Quick update - Miss K's sleeping habits

So I mentioned the other day here that I was trying to wean Miss K from her night time stirrings this week. Well we are up to day four of my weaning, and so far so good. On Tuesday night things didn't go exactly to plan because my little sister, who isn't entirely aware of what I'm trying to do at the moment brought Miss K into my room as soon as she started screaming at 12:00 in the morning. Given that I hadn't expected her to wake up to Miss K, I hadn't filled her in on my new ignore her and I'll deal with her rule, so I had to take Miss K off her hands and settle her down and try again the next night.

So last night Miss K got up again at 10:00, and was given a drink of water and put straight back into bed. She went back to sleep and all was quiet. Until she woke up again at midnight and expected me to come pick her up and play with her till she got tired again. Luckily my little sister was out last night, so there were no interruptions this time. I got up after a couple of minutes of Miss K's complaining, laid her back down in her bed and turned her mobile on for her. She complained for all of five minutes, and then...there was silence. SUCCESS!!!

So she is hopefully finally getting the message that midnight is no longer play time, and within the next two weeks I am hoping that I won't have to go in and settle her any more. Happy dances all round!

Confession time

So I'm going to let you guys in on a little secret, Miss K is still getting up for a midnight feed. Apparently according to my maternal health nurse this is a cardinal sin and makes me the worst parent ever! Well she never said these words exactly, but when I told her that Miss K was still having midnight feeds at 12 months, she told me I had to cut them out straight away. Well naughty me didn't cut them out straight away, because although I am aware that babies that feed at night are at risk of dental caries, I am also aware that babies also usually wean themselves off the midnight feeds by themselves.

Well Miss K is now 16 months old and is showing no signs of weaning herself off the midnight feeds. Occasionally she will sleep through the night, giving me a much needed rest from the disturbed sleep that this can bring, but the break is always short lived, and before long we are back to getting up every single night, at any time between 10 pm and 3 am. So I have decided it's time to give her a helping hand in settling herself back to sleep. Tonight she woke up at 10:00 and I got her up and gave her a bottle of water. I'm not entirely convinced that she isn't hungry when she wakes up. It's been 4 hours since she ate last, so to make sure her stomach is full and she's comfortable, she can have a drink that won't give her tooth decay. Then she was given a new nappy and put straight back into bed. Now given that this isn't how we normally do things Miss K was understandably upset by her new routine and made sure I was well aware of her feelings by standing at the end of her cot and screaming at me. I let her go for ten minutes, then I went back into her room, laid her back down and re-wound up her mobile. Another five minutes and she was fast asleep.

Now I don't know if it is going to be this easy every single night. Maybe tonight she was willing to put up with this as one of mum's crazy phases and is expecting everything to go back to normal again tomorrow night. But I'm determined to make sure these night time activities are born out of need and not out of habit. If Miss K is unwell or thirsty or her nappy is too full to be comfortable, I'm more than happy to care for her, but just getting up because I've allowed it for so long is not good for her, and it's not good for me either. So I'll be doing exactly the same thing again tomorrow night, and the night after, and the night after that. And who knows, soon she may not even bother letting me know that she's awake every single night between 10 pm and 3 am.

The witching hour strikes again

Ugh why am I on here writing to you people instead of tucked up in bed where I am supposed to be??? You can't say that I don't give you guys my absolute everything because I am even forsaking sleep for you my lovely readers and let me tell you I usually hate to let anything get in the way of my sleep. Well almost anything. I can and will stay up for crappy B-grade movies that come on television once every decade, an awesome website I stumble upon on the internet, an irritating sudoku puzzle that I just can't crack or a great book. Ok so we've established that I am easily distracted at bedtime.

I wouldn't be so tired tonight if I hadn't had such a monster afternoon with Miss K. It's the kind of afternoon we used to have every single day from about week 2 to week 12, and let me tell you I haven't missed these afternoons. For anyone who has had a baby, you might be familiar with the witching hour. (I'm not sure why they call it the witching hour because it's usually several hours, between around 3pm and 7pm, which coincidentally is also the time that my mum is at work.) For the first 3 months, I spent this time pacing the floor boards, singing songs, rocking, doing crazy dances and anything else I could think of to try and distract Miss K from her unrelenting screaming, only to have her calmed down and finally in bed about 5 minutes before my mum got home. She's never said as much but I wouldn't be surprised if mum thought I was exaggerating when I used to tell her that we spent the entire afternoon crying together.

But until this afternoon I thought all of this was long behind me and we had moved forward onto new phases like smelling absolutely everything she can get her hands on. (I'm pretty sure this is a genetic thing because I have an irresistible compulsion to smell things too, and I'm 27). We had the mother of all dummy spits this afternoon which started as soon as Miss K got up from her unusually long 2 hour nap, and finished when I finally ran out of ideas and turned on Play School. Although in Miss K's defence I will say I don't think this was an every day run of the mill temper tantrum as I have had a cold for the past week, and I think she's caught it off me, and combined with her teething it has made her pretty miserable. Knowing that this upset was because of illness didn't actually make it any easier to deal with, and if anything it make it quite a bit harder especially as I couldn't dose her up with paracetamol as we'd already given her some 3 hours earlier. Not even a bath cheered her up which is rare because my baby loves being naked, and bath time is a real treat for her. (Not because it only comes once a year but because she gets to combine being nude with water. Who wouldn't love that???)

I think the being alone part is what is the worst thing about having to deal with difficult afternoons like this. When mum is home she usually spends the time giving me suggestions of what might help, and taking Miss K of my hands when I need them free to refill drinks or measure out medicine. She also makes sure that I don't completely freak out and panic which even though I've been doing this whole mum thing for over 12 months now, I'm still likely to do when shit gets hard. I think that's the hardest part of being a mum. If this was any other job, I'd take every new change completely in my stride and run with it. But with being a parent, the changes are constant, and no matter how many experts you consult, or experienced mums you have at hand with advice on how they coped with what you're going through, there is no way you can every be really prepared for every new hurdle you face. Being a mum is the biggest leap of faith you will ever have to take because you have to completely trust your own instincts and abilities in order to be able to take care of a defenceless and totally reliant human being.

But it's not all doom and gloom around here. Despite looking like an extra from Night of the Living Dead at the moment, we've actually had a few big moments lately. I can say with great pride that Miss K is finally drinking from a cup. After all of the months of stressing and frustration, all it took was for me to step back and leave Miss K to her own devices and she figured it out for herself. Of course not without stabbing herself in the back of her throat a few times first, but she's still so much smarter than I give her credit for. She's also learned how to say Grandma, except from her mouth it sounds like bum-ma, but we know what she means.

Well as it's almost a new day I really need to go and get my beauty hibernation so I can be refreshed and ready to stumble blindly through tomorrow. Stay awesome readers, and of course feel free to drop me a line and say hello, I love chatting to random strangers, especially ones who know more about me than I do about them.

And now for something completely different

Ok so my last post was pretty depressing, and left me feeling a bit low, so I just wanted to let you know that it's not all doom and gloom around here at the moment. The rest of my day was pretty good.

I feel like I am slowly winning the battle to get Miss K to eat more solids. Today I gave her a slice of toast with jam on it and SHE ATE THE WHOLE THING!!!!! Then at tea, she was given a bowl of tuna mornay, and she ATE ALMOST THE WHOLE THING!!!!!! There were lots of hugs and kisses for Miss K today as I was so happy that she is finally starting to realise that just because it has lumps in it, doesn't mean it's poison.

The next big battle we have on our hands is the weaning off the bottle. Dun dun DUN!!!!! (I love my caps lock tonight, it's making this so much fun to write!) I have tried introducing sippy cups to Miss K in the past, but it has never gone well. We went with a well known branded cup last time, with a large silicone spout that is close to a bottle teat, but much larger and more complicated. It's not supposed to leak, but tell that to the juice stains in the bottom of my nappy bag. >:( We also discovered very early on that Miss K would prefer to chew on the spout instead of drink from it, which is fun for her, but frustrating for me. So this time I am going to try a cup with a straw instead of a mouthpiece. Both my big sister and my sister in law opted for this choice when weaning their kids, and they seem to have made the transition a lot smoother than Miss K and I are so fingers crossed this is the way to go.

Ady also came for his visit this afternoon but things didn't go quite to plan. I had hoped that he would accompany Miss K and I for our fortnightly shopping, as we were out of everything except nappies and breakfast cereal, but Miss K decided instead that she would like to go to sleep for 2 hours instead, something she has not done in a long time. So instead of spending the afternoon playing with our daughter and showing Ady exactly what it takes to care for her physical needs on a daily basis, we spent the afternoon falling asleep on the couch from boredom. When Miss K finally did wake up at 5 o'clock, it was so close to her dinner time that we had to do a mad dash to the shops so that I had something to feed her when the worms started biting. And that's when the rain decided to fall. We decided that it was probably better not to drown our daughter in the 10 metre dash from the car to the supermarket, so Ady distracted Miss K in the car with a teething rusk, and I did the 10 metre dash, and the subsequent frenzied rush through the supermarket on my own. I didn't actually mind not having Miss K there to help me shop by pulling everything off the shelves that she could get her hands on. And I didn't miss the inevitable temper tantrum that always comes once she gets tired of driving the shopping trolley from the safety of her seat at the front, but knowing that she would be equally unhappy being strapped into the now unmoving car, and with Ady not completely used to dealing with her temper tantrums, I can safely say my mind wasn't completely focused on the shopping. As a result I got home and remembered the long list of things I had forgotten to buy like Miss K's juice, mum's ice cream, mum's margarine...

So tomorrow will be spent buying all the things I was meant to today but completely forgot about. And doing the laundry, and vacuuming the carpets, and trying to get Miss K to drink from a cup with a straw, and now I have a headache.

Excuse me while I curl up in a ball in the corner for now. See you tomorrow.