SIX WEEKS/20.5 MONTHS

Getting loads of proper smiles now :)

So I haven't given up breastfeeding after all :) Was so close last week, but pushed on through and each day things seem to be getting a little better.

I've had great support from the local hospital's breastfeeding 'guru' - she's been very encouraging, checking I'm doing everything right and not having a go at me for introducing the bottle or the odd bit of formula. The suggestion from her is that James is simply a hungry baby that needs feeding a bit more than we were used to with Charlotte. So that means top ups, or more frequent feeds - the latter of which isn't conducive to also looking after a 20-month old toddler.

So at the moment - I'm feeding James myself when he's awake enough and we've got the time, otherwise it's a bottle of expressed milk (or formula if we've not got enough), with top-ups from the bottle if he doesn't seem satisfied despite coming off the breast.

So a mish-mash of everything, which is hard work, but should get easier the more he's simply taking from the breast. And if he's full and winded, we have one very chilled out boy. In fact that's how both the bf woman and the health visitor described him - "chilled". Rather different to the "strong personality" we often heard to describe his sister!

Talking of her - she's having horrendous nights because of her constant cough once again. She's on another course of antibiotics after the doctor said she's got a lingering chest infection. But she seems happy enough in between coughing fits. 

Despite her rough nights, she's now sleeping in her 'big girl bed'. She kept ending up in it after cuddles to ease her cough anyway, so we thought we might as well try the full night. Unfortunately we've had one falling out incident, thanks to an ill-fitting bed guard (now rectified) - which ended up waking her up to the point of her thinking it was playtime, so ended up back in her cot. 

And I can hardly believe her speech can have improved even more week by week - but the full sentences she now comes out with astounds me. "Look Mummy - it's a breadstick", "Look Grandad, my jeans fell down!". The talking of a 3-year old if the experts and books are to be believed.

Lastly, for this post, we're trying to establish a bit of routine with James already - otherwise we have no idea where we're at. So we've started with bedtime. Bath, massage, feed, story, bed, starting at 6pm - just as we did with Charlotte from a similar age - and so far it seems to be working.

He definitely gets his longest sleep when he's gone down (usually between 7.30-8pm), and up for feeds roughly every 3-4 hours after that (usually around 11-30pm, 2am, and then anything between 0430 and 6am). But it's proving trickier in the day as he doesn't follow very much of a pattern from which to take his lead - other than alternating one very awake day and one very sleepy day. So any kind of napping schedule will have to wait, and I'm just feeding him when he's hungry or every 3-4 hours if it's not so obvious.

Oh, go on then - another picture of my smiley 6-week old:

NICE WEEKEND

At a time when we're still surviving each day and ticking off each week with a newborn, we had a really good day on Saturday: Charlotte had a nap, James had a poo, I had a bath and we made it out of the house!

In my book, that's quite a successful day in between feeding, expressing, and trying to get both kids to sleep. I think I even managed to put the hoover round. It helped that I wasn't worrying that my OH wasn't getting any work done. He is such a massive help during the week, but it's an added stress when I think he's not getting his work done.

And we're even convinced we might have seen a glimpse of a few very early smiles :)

Nearly four weeks in and we're starting to think about getting James on a bit of a routine. Nothing rigid - we'll give the EASY (Eat, Activity, Sleep, You Time) routine a go as we did with Charlotte. It really helps to give us a clue as to whether he's hungry or tired. Plus, the biggest thing we ever learnt from the early months with Charlotte was to watch for the tired signs as early as possible, because she was so difficult to calm and get to sleep once she got to overtired/over-stimulated.

The only down side of the past few days has been Charlotte's waking in the night. She just cries and cries for cuddles - often woken by James crying when he's up for a night feed. It means while I'm feeding, my OH has to deal with her, so neither of us are getting any sleep to relieve the other the following day.

On Sunday night my OH ended up sleeping on the floor in her room because she just would not settle without one of us in there. I know it must be a reaction to the big change in her life, so we're trying not to get angry about it. But we did jump at the offer from her Grandma to have her stay there for two nights this week - mostly so I can get James' feeding back on track and catch up on some rest.

ROUTINES, PATTERNS AND LAUGHTER

As Charlotte approaches 12 weeks, I've been really trying to see the patterns in her behaviour to see if it will help us with sticking to any form of routine. So far as I can tell, she can't go past two hours without needing a nap, or else overtiredness very quickly sets in and it's extremely difficult to put her down for a snooze.

That's particularly true when it comes to her nighttime sleep. She really needs a little nap sometime around 5pm to make sure she's not overtired by the time we put her down at around 1845. The last few nights we've made sure that's happened by taking her out for a walk, and she's gone down with barely a whimper.

She's also edging back to between three and three and a half hours between feeds, after last week's growth spurt and extra feeds. While we've been trying to do the EASY (Eat, Activity, Sleep, You Time) routine, because she only catnaps, at least once a day it means Eat and Sleep fall at around the same time. That results in her falling asleep while feeding, or not sleeping well because she's hungry.

The first nap of the day is getting much easier to judge. It's usually around an hour and a half after she's got up, she's usually pretty easy to put down and she'll sleep for up to an hour. The only downside to that is that it falls at exactly the time I'd like to take her to a couple of sessions at the local Children's Centre (Baby Beethoven and Baby Stay and Play), which both start at 9am. So I'm giving those a miss for the time being, while we continue to establish a routine and pattern to Charlotte's day.


She also tends to be at her most alert and active in the afternoon. She's started grabbing toys that are put next to her and being much more co-ordinated with hitting objects. She did get a bit upset when she couldn't work out that she had to ungrip her fingers to let go of something, but I think she's worked that one out now!

The absolute best moment came on Tuesday evening - just as we were about to wind down from playtime to nighttime. Charlotte came out with two bouts of the most brilliant laughter. It was proper, full-on giggling that had me weeping with happiness! I hope to hear much more of that in the weeks and months to come...

GOING BACKWARDS

It seems a very long time ago that Charlotte was managing to settle herself straight to sleep - or with just 10 minutes' coaxing. The past three nights have seen a return to the screaming ab-dabs for up to 40 minutes as she fights going down to sleep. I don't think it's connected to the fact that we've started putting her in her own room, as she was the same on Thursday night when she was still in our room. And I don't think it's connected to her apparent growth spurt either.

Part of the problem is that she's so overtired after not having had enough sleep during the day, which is well documented in this blog. It doesn't seem to matter whether it's in her Moses basket, pram or harness these days - she just won't stay down for more than half an hour. We seem to be putting her down at the right time as it's not taking too much effort to get her to sleep, but after that it's up to her and she's just not staying asleep. She doesn't wake up especially grouchy or crying - usually she's quite playful - which makes me think the catnaps are all she needs. But then when she's barely had two hours in total all day, it's resulting in a nightmare evening.

She also seems to react to the moment we start to wind-down and make it 'nighttime' by making the flat darker and quieter. While we're told it's really important to have a bedtime routine so she knows what's coming next and helps her to sleep, it seems to have the opposite effect on Charlotte - she knows what's coming... bedtime... and she doesn't like it. Her baths have been great, but after that she'll scream the place down until her feed, and then again until we've resorted to white noise, rocking and/or cuddles to calm her.

We know this is just another phase that will pass, but it feels like we're taking another few steps backwards in her sleeping at the moment. And it upsets me that the image that I have of Charlotte before I go to bed is of an upset and unhappy child.

But it is nice to have our bedroom back!

GOOD CHARLOTTE

We've had a couple of good days.

Sure there's been plenty of bouts of screaming and refusing to sleep - anywhere - but we've had plenty of gorgeous moments too.

Yesterday we're convinced we saw Charlotte's first proper smile, as she sat in her little chair at my parents' making all sorts of lovely new noises. She was even a delight as we bathed her (which revealed her curly locks), and almost went a whole hour walking into town and back without crying her heart out and me having to put her in her baby carrier.

Then, she went down in her crib almost straight away at 7.30 until she woke for a feed at 11.15; and again until 0340. Between 5 and 8 she was a bit of different story, though.

But a 1 hour 45 minute car ride and a good feed got her back on track, and we saw more of the lovely Charlotte that makes it all seem worth it.

It's the first couple of days we've tried the E.A.S.Y routine - Eat, Activity, Sleep, You Time - and been really, really careful to watch for those first tired signs before she gets overtired too quickly. Very early days, but seems to be working.

It's currently 8.40 pm, and she's been down for almost two hours. Fingers crossed she manages another couple of long stretches between feeds.

MISSING THE SLEEP WINDOW

OK, so we all know that the only things a newborn baby does is sleep and feed. Well the latter is certainly true. In fact I think I've been over-feeding Charlotte - adding to any painful wind problems she may be having.

However, she doesn't seem to be getting nearly enough sleep, especially in the day.

The biggest problem, we have now decided, is that I've been mis-reading her tired cues as hunger cues, so not only is she feeding too much, she's not sleeping enough - leading to that vicious circle I spoke about in my last post.

So my OH and I have decided now's the time - at three and a half weeks - to start setting down a routine. I'm starting with her feeding. Having been weighed at 8lb (3.64 kg) yesterday by the health visitor, we're good to let her go up to 4 hours without a feed - more at night if she manages to sleep that bit longer - as she's feeding well when she does. So that's stage one - making sure I don't feed her anymore frequently, except maybe before bedtime so she's definitely full up and may sleep longer. That will be tested in a couple of weeks in her next growth spurt.

We're also going to start doing a proper bedtime routine - winding down from 6pm - something we've pretty much been doing anyway, and she's been asleep by 9.30 every night since Thursday. We're just going to have to try to make that a bit earlier each night.

The other step is making sure she gets enough sleep in the day, which in the last five days or so we know she hasn't been. Initially, while we will keep trying and trying to put her down in her Moses basket, if it's not worked after an hour, she can sleep where she likes so we don't get her overtired - which it escalates into if we miss that tiny window where she supposedly lets us know she's tired (yawning, rubbing her eyes, turning away from us, heavy eyes). Earlier I took her for a 2 hour walk where she slept, now she's asleep on my lap - all bad habits we know we have to break, but one step at a time.

One of the problems in getting Charlotte to sleep appears to be she's just so alert and aware of things for her age already. Our health visitor told us she sees six week old's who aren't as alert with things like focusing and playing with her hands. So while we reading up on what a 3 week old "should" be doing, it appears Charlotte may well be ahead of the curve. While that sounds great, it means she's fighting her sleep more because she wants to know what's going on around her - it's almost as if she doesn't want to miss out on what's going on by dropping off to sleep.Another tactic we're going to try once again is swaddling - even though she manages to fight her way out easier than Houdini.

Such challenging times. There are plenty of times when I really can't see how we'll get past this, but everyone tells us we will, it will get easier, and this first six-eight weeks is the toughest. After that there'll be new problems and issues, but "those too will pass..."