I'm going to be brutally honest with you.
Sophia is not an easy baby.
Or a fun baby.
Nor is she smiley,
content,
or relaxed baby.
She doesn't have colic but she is basically a highly fussy/never sleeps/extremely gassy baby. Some would call that colic, but we don't because she is able to be soothed. Or, rather, she often just cries herself to sleep.
She doesn't like being in our arms.
She loves being swaddled.
She won't take a bottle. Or a pacifier (we will persevere though...)
She does best when we stay home and don't go out and keep a very strict schedule. But "best," isn't really very good.
After saying all of that, know that I love our sweet girl very much. Her dimpled smile makes it ALL worth it whenever she deems it time to flash it at us. And I am well aware of the fact that this is only a season (PLEASE let it be only a season!) and I remind myself of that every night when we collapse into bed, exhausted.
Sleep:
What's that?
Oh.
The idea is that Sophia sleeps from 7pm until 6 am with one middle of the night feeding. She is also supposed to nap for 2 out of every 3 hours.
Well, that's the idea anyways. Most nights, Sophia goes down at 7 after 10 minutes of crying. She usually will wake up, and have to settle herself back to sleep a couple of times. She may need a midnight and a 3 am feeding, but she usually falls right back asleep.
Her nap times are ruled by the 45 minute intruder right now. She eats and plays for an hour, goes down and sleeps for 45 minutes and then wakes right up. She sometimes is comforted back to sleep, but sometimes she is just angry and awake.
We're not really sure how to help her get better at naps so we are just trying to be consistent with her routine and insisting it is nap time, not play time.
Food:
I really need to move her back to a 2 and a half hour schedule, but it is just SO hard to do that with a toddler underfoot. She feeds every 3 hours from 7 am until 7 pm and once in the middle of the night, around 3 am. She usually nurses for 15-25 minutes and she burps pretty easily now (yay! small victory.)
She is also COMPLETELY off of her gas medicine, which might be causing alot of the issues right now, but it was causing some serious digestive issues so we stopped it when we ran out of the last bottle.
We tried giving her a bottle of pumped milk but she wants nothing to do with it. We tried when she was full and we tried when she was hungry, but both times she wouldn't even latch onto it, just chewed it and gummed it around. She does the same thing with any type of pacifier too.
Activity
She has really stretched her awake time now, going almost 50-60 minutes from wake up time until nap time begins. She sits in her bumbo (Christmas gift,) or lays on her boppy, but she doesn't get more than a couple minutes of a time of tummy time. We're working on it.
She's loving chewing on her fists. And by chewing, I totally mean she sticks her whole fist in her mouth, oopens her fingers up, gags herself, trows up, and screams.
Awesome.
And she's scratched the roof of her mouth too.
She does have a great smile though, and for the first 5 minutes after a feeding you can make eye contact with her and get these awesome grins with a dimple showing and a squeak of delight. So fun!
Miscellaneous:
*I dropped my baby. I'm a terrible mom, I know. I was unswaddling her and when I backed away to get settled to nurse her, I didn't know the blanket was wrapped around my leg and...oops! There she went, right onto the floor. I felt horrible (I cried) but she nursed and hasn't seemed worse for the wear.
*She went camping for the first time and did pretty good!
*Sophia stayed with a babysitter for the first time while we went and saw The Hobbit! Sophia was asleep the whole time, but still, now we know we can escape for some "us" time!
*She is in size 2 diapers and wears 0-3 month clothing
Sophia is not an easy baby.
Or a fun baby.
Nor is she smiley,
content,
or relaxed baby.
She doesn't have colic but she is basically a highly fussy/never sleeps/extremely gassy baby. Some would call that colic, but we don't because she is able to be soothed. Or, rather, she often just cries herself to sleep.
She doesn't like being in our arms.
She loves being swaddled.
She won't take a bottle. Or a pacifier (we will persevere though...)
She does best when we stay home and don't go out and keep a very strict schedule. But "best," isn't really very good.
After saying all of that, know that I love our sweet girl very much. Her dimpled smile makes it ALL worth it whenever she deems it time to flash it at us. And I am well aware of the fact that this is only a season (PLEASE let it be only a season!) and I remind myself of that every night when we collapse into bed, exhausted.
Sleep:
What's that?
Oh.
The idea is that Sophia sleeps from 7pm until 6 am with one middle of the night feeding. She is also supposed to nap for 2 out of every 3 hours.
Well, that's the idea anyways. Most nights, Sophia goes down at 7 after 10 minutes of crying. She usually will wake up, and have to settle herself back to sleep a couple of times. She may need a midnight and a 3 am feeding, but she usually falls right back asleep.
Her nap times are ruled by the 45 minute intruder right now. She eats and plays for an hour, goes down and sleeps for 45 minutes and then wakes right up. She sometimes is comforted back to sleep, but sometimes she is just angry and awake.
We're not really sure how to help her get better at naps so we are just trying to be consistent with her routine and insisting it is nap time, not play time.
Food:
I really need to move her back to a 2 and a half hour schedule, but it is just SO hard to do that with a toddler underfoot. She feeds every 3 hours from 7 am until 7 pm and once in the middle of the night, around 3 am. She usually nurses for 15-25 minutes and she burps pretty easily now (yay! small victory.)
She is also COMPLETELY off of her gas medicine, which might be causing alot of the issues right now, but it was causing some serious digestive issues so we stopped it when we ran out of the last bottle.
We tried giving her a bottle of pumped milk but she wants nothing to do with it. We tried when she was full and we tried when she was hungry, but both times she wouldn't even latch onto it, just chewed it and gummed it around. She does the same thing with any type of pacifier too.
Activity
She has really stretched her awake time now, going almost 50-60 minutes from wake up time until nap time begins. She sits in her bumbo (Christmas gift,) or lays on her boppy, but she doesn't get more than a couple minutes of a time of tummy time. We're working on it.
She's loving chewing on her fists. And by chewing, I totally mean she sticks her whole fist in her mouth, oopens her fingers up, gags herself, trows up, and screams.
Awesome.
And she's scratched the roof of her mouth too.
She does have a great smile though, and for the first 5 minutes after a feeding you can make eye contact with her and get these awesome grins with a dimple showing and a squeak of delight. So fun!
Miscellaneous:
*I dropped my baby. I'm a terrible mom, I know. I was unswaddling her and when I backed away to get settled to nurse her, I didn't know the blanket was wrapped around my leg and...oops! There she went, right onto the floor. I felt horrible (I cried) but she nursed and hasn't seemed worse for the wear.
*She went camping for the first time and did pretty good!
*Sophia stayed with a babysitter for the first time while we went and saw The Hobbit! Sophia was asleep the whole time, but still, now we know we can escape for some "us" time!
*She is in size 2 diapers and wears 0-3 month clothing