The Michael Family Musings: Mia, Month Eight

Stats:

Weight: approximately 15.5 pounds

Height: 27.5 inches

Size: 9 months for clothes and we’re transitioning from size 2 to size 3 diapers.

Appearance: Mia’s eyes are a grayish blue at the moment. Her hair is getting darker and longer on top and in the back. The eyelashes on her top lid are very long and beautiful and the ones on her lower lid are much shorter.

Food:

Not a whole lot has changed from last month in the food department. She’s still nursing about every 4-5 hours for 15-20 minutes each feed and eating purees in between nursing sessions (in total, she eats every 2-2.5 hours). Her favorite is still sweet potatoes, but she also really seems to enjoy bananas and mangoes. She still will not eat green beans. She doesn’t seem to be all that fond of peas and squash, but she will eat them (particularly if they’re in medleys).
With the first puree of the day, we mix in either rice cereal or oatmeal.
She definitely understands the signs that we use to indicate mealtimes (‘milk’ and ‘eat’). We’ve started giving her a sippy cup with water in it at dinner time. She seems to understand that the spout part goes in your mouth, and she’s very proficient at holding the cup, but she uses it more as a teething toy than an actual cup right now.

Here’s her typical schedule:
7:30 am – wake up and nurse
8-9:30 – play
9:30 – solids
9:45 – 11:30 nap
12 p – nurse
12:30- 2 - walk, play
2:30 – solids
2:30-4 – nap
4 – nurse
4:30-6- play, family walk, dinner time
6:30 – solids
7-8 play, story time, bath
8-8:30 – nurse and bedtime

Sleep:

About halfway through the month, I started getting really concerned about Mia’s sleeping habits. She still wasn’t sleeping through the night, and it was really affecting not only her, but also us. I finally called her pediatrician who told me to just let her cry. I was very shocked that this was his recommendation, but after talking with Jason and doing research, we decided (begrudgingly, on my part) to give it a try. We decided to use the 7 day Ferber method (or graduated extinction). For those who aren’t familiar with this method, you basically let your baby cry in their crib but you go into their room every few minutes to comfort/soothe until the baby has fallen asleep. The only ‘requirement’ when you go in is that you do not pick up your baby, but you can use other comfort measures. With each subsequent check that you do, you wait longer and longer intervals of time before going back into their room. I want to point out that this was a VERY difficult thing for me to do and was not a decision I made lightly.
So here is the checking schedule that we used (but you can alter it to best fit your needs and your baby’s) for the first, second and third checks. For each check after the third, you continue using the longest (third) check interval:

Day 1 – 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes
Day 2 – 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 12 minutes
Day 3 – 10 minutes, 12 minutes, 15 minutes
Day 4 – 12 minutes, 15 minutes, 17 minutes
Day 5 – 15 minutes, 17 minutes, 20 minutes
Day 6 - 17 minutes, 20 minutes, 25 minutes
Day 7 – 20 minutes, 25 minutes, 30 minutes

The first two nights were definitely the hardest. For anyone wanting to try sleep training, start on a weekend!

I kept a sleep journal to document her progress

Day 1:
Put to bed at 8:30 pm, cried for 45 minutes.
Woke up at 12 am, cried for 1 hour.
Woke up at 5:30 am, cried for 30 minutes.

Day 2:
Woke up at 8 am (we woke her up).
Nap #1, cried 15 minutes, slept 45 minutes
Nap #2, slept 1.5 hours
Bed at 8:30 pm, cried 30 minutes.
Woke up at 12:30 am, cried for 1 hour.

Day 3:
Woke up at 7:30 am.
Nap #1, cried 1 hour, slept 45 minutes
Nap #2, cried 30 minutes, slept 30 minutes
Bed at 8 pm.
Woke up at 6 am, fussed for 10 minutes.

Day 4:
Woke up at 7:45 am.
Nap #1, fussed for 2 minutes, slept 30 minutes, cried 20 minutes, slept 20 minutes, cried 10 minutes, slept 40 minutes
Nap #2, fussed for 2 minutes, slept 30 minutes, cried 15 minutes, slept 15 minutes, cried 15 minutes, slept 15 minutes
Bed at 8:15 pm, fussed < 1 minute.

Day 5:
Woke up at 7:45 am.
Nap #1, cried 3 minutes, slept 1.25 hour
Nap #2 cried 5 minutes, slept 30 minutes, cried 15 minutes, slept 10 minutes
Bed at 8:15 pm, cried 5 minutes.

Day 6:
Up at 7:15 am.
Nap #1, cried 5 minutes, slept 30 minutes, cried 20 minutes, slept 30 minutes
Nap #2, slept 45 minutes, cried 20 minutes, alternate sleep/crying for 45 minutes
Bed at 8:30 pm (no crying)

Day 7:
Up at 7 am.
Nap #1, slept for 1.5 hours, no crying.
Nap #2, slept 45 minutes, cried 10 minutes, slept 45 minutes
Bed at 8:15 pm.

So, as you can see, she was sleeping through the night after just three nights of sleep training (which she is still doing by the way, usually 11-12 hours). We’re still having a little bit of an issue with naps. Usually, she’ll take a 1.5 hour nap in the morning without waking up, but in the afternoon, she’ll sleep 30-45 minutes, wake up and cry for a while, and then sometimes go back to sleep for anywhere from 20-45 minutes. I’m chalking this up to the fact that she’s never been that great of a napper, but I’m really hoping it continues to improve. Did I mention she only sleeps in her crib now? J

Milestones:

Mia still loves to babble. The most common thing I hear is ‘dadadada’, but she also does ‘mamamama’, ‘babababa’, ‘gagaga’, ‘guhguh’, ‘wahwah’.

When she’s looking for (or sees) Luna, she says “ah!”. I really think that’s how she says Luna’s name, because she doesn’t make that specific sound any other time.

She’s taken her first crawling steps! She’s really only taken the equivalent of maybe 6 or 7 ‘steps’, but it’s still really exciting! She very frequently gets up on all fours and rocks back and forth.

She’s got the very beginning stages of a tooth coming in; her lower left incisor. On that note, teething has been insane this month, particularly in the last week or so. SO much drool and she’s so cranky!

She’s sitting up like a boss now. When she’s lying down, she can almost completely pull herself into a sitting position.

She can’t pull up yet, but if we stand her holding onto a table or the couch or something, she can stand holding on for quite a while.

She chews on anything and everything she can get her hands on.

Things I want to remember about this month:

Mia had her first Christmas (okay, she had 4 Christmases J) and celebrated her first new year! She got so many new and cool toys! We spent lots of time with family and Mia got to meet her Aunt Sam and Uncle Brian from Michigan! I really enjoyed her first holiday season and I’m a little sad that it’s already over!

Sometimes when she’s saying ‘mamamama’ she’ll whisper it.

How happy she is when I come to get her out of bed in the morning. She wakes up smiling!

We play this game where Jason or I will put her on our shoulders and then pretend that we’ve ‘lost’ her. We’ll look all over the house, calling her name, and the whole time she’ll just sit up there smiling. Then, when we ‘find’ her, she gets really excited!

She always looks really surprised after she burps.

This is really random, but I think it’s interesting. So, while I have to cut her fingernails at least once a week, I’ve only ever cut her toenails once in her 8 months of life.

She always cries when we sign ‘all done’ after eating. She loves food as much as her mama does!