Josiah's diary - October 26th

Well today started out pretty slow. I kept telling mummy it was time for breakfast and she kept rolling over and falling asleep again. I tell you the service round here is going down hill! She said she was really tired - something to do with waking up every 2 hours last night to feed me. What can I say - I'm a growing boy. And besides, I though mummys were superhuman beings with an endless supply of energy.

We had a lazy morning in our pyjamas and then in the afternoon we all went into town. I decided to take a nap in the pram while mummy and daddy did boring things like food shopping.  Then mummy and daddy decided to go for a cheeky pumpkin spiced latte while I was asleep. Can't believe they were trying to do something fun without me! It's ok though cos I stirred just as they sat down. As soon as I realised where I was I woke up fully and demanded they let me join in. So we hung out together drinking coffee (well milk in my case), dancing to the music and watching strangers hurry by.

Actually, mummy and daddy seem to spend a lot of their time recently hanging out drinking coffee. Yesterday mummy took me to meet up with girls from the student group for coffee and Bible study and the day before daddy did the same thing with the student guys.

The Bible study was actually quite interesting. They were talking about theology. You're probably thinking I'm way too young to be tackling such an intellectual subject but actually they were talking about the fact that theology is for everyone.  People think you have to be really clever to do theology (or any other 'ology' for that matter). But theology just means 'God logic' (theo=god, logos=logic) - thinking about God.  You don't have to be super clever to be able to have thoughts about God. Some guy said that to be human is to be a theologian. Everyone thinks about God - from the atheist who thinks God isn't real, to the Buddhist who thinks God is found within them, to the agnostic who thinks God is probably out there somewhere but has no idea what this God might be like.

So, I am a theologian and so are you! The question is will we be good theologians or bad ones? Will we just let preachers or Bible commentaries or the media tell us what to think about God? Or will we study the Bible for ourselves with an open mind and allow God to reveal Himself to us?

Regaining sanity

Six weeks in and it finally feels like we've found some kind of normality again. Yesterday we got some shopping done, caught up on laundry and tidied the house a little. In the evening, instead of eating dinner one handed in the bedroom while trying to feed a grumpy kid to sleep, I sat at the table and enjoyed a proper unhurried meal with my husband. And after dinner we still had two hours left of our evening to relax and watch some CSI together.

So how did we get to this point? Honestly most of what we've learnt has been by accident. Allow me to share with you a little of our journey:

Step 1: Learning the difference between night and day
This seemed like a good place to start - a pretty foundational lesson. So daytime feeds involve talking and daylight and being surrounded by people. After 6pm feeds are done in the dark, talking is done in a whisper and he only has a nappy change if we hear him poo or he has a wet patch from a leaky nappy. He gets put straight to bed after eating without the usual daytime play first. He seems to have got the hang of it pretty quickly and is more active in the day and mellow at night.

Step 2:Self soothing
In the early days all he did was eat and sleep so I used to feed him to sleep, sit really still for a bit until he reached deep sleep and then put him in his crib asleep. As he got older, more alert and more playful this stopped working. When I put him in bed he would wake, I'd refeed him, wait for him to sleep again, put him down, he would wake again etc etc. To hear how we broke that cycle check out my Previous post.

Once he had the hang of settling himself back to sleep after waking it was time to try putting him in bed still awake. He quickly got the hang of it and now our nights have been transformed. Instead of hours spent awake trying to settle him I just put him in bed straight after feeding and he fidgets, snorts and gurgles until he falls asleep about 10 mins later. Amazing!!

Step 3: Setting a routine
When we went on the church weekend away to Newquay the other week Josiah was an angel child - slept really well at night, had good naps in the day, was a joy to be around when awake and cried very little. When we got home again he was a nightmare for the first few days! So we sat down and tried to work out what we did right on holiday that we were doing so wrong since getting home.  The short answer was routine - on holiday the day had structure as there were activities planned all day but when we got home that structure was gone again.

On holiday we'd feed him at 7am, change him and settle him in his buggy for a nap and then we'd head down to breakfast. After breakfast we'd feed him again, play with him a bit and then settle him for another nap in the buggy and drop him off at creche while we went to the morning talk. During the coffee break he'd wake for a feed and then we took him in the pool before settling him for another nap while we had lunch. After lunch I'd give him another feed before taking him out in the baby carrier while we went to the beach during which time he fell asleep. Without realising it we were following Tracey Hogg's E.A.S.Y method.

After the beach everyone was heading to the pool and we wanted to take Josiah in too. But he was hungry cos he'd just woken up so I did what I considered to be 'cheating' and fed him just enough to quiet him down. After a swim I gave him a full feed and then we put him down to bed. He then slept through the whole of dinner and the evening entertainment. The other day I was reading Gina Ford's recommendations for bedtime routine and realised my 'cheating' and feeding Josiah either side of his time in the pool actually matched her suggested bedtime routine. She advocates feeding at 5pm followed by bathtime and social time, another feed at 6.15pm and then settled to sleep at 7pm. We tried it for the first time last night and it worked wonders - no 2/3hour fight to get him to sleep!

Another thing I did while on holiday was when Josiah slept all evening and it got near to the time I wanted sleep I started thinking 'he's not gonna sleep much longer - if I go to bed now he's likely to wake me in half hour or so. Maybe I'll just wake him and feed him now.' So that's what I did - I woke him at 10pm to get  his feed out of the way before I went to bed instead of being woken at 11/11.30pm. Again I felt that by doing this I was somehow cheating. Then last night I read about dream feeding - basically giving a top up feed around 10/11pm while baby is still asleep. We tried it last night and it was quite amusing trying to shove a boob in his mouth in the dark while his mouth is clamped shut. We did manage it in the end though and the result was he only woke at 2am and 6am so not bad going.

Well it's nearly 5pm so time to go get little man for his feed and bathtime - he's stirring from his nap right on cue. Here's hoping tonight goes as well as last night!

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

First family holiday

Just got back from a great weekend away in Newquay with our lovely church family at St Andrews. It was so nice to get away for a few days and enjoy good food, time to relax and a break from housework as well as some good Bible teaching. Josiah was totally spoilt for attention - plenty of old ladies cooing over him and people fighting for their turn to have a cuddle.

Before going away I was a little apprehensive as I wondered how Josiah would behave. I could just imagine being stuck in our hotel room all weekend feeding and trying to settle a screaming kid. Thankfully, just a few days before going away, we made a major breakthrough and Josiah learned to settle himself to sleep. It was the one skill we were most keen for him to learn but had no idea how best to help him.

As a new parent there is so much to learn and so many choices to make as to how to look after your child. We have found ourselves turning to google on many occasions to help us answer questions like "how often should a newborn feed?", "how do I settle my screaming child?", "when/how should I get my child into a routine?" and "how do I get my kid to sleep through the night?" The internet was full of advice and theories on different parenting techniques but I found that when I began following what I had read I stopped listening to my own instinct and to my child as well - not good.

Last week I had got to the point where sleep had become more important to me than anything else and as a result I was cutting corners and making some unwise choices. I had got into a bad habit of feeding Josiah to sleep and then having to sit really still for 15 mins or so to make sure he was definately asleep before putting him in his crib as it seemed the only guaranteed method of settling him. Really I was making things worse for myself as it meant I became the only person able to settle him to sleep and that extra burden on top of feeding soon became too much for me. I knew it was a technique that I couldn't keep up for long and that I needed to try new methods.

One day I was so sleep deprived I wanted to cry and reaching breaking point as Josiah wailed continuously. Running out of ideas as to what to try to soothe him I of course turned to google. I soon found myself worn out by information overload from all the different and often conflicting advice. How do I know which methods to use or which advice to listen to?! Among all the websites about Ferber method, attachment parenting and cosleeping I found something that really helped me.  All the other websites I had read focused on telling parents what to do or not do but this one simply explained the reasons behind a childs behaviour and left you to make up your own mind on how to act.  It explained that in order to sleep we need to feel safe. We all wake up at points during the night and our survival instinct tells us to check for danger and if our surroundings are safe and we feel secure we fall asleep again.  So the key thing no matter what method I chose was to make Josiah feel safe and secure so he could sleep. 

I ended up trying a method across between Ferber and Hogg - give Josiah kisses and cuddles before putting him in his crib awake, leave the room for 5 mins and let him cry if needed, go back and gently talk to him and reassure him, stroke his hair, maybe more cuddles and then leave the room for another 5 mins etc etc. I really didn't expect it to work to be honest but it has worked beautifully ever since! And it's not just his sleep that has improved - he generally cries less throughout the day and seems much more secure and relaxed.  I think what it comes down to is that the mixture of reassuring him and leaving him alone a little has taught him:

1. Mummy and Daddy can be trusted and are never far away
2. The world isn't such a scary place really
3. His cries are heard and produce a response
4. He has confidence to try new things or overcome challenges on his own because he knows mummy and daddy are close by

Hooray for sleep!!

We now have a very happy, relaxed, confident and sociable little boy who is a joy to be around (mostly!) And I have learned to stop reading parenting websites and instead create my own methods based on the basic principals of making sure Josiah feels safe and loved while also giving him chance to push his boundaries and try new things.

Where's the off switch?!

We were doing so well and I was beginning to think we would be lucky enough not to reach the 'so tired you wanna cry' phase that everyone talks about. I was wrong.  Everything was going great, Josiah was feeding well, we'd learnt a few tricks to settle him and he coped very well with the disruption in his schedule when the grandparents came to visit.  Then the other day he decided to feed for 6 hours straight and the last few nights he's struggled to settle.  I am sooooo tired and long for some time to myself.  Don't get me wrong, I love spending time with Josiah and playing together and showing him new things and new places. But there are times I feel like across between a dairy cow and a human pacifier.  If only there were a way to detach my boobs and let him get on with it!

I was thinking the other day how weird breast feeding must be from a guys point of view. You marry a girl, you pledge to give your bodies solely to one another and you enjoy the intimacy of that. Then this kid comes along and suddenly not only do you no longer get sole access to your wifes boobs but you actually barely get near them cos the kid seems permanently attached.  Add to that the fact that those boobs that were once for your eyes only get whipped out anytime, any place, infront of anyone.  It must be a lot for a guy to get used to.  I'd be interested to hear comments from guys about their experience.