We had some good days, way back when. 1-1/2 hour naps. Some good nights. 5 hour stretches with only one or two little wakes for nursing thereafter.
It could be me. Especially during the Hawaii trip, I got in the habit of taking the boy into the bed to nurse lying down. I can’t tell if it really makes things better or worse. It seems like I doze, but it also seems like I’m waking up a lot more often to move him from one boob t’other. And then, in Hawaii, he started breaking that lovely 5-hour chunk into two pieces. That’s happened twice. I’d rather not have it happen again.
But between the teething, the reflux, the gas, the physical growing, the mental growing, can you blame him?
I read chunks of this blog post’s comments almost every day of our trip, fascinated with this thing of “sleep regression” in four-month-olds. I don’t know that our boy has actually regressed. But one day, I pray he’ll pro-gress towards more sleep.
Probably not till solid foods.
And when am I supposed to introduce those? People keep asking me. I haven’t even read the sleep books yet. And now there’s food books? I hear tell of different theories: Rice cereal first; grains last; vegetables first; fruit first; strained and organ meat first…
Man, is this parenting thing tiring.
Since Moxie says there’s no point in sleep training four-month-olds, and as we all know, I’m not such a schedule/train kind of gal, we’re putting that off for now. Though I am thinking of keeping better track of his sleep patterns, just so I can pretend to control whether or not he’s going to be fat when he gets older, a propos of this article.
And I can’t find the reference, but I’m pretty sure out there in the ether is the study that says babies who don’t sleep enough grow up to have ADD and mental disorders and commit more crimes or something.
Not that I’m worrying (who me?).
Actually, his total sleep may be around 12 hours in 24, which isn’t bad, I think. I’m the one who’s going to commit crimes at least accidentally, wandering around in this sleep-depro haze.
I’m not even sure where the last five days went since I’ve been home. How did I not have time to blog?
RE: solid food – I read recently that the latest thinking is – don’t fuss about what to feed him at all. Just promotes food allergies and pickiness. Let him eat what you eat. (!!!)
I think the key is – whatever he grabs out of your hand and stuffs in your mouth is a good first food. Or goat yogurt. Your call.
Woops – stuffs in *his* mouth, not yours.
Late night blog commenting – dangerous.
The parenting thing is indeed tiring — too many things that we can stress about or feel guilty about, eh?
For solid foods… when my son was a wee one (he’s now 3, almost 4), the thinking was to start anywhere from 4-6 months (we started at 5 months). Rice cereal was suggested as a starter food and from there we moved to vegies and then fruit. Nowadays it seems like the thinking is to wait until closer to 6 months (?) or so I seem to be reading.
I think Leila has an interesting point about the starter food — not worrying so much about what to feed. Not every culture starts their children on rice cereal or sticks with bland foods.
Did you pediatrician have any advice?
Uh-huh. I agree with Leila – ‘whatever he can steal, he can have’ is my view! I am going to go down the Baby Led Weaning path – probably starting with broccoli, as it has a ‘built in handle’
Mind, you could say that he’s already *had* his first solids – a stick of celery he decided to teeth on instead of just wave around as we’d expected. Frayed the end of that nicely, and seemed to enjoy it – although didn’t actually *eat* it as such.
Will try him teething on carrot next, but have been warned that carrot drool stains…
We have our next Pediatrician appt next week so will talk to her then. Last appt., she gave us a handout on starting between 4 & 6 months, per the new idea that THAT will stave off food allergies. Who knows?
Today he sucked on a frozen carrot! Orange drool! Huzzah!