Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

What a day! Spent the morning at The Bakery having brunch with friends and their kids and then a baby shower in the afternoon.

Due to the boy's recent sleep trouble I decided to walk into town from Royal William Yard in the hope it would help him get a longer nap. As we strolled along in the sunshine, the boy fast asleep, it seemed a crazy amount of motorbikes were out in the sun too. I had never before noticed just how loud motorbikes are!! As we came to traffic lights with a motorcyclist sat nosily revving I just wanted to say "shush will you - you'll wake the kid!" Thankfully he kept on sleeping.

Once we got close to town we had another challenge to the boy's sleep - a whole selection of emergency vehicles screaming past. But still he kept on sleeping.

Next we arrived in the city centre to find huge crowds of people and lots of events going on, meaning lots of noise. I tried a whole host of alternative routes through town but it seemed everywhere I turned there was a live band or trumpet player or some other such racket. As I turned down one street I was greeted by a full on marching band coming straight towards us. You've gotta be freaking kidding me!?! I quickly dived down an alleyway and into a car park to avoid them. And still the boy kept on sleeping.

Finally (after taking an hour to do a 30 minute walk due to all the detours) we arrived at the baby shower. Josiah was still soundly asleep and having the best nap he's had in weeks and weeks.

And then Ella-Sophia came to say hello and poked him in the face. Ooops!

Never mind, he didn't seem bothered and had a fun afternoon meeting new friends.

Sleep is for the weak!

Sigh....it's been another one of those weeks.

Nap transition + sleep regression + growth spurt + learning to crawl + obsession with his door bouncer + a whole lot of chattiness = very little sleep in the Gallagher house hold!

The 8 month sleep regression is the WORST. Just when it felt like things were going well - BAM!! And it's not like a growth spurt that lasts just a few days. It's been over a month now of wondering if the boy will ever sleep again. I am now realising how much I took for granted Josiah's good sleep habits. I'm finding it really hard to go from having a kid who keeps to a pretty similar routine each day to not having a clue when he might sleep, how long for, or if I'll ever make it out of my pyjamas again let alone the house! Also, I'd got used to getting up once a night to feed him, being back in bed 10 mins later and then not hearing from him again until 7am. Now he's waking at least once before we've even gone to bed and is feeding 2 or 3 times a night. It feels like we've taken huge steps backwards and is frankly depressing.

Last night I found myself googling "8 month sleep problems" - not to find advice but simply to read about parents having an even worse time of it than us so as to cheer myself up!

As I sat bleary eyed scouring Google for signs of hope, I came across a couple of great websites that helped me to see the funny side of things. I thought I would share with you my favourite articles and hope they make you smile too.

Baby no sleeping
The Cult of Motherhood
Good times, bad times

"You are my sunshine...."

I'm sat looking out of the window at a gloriously sunny evening and wishing so much that I could go outside (but I'm guessing leaving an 8 month old in bed home alone while I catch some sun would be considered bad parenting). I LOVE sunshine and this past week has been like a breath of fresh air to me. It's amazing how much difference a little sun can make. Instead of staying in my pyjamas as long as possible and avoiding going out of the house I've been dying to get outside at any and every opportunity. As a result I've made so much more out of my week than usual.

As well as the sunshine, there has also been much more sleep this week. Josiah is finally taking good daytime naps which has helped my stress levels no end. He is such a joy to be around when he's happy and well rested. It's insane how grown up he's getting - he's a proper little boy now and his personality is really coming out. He plays games, laughs at jokes, reaches out to be picked up, initiates kisses, asks for juice (by reaching for his cup) or more food (by yelling and pulling a grumpy face), tries to make conversation, talks in his sleep, tries to 'read' things, reaches out for things in shops (note to self: beware accidental shoplifting!) and chats to anyone who will listen.

I feel I have so much to be thankful for this week so I'm going to take this opportunity to praise God for:

• Catching up with friends I've not seen in a while
• Trips to the park
• Family walk in the sunshine before bedtime
• Sleep!
• My wonderfully supportive husband
• A child free morning and coffee with a friend while Josh and Josiah went to 'Who let the dad's out?'
• Singing worship songs while Josh played guitar and Josiah sat transfixed
• Sunny afternoons spent on the roof terrace
• Improptu meet ups with friends
• Time to relax and enjoy my husband in the evenings instead of him being out lots
• Watching Jesus Story Book Bible DVD together as a family and discovering new insights 
• Tea and toast time - sitting round the table together and taking a break before bedtime routine begins
• Lots of smiles and laughter - seeing our boy happy and healthy

What about you? What are you thankful for this week?

I think his sleep function is broken!?!

The last week or so suddenly sleep has become a big issue in our household again. I'm starting to realise how much I take Josiah's good sleep for granted. For me, having to try for half hour to get him to sleep only to give up and attempt another nap an hour later seems a huge deal and is really frustrating. I forget that for a lot of parents it is just a normal day in their household. I am very blessed to have a child who takes a nap for an hour just after breakfast so I can get dressed and do chores and then sleeps for an hour or two around lunch giving me time to eat in peace. When he suddenly stopped sleeping I got really fed up of being stuck at home spending the entire day (or so it felt) trying to get him to sleep. I got nothing done and lived in my pyjamas for days on end cos he never stayed asleep long enough for me to shower and get dressed. I felt gross, stressed and a little resentful. Then it dawned on me just how much is going on in Josiah's life right now. He's learned so much recently he must be buzzing and, like a student revising for a test or someone preparing for a big event, he must find it really difficult to switch off and sleep.

In the past 2-3 weeks he has learnt the following:
1. Rolling over in both directions
2. Drinking from a sippy cup
3. How to say Dadadada (as well as a variety of other new sounds)
4. Turning the pages and lifting flaps in books
5. Getting in the correct position to start crawling (no crawling yet though)
6. Relearnt how to drink from a bottle (been so long since he tried he had forgotten but he's mastered it again and now can hold the bottle himself)
7. Using his hands to splash water everywhere in the bath (who knew so little water could cause so much mess?!)
8. Circling his wrists
9. Playing hide and seek (so cute and he thinks it's hilarious)
10. Biting and chewing food
11. Opening mummy's ipad case
12. Turning on the playstation controller
13. Pressing buttons on the TV remote
14. Playing on the swings and holding on properly so we don't lose him! (he giggles and squeals with excitement when you push him higher)
15. Wiggling off the sofa to sit on the floor and reach things he wants on the coffee table
16. Remembering when his favourite bit of a song is coming up and giggling just before you get to it
17. Understanding what light switches do and trying to turn them on as he goes past (not strong enough yet, thankfully)
18. Putting his arms up towards us when we reach out to pick him up
19. Giving kisses (even gave a kiss to someone other than mummy and daddy today and without any prompting either)
20. Taking his bib off
21. Reaching out to hold hands with other kids when playing together
22. Robbing toys off other kids when playing together
23. Putting his feet in his mouth
24. Drinking out of a grown up cup
25. Standing while hold on to furniture

I'm sure there's more but you get the idea - so much to process it's like me trying to fall asleep when I have lists of chores and errands and random thoughts going round my head (i.e near impossible to get to sleep and then you wake up in the middle of the night thinking 'did I remember to.....'). I really need to learn some patience, cut the boy some slack and remember he wants to sleep just as much as I want him to sleep.

Totally clueless!?!

Worst night's sleep ever! Ok, maybe not ever, but worst in quite a while. Josiah woke up at 11pm for no real reason and settled back to sleep again reasonably well but decided to talk to himself loudly in the process thus waking up both parents. He woke again at 12:30am wanting to eat. Then he woke again at 4:30am and wouldn't settle so I fed him again. I was so tired I fed him lying down. Apparently he was tired too and fell asleep eating. Due to his unsettled sleep I decided to let him stay asleep in our bed instead of waking him to put him in his own bed. As I rolled away from him to get comfy ready to go back to sleep he decided to sprawl out and take up my entire side of the bed! This left my husband and I just half the bed for the both of us to sleep in. He was not too impressed at having his sleep space invaded at 5am.

We were even less impressed when Josiah woke up again at 6:30am. I tried to resettle him in his own bed but he was having none of it so I caved in and fed him again. Add to all the night waking the fact that I have a stinking cold preventing me from getting to sleep and mastitis making feeding very painful and you'll see it was really not a fun night!

The thing that annoys me most is that just a few weeks ago he was going 6-8 hours between feeds at night - not every night but at least 50% of the time. Why is he now going only 4 hours between feeds?! What am I doing wrong? At first I put it down to a growth spurt but it's been a couple of weeks now.

This parenting thing is hard work and I feel so clueless. It used to be so much more straight forward - let him sleep as long as he wants, feed him as soon as he wakes, change him, put him straight back to bed - simple. Now it's so much more complicated. He wants to be awake so much more and it's a careful balance trying to give him enough sleep but not so much he doesn't sleep at night. I think I know roughly how many feeds he needs and how much sleep but can't seem to work out how to coordinate the two. This week there has been plenty of crying because we've tried to put him to sleep when he wanted to play more. And there has been crying because we've woken him up to feed him while he still really needed sleep. (Kinda his own fault for staying up chatting for 45 mins before going to sleep instead of taking the opportunity to nap). We'd previously got into a nice little routine that worked well but the kid is constantly growing and changing and so are his needs. It's so hard to keep up!

Please somebody tell me this parenting thing gets easier right?!

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!