite soap bottle!!

Other Development

She is so strong now and still loves sitting up though can’t hold herself up at the moment (she falls forward) she loves being propped up by pillows and surveying the scene.

She is getting happier on her tummy sometimes and she has rolled from her tummy to her back. She did it, just once, nearly a month ago, seemed to scare the heck out of herself and hasn’t quite managed it again since lol! She lifts her head beautifully when she is on her tummy though.

Teeth

We have been convinced she was starting to teethe for a while because of all the dribbling and because of the general fussiness that has become common, and well we are now ever more certain that we are right as there is the little speck of white on her lower gum of a tooth about to pop through! I know it is early but Monkey cut his first tooth at 4 months so it doesn’t come as too great a surprise. Her upper canines also seem to bother her a lot and seem quite close to the surface so maybe they won’t be too far behind either. We shall have to see I guess.

I hate teething though. I hate it. We have an amber anklet which despite high hopes and reading success stories from other bloggers, I am just not convinced I’m afraid. She is still uber grumbly and obviously in pain a lot (I daren;t take it off though in case she is worse without it!!). We also use teething granules, teething gel and have been sent some teethers to review that so far she won’t have anything to do with. Despite all of this though there are days when she will only sleep, or just generally stop whinging and crying, when she has had calpol or baby nurofen. I hate having to give these to her, especially as she doesn’t have a fever or anything, but she is so much better when I do and it is survival as much as anything. I just hate to see her in pain and she can just be so miserable sometimes at the moment which I find really quite exhausting 🙁 Poor thing.

When she is not in pain she is generally a smily little girl and I hope that once these first teeth make an appearance that things will start to improve and we will see more smiles, and less medicine!

How Ferber’s “Progressive Wait” approach helped our children sleep better

Posted by Caroline Elliott

Before Monkey was born, whenever any friends were having troubles getting their little ones to sleep and they mentioned leaving them to cry themselves to sleep, I thought it seemed like a pretty sensible idea. Then when Monkey was born, I realised it wasn’t that simple, and the thought of doing it felt really really cruel. With him spending hours each day screaming in pain with his colic, neither hubs or I could bear the thought of leaving him to cry himself to sleep.

Monkey fast asleep – on his daddy not in bed!

So we did what many parents do and helped him to sleep. We rocked and shushed and patted, drove him round in the car, took him out in the buggy and let him suck our fingers. We tried to use a dummy though could never get him to take one! We did anything that worked and our lives and sleep revolved around getting him to sleep and keeping him that way. Honestly? It was exhausting, and miserable. I spent a lot of time crying and feared for my mental health. So after a few months of this we started looking for other ways. We tried “The Baby Whisperer” but didn’t manage with her techniques at all. If anything her pick up/put down technique just seemed to mean that Monkey screamed louder and for longer. Every child is different but at the time we blamed ourselves.

I remember people saying to me “maybe he just isn’t tired” or “maybe he doesn’t need the sleep” if I complained I couldn’t get him to sleep. But to me the answer to that was then why is he miserable? He was clearly tired. I had no problem with a child who was awake and happy to be, my frustration came from comforting a child who was miserable and clearly tired, but who refused to stay asleep!

Although we had initially discounted the possibility of “cry it out” techniques, we eventually got desperate and came across Dr Ferber’s progressive wait method. It seemed a little kinder than what I had thought of as “cry it out”so we decided to look into it more. I wanted to make sure we did it properly, if we were going to do it at all, so I bought his book “Solve your Child’s Sleep Problems“* from amazon and had a read. This book covers children of all ages with problems sleeping, with advice on anything from night terrors to sleep walking. The section we were interested in though is about younger children and helping them sleep better without being rocked, etc. There is far more information than I could hope to convey so if you are having problems, I strongly recommend that you have a read.
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The truth about life with newborns

Posted by Caroline Elliott

It has been just over a month since Little Miss arrived and well and truly became part of our family. As gorgeous as she is though, life with a newborn can be really hard, and exhausting. For all parents to be, here is some of the things you should know about life with a newborn (and for those of you who are already parents, I wonder if this will ring any bells!)

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Time for a big boy bed?

Posted by Caroline Elliott

We have been doing a lot of thinking lately about when the time is right to put Monkey in a big boy bed, how best to do it, and how will it go?

It’s difficult to know when is the right age to do this. He loves is cot and so we’d be happy keeping him in there longer, and he never tries to climb out of it. But he is very tall for his age, so his cot is starting to get a bit small for him and he bangs the sides all the time. Also, because we are thinking about baby no 2, we don’t want him to feel he is being pushed out of his cot to make way for the baby and so would rather he is well and truly happy in his bed before baby needs to use the cot. Seeing as I’m not even preggo yet I know we have a while, so we aren’t rushing into it, but it is on our minds a lot at the moment.

We started looking around at toddler beds and to start with we weren’t really sure which way to go, some have no side bits, some have short side bits near the head, while others have really tall sides until about 1/2 way along. So which one to go for? Like I say he bangs on the sides of his cot so does that mean he is likely to fall out of his bed to start with? Should we get one with a guard or just put something soft on the floor in case he falls out?

We decided the best thing was to physically go and see some beds so off we trotted to the shops to have a look and get a feel for them. It was good for Monkey too as he was climbing on one and we played getting in and out of the bed while we were there as we thought that may help him feel involved in the decision. There was a sale on and a further 15% off so we decided to go for it and got a lovely toddler bed, with a short side at the head, and mattress for £80 :).

There is still a lot we are unsure of though. He’s been in sleepy bags since he was tiny and any blanket that goes in with him gets snuggled with rather than used as a cover, so we are unsure how he will get on with a duvet. He’s never had a pillow either so I think we are going to go for the thinnest possible pillow, at least to start with! We are going to take him to have a look at bedding with us so he can help choose it. I understand that helps make the transition as it gets them excited about it?? I wonder whether it is worth making the change from sleep bag to duvet while still in his cot, so when he does go in his bed it isn’t such a big change? Plus the sleepy bags are almost too small for him now, even the biggest size. I just worry about him getting cold…

The main thing we are unsure of though is the when and how. Do we literally do a straight swap and take down his cot and build the new bed at the same time, with no crossover, or do we try and have both bed and cot in there for a day or two so he can get used to the idea of the bed? Would that ease the transition or make things worse? And when is best to start, at nap time or bedtime?

Are we just over-thinking all of this (it wouldn’t be the first time!) Should we just get over ourselves and do it? I always worry when it comes to changing Monkey’s routines but he usually surprises me by taking it all in his stride.

There are some other things to prepare too – we need to secure his furniture to the wall and make sure everything is safe in there – when he will be able to get out of bed on his own we need to make sure he can’t hurt himself in his bedroom when we are still asleep. We will have to actually close the stairgate at night too!

We are also preparing for the possibility of unhappiness as he loves his his cot and is so good at bedtime. He regularly takes us upstairs when he wants to go for a nap in the afternoon. Is he going to do the same with a bed? Because he can get out of it is he suddenly going to come into our bed at night of he wakes up?

I guess we are preparing for the worst, so hopefully it can only be better than we think! Ha ha maybe…

Will keep you updated on our progress 🙂

What age did your little one go into a bed? Did you do it in one go or have both bed and cot in there to start with? How did they get on with it?

Starting to think about baby number 2…. yipes!

Posted by Caroline Elliott

My brothers and I

Yep, we think it is time to think about maybe trying for a second baby. We’ve always known that we would like more than one child, but have had lots of discussions over the years about exactly how many kids we would like, and how close we would like them to be in age. Hubby has always been clear that he would like 3 children (we were both middle children in families with 3 children) whereas I am a bit more unsure of whether 2 or 3 is the right number. I’ve always thought 3 children just made things a bit more complicated, holidays, car size etc… but loved being one of 3 kids too so just really unsure whether to go with heart or head.

Hubby and his brothers

Age wise, we initially thought 2 years apart was about the right age gap… but after a difficult first pregnancy we realised we would need Monkey to be a little older, perhaps 2 1/2 – 3 when a sibling is born, just as he needs to be a bit more self sufficient. If my next pregnancy is anything like my first, I am unlikely to be able to do anywhere near as much with him as I do now. How difficult I find the next pregnancy will also potentially decide whether we stop at 2 children or have any more, as it depends how much I am willing to put my body through.

So what made my first pregnancy so hard? Well I have been writing about it but I think it deserves a post all to itself so there will be more of that to follow!!

Learning to be a mummy

The other thing to think about is how hard will it be with two? Monkey is at such a lovely age now, he is a lot more independent and very much a toddler rather than a baby. We are still waiting for words but he is a lot more communicative so hopefully it won’t be too long now. So the thought of going back to baby days scares me I have to admit. I am hoping that it is a little easier second time round, as you have done it once. There should be less of the rabbit in the headlights look that you get the first time, right? There will also be Monkey there for the baby to be entertained by and me to have fun with which I am hoping will make it less lonely than the first time round?

Sleepless nights

But going back to sleepless nights, breast feeding (and the lovely changes to your body that come with it) or maybe formula feeding, possibly sleep training again, then weaning….. It was hard enough the first time round, particularly the first 3 months I found, but maybe that’s just because Monkey had colic?

Am I ready to do it all again? Well, I have realised that I am as ready as I will ever be and that’s the key thing. I am certainly more ready than I was with Monkey as at least I know what to expect next time and have some experience. But I survived it before, and came out with a gorgeous, happy healthy little boy, a marriage intact and a happy smile on my face so I am sure I can do it again as I so want Monkey to have a sibling.

It’s funny to think about our family changing, our happy little unit of 3 will hopefully become a 4. How will the next baby’s personality evolve our family dynamic. It’s quite exciting to think about actually. Hubby was looking at some pre-monkey photos today and said he can’t remember the days when it was just us two. Will we feel like that about the days before baby 2 in a few years? Only time will tell I guess!

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Our little family

This is of course assuming that we will be able to get pregnant easily again, when there is no telling really. It happened much faster than we thought it would last time so this time we need to be prepared for that, but also prepared for it to take some time as you never know and we don’t want to stress about it… so I guess watch this space! We will have to wait and see what 2014 brings.

How did you find the change going from one child to two? Was it harder or easier than you thought?

Dropping daytime naps at 17 months??? Nooooooo!

Posted by Caroline Elliott

Monkey has been worrying me slightly this week. For a while now we have had an awesome routine, where we are busy all morning and then he naps really well in the afternoon. (And I can get some jobs done, or blog or rest etc.) The amount of time he sleeps can fluctuate quite a bit, but apart from the odd occasion where he only sleeps for 40 mins, he generally sleeps for a good hour and a half at the very least, and most of the time it’s more like 2 and a half hours! Which is amazing. He always sleeps really well overnight too, generally from 7.15 to about 6.30/7am. Sometimes he is still randomly awake (and happy) in his cot at like 8pm, but not often and he usually sorts himself out.

Anyway, it started at the weekend, and on Saturday afternoon he went to bed (seemingly tired) at around 1.45 ish, which is pretty normal, but then didn’t actually go to sleep until nearly 2.40. He was perfectly happy, chattering and giggling so I didn’t worry and he did sleep in the end, it just meant we had to wake him up at 4.30 so it didn’t mess up night time. Anyway then on Sunday, he went for his nap, but DIDN’T SLEEP AT ALL!! Me no likey! He was perfectly happy the whole time, and we kept hoping he would go off to sleep, so he was up there for nearly 2 hours! I guess he was resting at the least but the worrying thing for me was that he was happy the whole time and happy all evening, in other words, he can cope without a daytime nap, WHAT???!!!!

Ok, so I know I am lucky with the routine we have had. It wasn’t always so easy, we did the Ferber progressive wait when he was three months old and it changed our lives, he became a brilliant sleeper. I know it isn’t for everyone and for a long time we didn’t want to try it, but it absolutely worked for us. Anyway, I also know that at some point he isn’t going to need to nap during the day any more and I will have to cope with him being awake all day. But, I have really been hoping that it won’t be for some time yet. I was hoping that in 6 months to a year, when he is happier playing more independently, and using his imagination at playtime, and basically not needing my input or help as much, then I will be able to cope with the no more daytime naps. But 17-18 months seems so early!! I also in the back of my mind thought that no more naps, may coincide with playgroup or something 1 or 2 afternoons a week, but we will see.

All week has been up and down but it has pretty much taken him ages to get to sleep everyday, although Monday and Tuesday he did sleep. Yesterday however, he did it again! No sleep! Just chatting and happy in his cot for about 2 hours. We both got a rest obviously and who knows maybe he did doze a bit, but it’s concerning me a lot. We had had quite an easy day though as his grandparents came round and we were nattering and chatting a lot. So maybe he just wasn’t tired enough?

I took to my good friend Google and searched various forums online and found other mums in the same situation. Some whose children dropped their naps at around this age and never slept in the day again (Yipes!) others where it was just a phase and they carried on putting them down and they just started napping in the day again. (Please please please)

I have decided I am not going to let him drop his naps without a fight, this may seem selfish, but seriously how can he go from a 2 1/2 hour sleep to 0?? No way. So today I have been on a mission to tire him out! We have been out at the shops without the buggy. Interesting and I got laughed at by a passer by when I was trying out a ‘look, don’t touch’ method, but otherwise it was fine and we had fun.

Then after lunch we went for a walk to a local play park. Normally we go in the buggy and it takes about 10 mins to get there. At Monkey speed it took us 40 minutes! Was fun though, and we had a short play at the park then I wanted to come home before he got too tired. I failed in this though as his poor little legs were far too tired for the journey home! I don’t blame him because my legs are tired too! I managed to get him to walk about half way but then had to carry him the rest, and boy is he heavy now!! We came in and started to play a little but he was getting very easily frustrated, which is a clear sign of tiredness with him.

So up he went to bed and after just a couple of minutes chattering he is fast asleep! Phew! So clearly I need to tire him out more to keep this nap, we shall see how it goes. When did your little ones drop daytime naps? How did you cope?

Naps..when 2 becomes 1

Posted by Caroline Elliott

We knew this day would come, though we weren’t sure when, and here it is, Monkey has dropped his morning nap and we are down to one a day. New routine time! As with everything in parenting, there are many different opinions about routines for babies. From what makes a good routine to whether to have a routine at all. I found early on that routines make both monkey and I happier. I am a planner and like to know what is in store for me. I like to be able to tell someone I will see them at a specific time and know that 9 times out of ten I will be able to stick to it. (Of course babies are people and have off days so I don’t think any routine can be 100% perfect!) He is always happier when he has eaten well and slept well.

I struggled with a lack of routine in the beginning and had no idea how to get in to a routine at all. This coincided with lots of problems with monkey’s sleeping, mainly during the day with between 3 and 5 naps a day. We ended up for a while where he would only fall asleep if he was sucking on one of our little fingers, and well as you can imagine, we couldn’t maintain that forever! When he was born we were initially 100% against the Dr Ferber progressive wait or “Cry it out” techniques but by about 3 1/2 months (after he had finally outgrown the colic) we had changed our mind and though it was horribly hard, it really worked for all of us in just a few days. It really was this that settled monkey to his routine of morning nap, afternoon nap, and bedtime at around 7.

So we have had a fairly solid routine for a good 6 or 7 months now really. I had the feeling that we were approaching a nap change as he had started waking up a lot earlier in the mornings and his naps were both a lot shorter. I was reading articles and books to see if there was any way I could help or make the change or to find out if it would happen naturally. Then one day last week, boom! No morning nap. This sounds simpler than it was as obviously being so used to the routine I went to put him down for his nap but he was chatting and giggling away, so I thought, ok, maybe you want a slightly later nap today and got him up. Eventually after a couple more tries and when he got a bit unhappier about being put in his cot, I gave up and gave him his normal post-nap feed and that was it, no nap until the afternoon.

Apart from one day where he had a very late morning nap, and then a late afternoon nap where I had to wake him up for fear he wouldn’t sleep at bedtime (mean mummy) he has done pretty well on just one nap a day, though he now naps pretty much straight after lunch and is pretty dozy before lunchtime bless him.

In many ways, no morning nap is a good thing. There are some baby groups I would like to take him to that I haven’t before because they were slap bang in the middle of nap time, which we can of course now go to. His sleep in general has settled down, he’s no longer waking up at 530am every day, and he has a good two hour nap in the afternoon. But man, the long awake time in the morning is exhausting! I definitely need to find some new ways of keeping him entertained and I think the baby groups will help, although of course being easter holidays they aren’t on at the moment!

I also need to find time for housework. I know I now have 2 hours in the afternoon but I really am tired by then so don’t want to be spending the whole two hours cleaning! Whereas up until now I have basically had his awake time as playtime, now he is going to have to help with some chores I think, in the loosest sense of the word of course! So far he has stood and helped pull some wet clothes out of the washing machine. Unfortunately when trying to get him to help put clothes in the machine, he would much rather pull them out, but hey it’s a start! He also enjoys a nice ride in the laundry basket with the wet clothes to get to the airer.

When I get the dustbuster out he does like it, especially if he gets a little hoover kiss on his tummy through his clothes. He likes trying to grab it, but so far hasn’t actually helped in any way! As long as he’s happy when I’m dong chores is the main thing as I am going to have to find time to do them when he is awake from now on! My mother in law said that the boys liked helping her do the dusting so maybe when he’s a bit bigger I’ll give that a try! How do you manage to get chores done with the baby awake?

Becoming a Stay at Home Mum

Can I really do this?

baby sleep

Little Miss at 10 months

Stealth Shuffling & Sleep Regression at 8mths

Little Miss is 4 Months old!

Feeding and Pooing

Sleeping

Playing

Other Development

Teeth

How Ferber’s “Progressive Wait” approach helped our children sleep better

The truth about life with newborns

Time for a big boy bed?

Starting to think about baby number 2…. yipes!

Dropping daytime naps at 17 months??? Nooooooo!

Naps..when 2 becomes 1