It Goes On
Today we continued along the path to solid foods, introducing the more conventional rice cereal. Rice cereal is… weird. It looks like instant mashed potatoes, and when mixed with formula is, if possible, less appetizing. Eloise was not impressed with the special of the day, but Julian contentedly nommed it down. Tomorrow we’re going with applesauce. (And yes, yes, I know you’re “supposed” to wait 3-4 days before introducing each new food, but I just can’t, in good conscience, keep shoveling this bland mush into their mouths. If they like the applesauce, we’ll settle on that for a few days.)
The other thing going on is our continuing struggles with sleep. I meant to write a long, detailed post on our adventures with sleep training (and may yet, if I find the time and you, dear reader, express an interest) but the short version is that we went with Dr. Ferber. Julian has never really been a problem in terms of sleeping through the night, but we needed to get Eloise down to a single wake-up to feed, and we’re still working on getting them to nap reliably during the day.
About a week and a half ago we decided to eliminate Eloise’s final night feeding, and that’s been something of a battle. Even though she should be able to sleep through the night without eating, she emphatically does not want to, and is not shy about expressing her displeasure, loudly, at 4:00 in the morning. The last two nights have seen me spending those gray hours between 4:00 and 7:00 sitting in the glider with her sleeping on my shoulder, since she’s currently refusing to go back down into her crib. The challenge is exacerbated by the presence of her brother, who can sleep blissfully through almost anything, but not his sister wailing at 4:00 in the morning. We’re now planning to whisk him out of the room at the first sign of an Eloisplosion since otherwise they take turns working each other into a frenzy and no one gets any sleep.
As if that weren’t challenge enough, we’re also trying to wean them off sleeping swaddled. Yes, at this point, the babies can only fall asleep if tightly wrapped, which means if, say, they wriggle out of their blanket in the middle of the night, they can’t go back to sleep… ELOISE.
Our plan is to use the spirit of the Ferber method: we’ll put them down unswaddled and each night wait a progressively longer amount of time before picking them up and swaddling them. That sounds like it might work, right?
Right?
Please, God, let us get more sleep tonight.
Filed under Parenting | Tags: feeding, food, sleep, solid, swaddle | Comments (6)6 Responses to “It Goes On”
Leave a Reply
They won’t go to college in a swaddle; unless they’re getting tangled up in the blankets, you can go in there and wrap her back. That said, I’m not really the person to give you sleep advice. My monkeys gradually outgrew the swaddle, but didn’t sleep though the night until 11 months.
ohhhh hugs!! we went through this too. I agree with Lindsay, they will grow out of it. Our boy took a bit longer than expected, so we got a Peke Moe – http://www.pekemoe.co.nz and it worked immediately and kept him covered all night till he was about 15months! was fab.
all the best
Godspeed, my friends. Sadly, you have given life to two creatures with minds of their own. And it seems that they (*cough**AHEM**Eloise**cough*) are deciding to act on those independent minds.
Good luck with the sleep! We’re still up 1-2 times a night to eat. We successfully unswaddled Sam at 4-5 months – we took one arm out for a few nights, then the other. We put her in a sleep sack to work on the leg transition. It was rough for a few nights (she would wake herself up a lot), but now she sleeps like a champ! Fingers crossed for you!
Did you drop the bottle cold turkey or step her down? Elllie woke up at 3 am for MONTHS out of habit. At least it seemed like months.
PS I thought we were going to swaddle her until she was eleven, but once she started getting out on her own, it was kind of pointless. So we just let her escape and she worked it out herself after a while.
I got nothing about the “What do I do with two babies indoors for an hour for fun?” question. But I will give it additional thought. Do they roll all over yet?
We stepped it down, but that seemed to make her more upset, so we ended up jumping to zero a little earlier than we planned. Our Ellie has been able to work herself out of the swaddle, but can’t seem to put herself back to sleep yet—although there’s a glimmer of hope, because she managed to sleep unswaddled from about 8:00 to 3:00 last night!