I try not to very often, but can I just feel sorry for myself for a few minutes?
Miss Emmy started distinguishing days from nights pretty early on. Before I knew it, she was going 5 hours between feedings. Then magically, on a night not too long ago, she decided to sleep for a full 9 hours! She did this 2 nights in a row. The next night wasn't so great, but then the next night was a good sleep night again. Then.....the past two nights......it's been quite a few weeks since I've had to wake up at 2am to feed.
I woke up to the sound of Emmy sucking on her hand, I tried putting in the pacifier (or in our house, known as the PFIER)- but that didn't seem to satisfy. So I tried just holding her and rocking for a few minutes to see if she'd go back to sleep- she didn't.
I was talking to my mom last weekend about when she started all of us on rice cereal. I believe she said at 6 weeks we started with cereal in the bottle and at 3 months with a bowl and spoon.
For the mama's out there, when did you start? Did you do the whole cereal in a bottle thing, or just with the spoon?
I'm just starting to think that she's a hungry girl. Whatever it is, she has chosen a very *funny* time to start waking in the middle of the night....right when I'm gearing up to go back to work.
She's probably having a growth spurt. Just when you have a routine down babies seem to change their minds about when they'd like to eat/sleep/poop etc. She may genuinely need another night feeding right now. She's still pretty young to be going all night although its great if she will. Don't get too frustrated because this will happen many more times I promise. You should look into information about when to start solids, some doctors are recommending you wait til 6 months. They are finding that their little tummies sometimes aren't ready to digest anything besides breast milk or formula until then in lots of babies. Probably not the news you wanted to hear :) I started Noah on solids at 4 1/2 months and he was totally ready, Lily wasn't ready til 6.
ReplyDeleteWe were told by Jack's nutritionist that babies only need breastmilk or formula until they are 12 months old, who said it doesn't have any nutritional value for babies. All it does is train them on how to eat, but before 12 months they aren't ready for that sort of thing. We didn't start Jack on anything until he was 12 months old chronologically (but his adjusted age was only 8 months). With our older children, we started them on cereal in a bowl with a spoon at about 6 months. A pediatrician is probably going to tell you to wait...
ReplyDeleteWhat a precious little one you have! Lilli is 4 months today and we haven't started with cereal yet...I think it's different with every pediatrician but ours said to try and hold off until closer to 6 months because of allergies, so we'll start around then with a spoon. I bet your little one is going through a little growth spurt, they do that a lot.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I gave cereal by spoon to Kenzie until she was closer to 6mo old. However, my 13wk old girl is a "hefty" girl. She's weighing around 16lbs right now... and I did start putting some cereal in her bottles because she not only was eating a full 6oz everything 3 hours she was wanting some in between then. Sometimes it would be immediately follow a feeding and other times it would be about an hour later. But I only did that for about a week and now the 6oz bottles keep her content for atleast 3-4hours. I think it was a growth spurt moment.
ReplyDeleteBut I totally understand the frustration with Emmy starting to get up in the middle of the night again. Kenzie started sleeping through the night at 6wks- just in time for me to return to work and the twins were sleeping all night at about 5wks old and so when they do randomly wake up in the middle of the night or earlier than normal it throws you off. But hand in there!! It does get better!! You are doing great and yes, you have every right to complain from time to time! lol