I was sitting at the computer, reading all my favorite blogs when I thought, "hmm, I have one of those don't I?" Then I realized it has been over 10 days since I posted anything. Do you know how much can happen in the life of a 5.5 month old in ten days?!
1) Bug has learned how to sit up by herself. She can't get to the position by herself yet, but if sat up she can stay there until she sees something she wants behind her, then it's 'kerplunck'.
2) She has almost figured out how to crawl. She gets up on all fours, scoots her little knees forward, but doesn't realize her hands have to move too. Once again, 'kerplunck'.
3) She's learned if she hits her head on the side of mommy's bed enough that mommy will stand her up and she can hold onto the side of the bed and stand by herself. That is, until she lets go to grab at the bed sheet. Guess what happens then, you got it! 'kerplunck'!
4) We can see the outline of two teeth coming in through her bottom gums. Might take a while to get here but they're coming....and she is pissed! All day long I've had a cranky baby!
Oh, there's much more that she has learned lately but those are the exciting ones!
On the sleep issue however, mommy and daddy have given up and decided to try the "Cry It Out" method of sleep training. Before anyone thinks poorly of me, just remember that each baby is different and what you want for your child may not be what they need.
I remember just three months ago when I was 100% against any forms of CIO (cry it out) sleep training. In those three months, I have read more books/articles on baby sleep than I have Stephen King books (believe me, that's a lot of books!). I have tried everything I came across (interestingly enough, most of the books are strikingly similar in their methods). Yet there were no results. If I offered any sort of help in getting her to sleep on her own, it just wouldn't work. There was one method I tried for over six weeks with absolutely nothing to show for it. Needless to say, I was tired, frustrated and losing my mind.
The"final straw" came this past Sunday night. I remember Bug waking up at 1:30am and I thought, maybe she'll fall back to sleep. Why I would think that I don't know, she'd never gone to sleep on her own before, why would that time be any different? And it wasn't. But I was able to go back to sleep. I woke up at 6:15am to find her sound asleep, I thought the unthinkable had happened and she'd actually gone back to sleep on her own. Come to find out, I'd gotten up at 3am, went to her, tried to rock her to sleep, yelled when I got frustrated and Josh came and put her to sleep. Apparently I was asleep through all this. That is not cool in my book. So I decided to take drastic measures the next night. There was just no way I could let that happen again.
Anyway, the drastic measures was the CIO method. Kills me to do it but at least I'm wide awake and completely aware of the situation. Funny thing is, first night she slept 11 straight hours. Second night she woke at 4am and put herself back to sleep within 30 minutes. Today she's even going to sleep on her own at naptime. The most crying she's ever done is 50 minutes, which is nothing compared to the two hours she'd cry in the middle of the night, every night, when she'd wake and we couldn't get her back to sleep!!!! And she seems much happier too. As against CIO as I was, it has definitely solved a lot of our problems where other, gentler methods didn't work at all.
I'm proud to say my child is well rested and, if I could get to bed at a decent hour, I'd be well rested too!! That's pretty much the update.
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Kudos to you! Don't worry about what people think about the CIO method. If it works for your baby then great! Justice usually falls asleep while i am burping him after the last feeding of the day. But sometimes he wakes up as i put him down. He will do a fussy cry, and i just go do the dishes (peaking in on him every min.) and he falls asleep within 10 min.
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