Aimee sure grows fast.
I think you notice it most inher hands and her head size. And yet other areas remain almost the same - like her hair, which is still only a fluffy covering.
Anyway, our new bedtime routine seems to be helping. A nice 7am wake-up call meant all could get some decent shut-eye.


"I can't hear you!"

Lucky Mum is getting her fitness back.

Head scratching

“What do we do now?”
Cat begged the question the other night as yet again, little Aimee’s nightly screaming fits had us both scratching our heads trying to work out a way to get a decent night’s sleep.
So far, we have tried controlled crying – which works in the beginning of the evening, but not during the day and not at 3am. We are now onto pre-emptive feeding – this is where you wake up the monster half an hour before her usual wake up call to dose her with milk and put her back to sleep. This has a limited but slightly better response than just leaving her to wake up by herself. We have also begun Aimee on solids and introduced formula milk late at night – both foods ease the hunger as they are slower to digest than breast milk. But Aimee still wakes up.

I guess at the end of the day, there is no instant answer, despite what the guide books suggest. This is something that Cat and I simply have to cope with. No amount of trickery or technique will give us the instant help that we need, so we just plough on. And we are not the only ones, as endless stories from parents of all generations testify that their babies nearly always cried lots at night for feeds until one night, like magic, they simply slept all through the night. This magic age is usually about 6-7 months. We’re crossing our fingers that Aimee does this sooner rather than later.
But it is easy to complain and moan. These ramblings are really a release from the strains of early parenthood. It is very hard, make no doubt about that. But there is a flipside. Each day Aimee grows, she discovers something new to grab, bite, observe, laugh, and it is amazing to witness. When complete strangers do a turnaround and grab you to say what a beautiful baby you have, it makes you feel proud. Cat and I are also closer then ever because of Aimee. We have shared amazing experiences together. We dream about what type of person Aimee will become. Cat wants someone to go shopping with. I want to train a kungfu kicking ninjarette. Just dreams really, but Aimee gives us those dreams.

Easter eggs

An eventful Easter holiday for the family Yang.
So far, the controlled crying has been going very well. A typical evening now consists of a 7.30pm feed and afterwards into the cot still awake. A few minutes of fussing and then she sleeps for anything up to 6 hours. Another feed at between 12am to 2.30am and she’ll happily go back to sleep until 5am. Then she cries and we either respond with more feeding or, and this has been our preference – we leave her to cry until she stops and wakes up again – so far not later than 6am. Not too bad and quite manageable.
We have also begun trying solids with a few teaspoons of very dilute baby rice. The first two days were just a messy game, but by day three, she did actually swallow three spoonfuls. According to all the guidebooks, this is very normal and in fact at this age, 2 teaspoons is more than adequate. It’ll take several more weeks of trying and then offering new tastes gradually. What we also found is that her desire for milk has increased also (probably since she now feeds less at night). I’ve bought a nice baby recipe book and am looking forward to the challenge of making new foods.
All was going so swimmingly that we were on a roll, so I thought we should try our luck with controlled crying during the day. Usually, this is a big problem as Aimee is used to being carried on her baby carrier all day or at least amused by a variety of toys and swings. If she sleeps, it is very short naps. But yesterday I put her down when I thought she was tired but the poor mite screamed for over an hour. Finally, Cat could stand it no more and checked on her, only to find a nappy full of poo. Oh boy, did we feel bad.
Not only that, but last night, she woke up at 2am and screamed until 5am, because (a) she expected a 2am feed, but got none, and (b) she thought we would pick her up since that is what we did during the day.
So I am at work, bleary eyed but in retrospect, a successful long weekend.

Fairy Magic

Wow!
Cat ran in to the living room with Aimee (where I am sleeping - or trying to if my neighbour isn;t having late night parties) this morning and shouted LOOK!
I looked at Aimee and sure enough, the tooth fairy had visited and produced a tiny little front incisor on her lower jaw. It was just visible enough to be sure that it had broken through the gum line. amazing - a real pivotal moment in Aimee's development. She also seemed most calm and fed from Cat's breast without any of her usual fussing and whimpering.
I tried to take a photo but it's too small and Aimee too unwilling to cooperate.

I guess out teething honeymoon will be shortlived as she has plenty more to pop through, with the accompanying tetchiness and discomfort. But it's lovely to see her develop so fast.

Cry baby - Day 3

Night 3 of our controlled crying experiment was far more successful. Aimee fed well at 7.30pm and Cat put her down in the cot around 8.20pm. A short spell of fussing and crying and she fell asleep by 8.40pm and calm silence pretty much all night. Apart from a brief spell of fussiness at 2.30am when Cat decided to feed her and Aimee’s gums must have played up as a result. But it was very brief and she fell back to sleep until 7am. So not bad really. If it weren’t for poor Aimee’s teething pains, I’m pretty sure she would sleep ever better, but we can’t complain. This is so much better than last week, where Cat would have to feed her to sleep practically every hour in the night.This morning, Aimee was alert but very distracted with her gums. I placed a cooled teething dummy into her mouth and she chewed on it with gusto. In fact she was smiling as she was chewing which makes a slightly odd face. But other than that, she seemed fine and dandy.

Weight Gain everything

Weight gain despite everything!
Cat just went to get Aimee weighed. At almost 5 months old, she is a goodly 15Lbs5oz (7.03Kg) which is average for her age, not too big not too small. This small piece of news is heaven to our ears. Because Aimee had been such a brief to almost non-existent daytime feeder, we wondered if her health was suffering. Clearly, those nightly feeds were enough to sustain her growth. Now, it is a matter of reducing the night feeds with controlled crying and hopefully, she will feed more in the daytime.
Three comments the midwife made to Cat:
One – she was amazed that Aimee was such a healthy weight for a purely breastfed baby – that’ll be Cat’s rich milk supply again.
The second comment was ‘Oh, your baby is teething’. Well we did kind of suspect that she was teething but the midwife spotted it immediately. She said that was why Aimee only fed for short periods during the day. The third comment was – we should start her on solids very soon. Don’t leave it beyond six months. Blimey – surely this was counter to what many books I have read have said. So we have decided to give a bit of baby rice over Easter and see what happens. A lot of mess I imagine!

Cry baby- day two

Day two of our controlled crying experiment.
We put Aimee down at 8pm, fed and drowsy but not asleep. She cried for about 10 minutes then blissful silence. Cat and I congratulated ourselves for a job well done. Aimee had other plans. At 9.30pm she woke and screamed the house down for one whole hour. We followed out 5,10,15…minute soothing intervals but it was so tough. Every cry, every yell, every scream tore at our hearts. We questioned ourselves at every second. But when she stopped, we looked in and she seemed so peacefully asleep.
We decided that she should still have a midnight top-up feed and I woke her up at midnight. She fussed a bit but fed well. When I put her down, the crying began again. I honestly could not do it anymore and almost at the point where I picked her up, she stopped. It took only ten minutes and she fell back to sleep for 6 hours.
But the instinctive feeling that it is cruel and horrid never leaves our minds. A scan on the internet this morning was didn’t help the guilt with endless debates by ‘experts’ both pro and against the practice. This morning she seemed a bit clingy and distracted but still smiley and ‘chatty’. I hope we have not done any lasting mental harm. I am reserving judgement at the moment about whether it is working. Tonight we’ll prepare for the same. Consistency is the key for any technique, we can’t back out now.

Wah Wah pedal from hell

It's been a tough few weeks for Cat and I.Aimee has been waking up every two hours during the night and we both have been walking around like zombies as a result.Part of the blame lies with me. Apparently I am a noisy sleeper, with my snores, grunts and turning around, it doesn;t take much and Aimee wakes up. So I have been relegated to the futon in the living room. I don;t mind if it means I and Cat get a little more sleep but no, Aimee still wakes up and cannot go back to sleep. So, in order to calm her, Cat feeds her. This was fine until the last week, when Aimee fed so much during the night, she showed no interest to feed during the day. Worse, she now associated her night feeds with sleep and could only sleep whilst on the breast.She would scream and fuss and whinge until she got her feed and then continue to fuss. Cat and I realised, that despite our best efforts at denying her the use of a dummy, she had the next best thing - Cat's nipple!
So last night, out of sheer desperation, we did something we thought we would never do - controlled crying. The nemesis of all parenting techniques. Basically, it means letting your baby cry until she realises she can;t have what she want and makes herself go to sleep. It is not for the faint hearted. Each five minutes or so, you go in to reassure her, but you do not pick her up. Some horror stories talk of 3hour stints of intense crying. Before, Cat and I could not bear to hear her cry for longer than five minutes. When it is your own, you are instinctively programmed to respond within seconds to your baby crying. Last night,we went for it, and after a good feed, Cat put her in the cot and left the room. Of course Aimee started fussing, which
turned to yelling, which turned to screaming, which turned into the final level - BANSHEE HELL CRY!!!! It is awful. But me and Cat looked at each other and vowed to keep a strong front - with her entering every five minutes to hush to her. We were almost at our wits end desperate to pick her up when, after fifteen minutes of heelish cries, she stopped, whimpered and then went silent. She was asleep. I couldn't believe it. Only fifteen minutes?? Surely we had been let off too easily. We sat in the kitchen, waiting for the next installment. But there was none, bar a couple of sleepy whimpers, which was normal.
We have to do this for until Aimee can fall asleep under her own steam without any aids (feeding, rocking, music etc). It can be done, the books lead us to beleive that it almost always works. But it takes resolves of steel. We are hopeful of it working in the average three days it takes most others. But it does warn that it could take seven.
But the benefits are plenty. Mainly, that both Aimee and us get a decent night's sleep. But also that she doesn't use the breastfeeding or anything else as a sleep aid, which could cause us
big problems later on. As a result, we hope that a good night, means a good day with less whingeing and fussing and more feeding.
Hopefully it will lead to a drop of night feeding altogether.
Fingers crossed and hands over the ears.xx

Grandpa Yang says something amusing to Aimee!