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2005-09-09 - 10.56pm previous entry next entry
My TEN month old!!!
Thank you all so much for the messages and notes and emails about the sleep stuff, and for being so encouraging despite my strong feelings and the way I wrote about them. I appreciate ALL the advice soooo much! Shannon, your message particularly lifted me because of how you reminded me so clearly that God would guide me and that Arthur would grow up just fine. Phew! Thank you :) And then Julie, your message just reinforced those things for me. But I feel so blessed by ALL the messages left for me. Thank you so much! You guys are so lovely :)
Well I feel so much better about it all today. I am surprised about that actually! Yesterday morning Arthur did not have to cry at his nap because he fell asleep on the breast. He did the same in the afternoon but he did wake twice over an hour and a half, each time tired and wanting to go back to sleep. I didn�t have the heart to make him cry so I nursed him and back to sleep he went. He was so tired yesterday, and kind of unsettled.
Last night we were disorganised and had not kept up with the nappy laundry (unusual for us). So when I came to stuff a night nappy for Arthur, I found that there weren�t enough clean inserts � aaargh! Sooo we had to put him in a day nappy and change him at our bedtime. We haven�t had to change him at night in MONTHS, which feels so strange now when I remember how it felt to always have to change him and wonder if it would ever be any different! When we changed him he woke up pretty fully. I nursed him back to sleep. That was about 11.30pm. He woke again at 1.30, and I had not been to sleep yet � tsk! This time he got full on the breast very quickly, and then started chatting and babbling and crawling around (despite being enclosed in a sleeping bag!). Neil rocked him, but Arthur got cross and pushed against Neil to try and get down. So Neil lay with him. Arthur started to cry of course. I lay on the floor next to Neil (where the darn new mattress ought to be, if we ever get around to buying it!!), and we waited. Arthur cried and cried. I had heard him cry like that the other day, and he was only just starting to sob, not anywhere near as bad as he was crying before. I was surprised at how calm I felt about it. I just knew he had to go to sleep by himself, and I knew he COULD, and I also knew we needed to give him the space to do it.
How weird is that, for me to say?! :)
So after very little time of this, Neil suddenly picked him up and started to rock him. I said, �What are you doing?!� and he just rocked him. I told him to put Arthur down, but he just rocked him. I thought, uh-oh, he�s had enough of trying to leave Arthur to cry and go to sleep, and now how am I going to convince him to put him down?! But then Neil said that he thought he would just see if Arthur would like to be rocked. At this point, Arthur was bug-eyed with curiosity about why Mummy and Daddy were talking in a raised whisper, standing up in a dark room with him held in the middle of it all! Hehe! He didn�t make a peep, or move a muscle, he just stared and stared at us over Neil�s arm, the cutie :)
Anyway I said to Neil that I thought it wasn�t fair on Arthur to let him cry and get so upset and then pick him up and rock him, when I knew we might expect to let him cry again to try and fall asleep. I said we had to be consistent. Either we don�t let him cry at all and we rock him and nurse him and do whatever it takes, or we stay consistent and help him learn to sleep by himself. It just isn�t fair to mess him about doing both. Neil put him back down and I lay with Arthur, with Neil beside me. Arthur seemed much more calm with me next to him anyway, and he did cry a little for a while, but not anything like the last time. Then he went quiet but still awake. My face was inches from his and I kept my eyes on his face the whole time. He would keep locking my eyes with his gaze and just look into me in silence for a while, and then let his eyes roll shut and mooch his little mouth the way he does when he is falling asleep. Then his eyes would open again and we would hold each other�s gaze until his eyes rolled shut again. Eventually he fell asleep. Somehow that was just so peaceful compared with the last time. Last time, his eyes were either screwed shut in despair or else full of misery and pleading with me to do something for him. This time there was a lot of trust and calm, I think, which really surprised me for some reason.
He finally went back to sleep at around 3am, and woke again at 5.45, when I nursed him. He went back to sleep till 7.15am, which is really late for Arthur! But I think he must have been tired from the night. Today he got full of milk before falling asleep for BOTH of his naps. For the morning nap, I just let him stand and crawl in my �fenced off� area that I made with my body, and when he was tired of that he got kind of upset and cranky. He cried, but never got so that he was hysterical and sobbing like before. Then he went quiet and took his time (about 10 minutes maybe) to fall asleep, lying down on his tummy and mooching his sweet little mouth on and off till he fell asleep. He looked at me now and again and that seemed to reassure him. I always like to stay very close to him and keep my eyes open and looking him in the face/eyes, because then I am making myself as �available� as I possibly can to him, and I hope he can sense that. I think he does, you know.
So I left him on the bed fast asleep, without having had anything to do with it! How amazing! And he did not wake for TWO HOURS!!! Yay! He slept 9.50 till 11.50, and then he woke up and we played for a while, and then he had lunch. He was acting tired again just before 2pm, so up we went to nurse in bed. He got full and then cruised along my body as I lay there, shouting and babbling cheerfully (he�s so cute!). When he got tired of that he got cranky again, but this time he only grissled, I wouldn�t even call it crying. Then he went quiet again and did his moochy-mouth, watching-me thing for maybe 5 or 10 minutes before falling asleep. He woke after 30 minutes but seemed really tired still, so I nursed him again and he fell asleep on the breast for another hour. The phone rang and woke him but when I got to him after quickly getting rid of the offending caller (!!), he was asleep again! :) So I am really encouraged.
This evening we did the normal bedtime routine and I nursed him in bed at the normal time (sometime before 7pm). He got full. Neil asked if he should rock him, but I felt so confident. I said no, and lay next to Arthur and waited. He cried more than in the day, but never got hysterical or sobbing. I just kissed his head and patted his little back now and then, or told him it was okay and he was such a good boy, etc. In the end (maybe 20 minutes?) he went quiet and then fell asleep, on his tummy again. He woke after we left the room though, and cried like his heart was breaking :( I went back in and sat near the bed, but he rolled around the bed and cried so much, that I got back in with him. It was amazing, because IMMEDIATELY he rolled himself onto his side so that his tummy was pressed against me, tucked his little hands up under his chin, mooched his mouth a while, and was fast asleep! My little sweetie. He needs his mama. I love how he wants me close to him. I love BEING close to him. I love him sooooo much.
Soooo that is the sleep situation updated!! I am feeling so much better about it now, and so encouraged. I feel that this IS the right way to go, and that it is the right time. I am also surprised to discover that I feel quite a sense of freedom to be flexible with what we�re doing, at any given time, depending on how I judge things to be going. I feel confident in myself again. I feel like I can read the situation with Arthur really well, and act on it accordingly. Like this evening after he had been asleep an hour, he woke crying, and by the time I got to him he was sitting up in bed in his sleeping bag (not as easy to sit and crawl in!), face in his hands, sobbing his little heart out! My poor baby! I went to nurse him but he gagged and burped, so I scooped him up and held him close to me to burp him a little. After that I nursed him to sleep. See, that is fine, because I felt able to judge what was required in that specific situation. I seem to have lost my fear of making a �wrong� decision. I am not so scared that there IS a wrong decision now, and that is hugely liberating. I think he had a tummy ache because while I was nursing him he did the most enormous farts! And not just one or two either! Poor Boo. He seemed a lot more settled after that, and he hasn�t woken since.
OKAY! Nuff talk about Arthur�s sleep! I want to talk about something else!!...
Arthur is TEN months old today!!!!! Thank you Julie for wishing him a happy 10 months! I am so bad at remembering to other Diaryland babies� special dates! Thank you for remembering Arthur�s! :)
My BIG boy! He is in double figures on his months, can you believe it?! Here he is this morning, 10 months old, with my hat on his head :)
I had my usual proud moment of changing my breastfeeding milestone blinkie, this time to 10 months! :) I like this blinkie. It�s prettier than the previous ones. Also, I know I�m over-obsessed (!), but I found another blinkie that I couldn�t resist adding � �I am a child of God� What a cool blinkie! And I love declaring that truth about me! And it�s pretty anyways :) BUT you�ll be glad to know I have actually removed two blinkies! So maybe your eyes will be less sore, hehe! I removed the �No CIO here!� blinkie because it�s just not true anymore, but that�s okay. I am at peace with stuff now. And I removed the FLYbaby blinkie. I am soooo not FLYing right now. I even unsubscribed from the FLYlady emails. Urgh. But that is another story, and I want to talk about my TEN-month-old at the moment! :)
Arthur has had a good day on his 10-month birthday! He has had a lot of sleep. He enjoyed lunch (homemade, yay!). He didn�t really want breakfast or tea, but he has done that a lot this week. I�m not worried about that. I just offer it, and breastfeed him when he wants it anyway. It�s probably just a phase or teething or something. He is chewing his hands a LOT today, and drooling on everything, but I still don�t see anything obvious going on in his gums yet.
He is so vocal these last few days! This morning he was cruising around on the bedroom furniture, saying �Oh-ho-ho? Mmm-ho-ho?� over and over, almost absentmindedly! It was so cute! He babbles constantly, but lately it sounds a lot more like he is talking in complex sentences but I don�t understand the language. His favourite words seem to be anything that starts with B! He makes these words short and sharp, and his tone is all confident and like he�s declaring something, almost authoritative! He uses these B words most when he is doing something adventurous like climbing the stairs, or on a mission to find Daddy somewhere in the house! His most often used B words are things like, �Bap!�, �Babb!�, �Bam!�, �Buv!� and �Bag!� Anything with a B to start and a good solid consonant on the end to make a nice punctuating sound. He sometimes just shouts one of these Bs randomly at important moments (ie, he�s just spotted Daddy round the corner and doubles his crawling speed to reach him!), or else babbles them as he cruises or climbs, like �BahBahBahBab!!� Or he makes funny sentences with them (also while cruising or climbing), like �MmmBabb! Babmmbapbap�.AaaBuvBuvBap! BagBapmmBuvBap!� It�s so cute to listen to! He always sounds so serious and his expression is too, when he uses his most �important� words in sentences, hehe! He uses other �words� in his sentences too, with all sorts of sounds and vowels and starting sounds. My favourite �word� of his is �Mmdiggle!� (usually followed by a pause and then, �Ah-DIGGA!!� as though something triumphant just happened!). He has a fairly new word (last month or so) that he uses in interest or curiosity, often while looking at me or Neil if we are showing him something interesting. The word is �Det� or �Deh�. I wonder if that will turn into the �Dat� that Alex is using when pointing at things? It�s like an early version of �that� I suppose. He doesn�t use it with direction yet though. Just as a random comment so far!
His most irritable words are, �Laylaylaylay!� or �DAY!� or �RoeRoeRoe!� all repeated with very annoyed tone! He uses these when he is cross with me in his highchair because he wants to get out and I�m still cleaning him, or lately when I am not nursing him or rocking him to sleep, before he gets to the crying. He always lets me know he�s cross about it first! Now I think about it, �Lay�, �Day� and �Roe� have been specific words he has used when cross since he was first babbling with meaning at around 4 or 5 months. Funny how he still uses the same sounds for angry communication after all this time!
He hasn�t said mama or dada since he started crawling at 8 and a half months. He was saying them ALL the time, but it suddenly stopped with his big increase in motor developments. I have just recently read that this can be normal � one type of development can get put to one side as another big development gets going. He has said dada once or twice, but nothing compared with before. Anyway that is fine. He has plenty of time of course! I miss hearing his little chipmunky voice calling me Mama, but he�ll get back to it again. He has developed so fast and suddenly with his motor development, and really that was so important for him with his curly feet. They are looking so straight now! I am so happy about that. His big toes still want to curl in, but the foot itself is soooo straight! I can�t wait to see the physio again to see how thrilled she is with him! Yay! :)
Okay here are some more photos of Arthur today. They were all taken within 15 minutes after his afternoon nap. That boy is keeping me busy these days!
The wardrobe was all his own work! He cruised a chair and a chest of drawers to get to it, then opened both doors, pulled all his jumpers out, sat down and opened the drawer (HOW?! It is really stiff to open!) and started yanking all his socks and mittens and miscellaneous items out of it! Little monkey! ;)
He keeps on heading off to the stairs as fast as his little knees and hands will take him there! Like every 5 minutes sometimes. I block the bottom of the stairs off sometimes with his inflatable activity ring. It is impossible for him to move when I wedge it between the furniture and the stairs. He gets kind of annoyed when he sees it there sometimes, but then I just distract him with a story or build him a tower of bricks to knock down. He is still LOVING his stories. I read him half a dozen a day, something like that. He just goes so quiet and concentrates so hard on the book, or on the book and my face, depending on whether my face does funny things or makes funny sounds if those are called for in the story! He turns the pages and closes the book at the end. He loves to turn the pages. A couple of weeks ago his books were frustrating him SO much because he kept trying to separate the pages (hardboard) but couldn�t manage it. Now he can pick them apart and turn them, and he can crawl to his book pile and sit himself down and look through a book if he wants to. I often see him doing that completely independently, even without me reading to him! He loves the pictures in the touchy-feely books. He has four or five fantastic touchy-feely books with some great textures and illustrations to explore. I read those eleventy times a day sometimes. He likes to open those and use his pointy finger to poke the textures :) He�s such a sweetie.
He lauched himself off the top step of the stairs this morning! Yaargh! I was seconds behind him, but it�s so weird because he suddenly sped up as he reached them, as though he WANTED to fall down and get a few greenstick fractures! I have visions of me trembling with anxiety every other weekend while my teenage son insists on going bungee jumping off the cliffs of Dover or something crazy! As I saw his top half disappear off the top step, I just grabbed at his bottom, screeching, �Noooo!!� (poor Neil nearly died, hearing it from the bathroom about 2 feet away!). It was just instinctive. My grasp caught him by the bright orange Fuzzi Bunz he was wearing, thank goodness, and he stopped mid-air, and brought his hands down to rest on the third step down, so it looked as though he was doing a hand-stand on the stairs, only with me hanging onto the back of his nappy for dear life, hehe! He was completely UN-bothered! Which worries me slightly! He seems to have no fear about doing ANYTHING! Mind you, the health visitor DID warn me as much at his late 8-month check. I just didn�t expect him to speed up. I should be more careful next time. His nappy started to slowwwwly pull down so I yelled for Neil and he rescued us :) I remembered Jaya falling down the stairs recently and how it sounded like she started off in a similar way, just launching herself over the top! It made me feel quite breathless at the thought that Arthur could so easily have fallen right down. We have nasty stuff for him to get hurt on at the bottom, with the corner bend and a CD storage unit there. It doesn�t bear thinking about! I need to be a NANOsecond behind him when he is near the stairs, not a second or two.
It has POURED with rain today! Yay! I love the rain! We have had torrential rain and thunder and lightning all afternoon and evening. We sooooo needed the rain. It fell so hard like sheets, and we flung the window wide open (it was falling too hard to go anywhere but directly DOWN so it didn�t come in) and watched it. Arthur seemed fascinated by it. We watched it for ages. He reached and reached out of the window. He loves water though. He will reach with all his strength to touch the running tap water when I am holding him on my hip whilst rinsing some cloth wipes for changing his nappy, for example.
I have discovered a few new things that get Arthur laughing like crazy lately. Today he was in his highchair after his tea and getting very cross with me for cleaning him up (as usual!). He was wearing his very best frown and giving me very dark looks (hehehe, I can never help smiling at those � he means them so sincerely that it�s just funny!), and crossly saying, �RoeRoeRoe!!� at me over and over. I started to sing, �Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream�� and his face relaxed into a smile when I was saying �his� words too! I like the version I heard when I worked with nursery school kids years back that finishes, �If you see a crocodile, don�t forget to scream � AAAAHHHH!� So I did that with Arthur, and you know he LOVES to be made to jump, especially by sudden sounds (crazy child!), so he just loved that song. I took him out of his highchair and carried him around singing the song over and over, and every time I got to, �If you see a crocodile�� he would start gasping and squealing in anticipation! When I did the scream I would also pretend to drop him, so he was absolutely hysterical after a few rounds of this, as those two things are his favourite funnies!
Yesterday I was sitting on the carpet in the living room amongst his toys, and he kept pulling up on me and then cruising round to my back, where he stood and patted my shoulder blades with gusto! I would twist round and say, �Whatcha doooiinng?!� and he would giggle and bounce with glee. One time I suddenly surprised him and whipped my arms back behind me, clutched his whole body to my back with them, and stood up, bending right over so that it was like he was riding my back sitting upright (if that makes sense). I galloped around the room making assorted silly noises, and stopped and started suddenly now and then. Arthur laughed sooooo hard! He got hiccups in the end! As I bounded around, his giggling shook with my movements! It was the funniest cutest thing :) We showed Neil when he got home, and he just watched us and laughed. Arthur is so much fun to be around. When he finds something funny, it�s infectious. You just can�t help laughing with him.
Well I could waffle on with many more examples of things Arthur finds funny, or little things he does, but I have just noticed that it is late and I really need some extra sleep tonight.
I can�t believe there are only two months � two months exactly! � until my baby boy is one year old. That suddenly seems so close. Wow. I just love him completely. I need to update my pregnancy journal. I think we are going to hold off on the baby-making for a while. But I feel at peace about everything. Thank you Lord.
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