A Good Night's Rest

The girls are going to be eight months old next week, and finally we had a night where they both slept all night long.  It was glorious.  They had been regressing a little bit and getting up multiple times to eat most nights, so we had to institute some tough love again, but we all seem to have survived.

I just love going into their room to get them in the morning.  If they wake up first, they let me know by either crying, or sometimes these days by babbling.  When I walk in the door, they are generally on their bellies looking at me.  Then they smile.  If I have to wake them up, they rub their sleepy little eyes, stretch their little bodies, and smile up at me.  I love my happy little morning babies!

Sleepy Tannah in the Morning

Harper woke up before I could get a picture of her sleeping

Happy Babies!

Lots of Firsts

The girls are at an exciting age where we have lots of "firsts" happening.  I feel like I need to be very good about documenting everything because I'm still pretty tired all the time, so the chance of me remembering exact (or even approximate)dates in a month or a year is pretty unlikely.

The girls have both really been enjoying swimming lessons.  Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures because we're both in the water with the girls, but we sing songs, and the girls splash around in the pool.  I was very pleased that Tannah hasn't had any problems whatsoever.  This might be because we get to go in the small pool, which is very well heated:)

Tannah's first tooth (bottom front left) arrived on October 28.  Tooth number two arrived the next day.  She actually handled the teething process very well.  We didn't even notice that anything new was going on until I spotted the tooth in her mouth.  Let's hope that trend continues for future teething times.  I think I might see two teeth getting ready to pop through Harper's gums, but I can't be certain quite yet.

Please excuse the dirty face and bib.  She was in the middle of eating her carrots.

On Friday night, I was in the kitchen and Wei-Yand was playing with the girls, when he called out, "is she crawling"?  I ran into the living room, and while I don't know if we can quite consider it crawling yet, Tannah was scooting herself across the floor by pulling her legs up underneath her body and lunging forward.  In just the past few days, she's getting faster and starting to get up on all fours.  Mobile babies are going to create all sorts of new (but fun!) challenges for us.  We're just waiting for the day that Harper starts crawling and they go in opposite directions.  we put our baby gate up by our stairs a few weeks ago, so we're prepared for the inevitable.

Harper has surpassed Tannah as our "good sleeper".  She has been sleeping through the night 2-3 nights each week, while Tannah is still getting up at least once every night.

Harper is also our "good eater".  She'll eat anything we give her, and it's so adorable to see her open her mouth when she's ready to eat.  Tannah is a little pickier, but loves to feed herself.  The trick is finding food that is soft enough for her to actually bite but that doesn't turn to mush when she grabs it.

Sleep Training - It's Working!

After our long first night, I wasn't too optimistic about night two.  Wei-Yand had volleyball, so I was on my own for putting the girls to bed.  Harper was exhausted after not getting very much sleep the night before, and Tannah was definitely aware that something was going on.  The girls went to bed around 6:30.  Harper still cried for longer than I would like, but then something amazing happened.  She didn't wake up until 7:00 the next morning when I woke her up.  Wei-Yand and I both went in to check on her multiple times to make sure she was ok.  She was moving around in her crib a couple times, but she put herself back to sleep every time.

She also slept through the night for the rest of the week, and the amount of time she cried got shorter every day.  On Thursday she fell asleep while nursing and stayed asleep all night.  I felt so well rested!  The girls were also in good spirits after sleeping well for several nights.

We went to visit my parents over the weekend, and, while it was lots of fun, it definitely threw a wrench into the sleep situation.  We're having a more difficult time than toward the end of last week, but I'm confident that this will work, and we will all be happier because of it!

Sleep Training - The First Night

First let me say that Dr. Ferber is my hero.  His method of "gradual extinction" is highly recommended, and although I knew it would be hard, we decided to try it out.  When following the Ferber method you put your child to bed awake because you are trying to break bad sleep associations.  His theory is that if you were used to being rocked to sleep every night and then you woke up alone in your crib you wouldn't be very happy about it, and you wouldn't be able to go back to sleep without being rocked.  The goal is to teach your child to go to sleep in her crib, so if she wakes up in the middle of the night she will be able to put herself back to sleep.

Of course, most babies who are used to being rocked to sleep aren't very happy about being put into their cribs when they're still awake, so they cry.  The Ferber method allows the partent to go check on/comfort the child at set intervals so the child knows that she's not being abandonned in her crib.  I really think this is more for the parents than the kids since, Harper didn't even seem to notice that I was trying to get her to calm down.

We moved Harper's crib into the spare bedroom so she wouldn't disrupt Tannah's sleep (or bother our neighbors too much).  Their room looks so empty with only one crib!

The first night the intervals were 3 minutes, 5 minutes, and 7 minutes.  I put Harper in her crib and set a time for three minutes.  You're not supposed to pick your baby up when you go in, and you're only supposed to stay for 1-2 minutes maximum.  Harper cried, I cried, Wei-Yand was excited that we were teaching our daughter and doing some "real parenting".  I went in to pat Harper and tell her that mommy loves her, and she just kept crying.  It was heartbreaking.  When I hear one of my babies crying, everything in me screams to go pick her up and make her feel better. I kept telling myself that this was going to benefit all of us because a lack of sleep isn't good for her either.

I went in at the prescribed intervals, and she fell asleep after 36 minutes.  I really thought she was going to hold out for much longer than that, so we were really excited.  Wei-Yand army crawled into the room to make sure that she was ok.  She was, so we high-fived and decided that this might actually work.

She woke up 45 minutes later, I went in to pat her, and she fell back to sleep before my 3 minute timer went off.  Again, we considered this a success.  I went to sleep.

She woke up around 11:15, and that is when the fun (I'm being sarcastic here) began.  We really wanted to try to get her to extend her time between feedings, so we set four hours as the time she needed to go between feedings.  She cried until I fed her at 12.  She cried for a little while after the feeding, but then went to sleep.  She kept waking up on and off, and Wei-Yand went to go lay down in the spare bedroom next to her crib so he could comfort her.  I tried to get some sleep, but it's really hard for me to sleep when I could hear her crying. 

Tannah woke up around 3:15, so I fed both girls.  Again, Harper cried for a while, but eventually fell asleep and slept until I woke her up at 7 am.  The book says not to let your baby sleep past her normal wake up time so she gets used to sleeping at night.  She smiled at me in the morning just like she always does, so I was encouraged that she didn't hate me. 

The book says to use the same system with naps, but if your child doesn't fall asleep within 30 minutes to end the nap.  Lets just say that Harper didn't nap on Monday.  However, she was still in fairly good spirits as long as someone was playing with her.

This is another really long post, so I'll continue the story later.  Don't worry, the training starts going much better on day 2:)

The Sleep Situation

Most of my posts are pretty upbeat because, for the most part, life with Harper and Tannah is pretty fantastic.  Most parents probably feel this way, but I really think we have some of the sweetest babies in the world.  However, since part of the purpose of this blog is to document our lives so I don't forget all of the fun stuff we have going on right now, I would be remiss if I didn't also mention our biggest challenge - sleep, or more accurately, lack thereof.

I'm nursing the girls, so until I went back to work, I got up for every single feeding.  Around two months, the girls were sleeping reasonably well, and only getting up once during an eight hour period.  I'm not exactly sure what happened, but at the beginning of July our sleep situation went downhill.  I think that Harper has gotten up at least three times every night since then, sometimes it's four or five times.  It can also take a few hours to get her to sleep at night. 

After my first week of work, we decided that Wei-Yand was going to have to take over some of the night duty or I wouldn't be able to function at work.  Fortunately, we have lots of frozen milk, so I try to go to sleep as soon after we get the girls down as possible.  Unfortunately, we often eat after they go to bed, so it's often 10 or 10:30 before I go to sleep.  Wei-Yand covers any wakings until about 2 am, then I'm back on duty.  I'm usually up around 2, 4, and 6.

This has led to some seriously tired parents.  Every once in a while one of us gets a six hour stretch of sleep, but most often the most we get is four.  Wei-Yand seems to be dealing with the lack of sleep better than me (perhaps because he often gets naps in during the day while the girls are sleeping).  However, he has definitely relied on some crutches (i.e. the swing and holding the girls) to get them to take longer naps during the day, and he has to go back to work in two weeks.  I worry that napping at daycare is going to be a fiasco.

In short, as much as I hate to do it, it's time for a change.  I don't foresee any issues with Tannah, but it's going to be a struggle to get Harper to fall asleep on her own and stay asleep.  I checked out "How to Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems" from the library, and we are getting ready to begin our sleep training.  I'm not looking forward to it.  I hate having a baby cry when I know that she would stop if I just picked her up.  I keep telling myself that this will make all of us happier in the long run.  Hopefully I'm right.

This post has gotten kind of long, and is kind of a downer, so here are some cute pictures of my beauties.  Hopefully I'll have a post in a few days discussing the miraculous change in our sleep situation.  Fingers crossed!