Sleepy Thoughts

Before I get into what this post is about, I'd like to state that Alexa is a wonderful and happy baby. She really is. She laughs and wants to play all the time. In fact, the only time that she has ever been truly fussy was after her shots and when she had a cold last week. As far as sleeping is concerned, she has been "sleeping through the night" since she was about 5 weeks old. I put that in quotes because apparently sleeping through the night in baby terms is five hours. In my world, sleeping through the night is at least 8 hours. I'm just saying.

Anyway. We moved Alexa into her room about a month ago and since then she has been waking up in the middle of the night. When I'm home, she'll (sometimes) wake up at around 12:30 just wanting the paci and then at 5:30 to eat. After that she keeps on sleeping until 8:30 at which time we get up for the day. When I'm at work and Nick has her it's a totally different story. Just last night she woke up a total of 8 times for him. That is rediculoso. When I was talking to him on the phone (as I was driving home from work and he was driving to work) he was telling me how he did the exact same things I do but for some reason it doesn't work for him. He even let her try to cry it out one of the times which didn't work. This crying it out thing has now become a hot topic in our house. I have been a firm believer in this for years. Nick, not so much. We have been trying it for the past few weeks and I keep telling him that the baby is safe, it's ok to let her cry, she will fall asleep. Apparently this is not true for my kid. As I have mentioned before, she is about as stubborn as Nick and I are. The other morning she was having a hard time going back to sleep for me and she cried for 45 minutes. It was craziness and she never did just fall asleep. It took Nick going in there and picking her up to finally calm her down (after multiple attempts of trying to stick the paci back in her mouth and roll her over).

So this all prompted me to research online about no cry sleep training. I know, I sound like one of those crazies who breast feeds and has a 'family bed' until their kids are 18. I have been reading about this lady Elizabeth Pantley who wrote the book "The No-Cry Sleep Solution" and I think I might get her book. She talks about sleep training that actually trains the baby to sleep (as opposed to just picking her up every time she wakes up) without letting her scream for 20 minutes. She talks a lot about sleep associations which immediately made me think of the fact that every time Alexa is put on her side (I know, the baby should be back to sleep but who seriously can sleep well on their backs? I've put babies to sleep on their sides for years at work and I was pretty adamant about doing it at home too) with the paci she falls right to sleep. This is a good thing, right? Sure, until she rolls over in the middle of the night and wakes up paciless and on her back. No wonder she can't put herself back to sleep, she's in the wrong position without anything to suck on. All of this has seriously made me second guess my whole put Alexa on her side to sleep thing that worked so well for the first three months of her life. Now I feel like it's back firing on me. I know this is completely against my normal way of thinking but I really feel like the crying it out thing just isn't working for her. Has anyone heard of or tried Pantley's program? Any thoughts or opinions? I'd really love to know what you think!

Playing Catch Up

I was just looking back on my previous posts and I realized that there isn't much of Alexa in the form of pictures, video, etc. Sorry. I know the few people that actually read my blog are more interested in her then me. I don't blame you, she's pretty awesome. So without further ado, I give you..."Alexa's life over the past two months as told in pictures".

Shower Streams

I was just in the shower and I discovered the most entertaining thing ever! (You got to love a blog post that starts with a sentence like that) In case you haven't figured it out already...WARNING! I am once again going to talk about my boobs. I'm sorry, I know no one really wants to hear about it (again) but I've never really had them before and I find them intriguing. So the background to this story is that Alexa is starting to take at least one bottle of formula a day in addition to nursing. When she had formula earlier it filled her up and then she didn't nurse as well and, well the important thing to know is that when I got into the shower I had one side drained and the other side was pretty full. So I was standing there washing my hair and thinking about how much my right boob is going to hurt by morning. Then I thought of one of my nurse friends at Joe D who was nursing at the time and told me that she could shoot milk out of her boob by squeezing it. Well obviously I had to try it and oh does it work! And I must say, for my little boobies I can sure shoot an impressive stream! Plus, now I'm not going to be in so much pain in the morning. Was it an immature thing to do? Yes. Should I have just pumped so that Alexa could have more milk to drink while I'm at work? Probably. Did I have the time of my life playing target practice with Alexa's bath toys? Absolutely!