Hello wonderful Mummies. Sorry I've been even more AWOL than usual. It feels like months since I last posted. I do pop in from time to time and check in on you all and I love catching up with piccies and status updates on FB. I'm so excited that our meet-up is almost here so I can finally meet you all and your beautiful kiddlets and chat to you IRL.
We've been having a terrible time with sleep which (apart from my usual level of laziness and disorganisation) has made it really hard to find a moment to post. Ivy is still really resisting day-sleeps and will cry even if I attempt to rock her and pat her to sleep. She also screams when we try to put her down at night and is waking 2-4 times. I don't mind the night wakings - she's hungry - I just hate the distress over getting her to sleep. She's so wise to it now she cries when I walk into a darkened room or turn on her sleep music and often cries when I start to read a story as she knows all of these things are part of the bed time routine. I don't want her to develop an aversion to stories and music! But she just gets SO upset. Pretty much the only thing that works is feeding her to sleep but then 99% of the time she wakes and screams the second I try to put her down. Needless to say, I've been pinned to my couch for hours on end recently, just holding her so at least she gets 30 mins sleep (which is the most she will nap through the day).
I've had a really rough time with it because my cuddles and closeness don't seem to soothe her. Once she's decided she's upset she just cries in my arms and often will work herself up into gulping, sobbing hysterics. It breaks my heart. And I end up feeling like I can't help her and am being mean. I don't understand why she hates to sleep so much. Only 5 months ago I could barely keep her awake long enough to feed! On top of self doubt, the advice of others has crept in, and I cringe to confess that we actually tried a modified version of sleep training for a week. I never left her, but I did put her in the cot and just stay with her and pat her and sing etc. It was horrible. It seemed to be working for a few days and there were a couple of sleeps where she just popped her thumb in and took herself off to sleep. But then it all went backwards and the screaming resumed. The sleep consultant we'd been working with wanted me to ramp it up a notch and start leaving her for short stretches in spite of crying. I'm actually glad she suggested this, as it was enough to shake me to my senses. The mere idea of it made me feel ill. It just sounded so wrong. And I knew that we had to just abandon the whole thing and just go back to what we were doing. Trying to follow Ivy's lead to find whatever will provide her with as much security and comfort as we can give her each time and hoping that she'll find her way through this.
Woah. Sorry. Didn't expect to rant so much about this but it's been a rough couple of months and I know you guys get it.
On the flip-side... Oh my god that girl is so cute! She's at such an awesome stage at the moment. Lots of giggles, rasperries, huuuuuuge grins for Daddy and me, babbling, squealing, stamping her legs on the floor and just in the last few days, starting to pull up onto hands and knees (or often hands and feet - so strong!) and getting ready to crawl. She's amazing and I feel so very blessed to have her. Such a miracle watching her figure out her body and the world around her. She's LOVING music and we often do a tour of our music room playing the piano, xylophone, drums, guitar, flute... (Daddy's a muso so we've got lots of stuff!) and gets really excited when she can make the noises by herself. She loves when i sing to her too and is starting to anticipate the actions in songs - looking to my hands or face when she knows a particular action or noise is coming or getting all squeely and leaning forward when we get to the end of a particular song when I make her fly up into the air! SOOOOOOOO CUTE!!
We started BLS the other day. Some interest. Some disgust - ewwwww banana! Not much has really been ingested yet, she tends to just push stuff out with her tongue, but she's more than happy to explore different foods which is great.
oops. awake again. gotta run. will try to post in the meet-up facebook thread soon.
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