So just when you patients for no sleep runs out and you think you can’t take the crying fits and unexplainable fussiness, the clever little cuddle bug (my favorite nickname for her so far) learns to do something very tricky. She smiles. Real smiles, and the beginning of a laugh. Making faces at her, showing her her reflection in a mirror, and even letting her look at our big Beatles photograph will make her laugh and dance with joy. Pictures of her smiling on my desktop at work are making it especially hard to stay late.
Another blessing she has given us is big chunks of sleep. Lately we’ve been able to get 7-8 hours out of her at night. Sometimes it’s only 5, but from what I hear, even that is good. I think the key to getting her to stay down is a tight double swaddle, and a BIG bottle (6-7 oz.) just before bed. We’ve even gotten her to sleep in her crib now. She use to only sleep well in her swing, but as she starts rapidly nearing the maximum weight limit (she’s 12 lbs already!) we need to get her into a longer term solution.
The mobile we have helps her feel comfortable alone. She loves it, but my one complaint to all of these kid product manufactures is this: Your products need to have longer timers on them. Our baby swing, which we LOVE (I don’t know how people do without them) plays music and turns a mobile, but only for about 10-15 minutes, then it shuts off (just the mobile, the swing keeps going). Usually this is when we’re trying to eat dinner and we have the baby all sleepy and content in her swing… then the music comes to a sudden stop and she pops here eyes open looking around wonder what the heck is going on. I usually end up leaping across the room to hit the restart button at least twice during a meal. Our crib mobile does the same thing. We only get about 20 minutes out of it before it turns off. That is when Hanalei lets us know that she is upset with the short timer as well.
Another solution we have found that helps smooth out the night is to constantly have noise going in the room. My favorite is the Bob Marley Rockabye Baby CD, but I also like the Nature sounds CD that has a 20 minute track of a jungle rainforest (Your local library is a good source for nature CDs). This background noise helps drown out hissing radiators, neighbors in the outdoor stairway and creaking floor boards.
**Secret Tip**
When she is especially frantic and screaming her head off, we have found one surefire solution. After she is changed, fed, swaddled, bounced and pacifired and still screaming, we pull out the clock radio. Roll the dial all the way to one end and turn it up as loud as it goes. It should be louder than her. Put it right next to her in a spot where she can’t get tangled in the cord. Even if it has to be 6 inches from her at full volume don’t worry. From what I’ve heard this is about the same level of noise that she had in the womb (and the same sound, which is why she likes it). Either way, its just as loud as her screaming, so she should be fine. This usually stops her within 10 seconds. Let it sit for a couple of minutes before you start SLOWLY tuning it down. It might take 10 minutes before you can get it to a more tolerable level, but once you do, just leave it. She usually falls asleep within 15 minutes and the we just leave it on the floor next to her and go in the other room. I guess you could pay a lot of money for a white noise machine, but the old $10 clock radio we had in the back of the closet from 15 years ago works just fine.
Enough of that, here are some of the pics that make it hard to go to work on the weekdays:
melts my heart
so happy all the time
likes to dance too
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