@philfemgal (jbranden12)

jbranden12

@philfemgal - How are things going with getting Alice to sleep? Has she let your wife put her down? 

philfemgal

Hi jlbranden12,

Things are much better overall sleep-wise since my last post.  We actually ended up sleep training Ada a few days after I posted.  She started doing to me what she had been doing to my wife--the screaming in arms, flailing her body, etc. when it came to nap time.  We started keeping track of her actual sleep and realized she was only sleeping 10 hours some days with 12 hours being her absolute max.

So even though I felt so guilty, we started doing Ferber and thankfully it was not nearly as bad as I had feared.  The worst was one or two times she cried for one hour the first day or two.  Then around day 5 we had a really bad day nap-wise with a lot of crying.  Naps are still sort of rough--I think we just can't get her wake-time and length of naps right.  And were conflicted about whether she's a little too dependent on needing a pacifier while going to sleep and sometimes needing it replaced.  But overall things are so much better than they were two weeks ago.

Both my wife and I can now do the bedtime putting her down in her crib and usually there is no crying, sometimes a few minutes.  She is also getting more sleep overall--now 12 hours is more her minimum, and a good day is more like 14 hours.  And her mood has improved so much since she has started getting more sleep--she just isn't cranky most of the time like she used to be.  So even though it still pains me to let her cry at all, I'm now pretty convinced we did the the right thing and now feel bad that I let that go on so long when apparently she was crabby due to sleep deprivation for months and we just thought she was a fussy baby!

And actually things had already started getting much better between my wife and Ada even before the sleep training.  We had started solids and my wife was really enjoying getting to do some feeding and introducing her to new things.  And she started getting much more interested in playing in the last month and a half or so.  Improving the sleep stuff has only made it better.

Thanks for thinking of us and asking!

How are you, Anna, and your husband doing?

jbranden12

That's great! I'm glad you all are getting good sleep and can bond more during meal and play time.

We are chugging along. Anna is growing like a weed and she is full on chubby! Her shunt seems to be doing it's job and we've increased the therapy to twice a week. She's still not putting much weight on her hands or rolling but she is making progress grabbing things with her right arm. She full on laughed for the first time last weekend so we spend a lot of time trying to get her to do that!

philfemgal

That's great that the shunt is working well and I'm glad Anna's making progress with the right arm!

Oh it's so fun getting smiles and laughs.  Ada's very stingy with real laughter.  I got really adorable giggles (luckily on video) recently singing "All Around the Mulberry Bush," but only the first time--since then she's like "oh that song, yeah it's amusing enough but I've heard it before--got anything better?"

I just looked at your blog and the pictures of Anna swimming are adorable!  (I've never heard of a swim collar, but we are hoping to start swimming with Ada soon--maybe do a mom and tot kind of class. I'll have to look into it.)