The following night was very much the same, I’m happy to say – the only difference was that I heard Conrad stir a bit at about 1.45am, so I snuck over to check on him. He was making little noises and moving around, but asleep still, so I thought I shouldn’t assume that he wanted a feed and whisk him out of bed to try to preempt him crying, but wait and see if he would wake up properly. As his legs were moving a lot, though, and the blankets are tricky to secure down the sides of the cot, I sat by his cot for a while and held a corner of the blankets, so he wouldn’t kick them off and wake up from the change in temperature.
I waited for about 20 minutes but he didn’t wake up and he didn’t cry, and after that he started to seem more settled again, so I went back to our bed. Next thing I knew it was 2.20am, I checked on Conrad and he was sound asleep. Had he woken up properly and cried it would definitely have roused me, so that’s another confirmation that he probably actually doesn’t need food during the night anymore…
That doesn’t mean I’m denying him night feeds, though, of course! The following nights he has slept for 4-4.5 hours before stirring for the first time, but then has cried, and after I’ve checked that his blankets are on, he hasn’t thrown up, or there is anything else obvious that has distressed him, I give him a bottle of milk. As I’ve heard, though, that automatically giving milk during the night to resettle a baby can lead to the baby in the long run not being able to settle without it, even if he or she isn’t hungry, I will try to be more attentive to whether it’s actually milk Conrad needs in future.
Yesterday (Thursday 21 August) we were invited over to one of the mums from the postnatal group I got to know when I’d had Conrad’s sister Jessica. I took Conrad and Jessica on the train in the double buggy and once in Redhill we were picked up at the station by the hostess and another mum. Last time they saw Conrad he was asleep most of the time, but as he nowadays spends more time awake he was put in a baby bouncer on the patio, surrounded by toys, toddlers and mums. He charmed a few of the mums with his smile and seemed fascinated by a couple of little teddies that were hanging on the frame of the baby bouncer and chatted to them for a while. The toddlers, five in total including his sister, left him to it most of the time, but one of the boys insisted on throwing him a little wooden brick – it hit the side of Conrad’s leg the once, the boy’s mum apologised profusely, but Conrad only smiled and took no notice.
When Ian turned up in the car to fetch the three of us about 4.45pm, Conrad was getting a bit fed up. He’d been awake all afternoon and it was only two hours since his last feed, but he started to cry a bit desperately. I have noticed in the last week or so that when Conrad gets tired, he doesn’t always simply drop off to sleep but gets upset and I’ve unwittingly rocked him to sleep a few times in the afternoon – he’s not been too interested in feeding and there’s nothing else obvious that is uncomfortable: he’s not showing any signs of tummy ache, for example – but when I rock him to try to soothe him he’s nodded off on my shoulder. This time, I prepared a bottle of formula just to be sure and was shown a quite corner upstairs to feed him. But he only had 30ml before falling sound asleep, so it seemed pretty clear that what he really had needed was just some help to switch off…
I had hoped, of course, that Conrad would be able to fall asleep regardless of almost any surroundings, noises and activity around him. We’ll just have to see how things go. Once asleep, he seems to be able to stay asleep through most things still, though, which of course is a good thing (and long may it continue…!). I take the kids to the park each morning nowadays and when we come back I leave Conrad in the pushchair in the hallway (Jessica’s leaving him to it now, too) and he carries on sleeping for up to three hours, unaffected of me banging cupboard doors or using the blender in the kitchen area right next to him, or the hoover going when the lady who cleans for us is around.
Gabriella