Tuesday, November 22, 2011

19 Weeks

This week was a rough one when it came to sleep. First, the good news: we are now swaddle free! We left Josie unswaddled last Saturday night, and although she kicked around and woke up more frequently, for whatever reason we decided to try again Sunday night, and she did much better. She seemed to sleep very well the next couple of nights, actually, except I couldn't enjoy it since then I couldn't sleep. I had been noticing that I seemed to have been losing the magical sleeping abilities I developed when Josie was first born (of being able to be wide awake instantaneously in the middle of the night, and also go back to sleep quickly after each waking), but then I suddenly just couldn't get to sleep. It seemed so cruel that Josie (and Ryan, for that matter) were sleeping so peacefully that I was excited to be able to get some sleep in as well, and then it ended up taking me over two hours to fall asleep Monday night. Then, when I started being able to fall asleep again, Josie appeared to have hit her 4-month wakeful/sleep regression/whatever you'd like to call it - basically, babies around her age can have some troubles sleeping as their brains are working overtime on some big developmental leaps. Either that, or maybe it's the full-blown cold she has now, since being congested is probably also not helping her to sleep well.

So as it turns out, Josie's chatting is much cuter at 7pm vs. 12am. And 2am. And 4am. And 6am. Because the last several nights she's gone back to sleeping about 4-5 hours at the beginning of the night - sometimes waking after the first 30-minute sleep cycle again too - and then waking every 1-2 hours after that. It's amazing how much harder it is to function with such interrupted sleep when I don't have the luxury of being able to try to make up the lost sleep via afternoon naps with Josie. I've been in a bit of a daze at work the last week, but I guess there's not much else I can do except try to get her back to sleep as quickly as possible and for me to get myself to bed as soon as I can after she falls asleep. Thank goodness for A/C-powered swings though, too, since we put her in that last night to see if being more upright would help her with her congestion, and she seemed to sleep very well in that for about 6 hours.


Josie is also very close to rolling over from back to tummy now - she can get everything over except for her bottom arm. She's so cute when I go to feed her now - she'll roll over to meet me, and usually laughs as she does so.


Josie has now decided that it's not enough to have two thumbs to choose from, and she's branched out to sucking on every finger on her right hand except for her pinky so far (I think given another week, she'll remedy that oversight).
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[Sucking on her index finger]


I also finally pulled out some teething rings for her, which she actually grabbed for and got in her mouth a couple times, but I think she didn't fully understand the purpose quite yet ;)
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Josie is now consistently eating an extra 4oz each day at daycare - I'm not sure if 24oz in a 10-hour period is a lot, but it seems to keep the weight on her ;) I also made it out to a La Leche League meeting for the first time since I returned to work, which was timely since the topic was Vitamin D supplementation. Josie's pediatrician had just recommended we start Josie on some Vitamin D drops, so that was good to have some confirmation from other like-minded moms that Vitamin D supplementation is not only fine, but highly recommended, given the latitude we live at and that we're heading into winter now. Especially since our at least once-daily walks with Josie that we were doing all summer for some exercise (for us), sleep (for her), and Vitamin D intake (for all of us) are now down to one, maybe two walks on the weekends.

We've also had some more success with getting Josie to laugh - apparently the perfect combination for some serious giggling is for Ryan to lift her over his head in "superbaby" pose, and then say "zschew, zschew, zschew" - that's my best attempt at spelling the following sound:


As a sidenote - yes, Ryan currently has a mohawk.... he hadn't shaved (or gotten a haircut) since the beginning of August, and then decided last weekend that he was ready for a haircut and shave. For some reason the shave didn't happen (which I think Josie is happy about, since she likes to hang onto his neck beard :) ), and it only took a little bit of peer pressure to agree on him getting a mohawk ;)


Miscellaneous cuteness:
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[Josie is ready to take on whatever you're dishing out]
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[Second time on a forward-facing walk = excitement...]
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[...followed quickly by sleepytime]

2 comments:

  1. What have you done with my son? I knew having a baby had some strange side effects on the mother but not the father!!! :(

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  2. Hahaha... don't worry, he won't have it for too much longer probably. And then the neck beard will likely go then too ;)

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