Weaning diary notes #2 - cold turkey day

Sun 23.17:
Felix rolled over onto his tummy in his sleep. Started screaming. Full breastfeed.

Mon 01:00:
Same thing happened again. Short burst of booby milk.

Mon 02.50 - 04.00:
Felix rolled over again. We righted him, twice, then let him cry himself to sleep for 1 hour and 10 minutes. It is at some point while he was screaming that I decided we go cold turkey from now.

Mon 07.30:
Felix wakes. Daddy offers bottle nonchalantly. Squealibeans Rejects Bottle. I am totally on edge, assuming he is a bomb about to go off.

Mon 11.00:
Whimpering grows but he's nowhere near frantic. After some initial resistance bf bottle-feeds him 110ml of EBM/formula mix.

WOW! We are amazed. Clearly, he can still drink from a bottle!!

Mon 1pm:
Whimpering grows again, but still not frantic. Felix drinks another 70ml EBM/formula mix from a bottle.

Mon 14.50:
After persistent complaining since his last feed Felix takes another 110ml. Another small step forward. Had been feeling very antsy up to this point, but again, calm and hopefulness is restored.

Mon 17.10:
Felix drinks 110ml, given to him by his mum.

Mon 19.00:
120ml, again given by mum. He finishes the bottle. I wish I had put more milk in.

Total Monday: 520ml.

Tues some heinous hour of night:
Felix woke, hungry and screaming. After 45 mins I caved in and give him 170ml from a bottle.

Tues 09.00:
150ml from bottle.

Tues 11.30:
130ml from bottle.

Which brings us up to now.

Is it safe to say he's weaned now? Could it really be that quick? After all our anxiety, surely it should be a lot more painful? It makes me feel stupid for worrying so much. Anyway, the plan is really to establish him on milk for a few days, then go back to giving him some solids too and a few sips from the cup. I've been pumping the boobs to ease the pain, and just need to reduce the frequency and volume I express each time. Then we'll increase the formula to EBM ratio till it's totally formula. All eminently doable.

At some point we need to make sure he's full enough during the days so he can go back to sleeping through the night again. Aaarrrgghhhh at the thought of sleep training again. At least there is something left for me to worry about.

Operation Cold Turkey starts earlier than expected

As if snuffles, teething, cup training, weaning onto solids and me cutting back the booby milk weren't enough, Felix started to roll over onto his tummy. It's a huge developmental milestone... only he started doing it in the middle of the night. Every 90 minutes to be precise.

Doubtless after his day of solids-training, he hadn't eaten enough and was unsettled and HUNGRY, which made him thrash about and madly suck his fist, which made him roll over. Lots. Which made him scream. Lots. Poor little mite, it's understandable.

But despite that, in my exhausted, I-can't-take-much-more-of-this stupor I decided, gulp, that we couldn't have Felix being that hungry in the night. Going cold turkey on the breastfeeding front and bottle feeding only for Felix would have to start ASAP.

Getting Felix to sleep through - executive summary

So Felix is consistently sleeping through somewhere between 9 and 11 hours every night. He doesn't always go to bed easily, sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night and needs to settle himself back again, and often it's nearer 9 hours than the desired 11 BUT the important thing of note is that I am getting decent kip, at last, and I think I've sort of stopped moaning about it. But it does beg the question - why do I still feel so tired?

Getting Felix to sleep through - twelfth and thirteenth nights

Night 12 sleep report: Felix slept through 11 hours

Night 13 sleep report: Felix woke up around 4am, eyes wide open, babbling and desperately trying to chew on anything within grabbing distance, but he wasn't crying. A few yelps and wails ensued over the next 20 mins or so then he went back to sleep by himself.

So according to the 5-night rule, he's not "sleeping through" just yet but 3 in a row is good going.

Getting Felix to sleep through - eleventh night

Felix went to bed like a dream at 7 and slept through 11 hours again last night. So I'm now wondering how many consecutive nights before we can start claiming that Felix is actually 'sleeping through'? I reckon about 5.

Getting Felix to sleep through - ninth and tenth night

Sleep report night 9:

After our wibble, we did a proper bedtime routine, on time again. The trick is to get him used to falling asleep by himself, as opposed to being fed or cuddled, then he'll know what to do if he wakes in the middle of the night. Only Felix wouldn't settle, because he was still hungry I think, and when I went to feed him around 8pm he fell asleep at the breast and I couldn't rouse him. What can you do?

So in the middle of the night Felix woke up around 2am and cried for 10 minutes, which woke up Jambeans. Then I went to get Jambeans into our bed and check Felix, which made him cry harder for another 10 minutes. Then he was completely quiet, and it toook about 20 minutes for us to all relax again and start to doze off, when he woke up again and cried for the next 40 minutes. Total ordeal lasted about an hour. It was OK. Jambeans managed to ignore it and fall asleep pretty quickly which made it a lot easier.

Sleep report night 10:

Felix slept through again. Yaaaaaaaaaayyyyy!

Getting Felix to sleep through - the wibble in the middle

So after our amazing nights' sleep we sort of wibbled a bit. Felix is still sleeping long stretches - 7 to 9 hours, but not the 10 - 11 I really need. Instead, he's been waking between 9pm and 10pm and I've been feeding him then and he goes through till about 5am. And I've been a bit lax about making sure he doesn't feed himself to sleep during the day too, which doesn't help I'm sure. So we're going to sharpen our act up again and get back on track.

Getting Felix to sleep through - sixth night

Apologies, in advance, for the indiscriminate use of punctuation marks, but...

FELIX SLEPT THROUGH LAST NIGHT!!!!

HURRAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!

And although it's a bit premature, I am already planning weeks of sleep-laden nights ahead.

Getting Felix to sleep through - fifth night

Night 5 sleep report:

Felix settled himself to sleep around 19.00, then woke at 03.45, did about 10 minutes halfhearted whimpering that was barely audible, then went back to sleep by himself.

Hurrah! Elation! Joy!

Babymomma was very excited that he had actually slept through for the first time.

But then 20 minutes later and mid-celebration Felix woke up again and started whimpering himself fully awake. This time I went into check him, my cunning plan being to wear bf's enormous dressing gown to disguise the smell of milk and make Felix think I am daddy. Needless to say, I wasn't expecting too much.

So Felix is whimpering, then goes all silent and hopeful when he hears my footsteps, looks at me imploringly as I reposition him, then as I turn to go he starts screaming in a way that translates as "Nooooo! Don't Go! Come back! Mummy come back! Mummy come back now! Pleeease come back! I want a cuuuuuuuddle!!!!!!!!!!!"

But it only lasted half an hour this time, and the gaps between his fits of crying are growing longer, so we're definitely on the right path.

Getting Felix to sleep through - fourth night

Night 4 sleep report as follows:

Felix' last feed was at 18.10, he went to sleep on his own at 20.00, woke at 04.00, bf went to check on him but no cuddle, Felix then cried for 42 mins only and slept till 7am...

Am feeling hopeful.

And I've also decided to ditch getting Felix onto a bottle for at least the foreseeable future and wean Felix straight onto the cup, as we did with Jasmine. It's going well so far - he's lapping up about 60ml at a time in a messy but eager way, and I'm sure could take more. And he seems quite comfortable with formula, even if it's neat. And including the fact he's eating rice porridge quite nicely maybe, just maybe, that means I can start having the occasional morning off when bf is at home?

It's scary just writing it down because it seems like too much to hope for. Also, at the back of my mind, is the knowledge that Jasmine made exactly the same progress and then rejected the cup a few days before she was due to start nursery...

Getting Felix to sleep through - third night

Night 3 sleep report:

Felix cried for 1 hour 20 mins - insistent, pleading, loud, angry, hungry cries - and it goddamn nearly broke my heart to listen to him. I had to go downstairs and watch the end of "50 Sexiest Supermodels" on E! Entertainment. (Heidi Klum? Number 2?? Surely a mistake?) But he did sleep eventually, and then slept till 7am.

I don't know why, but I got it into my head that it only takes about 3 days for the whole thing to work, so even though it's not going badly I feel a bit sad today that we're putting the poor wee bub through the whole ordeal.

Getting Felix to sleep through - second night

Night 2 sleep report:

Felix woke at 2.34am, cried for 1 hour and 3 minutes, had 2 cuddles from the bf but no food. It started off a slow tired moan, got more frantic then he conked out. I woke him at 7am to feed him because my boobs were exploding.

It's going quite well. But I'm nervous about when the bf is at work.

Getting Felix to sleep through - first night

Felix is a pretty good sleeper, and was making fab progress till he rejected the bottle at the beginning of June. Since then, either because of, or simply by coincidence, his night waking patterns have been a lot more unpredictable, so I decided that as soon as we get back from holiday we should aim to get him to sleep through. He's just shy of 5 months' old - it feels like the right time.

We're not 100% sure what the best way to go about it is. We keep debating whether to try and link it to getting him used to the bottle again. Weaning is the next major hurdle, and will take longer (and, because of the nightmare I had last time, and because history is repeating itself, is the thing I dread more than torture, more than death, more than global chocolate-drought). So we've been pratting about trying to give him a 10pm bottle feed (maybe he wasn't hungry or he was and just rejected it - either way it was a FAIL and I was plunged into despair just before bedtime) and then trying to bottle feed him in the middle of the night when he did wake (same result, same potential reasons, same middle of night despair). We've now decided to ditch that particular problem till later, bench the despair, and focus on getting him to sleep through for now.

With Jambeans we didn't try till she was 7 months corrected, and when we finally did get round to doing it, we did it in a gentle, slow way - first weaning her off the breast, then weaning her off the cuddles - but the thing that really worked worked was ultimately letting her cry it out, so we're going to cut out all the Good Cop tactics and try the same with Felix. Luckily for me, bf gets to be Bad Cop.

Soooo, first night's report:

Felix cried for 1 hour and 8 minutes. It started of a gentle, bearable, whiny-wimpering. Then got more persistent so Bf administered cuddles after half an hour. Then turned into full on shrieking which woke Jambeans up. Then, all of a sudden - total quiet. And sleep till 7am.

The first night is supposed to be the worst, so by my calculations that was a good start.

Teething is upon us

Felix has definitely started teething - which will rapidly become the catch all explanation for every scrumble fit he has from now for the next 12 or so months. He's been doing about 2-3 teething poos a day - smelly, gooey, lumpy and mustardy - he wakes often at night and is impossible to settle in the evening, crying till about half eight or nine at night. Bf and I have been taking turns to work through the various remedies to the crying: Bonjela, which lasts for about 10 minutes but can only be administered every 3 hours; cuddling (=armache); feeding - often doesn't work because he's either not hungry, or is hungry but is in pain and can't eat comfortably; burping and ultimately Calpol, by which time he's exhausted, we're exhausted and ready to let him cry himself to sleep.

A good start

So, Felix screamed his lungs out (and pretty much every other vital organ in his body) for a grand total of 39 minutes yesterday, then all was eerily silent. The relief was palpable, but the guilt carried on for at least until the end of the football. Then bf fed him, then he rewarded us by not waking till 6am when he did a poo, so now he is calm and happy, as is his babymomma ;-)

Babymomma shows a distinct lack of grit

It had to happen some time, Felix was up 5 times last night. Either he's hungry and getting ready for solids, or teething which is making him eat little and often, but the end result is the same - one very tired and frazzled babymomma.

To add insult to injury it was his 4 month jabs today, so he had to have 3 injections and my god did he cry and wobble his little lip like mad - which I found tres upsetting despite all my efforts to stay level-headed about it all. Felix was crying so much, and I felt so sorry for him that tears started leaking out of the sides of my eyes. At least it was graceful, ladylike crying, rather than the full-on, red-cheeked, snotty-nosed, puffy-eyed, ugly-faced blubbing variety, but it was crying in public nevertheless, i.e. a Sign of Weakness, and it was only half ten in the morning.

Still, fingers crossed I make it through the day.

Felix does a triangle

Felix is 12 weeks and 2 days old.

He turned corner 1 recently when he started sleeping a couple of 5-6 hour shifts between 6pm-ish and 6am-ish. So Mummy got some decent sleep and was very Happy.

Corner 2 was turned a few days ago when he still managed a couple of 5-6 hour sleep shifts, but at the wrong times of day, so in the evening when we have both had long weary-making days and I desperately want the bubs to SLEEP NOW GODDAMIT we have the company of a very wakey babbling, burbling, occasionally crying and sometimes screaming Felix too.

Which is okay, and thank God I know not to go all Gina Ford on his ass, but being on child duty for longer makes Mummy Tired Again and Grumpy coming so soon after having a blissful taste of decent sleep and thinking 'at last at last at last.'

whassup with jambeans?????????

jambeans wouldn't sleep last night just screamed and screamed and screamed even when we brought her into bed with us she just wanted to be held wouldn't tolerate being put down at all she wasn't ill wasn't teething we don't think hadn't done a poo etc. we think it's probably separation anxiety combined with awareness of world rushing in and her not knowing how to control her mood state but in the end we gave her some food changed her nappy gave her some calpol and left her to it but i think she fell asleep at that point mainly because she had been screaming for about 4 hours then we caught some zees but only a few hours and were both zombies all day but bf had said that morning on the train platform whatever happens DON'T STOP WORKING and he was right cos otherwise i would have gone numb but when i finally did stop it all caught up with me and thought i was going to die or be sick from exhaustion but still had to pick jambeans up and get her home and now she is in bed and we hope she sleeps ok and i feel like poooooooooooooo

Bam-jeans does Heat magazine

Saturday 7th April - Easter weekend

• so into it:
  
• chewing the tops off broccoli heads "no way are these vegetables"
  
• eating raisins like no other food exists "yummy yummy"
  
• drinking milk or water from a cup "but only occasionally mind you"
  
• waving hello
  
• picking up super small things with my finger and thumb
  
• flirting with grown-ups on the tube "you grown ups - you're so easy!"
  
• sleeping thru' 12 hours
• chilling on a rug in the garden
  

• so over it:
• toast "it's easy, it's quick - where's the challenge in that?"
  
• breastfeeding "so for babies"
  
• sitting still "because there's so much to explore"
  
• daddy being on call for the whole of Easter "Borrrring"
  
• Snot Rivers "Joan's evil cousin has laid siege to my nose"
• being last in the pecking order after mummy and daddy for Heat magazine

• so looking forward to:
• baby boyfriends birthday parties - ben, zayne and sam
• mummy and daddy splashing out on a weekend away for my birthday
• auntie mary and uncle leon visiting soon
  

Stories I am too tired to write about

Well, I was going to try and write about Nicki and new baby Siena, who has been putting on weight quite slowly since being born (on Valentines Day - just over 3 weeks ago), so Nicki's Dairy has opened 24/7 for feeding and expressing and bottles.

Or how Jam-beans has slept well for the last 3 nights and gone back to 10 hour stints. Even though that still means I am up at 5am.

Or that tooth number 4 is appearing.

Or that she seems to be back on vegetables, for yesterday at least.

Or how yesterday she looked as if she was realy trying to crawl, as she pulled herself round in a circle on her tummy.

Or how things that I thought would be hard at work are turning out to be easy. And things I didn't even think of are turning out to be a real challenge. (Like the stop-start-stop-start of doing 3 days a week, and missing all the good things about my old job, but forgetting what was hard about it).

Or how within two weeks of losing the Carling Cup, and going out of the FA cup, Arsenal have now bombed out of the Champions League. And Man U, Chelsea and Liverpool all made it to the quarters, which makes it harder, and Thierry Henry is injured for at least 3 weeks, which makes it totally pants.

Instead I am going to moan about feeling so tired I can barely function.