We decided to make the most of the three-day weekend by doing lots of "firsts" with Belle. The first thing on the agenda was to finally sleep train the little one. She is nearly 6 months old, and has only slept through the night a handful of times. I know much of this is my fault because whenever she cries I rush to soothe her by picking her up. Belle will usually wake up once, sometimes twice, at night and I will feed her a bottle and rock her back to sleep. We know she doesn't really need to eat in the middle of the night because she eats plenty during the day and her weight is on track for her age. It was time to cut out the "dream feed" and get some sleep! She has always slept in her bassinet and now her crib, so we didn't have to worry about her having a problem with being separated from us. Sean was out of town all last week for work, so this was the best time to start. To ease me into it, Sean decided to take baby duty the first night. He slept in the guest room with the monitor so I could sleep uninterrupted. Let me tell you, that is the first time I have slept soundly since she was born and it was glorious! He said she woke up about an hour after he put her to sleep, but she only cried for 10 minutes and then fell asleep for the rest of the night. We did the same routine all weekend long: fed her evening meal of rice cereal and a bottle at around 8 p.m., read to her, sing her lullabies, rock her to sleep, and put her down for the night. If she woke up and cried we did not go back in the room, and just listened until she fell back asleep. The longest she would cry at one time was 10 minutes and she never seemed in distress. Now that she is older we can tell what her cries mean. When she cried it was more of a "Hey, I want attention cry" rather than a "I'm hungry", "I'm sick/hurt" cry. I would say it was a success because for the past 4 nights she has slept through the night! I'm not talking about a 4-5 hour stretch, I mean she has been sleeping 8+ hours at night, and one night she slept over 10 hours. Since we've been getting more sleep we have the energy now to do more things like...
Take Belle to Pinnacle Mountain and walk on the Kingfisher Trail. We're not brave enough to hike up the mountain with her just yet, but we definitely had a good time. This was her first time going to a park because we normally just take her on walks around the neighborhood. Our daughter loves being outside, and we realized that she doesn't get to see many trees since we live in one of those subdivsions that cut all the trees down to make for easier building. When we took her out of the car, she instantly looked up and around at all the trees and couldn't stop the entire time we were there. We used the stroller for the trail, and later put her in the Baby Bjorn. She loves sitting in the carrier because she is eye-level and it faces outwards so she can see everything. On the way back home we also had another "first." My first time changing a poopy diaper on one of those hard plastic changing tables in the public restroom. Apparently, Belle is accustomed to a cushy changing pad because she started crying as soon as I laid her down, and stopped as soon as I picked her back up!
We also took her swimming for the first time this weekend. Sean and I figured she would love it because she has been splashing in her infant bathtub like crazy. We took her to my aunt and uncle's pool, and as soon as we got her in the water she started crying. The water was too cold for her, but after awhile she calmed down a little bit. She started to splash, but when she got water in her eye she cried again! We decided to try again later in the summer, hopefuly she will like it then.
Sean and I enjoyed doing some new things with Belle because she is getting to an age that she can actually enjoy her surroundings. I'm leaving for a wedding out of town this weekend and Sean is on baby duty! I'm pretty sure she will be just fine, but I may not be :) In a few weeks we are going to Petit Jean to stay in a cabin with some friends, and this will be Belle's first time to spend the night away from home. Hopefully, she will do well!
P.S.: We also found time to celebrate our anniversary by going to Brave New Restaurant without the baby and got our house ready for sale. It goes on the market this week! See what sleep can do for you :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment