Conrad wanted to chomp on my fingers this morning, as he does quite often, and I don’t really mind as I’m only at risk of getting soggy, but maybe I need to re-consider that now – at the front left of his bottom jaw I could feel the rough tip of a little tooth coming through…!
Gabriella
Yesterday Conrad and I had another one of our days together just the two of us. He fell asleep in his pushchair while I went out for a morning walk and then did some shopping, and carried on sleeping in the hallway, while I batch-cooked a couple of dishes for him. He quite happily ate my mushroom and leek with wholemeal noodles concoction for lunch. About an hour after lunch, I’d decided to try putting him in the bath tub for the first time, rather than in the baby bath.
I needn’t have worried – he absolutely loved it! I guess he’s been watching his sister bathe in it often enough – when Jessica has her bath before bedtime, Conrad usually stands for a while by the side of the tub (now he holds on all by himself) and giggles when he watches her splash about. Pretty often she’ll hand him a toy or two, or complain “nej, nej, nej” when he tries to grab a toy she’s balanced on the side and doesn’t want him to touch.
Conrad was certainly ready to be in the bigger bath himself. He splashed and splashed when reaching for the selection of toys I’d put in the water with him and giggled away. He was sitting very confidently. After a while he reached for one of the handles on the side of the bath and started pulling himself up, which didn’t work quite so well: he slipped a bit so I had to catch him, but then he happily stood up in the bath holding on to my hands instead.
We’ve been thinking that we should let Conrad bathe in the tub for about a month, with Jessica watching him at the weekends to get used to the idea of him in there, and after that try them both in the bath at bedtime. Will be quite interesting to see what they make of that when the time comes…
In the afternoon, I’d decided to take Conrad to an ‘under 1’s’ get-together at Meath Green Infant School. I’d been thinking about doing some sort of an activity together with Conrad, and this one was on in the afternoon and a drop-in one – so no commitment needed if I or Conrad didn’t like it. It was only a small group of people, and the others all seemed to know each other from before, although that didn’t stop them from happily chatting to me. The other babies present were around 6-7 months and I was glad that Conrad got a chance to see others like him. He’s mainly seen toddlers so far (and always chatted and giggled delightedly at them in an effort to make contact) and I’ve been wanting to give him a chance to ‘make friends’ his ‘own age’ – although it’s obviously very early days yet…
There were different and fun toys for him to play with (or rather dribble on), and he was curiously watching the other babies and they him. Then after a while he of course wanted to stand up and walk around. I’m always hesitant to let him do that around other mums, especially ones I don’t know very well, in case they think I just want to show him off. But on the other hand I know how much he enjoys it, and others must surely see that it’s him setting off whilst giggling away, and not me dragging him along going ‘look, how advanced my baby is!’. (That’s not to say I don’t feel proud while he does…)
Gabriella
The following night, it took Conrad an hour to go back to sleep, using the same tactics. And the two nights after that, he actually slept through – there was a bit of a moan or a cry from him a few times during the night but he seemed to drift off to sleep again straight away and I didn’t need to leave my bed. The last couple of nights, though, I’ve needed to spend about an hour comforting him again though. But this could be partly due to a cold that he and his sister are suffering at the mo – Conrad’s got a bit of a cough and it seems to upset him. Conrad still hasn’t had any formula during the night since the night Thursday to Friday, and I’m very pleased about that – hopefully we’re generally heading in the right direction.
Conrad loves to walk about for little excursions around the ground floor (holding on to my hands still, of course) and to stand by the trampoline or a chair or the sofa, where toys are spread out. Occasionally he lets go of me completely to only lean on or hold on to the piece of furniture, but I still need to hold an arm behind him as he can loose his balance very suddenly. He’s walking with the trolley too now, but a bit jerkily on slightly wobbly legs, and I stay very close behind or have a hand on the trolley just to make sure it doesn’t run away with him (though he can get up to quite a speed himself at times…). He’s so much more aware of everything now. When he sits on the floor and wants to stand up, he very deliberately grabs for my hands – his right grabs my left and his left my right – and then starts to pull himself up. When he walks, he sometimes moves so quickly his feet don’t quite follow him, he really pushes forward. It’s fun to see him so keen. When he gets up on his feet, he usually giggles and looks really chuffed with himself.
Conrad isn’t much into books, apart from some with touchy feely bits, especially crinkly or shiny ones. He loves the glittery, rustling wings of a dragon fly in Jessica’s Meg and Mog book, reaches for the page with both arms and really leans into it, as if he’s totally absorbed by it, and runs his hands over it for ages. If he can get hold of a plastic bag or anything else that rustles, he’ll scrunch it and put it in his mouth as soon as he can (something we obviously don’t want to encourage). Lights attract him too; sometimes when I hold him he’ll lean right back so he’s almost upside down to see the lights in the ceiling.
Feeding is going okay. I’ve just introduced beans into his diet and he seems especially keen on mashed potato mixed with butter, milk and pureed kidney beans. Other dishes he likes are mild lentil curries, and broccoli and cauliflower with cheese. Unfortunately, as his napping can be a bit irregular, he can be too tired to eat and just cries when I try to feed him – he’ll open his mouth for a few spoonfuls, as he’s obviously hungry but then bursts into tears. As solids are relatively new and he’s only little still, eating, rather than just lying back and gulping formula, is probably still a bit of an effort. I feel really sorry for him – it must be really frustrating for him, and as I want to make sure mealtimes are a positive experience for him I’m a bit stuck sometimes regarding what to do. Once, after a few spoonfuls of his savoury main dish, which made him cry, I gave him his pureed fruit dessert, and he was happy enough to eat that. After he’d finished his fruit, I tried the savoury again, and this time he ate a fair bit of it. I’m guessing the fruit seemed easier for him to eat (maybe because it was sweet and more appealing…?) and once that had taken the edge of his hunger, he had more patience with the savoury dish. Sadly though, this doesn’t work every time. I just have to hope his naps happen before feeding times as often a possible, so that he’s rested and happy to try new things, and then eventually eating will be less of an effort.
Gabriella
Encouraged by the fact that Conrad managed to resettle without a bottle a couple of nights ago (i.e. he definitely isn’t waking because of hunger), I decided to finally get to it and try to actively ‘coach’ him to make this the norm. I’d been hoping for a long time that Conrad would stop needing a bottle all by himself, but I imagine the association between bottle/comfort/sleep is much too strong and he obviously doesn’t know why he should try to break that. Not only is it for the sake of me getting my nights back (selfish, I know!), but as long as I keep putting a teat in Conrad’s mouth to help him back to sleep I’m not actually helping him in the long run – to become self-reliant when it comes to sleeping when he needs it and to not fill up on milk during the night when he should be feeding during the day (with emphasis on solids now, of course).
A friend of a friend, who’s a single mum of two boys (and an accountant, not that that matters), had told me that when she needed to start planning going back to work, when her youngest (one month older than Conrad) was six months, she decided she had to stop the night feeds as she would need as much sleep she could get. So she decided: no bottle, only cuddles. The first night her little boy didn’t so much cry, but moan for about four hours…! The second night it was half an hour and the third he slept through, and, she told me, now he sleeps through most nights. I had been dreading losing as much (or more…) as four hours sleep but as it worked for her little baby, it was worth a try with Conrad.
Conrad woke up at 3.20 am that night and started to cry. After a few minutes it seemed quite clear that he wasn’t going to just drift back off to sleep himself, so I switched the green night light on and went to pick him up. It’s been a bit frustrating trying to comfort Conrad in the past; he’s been trashing around and crying (sometimes even louder from being picked up) and it hasn’t seemed to matter that he’s being held or cuddled. This was obviously worse while he was colicky, as he was in pain, but has continued since when he’s woken up at night. I guess this is part of why I thought that trying to comfort Conrad back to sleep wasn’t an option and I’ve assumed that only formula would do. But this time I persevered.
Conrad trashed around and cried in my arms. I had to keep moving my head out of the way so he wouldn’t clonk himself on the corner of my glasses and keep a firm grip so I wouldn’t drop him. But at the same time I sort of managed to hold him softly, with a hand behind his head to try to encourage him to rest against it – not that he did, but hopefully he noticed it being there. I couldn’t stop thinking about a piece of advice I’d read somewhere, that even if babies don’t stop crying and what you do doesn’t seem to make any difference, it does matter to the baby that Mummy or Daddy are there. So I started rocking him slowly and singing a lullaby (“När trollmor har lagt de elva små trollen”) in his ear, hoping he’d realise that he was safe and it was alright to calm down and just cuddle. And after a little while he did. I put Conrad back in the cot, kissed him on the cheek and tucked him in, and he was calm for a little bit before he started crying again.
I just repeated the procedure about every 5-10 minutes (whenever his crying started to become a bit more serious), determined to not open the carton of formula I had waiting on the bedside table together with scissors and bottle, and every time he seemed to calm down sooner from me holding him. And eventually, after only an hour and fifteen minutes in the end, he quietly drifted back off to sleep in his cot.
In the morning when Conrad woke up, slightly later than usual at 6.30am, he was happy and playful and not in any hurry to have breakfast, but I had time to wash and change him and then he sat on the living room emptying a bucket of plastic bricks and teething rings to chomp on while I prepared his breakfast.
So it’s ‘watch this space’ (and fingers crossed) now, for whether this will work or not…
Gabriella
Last night Conrad woke up at 2am, and for the first time I actually managed to help him settle again by just cuddling and singing to him. It was a close call, though – he was crying so I picked him up, but he was thrashing about in my arms and I had a hard time trying to avoid him clonking himself on the corner of my glasses. I sang a lullaby to him anyway, then after a couple of verses I gave up and put him back in his cot in order to go sort a bottle out. But as he was lying down again, Conrad stopped crying, started moaning a bit and then drifting back to sleep… I held fire on the bottle and soon he was snoozing away and slept until morning. So it can be done – it’s not that he’s actually hungry anymore…
I took Conrad to the health visitor weighing clinic in the afternoon, which I do once a month to keep a log of his physical growth. But it wasn’t a great experience and I’m seriously wondering whether I should go back. Conrad was a bit heavy on the scales, something I would expect as he’s been feeding during the night and therefore drunk excess milk – something that will sort itself out once he starts sleeping through without night feeds, so I’m not worried. But the health visitor nurse, who weighed him, started talking about childhood obesity and ‘that’s not the way we want to go, is it?’. And then she started grilling me about his diet. As it is, I’m sure Conrad is at no risk of of becoming obese whatsoever: he eats very healthy home-cooked food and it’s not like I have or will start giving him fast food, sweets or cakes anytime soon…
The last few months I have gone to the clinic, I have every time been given lots of advice I’ve not asked for or been questioned in detail about what I feed Conrad, and felt like I’ve had to defend myself. There’s no need for that. Any advice they’ve given has been basic and thereby unnecessary (I’ve usually tried it before, with Conrad’s sister, so would have known to try it already, or it’s not applicable) and most of the time I’m sure I know a great deal more than them about how to give a vegetarian baby a good, well-balanced diet. (The exception is Noreen, who was a good support in the early days when I was struggling to get Conrad to breastfeed.)
Regarding Conrad not sleeping through the night, she also asked: ‘Does he get enough attention during the day?’, as apparently babies who do not can try to compensate for this by waking and crying at night. I didn’t know what to say to this. (Apart from ‘of course’.) And on the way home, I’m sorry to say, I cried. How much further off the mark could she possibly be? And how useful can advice be if the person giving it really doesn’t know anything about you or your baby?
Apart from logging Conrad’s progress in weight for the baby book, there’s not really any reason to go to the health visitor clinic. Maybe I should come up with a fun activity for Conrad and me to do together on a Wednesday instead – something sociable that we can both enjoy.
Gabriella
Time’s just flying by, days are busy and Conrad seems to be growing taller and become more of a little boy than a baby every day. He plays quite happily sitting by himself on the floor now, though I put two flat cushions behind him just in case he topples: although we’ve got carpet with a fairly soft wooden floor underneath in our living room, the bump when he falls on his back still makes him cry unless there’s some extra cushioning. When he lands on the cushions it’s quite funny to watch, actually – he falls very slowly and then looks a bit puzzled, and slightly awkward like a cute little turtle on its back. (I tend to sit him up again as soon as I can – he’s not keen on lying down nowadays.)
He seems the happiest when Jessica’s around though: he watches her constantly and often giggles at most things she’s up to. And she in turn giggles when he giggles. Earlier in the week, Jessica was bouncing on her trampoline and I was sitting by it holding Conrad and let him bounce up and down on my lap whilst watching her. The two kids were laughing so much it was fantastic, and in the end Jessica got so excited she had to stop bouncing to shriek happily and pat Conrad on his cheek and head. It’s so lovely to see the little signs of affection between them. Sometimes Conrad looks at Jessica with what looks like such intense admiration that it almost breaks my heart; it’s so lovely to see her appreciate him in return.
Conrad’s weaning hasn’t taken any significant leaps since last, really, apart from me trying to make his food a little lumpier and a bit thicker. I have been mashing cooked apple and banana, for example, with a fork for a while now, rather than running them through the blender. I still try to cook as much as possible and am proud to say I’ve only resorted to giving him a jar once in the last couple of weeks (when I’d mixed some quinoa into the food I’d just cooked for him and then realised that it was probably a bit too old – better safe than sorry). I’m keen to move on to beans and other pulses than red lentils and peas to vary his diet more, but have to remind myself to not rush things – beans aren’t recommended until 8 months of age and Conrad’s only 7 months old yet (today in fact!). During the last few days I have given Conrad a couple of rice cakes and a piece of cracker bread (knäckebröd) to chomp on, just to give him a bit of experience of finger foods, but not knowing when he’ll get his first teeth (theres a sharpish lump in his gums at the back on the right hand side of his bottom jaw, but that could mean nothing, especially since first teeth tend to appear at the very front) I won’t worry about carrot sticks or anything harder just yet.
Conrad has eaten everything I’ve offered him so far – apart from a kiwi fruit, which probably was a bit too tart and made him cry. He doesn’t quite get on with his hard plastic bibs, so has grumbled at that and I’ve reverted back to soft plastic bibs for now, and at times when he has been a bit too tired and hungry he’s been a bit cranky, but on the whole feeding seems to be going well. The only thing is the night feeds… He still has one or two bottles of milk at night, because I can’t find any other way of resettling him when he wakes up and cries. He does resettle himself every so often and I usually leave him to it a bit to see if he will. But when he gets more upset and it’s time to pick him up, cuddling, rocking or singing won’t help. Putting him back down in his cot just makes him cry worse. So I’m carrying on feeding him at that point, hoping that he’ll learn to resettle without milk – somehow – eventually.
Another issue with the night feeds is that, in effect, Conrad is having too much milk at the moment. He’s meant to have 600 ml of milk/dairy in every 24 hours (so any cheese, cream or milk that I put in his food counts too). I put no more than 200ml in each bottle, of which he’s meant to have three each day: mid-morning, mid-afternoon and before bed. And more often than not Conrad sleeps through his mid-morning bottle to wake up sometime around 12 or 1 o’clock, so I feed him lunch straight away. But with the night feeds he still often has 800ml of formula per 24 hours. As long as the night feeds still happen, all I can think to do is to maybe water his formula down a little bit and maybe also give him some fruit in-between meals so that he fills up on that instead of quite as much milk during the day.
Regarding sleeping, Conrad still more often that not sleeps for 3-4 hours during the morning, and sometimes has a half hour in the afternoon too. It can work out so that in effect Jessica has me all to herself during the morning, and then when she settles for a nap around 1.30-2pm, Conrad has me to himself for the 2-3 hours that his sister sleeps. It’s so good to be able to spend a bit of quality time each with the kids, to give them my full attention for a little while.
Gabriella
This morning Conrad sat up on the floor by himself really confidently, playing with round, plastic stacking brics, Jessica’s new Duplo Lego and any other things he could reach. He only toppled over every so often, and very slowly, when he’d over-reached for something, but stayed sitting for 5-10 minutes at the time in-between. This is a definite improvement from before Christmas (not that he got much practise during the holidays), when we had to sit behind him, lightly propping him up with our legs, as he tended to lean and topple in all directions. Won’t be long now before he’ll sit on his own really well to play and we can dispose of the baby bouncer for good (I’ve put a half-full hold-all as counter balance on the legs, as Conrad still tends to reach for his feet, which makes the whole thing fall forward…).
Ian has been home all week and it’s been so great to have all this family time just the four of us. We’ve gone out for walks in the mornings, to the park and then food shopping, with Conrad falling asleep in the back of the pushchair for his morning nap. Yesterday, however, Conrad didn’t want to settle and was crying more and more desperately. At first we thought he was just over-tired, as he had been awake since 4.30am. But his crying came in waves and was more intense than usual, he fell asleep but only for about five minutes before he woke and started crying again. This was so out of character, that we started to think that he was suffering from pain, maybe a stomach ache. At home, I gave Conrad Calpol (baby paracetamol) and some milk, and after I’d carried him around and sung to him for a while, he calmed down.
We had an appointment with an estate agent to view a 3-bedroom house up for rent at Langshott, in Horley about 15-20 minutes walk from where we live, so took a chance and put Conrad in the pushchair again, hoping that he’d fall asleep properly this time from us being out for a walk, and he did, quietly snoozing away as we checked the house out from the outside and then met up with the guy from the estate agent and viewed the house inside. (The house was horrid, by the way: as soon as we came in we spotted the storage heaters and single-glazing, and then everything we saw after that just confirmed that we certainly would NOT be moving to this place…!) On our way home, though, Conrad woke up after having had only about 30-40 minutes of sleep, crying desperately again. Ian took the slow route with Jessica, letting her amble at her own pace, while I hurried home with Conrad in the pushchair.
At this point it had become time for Conrad’s lunch but as he was so upset, I didn’t even contemplate offering him solids but gave him another bottle, and eventually he allowed himself to switch off and have some sleep. This week I’ve noticed that having the dehumidifier on in our bedroom when I lay Conrad in his cot for a nap seems to make him calm and settle him much quicker, and I made sure to have it on this time. He slept for an hour, woke up being quite delicate and needing calming down at general intervals. Ian had been out with Conrad’s Aunti Wendy, taking stuff to the dump and she stopped by for a cup of tea, playing with Conrad, who needed comforting every so often but was getting decidedly more cheerful as the afternoon progressed. I’d noticed – and Ian and Wendy agreed later – that whenever Conrad burped or threw up a little, he cried, as if he was suffering from heartburn. I dug some baby Gaviscon we’d bought for Conrad in the early days but never used, as him being sick hadn’t seemed to bother him then. As it happened, Conrad seemed absolutely fine by the early part of the evening, even played happily by himself in the play ring whilst the rest of us had our tea – the medication needed to be given mixed with a bottle of formula, but come bedtime we decided not too worry.
Since coming back after Christmas, as I’d got into the (bad, but intentional) habit of giving Conrad a bottle every time he woke up and made a noise in the night – for fear of him waking Jessica and her then keeping all of us awake for the rest of the night – instead of letting Conrad cry/moan for a bit to see if he’d resettle by himself, it felt like we went back to square one regarding Conrad’s night feeds, with him waking up every 2 to 3 hours and not settling again after he’d had a bottle feed. When I’d discovered the connection between Conrad settling for an afternoon nap and the dehumidifier running in the room, I did think to try that during the night too: sadly, it hasn’t worked so far (of course it wasn’t going to be THAT easy to crack that one…!). Saying that, last night Conrad only woke up once during the night, at half past midnight, and then didn’t stir again until 6am. So maybe we’ll get to feed-free nights after all.
Gabriella