Lilypie First Birthday tickers

Friday, December 17, 2010

Co-Sleeping

I'm thinking about starting to sleep with Hunter. In reality the majority of the world sleeps with their infants, and it was extremely common before "modern time" too. Babies having their own beds and bedrooms is an extremely recent development. People talk about the risks of co-sleeping, but there are also a lot of benefits, not just for breastfeeding, but also for breathing and how in-sync mother and baby are. Hunter just seems to sleep better when he's being held. I've done a lot of reading and research about it, and it goes both ways. We'll see how to goes, I'm going to start tonight.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Momma

There's something special about being a mom. When Hunter is happy my world is wonderful. When he smiles there's nothing more beautiful in the world. I try to think of him like a little person to help me figure out his quirks. He tells me what he needs, it's just in code. And I love him so much that deciphering that code so I can make him happy is of the utmost importance. But he's not fussy for no reason, he's not colicky, and he doesn't cry a lot. So when he's talking to me he really is trying to talk to me the only way he can.

Maybe all of this sounds dumb, but I'm completely smitten.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Becoming Baby Wise

So I've been keeping track of Hunter's natural schedule for the past week, and determined that we don't do anything on a real schedule. We nurse at random times, though the time between feedings is always acceptable. Naps are always variable in length of time and when they happen though, which means that awake times are variable too. From my reading I think that this is because we haven't established a first feeding time. According to Baby Wise if I wake him at a certain time every morning for the first feeding I can expect the rest of the day to follow a more predictable schedule. I've chosen 6:00AM, with a second feeding at 9:00AM, or around then. So for the next week I'm going to attempt to feed him at 6 and see how his natural schedule flows from there. According the Baby Wise, we should reach a natural stability of Eat-Wake-Sleep once I start waking him up at the same time every morning. Now, I do hope to sleep for another couple of hours between 6 and 9, as opposed to having a wake time in between. I have a general schedule proposed for the whole day, but that is an extremely loose guideline, especially now. Once I have enough of a record to make sense of our natural schedule I can work to refine it. Until then we'll just see what he does. Luckily I don't have daily obligations that require any particular space of free time.

Updates to follow. My goal is to have somewhat of an established schedule by the time we leave for Cleveland on the 19th. That's exactly two weeks. Here we go!