Week 5...One month!

Check out the little guy! He's starting to get chubby little cheeks! This picture was taken this morning when he wasn't cranky. It's been a pretty rough week. I now know how important it is for babies to sleep. For the past few days, our schedule has been thrown off a bit, causing Nathan to not sleep for more than 10 minute stretches at a time. We didn't really understand how a baby could be tired and not go to sleep. Also, I was getting a bit stressed out about trying to sleep train him (putting him down right before he dozes off) and failing miserably.Today has been the first time this week I have been able to sit down, eat lunch, and have some time to myself.

Well, turns out that until 2-3 months, it is ok for him to fall asleep in my arms. So, I guess I will start to sleep train him when the new year rolls around. I'm still a bit torn about what sleep training method I will use. My instinct tells me to go with the PD/PU method (Put down/pick up) where you put the baby down as they are drowsy and pick them up when they start to cry. However, the easier and thus more enticing method, the one my mom used on me, was the Ferber method, AKA the cry-it-out method. I'm curious about what others have done and how their kids turned out. My mom Ferberized, and while I'm not the most confident person, and I have some issues with separation, I think I turned out ok. I guess we still have a few weeks to figure this out.

Nathan is about 8 and a half pounds now, we are actually tracking his growth on the Wii. I even created a little baby Mii for him.

Cloth diapering is going well. Right now, he's a bit small for the one-size pocket diapers, but I think my favorite system is the prefolds with the Thirsties duo snap covers. I find that they are less bulky and they have a leak guard that keeps the mess down. I found that we were having to hand wash the covers between diaper washes, so I ordered another 2 diaper covers today. I wonder if these will still be my favorites when he is a bit bigger.

Night time sleep is alright. I have found that because I now can anticipate him getting up every 3 hours, the interrupted sleep is not bad. Since Nathan is feeding more efficiently, our feeding sessions are now down to 20-30 minutes as opposed to 45-50 minutes last week. I need to do a better job burping him, because sometimes I'll put him down, lay down, and a few minutes later, he wakes up crying because of gas. I think we also have a good system that we started last night and I ended up getting at least 7 hours of sleep. After bathing and feeding him, I would pass him off to Steve at around 10, when I would go to sleep. Steve puts him to sleep and is done for the night. I wake up at around 2 and 5 to feed him (one of the feedings almost always requires me to walk around the house to get him to sleep, and the other one, he goes straight to sleep after he eats) and then I wake up around 8 in the morning for good.

I guess that's it for now. I'm headed off to tidy up the house a bit and perhaps get a short power nap in before he wakes up. He's been asleep for 2 hours!