Let's start with 5 month old Wells and how things were going in December....
I bought a Zipadee Zip, thinking it'd help with sleep. It doesn't. In fact, I was shocked about how poorly made it was. I got the fleece one because it's winter and I wasn't impressed. His Halo sleepsack is made from a thicker fleece. Also, he really likes sleeping with his arms above his head so this didn't work. He's currently using a size medium sleep sack. Walmart sells them for $13, opposed to $20 on Amazon, if you're in the market.
Sleep training was failing spectacularly in December. You'll see below that it was working out..but then we started going back and forth to Colorado a few times, and that caused the routine to shift a bit (sharing a room again, only an overhead light in the bedroom, etc.). And then being in Wyoming during finals week meant that I felt reallllly terrible letting him cry it out when Scott was up until 2am studying because it's a small house. So I started rocking him again.
Anyway...
I started sleep-training Wells the week before Thanksgiving. We were having an awful time at night and, with Scott working around the clock (really, these last few months have been worse than his time in command, if I'm being honest), it was all on me. One Saturday, I downloaded an ebook, read it in an hour, and started it that night. It took one night of crying it out for him to catch on. I'm not saying he never cried again, but he never wailed for an hour like that first night.
Sleep training was going TREMENDOUSLY well...until he started full-on teething. Then, he started waking up at night crying, not because he's alone in his crib or because he's hungry, but because his mouth hurt. He always has his hands in his mouth or the collar of his sleepsack shoved in there so he can chew on it. He just wants to be comforted, so I pick him up, he takes a few sips of his bottle and he goes back to sleep and the cycle starts all over again 60 minutes later.
We started purees around the end of November, around 4 1/2 months. Wells' doctor said we could start whenever we wanted so it was a lot of reading up on the world of solid food for babies. I knew nothing about it, really. I also did a little bit of reading on baby-led weaning, but I really wanted to start solids before we moved away from Wyoming, so starting earlier was better in our case. I tried rice cereal first, to get him used to a spoon and to see how he'd do with it. He was so-so the first time, so I tried again a few days later and he loved it. We did rice cereal for about a week and then moved onto vegetables and fruit. So far: sweet potatoes, green beans, peas, butternut squash, banana, avocado, carrots, apples, peaches, and pears. He was not a fan of chicken. Pureed chicken just seems less than appealing to me. The only thing he hasn't cared for is banana and he'll only eat avocado if I mix it with formula. We did peanut butter and that worked out well. I mixed it with banana but he doesn't love banana, so he ate it and didn't have a reaction, but I don't know if he actually enjoyed it the way he inhales those vegetables.
My dinner and his. Safeway makes this green chile dip and I don't even think I could replicate it. It was so amazing.
The way I introduced veggies wasn't how they told me to, but it seemed like the best way for us. I bought a glass jar of the organic baby food. I had him try it over a couple of days to 1) see if he liked it, and 2) make sure he didn't have a reaction to it. If it was one he liked, I made my own purees, freezing it into ice cube trays and then storing in the freezer in ziploc bags. That way I wasn't wasting time/money/energy on something we wouldn't end up using/eating. I did make the chicken, avocado, and banana myself. The vegetables just seemed easier to buy in the jar at first.
Wells isn't quite sitting on his own when not in a Bumbo. He, until the last few weeks, wouldn't actually sit at all. He wants to lay on his back and kick or he wants to be held up so he's standing in your lap. He also prefers kneeling and squatting on your lap to just plain sitting. We're working on this.
That was month five for Wells. All that we really worked on was eating and sleeping (and packing and moving). Month 6 was a month of giant transitions that included a new state, a new doctor, meeting family, etc. (I'm not really wondering why the kid doesn't sleep, to be honest...things are a mess.)
I'll be back with the 6 month recap next week (because I still need to take his picture).
Time flies faster when you have a baby huh
ReplyDeleteThat second picture is so funny! Poor guy and his mouth. I've never heard a good teething story! Hope he's doing a bit better now.
ReplyDeleteThe ice cube tray thing is a great idea! Mostly I try to have Cyrus eat something from whatever we're eating, because that's way cheaper than the baby food jars, but I always do have jars on hand because sometimes they're just way easier. He didn't like chicken at first, either, but now shredded chicken or pork is some of his favorite food.
ReplyDeleteI like how, in the second picture, he's so calm after he's fallen over sideways. :P Babies, they're reactions are just so funny!
Teething really does screw everything up!!! It definitely gets better and easier.
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