8 Weeks

Dear Gabriel,

You were born eight weeks ago today. I can't believe the time has flown so fast! It seems like you've been part of our family forever.

In some ways you're just as you were during your first week. You still study the world with a very serious look on your sweet face. You still have a love/hate relationship with your swaddle. And your hands are still your best friends.

You've grown a lot, too. You can hold your head up like a champ now. Your mouth and jaw are much stronger. You sometimes like to lay alone to play and observe the world. And you can get your hands to your mouth on purpose to suck on them.

You now weigh twelve pounds and one and a half ounces. That's nearly three pounds bigger than when you were born. At your lady doctor's appointment you were 23 inches long but that was nearly two weeks ago so you could very well be longer now. You were 20.5 inches long at birth. You are currently wearing size 0-3 month and plain 3 month outfits.

You aren't "sleeping through the night" yet, and just recently stopped sleeping for longer than an hour and a half at a time, but that's okay. We were frustrated at first but now we've decided that this, too, will pass.

We do have a bit of a daytime routine going. We start our day between 8:00 and 9:00. You wake up a little fussy but then we nurse and you perk up pretty quick. Then you get all smiley and happy while I change your diaper and get you dressed. After that you're usually pretty okay with laying on the bed or in your bouncer greeting the ceiling fan while I brush my teeth, fix my hair and makeup, and get dressed.

Then we head downstairs where you chill in your Bumbo chair looking out the living room windows and chatting with me while I eat a quick breakfast. After all this activity, you're usually ready for a nurse and a nap. You'll usually sleep for an hour or an hour and a half. I like to snuggle you and will either nap with you, read, or watch TV.

You wake up right around the time Daddy comes home for lunch and are often all smiles and wide eyes for him. He plays with you while I eat lunch and by the time he leaves suite work, you're ready for another nurse and a nap. This nap lasts longer, between two and three hours, and I can usually put you down in your swing. While you sleep, I take care of the house doing the dishes and the laundry. Sometimes, I try to sneak another nap in.

You wake up just in time for Daddy to come home. He plays with you while I make dinner and you usually eat when we do. After dinner, we go for a walk. Sometimes you ride in your stroller and sometimes I wear you in  your wrap. You just got big enough to be worn facing out and you love seeing the world come at you. Sometimes you kick your feet and when the wind blows in your face you'll coo.

After our walk, you have a nurse with Mommy and playtime/storytime with Daddy followed by a bath - usually with Daddy but sometimes with Mommy. Then you get a lavender massage, a fresh diaper, and a swaddle. Then we cuddle up in the rocker and you nurse to sleep.

Sometimes you and I will go shopping or have a playdate in the mornings but it's summer now and gets dreadfully hot earlier in the day. You also aren't a huge fan of your carseat currently.

You've been lots of places this month. You took your first road trip to Oklahoma. We learned that you travel the great distance better over night. We went there for Memorial Day. We stayed with Papa and CiCi. You swam in a pool for the first time. It was cold but you laid your head back and cooed.

We went back to Oklahoma over Father's Day weekend. Some of your cousins came to visit from Michigan. We went to see them and you met most of your cousins on your Daddy's side.

We celebrated many things this month: Rocky, Mommy, and Daddy all had birthdays and Father's Day. For Daddy's first Father's Day and his birthday we got him a handsome watch.

You got to meet your third set of grandparents - Mommy's dad and stepmom.

You went to see Dr. Thomas for the first time and saw Joi for the last. You enjoyed your visit to Dr. Thomas.

We made huge progress in the world of nursing. Mommy couldn't nurse you at first because your mouth was weak and my nipples were flat. After six weeks of pumping breastmilk for you and nursing between feedings, we started nursing full time and never looked back. Despite the sore nipples and sleepless nights, I couldn't be more proud that we overcame that huge hurdle when so many others would have given up.

Mommy has learned quite alot about mothering, herself, life, and God in the last month. She's had many tears - of happiness, frustration, awe, and love. Never did she know just how strong yet dependent she was.

I love you, Gabe, and can't wait to see what the next month brings!

Love,
Mommy

Sleep Up to Eight Weeks

My spiffy new cell phone has a blogger app so now I can post to the blog without having to go through the trouble of getting out thee old laptop. So cool!
Gabriel's sleep up to now has brought us little more than confusion and frustration. Our time in the hospital is a blur filled with much chest sleeping on G's part. Once home, we continued with what we knew. By the time G was two weeks old, we were exhausted.
Knowing that something had to change, we tried to move him to his co-sleeper. It didn't go over well; he cried so often we ended up holding him all night anyway.
When we were preparing our lives for G, we weren't comfortable with him alone in another room having decided we wanted the benefits of being attached parents and overnight parenting, specifically a lower incidence of SIDS. However, we didn't want him in our bed for safety reasons so we opted for the bedside bassinet. We wanted him near but wanted to maintain some boundaries.
By the time we reached this point in our sleep journey, we were totally down with bed-sharing (we enjoyed the nighttime convenience and peace of mind) having him super close but wanted a safer option. At Babies R Us we found a product called a "nest" that was basically a little pod that rested on the bed so he could safely share our bed.
He stayed in his nest successfully until he was around six weeks. At that time we opted to move him out of our bed and into his bassinet. We began this by simply placing his nest into the bassinet. He transitioned easily and didn't really know the difference. After about a week we ditched the nest entirely.
Our huge struggle now was getting him to sleep and getting him to stay asleep. I would nurse him to sleep and try to put him down and he'd rouse within minutes. This would happen repeatedly all night. When I'd get frustrated, David would take over, bouncing Gabe for hours. We were back to getting no sleep.
I turned to the attachment parenting guru's, Dr. Bill Sears, the Baby Sleep Book. It was here I learned how babies sleep. I learned that G was gadling asleep when I nursed him, but he want staying asleep when I put him down because I was jumping the gun. Babies sleep in two stages: light (REM) and deep. They spend about half their sleep time in light sleep while we only spend 1/5 of our sleep time there. I was simply waking him up when I put him down! All I had to do was wait about twenty minutes and he'd be in deep sleep. I began to do this and it works most of the time.
Most recently, in pursuit of regular naptimes, I also read the famous Happiest Baby on the Block. This book has done wonders for our sleep! The book is built on the foundation of the fourth trimester, which I fully agree with. The fourth trimester is the observation that most mammals are born relatively self-sufficient except a few like humans and kangaroos, which need a little more time to develop outside the womb. Thus the three months following standard gestation should be spent giving Baby a gentle transition to life outside the womb by nursing on cue, sleeping close to one another, and baby wearing.
The book touts the "five s's" of baby sleep strategies: swaddling, side laying, shhing, swinging, and sucking. Long story short, we recently began implementing these strategies and have seen dramatic improvements in falling asleep and staying asleep, especially during naps.
For example, last night G slept for four hours and then intermittently for the subsequent four - waking to nurse and rapidly falling back to sleep. Then, this afternoon, he slept for two hours straight in his swing. I was actually able to put him down (swaddled, post nursing, in deep sleep) and get some stuff done around the house.
It's so nice to finally be making progress with our little guy! :)