Two days before Christmas, Emma had her 4 month check up. She's 4 months old already. HOLY. COW. Just wear has the time gone? I'm happy to report that she is happy and healthy. Her weight is in the 12th percentile, height in the 29th percentile, and her head size is in the 36th percentile. She's growing right along her growth curve and is perfect in every way. Just like Mary Poppins.
We were given the all clear to start her on cereals. She's been getting oatmeal once a day. She's taken to that really well. She's already figured out that when the spoon comes toward her to open her mouth. She's still working out the tongue action though but she can take down 2 teaspoons in about 5 minutes. I think it's safe to say that she likes it.
During her 4 month check up the doctor asked if she was sleeping through the night yet. Answer is, No she's not. The pedi then starts talking about how we need to get her to sleep through the night now so that she can learn to self sooth and how it's much easier to do at this age and takes less time then if we wait until she's older. He said that 3 bad nights now will be better than 3 bad weeks when she is much older.
Of course I was keen to try this. Sleeping through the night is something that I haven't had the luxury of since the day that she was born. The thought of that was very appealing. That night we started to try. Scott would get up with her and try to comfort her back to sleep. After about 5 min, probably more like 2, and her cry escalating I would go in and feed her for only a few minutes and then try to get her to go back to sleep. That kind of worked. She woke up sooner than she did before we started and I figured it was because she wasn't use to this new way of doing things. We kept trying. With no success. This past week we have both gotten less sleep then we did before. Not what I bargained for.
After Emma woke up the first time tonight, at about 2:15, I started thinking about what we were doing wrong, why wasn't this working. Hence the reason why I'm still awake. Naturally, I went to google and typed "how to get 4 month old breast fed baby to sleep through the night" into the search query. The first link that pops up is from kellymom.com. I should have known to look there first. I go there for all of my other baby/breastfeeding questions I should have known there would be information on sleeping through the night.
After reading the information on that website, I have decided to forgo trying to get Emma to sleep through the night, right now. I really like our pedi, but in this instance I'm going to hold off on following his advise and listen to and pay attention to Emma and her needs.
I don't think she's ready yet. And that makes sense to me. I don't really mind getting up to feed her twice during the night. It's something that I have gotten use to. It's more time that I can spend with her that I miss during the day while I'm at work. Why fix what isn't broken? If we actually get more sleep with her waking twice a night than we do trying to get her to sleep through the night, then I'm all for it. She will do that when she's ready.
It's hard to believe that just one year ago yesterday we found out that we were going to have a baby. That was probably one of the happiest days of our lives! It's crazy to think that an entire year has come and gone already.
I wish you a Very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from my family to yours. I wish you the very best in the year to come and much joy and love!
2 comments:
Yeah most breastfed babies don't sleep through the night as soon as formula fed. It's digested much quicker. Haydon was at about 11 months, Presley.... not yet. Keep at it mama you're not doing anything wrong! I thought/think of it the same way.. extra bonding time.
Yeah most breastfed babies don't sleep through the night as soon as formula fed. It's digested much quicker. Haydon was at about 11 months, Presley.... not yet. Keep at it mama you're not doing anything wrong! I thought/think of it the same way.. extra bonding time.
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