Tiger is now a six months old which means he is nearer to one then he is to being born, how did that happen?!
I’m not going to lie, the last month has been a STRESSFUL one but things have started to turn around this week.
At the worst point Tiger was waking every 45 minutes at night, not going to sleep in the evening, crying all day (apart from when he had my boob in his mouth) and not napping for longer than ten minutes at a time. I felt like everything was a bit of a mess and was so tired that everything seemed like even harder work.
I decided it was time to tackle the fact that he only ever fell asleep on my boob. The thing is that I had no problem with him falling asleep on my boob when he was only waking once or twice a night but when he was waking up either every time I put him down or every 45 minutes and I had to pick him up again and feed him again it started to feel ridiculous. He didn’t know how to fall asleep himself and I was torn between doing the same thing I did with Cherry or carrying on and hoping it would improve.
With Cherry I sat next to her cot until she fell asleep on her own, she did cry, a lot, for nearly an hour she cried but as I was there stroking her back so it was a bit easier for me to deal with. I had been dreading it this time though, part of me almost didn’t even believe it would work so I kept putting it off until last weekend when I just couldn’t go on with how things were.
I put him in his cot awake and waited for him to start screaming but to my surprise, he didn’t.
He did cry but only for a couple of minutes at a time and nothing compared to how he screams when he is in his car seat sometimes. After about half an hour he fell asleep, then since then it’s taken him about five to ten minutes but with no crying! I’m so relieved and it has really made a difference to how I feel about everything now.
Mainly because I actually have a couple of hours in the evening to get things done! He has been going to bed at around 6.30/7pm and will generally sleep until I go to bed, he has had a cold this week so did wake a few times in the evening but just knowing he can go to sleep himself has made me a lot less concerned about how often he wakes or wants feeding in the night.
Just to point out that he is still waking in the night, A LOT! I wasn’t expecting him to stop waking for feeds but I guess I thought it might help a bit. Cherry started waking twice a night after she learnt how to fall asleep herself then started sleeping through at ten months, I can’t see Tiger doing that!! Although last night I did leave him to go back to sleep himself when he’d woken for the third time before midnight, we got into bad habits when he had his cold last week and he thought I was just going to feed him every hour again, it took him two and a half hours of rolling around and moaning but eventually he fell asleep and only woke once until 8.15am which was the best lie-in I’ve had in months!
As he’s now six months I do think having his own room would help as he gets woken up every time I roll over then sees me and thinks ‘oh I would love some milk’. We only have 2 bedrooms though and I don’t want to put him in with Cherry until he’s sleeping through as it will just disturb her so hopefully he will just get used to being in with us.
I have properly starting weaning now, he goes in his highchair at mealtimes and I offer him food. You might remember me saying that I was going to do BLW this time as he didn’t take puree off a spoon, well I have kind of changed my mind again. I found that the mess was stressing me out and I found it so wasteful, nearly everything I gave him ended up on the floor and when fruit and veg is so expensive it’s a bit hard to watch. I can see that it teaches them about food and gives them more control over what they are putting in their mouths but to be honest nearly every toddler I know is fussy regardless of how they were weaned so I don’t know how much difference it really makes.
I have just been mashing up whatever we eat and not putting salt in my cooking. He eats an okay amount of some things but not much generally. His favourite is mashed avocado and banana, he also loved ratatouille and pasta the other night. I’m a lot more relaxed about it all this time and although he doesn’t eat much now I’m sure he will get there eventually.
Breastfeeding is still going well, he is a boob monster and would spend most the day feeding if he could. I did try and get his day time feeds in a loose routine last week but it made no difference to anything so now it’s just whenever he wants again. He is teething really badly and sometimes it’s all he wants to do but at least I get to sit down in peace, and eat lots of cake to keep my calorie intake up!
He has become really mobile all of a sudden and can pull himself from one side of the room to the other in no time at all, he also keeps getting up on all fours so I don’t think it will be long before he is crawling.
Part of me wants time to slow down and part of me wants this phase to be over, I can remember this age being hard work with Cherry too. She was so frustrated when she was learning to crawl, mix that in with teething and being tired from not much sleep at night and it doesn’t make for a happy baby!
When he is happy though it’s as lovely as ever, a laughing baby is one of the best things.
So there we are, half a year, in the same time again he will be one. Cherry was walking and talking by that age and definitely more toddler than baby.
The first year really does go by in a blur and I heard a phrase the other day that I always think of when we are having a bad day:
‘This too shall pass’
And it does, all too quickly sometimes.
Happy half a year little man, you have made our family complete and I love you a ridiculous amount.
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