I [heart] Davids

Somehow, against all thoughts and plans to the contrary, we’ve ended up with a baby that won’t sleep through the night.

This is due to at least a few reasons that I can think of, including the fact that Henry’s schedule is more fixed, so we’ve worked Linus in around Henry, and also that Linus’s colostomy bag prevents us from giving him a bath every night so we don’t have a good nighttime routine going.

Our current schedule has Linus nursing from 8-10, dozing and nursing on and off, and finally going to bed between 10 and 12. He gets up at least once or twice during the night to nurse, but has to be woken in the morning to get to school on time. Not a very good schedule for any of us.

Last night I re-read the Ferber book and realized there are three problems we need to work on. First, he’s getting up too often at night to nurse. (He recently had a cold and was up 3 times a night!). Second, he needs to be put on a more regular, predictable schedule so that he can know what to expect when. Lastly, he needs to lose his improper sleep associations, which generally is me nursing him to sleep.

Luckily, we have the journal from when Henry was little, and we have this record of his schedule. Using those two historical logs, we’re building a new schedule for Linus and working on these problems.

Here’s my plan of attack. First, we’re leaving the evenings alone and just focusing on eliminating the nighttime feedings. Last night he went 5 hours between bedtime and his first nurse. Every day we’ll add 30 minutes on to that until he can go approximately 7-8 hours without a feeding at night. At the same time, we’re setting a fixed wake-up time for him, 6 AM. This will set him on a predictable schedule for the day, and should align to be his first feeding of the day once we wean him from nighttime nursing.

After we’ve achieved that goal, then we’ll start trying to fix the evening. We need to institute a predictable evening ritual, a standard routine. At some point, we’ll also want to move his bedtime earlier. That would be the last step, however, in our plan.

So, we started last night and we’ll see how it goes. Wish us luck!!

Linus has recently celebrated his two-month-old birthday, and soon will celebrate his third!

Here’s the statistical update from his two-month checkup.

• Weight: 13#, 2 oz. (85th percentile!)
• Height: 23″
• Head Circumference: 15.5″

As of last week, he was already 14 1/2 pounds, so he keeps on growing. He is definitely getting bigger, judging by how quickly he’s outgrowing his clothes! He is wearing 3-6 month clothes, mostly, and some of them are too short already. He is pumping his legs almost every minute he’s awake, and he’s quite strong. Sometimes he’s a bit difficult to contain when he’s nursing if his legs are moving.

He is doing really well. He is on a pretty good three-hour schedule during the day, though sometimes it seems that he wants to sleep a bit longer. Concerned about daytime sleep robbing him of good nighttime sleep, we usually wake him up if he sleeps for more than two or three hours in a row. At night, he goes to bed around 10 or 10:30 PM, and then he’s up once around 3 or 3:30 AM. After that, we don’t expect to hear from him until 6 AM or later. He seems to be sleeping better, and does not need to be swaddled for naps. When we recognize his sleepy signs and respond to them quickly, he will go down for a nap with minimal fuss. Put down overtired, however, and he will more than likely need to be swaddled and will cry for 20 minutes before falling asleep. We have been really working on reading his signals right!

He is smiling a whole lot now, and will respond to you if you look at him and coo. He laughs and grins when we play little games with him, and will smile when you make exaggerated expressions with your face. His vision allows him to see farther than before, and now he’ll focus on more things like toys and people. He’s gaining head control, though he’s not all the way there yet. We try to give him some tummy time every day, but, like most babies, he hates it, and it tends to exacerbate the symptoms of his reflux.

He has managed to get both his left and his right thumb into his mouth, though he doesn’t have quite the motor skills to keep either there. However, being able to do so has made him happier and he’s better able to self-soothe. He will also gnaw on a burp cloth or blanket if one is available. Despite trying several different varieties, he does not seem that interested in taking a pacifier. We’ll keep trying, though, as he seems to need to suck to soothe himself a lot more than Henry did.

His colostomy is doing just fine, too. Dave and I are getting to be experts on bag changes. Our expertise means fewer 2 AM bag changes, which is a good thing! We usually do a bath when we change his bag, and he’s enjoying his baths more these days.

My maternity leave is almost over. I start back to work and Linus starts daycare on June 14th. I’m definitely glad to have had this time with him. Six weeks would not be long enough.