Little Lady is almost 11 months (next week)! Hard to believe she's nearly 1 year old! But at the same time, she does act pretty mature. She can give little exchanges, like if you say "hi" or "bye", even in casual conversation, she'll wave. If you blow raspberries at her or make a smacking sound with your mouth, she will return either of those sounds and clap her hands, she is so excited! I am also pretty sure she says "mama". When she sees me she will go on and on with the "mamamamamamaama!". And a few times when Christian is around she'll say "dahdahdahdah", so she might know his name too. She also has 3 teeth - two on the bottom middle and one eyetooth. She looks like a funny little half-vampire when she smiles with that one upper tooth.
In those respects, she's a little ahead of Little Sir at her age - he didn't have any teeth, wasn't making any serious talking noises, and hadn't really gotten the hang of waving. But at her age, he was already walking. So far she's not interested in walking at all. She's content to pull up and stand beside things, climb up and sit on top of things, and crawl, crawl, crawl.
One other thing he was ahead of her in: sleeping through the night.
She actually did start sleeping "through the night" (by which I mean she slept until 4am or 5am, needed a bottle, and then went back down until 6am or 7am) around 9 months and I was so excited! I thought, yay, she beat him by sleeping through the night sooner than he did (he was 10 months). But then, about 3-4 weeks later, she quit doing it. She is now back to waking up every 2-3 hours, and last night she was on track to be up every 45 minutes. We've taken her to the doctor to check her ears, thinking she might have an ear infection but everything looked fine. She isn't cutting any new teeth. Also, she stops crying pretty much immediately when someone comes into her room. That doesn't happen if a baby is in pain. What she wants is someone to hang out with her, feed her, and help her go back to sleep. UH NO. She is fully capable of going all night without eating (as we saw from her early sleeping-through-the-night). She is fully capable of putting herself back to sleep. When we do give her a bottle she only drinks 1-2 ounces before throwing it out of the crib (it's cute how she literally throws her bottle, except at 2am, then it's not so cute). If this was a growth spurt and she needed the extra nutrition, she would actually be eating something significant, but she's not.
So last night, after I read Jill from BabyRabies' post about allowing her daughter to cry, I decided we can do this - I am going to let her cry. The child was MAD. Mad, mad, mad. She threw a big fit in there for about 2 hours straight - 11:30pm to 1:30am. Then she finally wore herself out and slept until 6am. I felt really bad about it, I went in a few times but she was just angry and I couldn't console her without getting her up and getting her a bottle, which I was determined NOT to do.
I always said I did not believe in CIO, and I still don't believe in it for babies. But honestly, she's nearly a toddler. She doesn't have anything wrong with her. She just wants some cuddles. And I love to cuddle her! However, I also need sleep. I haven't slept through the night since some time in 2008 or 2009, and I'm over it. Hopefully, I'm helping her too - she is so much happier when she gets enough sleep. She's a pretty happy baby overall. I sure hope we are doing the right thing for my little dumpling.
0 comments:
Post a Comment