any april/may 05 moms want to chat?

[s_olano00]

Kate,

It's great to know that Liam is all right!! I hope that now that you are back home you can get things back to normal and hopefully rest a little.

Take care,

[Jamom]

Kate -- glad to hear you are back from the hospital and everything is OK.


I  have a question, has anyone successfully weaned from the swaddle? I may wait a few more weeks because the doctor said the arm jolts will lessen as he gets older to get serious about the weaning, but it sure seems like Jake needs to be swaddled (both hands) to settle.  I don't mind that he is swaddled but he is going to start growing out of his swaddle blankets (the velcro kind) and I've already got him in the largest size.  At night, he can fall asleep with both hands out and only his legs swaddled.  But he can't do that at naps.  Ideally, I'd like to make it so he just needs a sleep sack or something, if even that.  I tried leaving him with loosely swaddled in a regular blanket yetersday (mainly because his velcro one's were in the wash :oops:) and he went back to the old days, waking at 25 minutes.  As soon as his velcro one was dry, I put him in it and he fell right back asleep.  Then today, I tried with one arm out because he was sucking his hand and he just couldn't settle himself.  As soon as I swaddled both hands, he fell right asleep.  I guess this swaddle blanket may have become his prop?!?!? :?   Am I going to have to resort to PU/PD or should I just try again next weekend and see what happens? What is the best way to do this? 

Hope all is well with everyone and that you are enjoying your weekend. I get so sad every Sunday night because I know that I have to go back to work.  To make things worst, I had a really bad week last week at work, which isn't making me feel much like going back this week.  :evil:

[jjstar]

Kate it is great that Liam is home and doing well!

Erin I don't have much advice on the swaddling as Jameson hasn't liked it from the start but if I had to guess I would say you might have to do PUPD as it might be a prop like a paci.

Well we've just about got on the 4 hr EASY with a slight adjustment to it in the evenings. The 3rd cycle just doesn't seem like he can go 4 hours so I feed after he wakes from his catnap and then we do bath and then feed again. I'm guessing this is similar to what you mentioned Kate. When the feed is less than an hour later do you feed from the same side as if it was the same feed with a break? I'm thinking that would give the most hind milk and might help him sleep longer at night?! He is still waking once between the DF and morning wake but it just takes 10 minutes to feed and get him right back to sleep. It is always at a different time so I'm guessing it is a hunger thing. We'll see.

Hope everyone had a good weekend!

[Olivia's Mommy]

Erin, my LO also needed swaddling as her arm jolts would wake her up, too. As she got bigger, she kept "breaking out" of it. We would have to go back in and reswaddle time and time again! Finally, she was able to settle herself with her arms out. She would suck her fist and then eventually she would put her hands behind her head and fall asleep that way. It just sort of happened one day. We still swaddle her but we leave her arms out now that she has control of them. She usually fall asleep sucking her thumb.

I'm sorry I don't have any "advice" to offer. Just know that your LO is not alone, and eventually they do gain control of their arms. Then the swaddling is not so crucial.

Hang in there!

[JKHH]

Erin,

I just weaned Kay from her swaddle on Friday night! I had been trying off and on for a month...everytime I tried she had a short nap like you described 25 min or so. I started again because we found her asleep on her stomach while in the swaddle  :shock:  so we knew it was time to wean her ASAP.

The past two weeks, Kay has been sucking her fingers so much during the day that she was trying to get at them while in the swaddle. So, I left an arm out for her...but she wouldn't suck her fingers and still needed the paci. It took a number of tries for her to suck her fingers while in the crib. I proceeded pretty slowly as she was so used to the swaddle as part of her routine. By the end, Kay started breaking out of her swaddle to get at her fingers...and was going back to sleep with her arms free. I found it helped to try new things (like an arm out) after her first nap since it is usually her best. 

BTW, Kay now sleeps in a grobag. It was a great purchase since I don't have to worry if she is cold...plus now I don't have to buy PJs for a while:)

[s_olano00]

Erin,

We weaned from the swaddle about 3 weeks ago. I said "we" mostly because Anna Krisztina hated to be swaddled, but it was a great help for me to settle her down, so it turned out that I needed the swaddle more than she did.

We did the "cold turkey" approach. One day I just didn't swaddle her and at the beginning, she was pretty surprised that she didn't have an excuse to moan about (HA!  :twisted: ), but still when she was falling asleep, she would rub her face with one hand (and get herself started all over again)  or she would wail her arms (and get herself started!), so what I did was that I put a big pillow on top of her (waist down) so the weight would help her settle down and not jump too much and I would have to gently hold her mischevious hands until I could feel that she was relaxed enough and she wouldn't jump anymore. I also tried to put her little arms under her blanket with not too much success.

About a week after, she started to suck her right fist and the holding hand thing was rather a distraction for her (she would just do anything in order not to be held) so I just stopped doing it.

I personally was very worried about the "shifting gears" in the middle of the night, because I had seen her wailing her arms a lot and I was afraid that she would wake up, but again, babies are surprising little creatures and it only happened a few times...

Just remember that babies are different, and you shouldn't worry if yours still needs the swaddling. The BW book says that some babies need it until about 7 - 8 months.

Good luck!

[Jamom]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I think that I may just keep trying bit by bit on the weekends when I am at home -- e.g., one arm out -- and see what happens.  I actually think that he gets "distracted" by sucking on his hand and then can't get to sleep but who knows?  I just know that some day I am going to be forced to wean because he is going to grow out of the blankets.   :? 
I still don't know why he doesn't need it at night but only during naps.   :?

We'll just see what happens this weekend!!!  Glad to know there are others I can count on for support and ideas.

Thanks again.

[philippa w]

Hi there, I have a May baby,Ryder, born 10th /5/05.We are on a farm in Western Australia.   I have enjoyed reading everyone's posts and thought I'd put my boys routine in. 
E  6.45-7.00am wake b/f (10 mins-he has always been a fast feeder)
A  Play on floor in gymini or with a toy
S  8.30-10.30, 11.00
E  11.00 b/f
A  more floor play, talks with mum /dad/brother
S  1.00pm-3.00
E  3.00pm b/f
A  Usually getting overstimulated by now by hyper brother home from school 
S  4.45- 5.15  nap
This is where the easy goes haywire as then we have a shower and get into bed clothes. Then he is usually happy for about 45mins and then starts to fuss and rub his eyes etc... I am usually lucky to get him to string out until 7.00pm , b/f then straight to bed, but more often than not he's totally had it by 6.30pm, so I feed and then bed.  I worry that this is too early a bed time, but he always sleeps through without a d/f until 3.30am.Then I feed at 3.30 and back to sleep until 6.45-7.00am.   He has been waking around 2.30am every night but the cruel mum I am, I was going in and putting the dummy in which would string him out til 3.30. Otherwise if I fed at 2.30 he would wake again around 6.00am.  But now I go in at 1.30am and wake to sleep and it works until the 3.30 wake up.  So that's Ryders day.  I hope I haven't bored anyone to tears !!! :wink:
Philippa, Bencubbin WA

[cambeladamom]

welcome philippe-nice to have you.
it seems i can't keep up anymore with all the posts. the days are crazy here. cambel and i are learning to be very adaptable, which i guess is a good thing. we are just shuttling him all over the place. so far he has done okay. his night sleep isn't as great, but he is getting better. next week we go to colorado for dh's training. i know someone just flew with thier little one. any tips?
erin-we are in the same boat with swaddling. ds has no trouble breaking out of it, and he is getting too big for the blanket, but he can't seem to go to sleep without it. i think at this point i will hold off changing things. we have too much going on! but i do wonder about him being older and his arms not jerking as much. i have heard that too and am hoping it will happen for us. after paci weaning at night i am not looking forward to another round!
kate- i haven't been keeping up with things, so i missed liam's illness. but i am glad he is doing better.
a question-do you wake your lo up from their nap if it is over 2 hours? cambel does this (very rarely) and i just wondered what you all do.

[jjstar]

Maria, I used to wake Jameson up but stopped and he doesn't ever seem to sleep too much past it. I figure he must really be tired. I've started not waking him in the morning either because I figure if he is more of a night sleeper, I'll take it! Today he actually slept until 8:40 (he did have a DF and woke at 3:15 for a feed). I talked to my mom and she said that I was always a better night sleeper than a napper. I might have one of those on my hands. He took two 1.5 naps yesterday and then was down for 13 hours (minus 30 minutes for the two feeds).

Well I'll be away from the boards for a bit. We're leaving this thursday for Ohio. We'll be there for 2 weeks. We're driving?! Not sure how that is exactly going to go but we'll see. Then we get home and 5 days later we leave for the beach for a week. I'm just happy I was able to get him on the 4 hr EASY before leaving for all of this. He'll be a whole month older by the time we get back home and then the holidays start. Always something?!

[Jamom]

Maria, I have stopped waking Jake as well because now I know that he knows when it is night and day and sometimes he just needs a longer nap.  It usually equals out in the end -- e.g., a shorter nap somewhere else.  I used to be a drill sargeant about waking him after 2 hours but for the last month or so, I've left it.  HOwever, I have to say, there aren't a lot of times that he goes past 2 hours.  He's more of an 1 1/2 hour sleeper these days.  Once in awhile he'll take a long afternoon nap at daycare in the afternoon but that is because he had a short one (45 minutes  :twisted:) in the morning.

A swaddling update-- no better news for the naps but last night he slept in one of those sleep sacks!!     Baby steps...

I'm actually taking Jake to the doc this evening for some minor eczema.  I was freaking out that it was a food allergy but when I got my logic back, I realized that it wasn't because after I thought about it, he's had it all along and he's only had rice cereal, which I guess it would be very unlikely that he would've had an allergic reaction to.  I guess that I had eczema as an infant and so did my mother.  So, I'm taking him to the doc to get some treatment for it and that way I can discuss some other things with the doc again -- e.g., foods and the swaddling.   I actually think the eczema is being aggravated by the bathsoaps or bathing because it is worst the day after we do a bath.   :?   Who knows?  I just feel bad for him because he's started scratching the back of his head where he has just a bit on his hairline. 

Hope all is well.

Jill have fun on all of your vacations.  I wish I was doing that instead of working!

[mommytsa]

How lucky you ladies are to have to wake them at 2 hours!!!  Aaron won't sleep beyond 45 min now, no matter what we do to extend naps.  We've tried wake-to-sleep, pu/pd and extending A time, and shortening A time (thinking he might just have been overstimulated).  None of those did any good.  So for now, we're just hoping that he eventually outgrows it.

Lately DS has been a real bear, and I thought he was getting sick (he had diarrhea and lots of crankiness).  We took him to the Dr., and they said he was teething, but that he might not actually get teeth yet--he might have what they called "teething syndrome" where the teeth start to rise to the surface, but then go back down instead of emerging all the way, and if that is the case it could go on for MONTHS.  Is anyone else going through this?  Jill, was it you who said that Jameson had already started teething?  Did he actually get teeth, or did it just go away?

Kate-Glad to hear that Liam is getting better.  I'm sure you'll have things back on track in a little while.

Hope you all have a good week.

[s_olano00]

I just stopped crying to write down this, because it seems that since last Thursday night, someone came and changed my baby.

Although Anna Krisztina has always put a fight to go to sleep in the night, days were quite OK and naps were easy to do. Not since Thursday. Wind down doesn't work anymore, she hates her crib (she will start crying the minute I put her down) and has lost the capability to self-soothe (she will suck her fist for 5 mins, then get frustrated and wont fall asleep). Not to mention that she started to wake up at 5am and her naps won't last more than 30 mins.

It's just awful. I feel such a bad mother because I really don't know what to do anymore. EASY is not working anymore for us.... well, ANYTHING works anymore and I am just going nuts because I don't know how I can help her...

We both are cranky, tired and without patience. The worst thing is that since I am at home alone, I dont have anybody to help me out. I just have spent this 5 days feeling terrible thinking how did I screwed it up....

Sorry for this post, but I just needed to get it out of my system.

[jjstar]

Silvia...we've all had those bad weeks. You just have to remind yourself that it will pass. It really makes you treasure the good days. I know it sounds silly but take a deep breath and if you need to let her cry for 2 minutes while you take a break...even if it means just using the restroom. Do what you have to. Using EASY loosly sometimes is the only way to get through it. Good luck and know we're here for you!

Theresa, yes it was me that mentioned the teething. And no nothing has actually appeared but he goes through the motions ever couple of weeks. Runny BMs, biting everything and a bit fussy. And then completley fine.

Couple questions for everyone...has anyone moved up to size 4 diapers. I feel like it is so early but he was leaking out of the 3s. I know people say not to go by the weight on them but 4 starts at 22 lbs and Jameson is only just under 17. Also regarding the carrier car seats, has anyone moved out of that one into a regular backward one? They say 20 lbs and/or 26 inches long. Jameson was 26 in at his 4 month checkup but I just don't feel ready to move him out of the carrier. I love the sun shade and the fact that he can stay in it when we get out of the car.

Well I better get back to packing...how can 2 people need so much stuff???

[Jamom]

Silvia -- sorry to hear that.  Do you think she could be teething or something else developmental?  I agree with Jill -- sometimes you need to do EASY loosely until your lo is back on track.

Jill-- Jake grew out of his infant carrier too.  He was 26 1/2 inches at his 4 mo. appointment.  So, I debated getting the other kind too and was hesitant because of the inability to carry him around like the infant carrier.  Luckily, my SIL's carrier went up to 30 inches -- it's a bigger carrier and more like the backward facing seat but with the handles.  So, sorry I can't help you.  I know it's against the recommendations but if he's not way too big for it and he's within the weight restrictions, you could probably last a little longer -- maybe he'll be sitting by then.