The Discovery of Delicious Toes During Week 19

This week was a pretty exciting week. Nathan was baptized and reached a few more milestones. Towards the end of this week, he was grabbing onto his toes and sucking on them. He is also now able to roll from his back to his side.

Mmmm. foot. looks. delicious.

Jackpot! 

The grandparents came in for his baptism. The picture also shows his Godparents or Sponsors.

Nathan received lots of really neat gifts to commemorate this special day. Great-grandma gave him a silver bracelet with his birth date on it.  He also received a cross-stitch blanket from grandma and a hand printed graphic of Nathan's name and birth information from our friend.

As far as other interesting news goes...

Bracelet from Great-Grandma

It's been a week since he last pooped. 7 days exactly and he decided to let one out during our long walk today. Luckily we were pretty close to the car so I could change him pretty quickly. Apparently, it's pretty normal for babies to not poop for days. Breast milk is just that efficient at providing nutrients to the baby.

I finally was able to get an Ergo Baby off of Craigslist and so far I've tried it out on both a hike and a walk. It is definitely  far more comfortable than the Baby Bjorn, but I found it to be a bit hot to wear. I was able to hike along a trail this past weekend that was semi-rigorous and completed a 4 mile walk with no back soreness afterwards. I'd say that this is a keeper.

I'd say that we've been pretty blessed to have a chill baby. He is sweet, happy, and pretty easy to take care of. (Now that we have had a few weeks of practice).As of last week, the only complaint that I had was his night time sleeping schedule. As accommodating and patient as I tried to be, 4 months of waking up every 2.5-3 (sometimes less) hours was wearing me out. And the articles that say "your baby should be sleeping through the night by 4 months" did not help.

So, after debating or not to sleep train Nathan, I kind of made modifications to what the pediatrician suggested, and now Nathan is only waking up once at night to feed. If you want to know the details, read below. Otherwise, come back next week for more great news! This is how it happened:

One night, I decided to try to add a 2.5 oz bottle to the end of his 10:00 dream feed to see if that may hold him over a bit longer.
10:30 Nathan gets put down and I go to bed myself.

12:08 His crying woke me up and when I looked at the clock, 3 hours had not passed by. I waited a few minutes to see if he would soothe himself and 5 minutes later, the crying had crescendoed to become heart breaking. I went in and patted him for a few seconds and walked out. At that point, I thought to myself, I know he's full and capable of sleeping 3 hours. I will hold out on feeding him until 2:00. Even though he's slept for 5 hours before, I will have him hold it for 3.5. That's reasonable. So, I let him cry it out for 10 minutes. Before the 10 minutes came along, he fell asleep and shortly, I did too.

12:48. Less than an hour or so later I was woken up again. I stumbled into his room, patted him a bit and walked away. This time I went back to the room and fell asleep before I realized that he had fallen asleep, so I'm not sure how long he cried.

2:58 Next time he woke up, it was a few minutes before 3:00. I nursed him for almost an hour and then we both went to sleep.

7:18 Happy with his 3 hour stretch, I nursed him again and afterwards, he fell asleep for another 45 minutes.

Now, even though I got up 4 times that night, I had never felt better. I felt refreshed and well rested. I decided that I would continue this for a few nights to see how it would go. And it only became easier.

The next night, he woke up at 1:15, I patted him down and he woke up at 3:00 to nurse. He then slept till 7:30.

The night afterwards, he slept until 2:45 before waking up to nurse and then slept until 7:00.

The 4th night, he slept until 4:30, nursed and woke up at 7:30.

The 5th night, he slept until 4:15, nursed and slept until 8:30.

We'll see how this continues. But I have been getting lots of sleep and I feel like Nathan has become a more efficient nurser. He is no longer snacking and will nurse with good effort for about 15-20 minutes before he is satisfied and drops off on his own. Before, he was a weak sucker and would nurse on and off for 45 minutes to an hour. So far, I'm happy with my decision and thought that the process wasn't too harsh or cruel.