Tiny Boy turned six months on Saturday. I happened to find one of his preemie onesies on LG's floor (she used it for her doll) and threw it in the laundry. Marvelous Mother's Helper said to me did he REALLY wear this? Umm, yeah, he did. About 9 lbs and 7 inches ago. According to his pediatrician, Tiny Boy is currently 14 lbs 6 oz (5th percentile) and 25.5 inches (10th percentile), which makes him both a teeny tiny guy and, well, ginormous compared to what he was at birth.
He's a kid, people. He sits up and throws toys and screams like a banshee to get attention. He is, according to many people, the smiliest baby they've ever seen. In a few days we'll take another stab at "solid" food--we did rice cereal and sweet potato for a few days last month and ended up in the rocking chair with a belly ache in the middle of the night. Right now I give him a sippy cup at dinner, because he's clearly envious of the goods on LG's plate.
Sleep? Well, that still sucks to tell the truth. Night sleep is slowly improving, in that we no longer have an extended wakeful period in the middle of the night, and about half the time we don't even need to do the rocking chair at 4-5 am. He's much less restless than he was; he feeds frequently, but I'm not bothered by that. Still, he generally wakes after the first 40 minutes (which is almost inevitably when I'm trying to get LG out of the shower or into bed), and his longest sleep stretch, if I'm lucky, is three hours toward the beginning of the night.
Day sleep is erratic. Some days he's able to take a legitimate nap for 1.5-2.5 hrs in the afternoon (along with one or two shorter ones), but most of the time I'm lucky to get 3-4 40 minute naps out of him. We took a 5-hour car ride this weekend to visit family, and he took two "naps" of 20 minutes and 30 minutes. If that isn't nap resistant, I don't know what is. He's a very light sleeper, which is a real challenge with an older (loud!!) sibling in the house. I've tried music and all kinds of white noise and it really doesn't help. I don't really know what to do to get him to nap, as there doesn't seem to be any reason for why he sleeps better some days than others.
All in all, it's been a crazy whirlwind of babyness for six months, and I'm both sad that it's ending and ready to get back to the other parts (the writerly, intellectual parts) of gwinne. This mothering stuff is hard work. But, really, as much as I wanted this baby, I don't think I adequately imagined how wonderful it would be.
This is a great post to read, sleep issues aside. To be honest, it's comforting to know there's someone else out there who is happy that their 6 month old is only waking to eat throughout the night even if the baby never sleeps more than a few hours at a time. I've talked to so many people horrified that their baby wasn't sleeping through the night by 6 months, but we're just happy she's no longer awake for huge chunks of the night. Of course, it's not my body doing the nursing, but I think I can speak for Fern on this too.
ReplyDeleteThe kid part is amazing to me too. Such a contrast to the tiny, 5 pound screaming infants we had!
I'm glad you have this joy.