After the wonderful night when Conrad slept for over nine hours, he had almost a week of waking up every three hours throughout the night (although he did go back to sleep almost always straight away after a feed) and I was starting to feel a bit despondent again. But then lately, he has only woken up once a night, sometimes after as much as 7 hours’ sleep. I’m a bit at a loss on what to do to help him settle back when he cries in the night apart from giving him a bottle: e.g. stroking or cuddling him or changing his nappy doesn’t help the slightest. I just have to hope that he learns to resettle himself at some point – broken sleep can’t be great for Conrad either in the long run.
In the day time, Conrad still has a morning nap of anything between 1 and 4 hours, usually around 3 hours. In the afternoon I’ve started to put him in his cot when I suspect that he’s tired (unless we’re out and about – then he just dozes off in the pushchair if he needs a nap) and three times now he has fallen asleep there, once even without any kind of cranking, just happy chatter that gradually went more quiet until he drifted off. It’d be nice in a way if Conrad could sleep wherever whenever, but at home it’s safer for him to nap in his cot when Jessica and sometimes other toddlers are around.
Of course Jessica and any visiting toddlers don’t mean any harm, but they don’t always look where they’re going, and Jessica can get a bit overexcited around Conrad. She finds him fascinating, loves pointing out his facial features (I always keep a very close and slightly worried look when she points at his eyes, but she has learned to point them out at a slight distance), grabbing his feet (sometimes a bit hard), burying him in toys (Conrad isn’t always overly keen when toys get stacked right in front of or on top his face, funnily enough…!) or pat his head (sometimes a bit hard too, when she gets carried away). So I’ve decided that if he can be safely tucked away upstairs to sleep in peace, that’s the better option. In the afternoon he can sleep from half an hour to one and a half. I’m not expecting regular eating and sleeping times for quite some time yet, or they might not ever happen (and I’ll be forever guessing whether he’s tired or not…).
Conrad does get bored at times. A few days ago, I decided to try a few of Jessica’s books on him to see how he’d like them, and it went down really well! I chose a couple with good contrast in the pictures – one has coloured shapes which he looks at more that the black and white images of other babies on the opposing page, the other has bold colours and textures. He reaches for the pages, tries to grab the images and sometimes gets a very firm hold on the side of the page. Both books are cardboard ones, and I really have to struggle to keep the pages open and steady: he’s so strong, but obviously not yet in complete control over what his hands and arms are doing.
Conrad has taken to sucking his thumb every so often. It’s not when he’s about to go to sleep or at any other seemingly regularly occurring occasion – maybe his thumb is just another fun thing to chomp on and he’ll get bored of it after a while. We’ve never given Conrad a dummy, but if he chooses to suck his thumb instead, so be it.
As today was the Wednesday nearest to Conrad’s 5 month day (Sunday the 9th), I took him to the health visitor clinic to be weighed. He’s now just under 9 kilos: 8.96 kilos (or 19 lbs 11 oz). At home in the early evening, Ian got the tape measure out and we checked Conrad’s length too: 71 cm (2 ft 4 in).
Gabriella
Grattis på namnsdagen 12/11 söta pojke!
Kram Mia