Thinking Different Key to Sanity in Motherhood?

The expression “The more things change, the more things stay the same” has so much truth for raising children. Little Miss 6 months has steadily been getting better at sleeping through the night. I think she was probably ready for it 2 months ago, but maybe I just wasn’t reading her cues properly. No matter, everything happens for a reason, she was an early baby and so the extra feeds through the night have made her jump up to the 50% percentile within the first 5 months of life, this is huge. Huge and helpful in helping her to develop and be strong enough to fight off big brother’s yucky toddler germs. Let’s be honest, he brings in so many mutant germs from preschool that no amount of hand washing can kill.

Now that she is sleeping at least 9 hours through the night, I breathe a sigh of relief. I’m happy to give her that sleepy feed top up, or “tanking up” as my first child’s midwife use to call it. The 11 PM sleepy feed was something I first learnt about in one of only 2 baby books I read the first time around (google “tracy Hogg The Baby Whisperer if interested, absolutely love this book!). With the sleepy feed, she doesn’t wake up, she just feeds, burps, goes right back to bed and (fingers crossed) keeps sleeping through til morning.

Well, now that the nightime is going relatively smoothly wouldn’t you know that this week she has decided that naps in the day time are for suckers! Yep, that’s right. She’s replaced her naps with night time sleep because I guess doing both would make life too easy for me 🙂 You see, the more things change…

She’ll happily sleep on me strapped into her Ergo Baby carrier, but sheesh, going to the bathroom without a baby strapped to me just once this week would be nice 😉 She has spent alot of  time on me even when we are at home which is definitely a big change for both of us. Normally she is really into tummy time, but something has changed. I suspect she may be teething, sucking gums, pulling gums, runny nose and puddles of drool are the clues. It doesn’t seem like a cold, mother’s intuition tells me teeth and that is why she is more clingy.

After falling asleep on me again this morning, I tried putting her down to which she quickly protested. It was obvious that she was tired, after having spent 10 minutes snoring and drooling on me. So, I did something that I hate to do, I let her cry it out while I took a shower. It was a quick shower, cause I felt bad and worried about leaving her to cry. But, you know what? By the time I got out of the shower she had stopped crying. The side of my brain that is a worrisome mother automatically wondered if she was ok, had she choked? I wanted to check on her, but the sensible part of my brain knew that she was tired, so logically she fell asleep and if I walked in now it would be all over rover – also her crib is free of anything that she can choke on. So, I left her to sleep for over an hour now, of course I eventually checked and she is sleeping like and angel. Now I’m wondering why I didn’t do this earlier this week.

Well, I’m off to do something productive , while she sleeps.

So what have you had to do differently to get through a new stage in your child’s life?

Check out some of my humorous motherhood Pinterest pins.