Sleeping Issues

Our darling little daughter has decided that she doesn't like to sleep by herself at night anymore. It started last week when she got a cold. She had been sleeping in 4-6 hour stretches, usually with one early morning feeding (between 3-5 am), then back to sleep until 8 or so. Then she got sick and had a harder time sleeping due to her cough and congestion. But still she would get in at least one 4 hour stretch of sleep. Except for the last couple of nights, when she has been waking up every single hour, all night long. It makes for the longest night ever. If you have time to read my whole rant here, I would be happy for any advice from fellow parents out there!!

I am hoping this waking up has to do with her cold. Sometimes I think she coughs and wakes herself up, or she has difficulty breathing through her nose and wakes up. We have a humidifier running and we have been putting her in her glider to sleep, so she is propped up and not flat on her back. But still, she's not sleeping at night, at least not for more than an hour at a time. And she's really not sleeping any more than normal during the day. We try to stick with a eat, play, sleep routine through the day (she usually takes about 3 naps). I try to put her down (for both naps and at night) while she is still awake, so that she can fall asleep on her own. We have a bedtime routine: eat, bath, book, a little rocking, bed. All of these things seemed to be working, which makes the past few nights so much more frustrating.

So I've read a TON of stuff about baby sleeping habits and how to get a baby to sleep through the night. Although at this point, I'm not even worried about sleeping through the night...I'd just like to get her to sleep for a few hours at a time again, like she did when she was just a couple of weeks old! Anyway, there is so much conflicting information out there about babies and sleep. I wish there was just one right way to get them to sleep well, but I don't think there is. And I am increasingly becoming convinced that it cannot be controlled completely by the parents. I think a large majority of how a baby sleeps depends on the baby. There is only so much me and Daniel can do to help her sleep through the night, the rest is up to her, when she is ready to do it!

I'm OK with letting her "cry it out" with a few conditions. First, I think that she is too young to let her really cry for long periods of time. There may come a point where we will need to do that, but 2 months is still too young for that in my opinion. And we had some friends who said their pediatrician doesn't recommend letting them cry it out until they are double their birth weight, so they are big enough to go without that nightly feeding. So at this point, I just don't think she's quite ready to sleep through the night or cry herself to sleep...MAYBE in a few months. Plus, at this point, she is still sleeping in our room, because we think her nursery is too cold. It's really hard to let her cry when she is right next to you! I'm OK with letting her cry for 5-10 minutes before one of us gets up to comfort her. Last night, that worked once and she got herself back to sleep (for an hour). If I knew that once she cried, she would fall asleep and stay asleep it would be easier to let her cry longer. However, when she is waking up every single hour, it just seems cruel to let her cry that often, all night long. By about 4 this morning, I think we were done letting her cry at all and were ready to do anything to get her to go to sleep and stay asleep. And finally, after a little formula and some rocking, I put her down at 5:30 and she fell asleep and stayed asleep until 9. It was comforting to know that she is still able to sleep for longer periods of time.

She's taking a good nap now, which means I should probably be trying to take a nap too. But I'm not good at napping during the day, which makes the sleepless nights even more frustrating. It's a good thing she is so cute!! When she greets you with these smiles like she did this morning, it makes it easier to forget the frustrating nights!

What a big girl!

Audrey has been holding her head up pretty well lately. So I thought we would try out her Bumbo seat and see how she did. And she did really good. I didn't leave her in for more than a minute or two, because she still seems to be a little young for it. But she was pretty stable in it and kept her head up the whole time. And she looks really cute sitting in it, I think!

And a funny face!

And I tried to get another video of her talking and playing with her toys, but every time I turned on the camera, all she wanted to do was stare at it. She does flash a few smiles for the camera in these videos though...enjoy!

10 Weeks

Today Audrey is 10 weeks old. She had her first cold this week, and it's so sad to hear her congested breathing and little cough. She doesn't seem to be too terribly bothered by it, but I'm ready for her to be back to normal. Yesterday we had her 2 month check up. She was 10 lbs 6 oz and 23 inches long. So in the past 5 weeks, she has gained 2 1/2 pounds and grown 1 1/2 inches! She is now in the 40th percentile for weight (she used to be in the 15th) so she is starting to catch up. She also had to have her first round of shots yesterday. The shots went much better than I anticipated. She only had to get 2. She did cry, but it wasn't as bad as I had imagined it would be in my head.

We also got a new swing this week. She loves to stare at mobiles, so I was looking for a swing with a good mobile. I think I picked a good one, because she loves to sit and stare at it. Hopefully, she will be content to hang out in her swing when I start teaching piano lessons again next week. I'm a little nervous about having to deal with a fussy baby and teach at the same time...hopefully I won't have to because she will be happily content in her new rainforest swing!

Poor Maggie...I think she may be starting to realize that Audrey is here to stay, which means Maggie will never be the center of attention again. Yesterday afternoon Maggie was being really clingy. She just wanted to be right on top of me and in my face. She didn't want to be on Daniel, just me. Later I was upstairs changing Audrey and Maggie crawled underneath the changing table. Looking at the table, I didn't think there was any way she could fit, it's maybe a 5-6 inch opening...but she did. And she stayed there for a while, almost like throwing a little temper tantrum and pouting because she didn't get her way. Well, we went back downstairs, and eventually Maggie came out of her hiding spot and was fine the rest of the day. Silly dog!

I had a video of Audrey playing yesterday, but I somehow deleted it by accident. I'll try to take another one today and post it soon.

It's been a few days

It's been a few days since I've posted. I spent the last 2 1/2 days or so miserably sick with some kind of cold/sinus stuff. And Audrey seems to have caught some of it, as she is very congested and has a yucky cough. It makes me very sad. Daniel also seems to have caught some of what is going around, so our house is just full of germs and sickness right now. But today I am feeling much better, so hopefully things will be looking up.

Last week, I packed away all of Audrey's newborn clothes. It was kind of sad, she is growing so fast. But it was kind of exciting too, because now we have a whole new wardrobe in the 0-3 month size range. She will probably outgrow these clothes quickly, so I have to take pictures every time she wears a new outfit!! Here are some pictures from our photo shoot last week.

I just ordered a new camera on Friday. Thanks to some Christmas money and more credit card rewards gift cards, we got this camera. I don't know anything about photography, so I have some learning to do to figure out how to use it. But I'm very excited and can't wait for it to get here! Poor Audrey, if she felt like I took a lot of pictures of her now, just wait until I get my hands on a new fancy camera!

Two months old!

Audrey officially turned two months old yesterday (New Year's Eve). She is getting so big! We go to the doctor next week, and I am very curious to see how big she is getting. According to the Wii Fit, she weighs around 9 1/2 pounds right now. If you compare these pictures to her one month old picture, you can see that she is really growing. She looks so different!

Christmas in Keokuk

We spent the last few days with my family in Keokuk and Quincy. She got to meet a lot of her family for the first time: Great Grandpa Chuck, Great Grandma Elly, Great Grandma Lois, Uncle Seth, Aunt Andrea and Aunt Elisabeth.

While we were there Seth took some cute pictures of Audrey. I'm going to post some of them here. But I have a bunch more that I'm not going to put here, so if you want to see more pics from our time in Keokuk, click here to go to my facebook album.

Christmas at our house

Since we are spending Christmas away from home, we wanted to celebrate our own family Christmas at our house before we left. Friday night we didn't have anything to do and the presents were all bought, so we decided to have Christmas then!

We didn't buy Audrey any presents as I have a feeling she will get plenty of presents from our family. But we had this stocking for her, and I felt like she should have something in it! I wrapped a couple of toys that we had unopened and unused and put them in her stocking so she wouldn't feel left out.

Maggie got a present too--some treats and a rawhide. She was happy.
Daniel got me lots of things--some sweatpants, a sweater, a Wii game, an itunes gift card, and a new pen holder for my desk.

It looks like I didn't get Daniel as much, but we spent equal amounts of money. Daniel got this canvas print of him and Audrey for his office, and he got money to buy new tennis shoes.
(these are his old shoes that I wrapped so he would have something to open)

And now for some more pictures of Audrey. This poor little girl probably feels like she is growing up with the paparazzi as she always has a camera in her face. I can't help myself, she's just too cute!

This morning I put Audrey in this sweatsuit for the first time. It's a little baggy, but she is still wearing it to church this morning, because changing outfits is not a fun process. And plus she needs a warm outfit today, because it is incredibly cold outside this morning...I am really dreading leaving the house. (Good thing the church is only 1 block away and Daniel fixed the remote start on my car, so it will be nice and toasty for our 20 second drive!)

And I caught a smile! It's not a good angle, but her smiles are quick, so there's no time for posing when I am trying to get a picture of one.