Secret Weapon of Sleep

The sleep training has been going well again. Last night Sumayah only woke once and only cried for 10 minutes before sleeping again all on her own. But I think alot of it has to do with my new secret weapon of sleep.

Sleep Training Night 4

It feels like all that was done was undone last night. Sumayah woke up at the usual midnight witching hour and then again at 1.30am... then again at 2.30am... 4am... 5am...
Finally at 5.30am I fed her and she slept again till 6.30am in the bed! What happened you ask?
Well I broke all the rules that's what! I broke, crumbled, caved in... you get the picture. I just couldn't endure the crying last night so I kept giving her the dummy and yes even picking her up. But you know what i am not despondent and I shall not give up on my quest for a good night's sleep.

Tonight when I put her in her cot, when she started crying I just sat with her until she fell asleep - only 15 minutes in total. I'm quite pleases with this, so let's hope I can be stron-willed enough tonight if she wakes up again.

Sleep Training Night 2 & 3

I haven't had time... correction... I've been lazy to update my blog regarding the whole sleep training debacle, but here goes. Night 2 went pretty well. We broke the rules slightly in the beginning, because she's just so warm and cuddly so the closeness and affection is often for our own benefit too! So anyway she fell asleep lying on Yaasier's chest, but of course not long after he put her in the cot she woke up crying. Surprisingly I was very calm and relaxed about the whole thing. I don't know if the previous night just gave me confidence that it could be done? So anyway, I picked her up for hardly even a minute just to comfort her then put her back down drowsy but awake. She fussed a little, but I kept my hand on her and susshed a little and hey presto! lala land! I can't remember what time this was, but the next time she cried was about 1.30am. She may not have lasted as long as the previous night, but it didn't require much to get her to sleep again... just a light pat and a sush and in minutes she was sleeping again. She woke again at about 4am with the same results, till finally when she woke at about 7am, I fed her.

Night 3 was a real success in my eyes. I discovered that she finds comfort playing with the label on the corner of her comforter. So when I put her in her cot at bedtime, again drowsy but awake, I placed the label in her hand. She gave this adorable little droopy-eyed smile and slept! She did wake at about 10.30pm, but I think she was just getting a bit cold because I forgot to put the balnket on her once she was asleep. Once I covered her lightly she dozed off again all the way till about 4.30am. Once or twice she creid in her sleep, but then slept on. I'm taking it as a good sign that she is in fact learning to self-soothe during the night. She was a bit restless when she woke at 4.30am and when it was appraoching 5am I figured I may as well feed her, which is what I did. She fell asleep again at 5.30am and only woke again at 8am this morning. It may not seem all that wonderful to those who enjoy a full night's sleep, but for this sleep deprived momma it was bliss!

Tonight when I put her in her cot very much awake she was happily playing with the label again. I think I should get her one of those taglet blankets. After about 10 minutes she became restless. I sat with her susshing her until she fell asleep. Although it took about 40 minutes for her to fall asleep, miraculously there was very little crying. During that time I had been in and out of the room a few times and she only cried out a few times toward the end when the tiredness was becoming too much for her to handle. Now we shall see how the rest of the night pans out.

However, I am very much anticipating another bout of teething in the horizon, so let's hope the sleep training can be sorted before then!

Wordless Wednesday 6

Sleep Glorious Sleep... May I have some more Please?

Wow! A whole 5 hours sleep for me! After I logged off last night and went to bed at a about 10.30pm, i was fully expecting Sumayah to wake again at the dreaded midnight witching hour... but she didn't! I was so exhausted with the whole sleep training episode that I was fast asleep in no time! From eventually falling asleep at about 9.20pm, Sumayah actually sleep right through till 3.30am! So I stuck to my guns, only picking her up for a minute to settle her and put her immediately back into her cot. She fussed a little, cried a little, tossed and turned a little and after about 20 minutes she fell asleep again and sleep all the way through till 6.45am. When she woke she didn't cry, just moaned a little, so I brought her to the bed for a feed. This morning she was so pleasant, not at all clingy or upset over last night's experience so I have consoled myself that I have not emotionally damaged her in any way. This morning for her nap I wasn't as strict with the method, but still encouraged her to fall asleep on her own, and this time it only took 30 minutes as opposed to the hour from last night. So let's see how tonight pans out!

Sleep Training Day 1

Finally last night I had it and decided that tonight would be the night that sleep training will commence. usually Sumayah would sleep until the infamous witching hour at midnight and wake every 30 to 60 minutes only needing a pat to fall back to sleep. So basically I haven't been sleeping much! Fellow blogger Margot was my inspiration for my sleep training adventure. I used to read her blog greedily when she documented her experience so I was mentally prepared for the horrors of sleep training and was ready to take it on tonight! Of course I still made sure I picked up a copy of the baby-sleep-bible of our time...i.e. Baby Sense and read it thoroughly a few times. So according to this book if you follow the sleep training method it should take 2 to 4 days for baby to learn to fall asleep independently and sleep through the night. It also said that if you stay with your baby comforting her, but not picking her up it could take up to 20 minutes of crying before falling asleep. So let's go through the stages up to that point.
Stage 1: put her down drowsy, but awake. The room is dark and Sumayah is looking up at me bright-eyed the minute I put her in the cot. She just thinks we playing a game; until I try walking away that is! So I leave her to moan a little, but this soon turns into full on crying. I wait 2 minutes, pick her up to comfort her and put her back in her cot still drowsy, but awake.
Stage 2: she cries the minute I put her down, only this time I resist a whole 5 minutes! yay me!
Stage 3: crying and more crying, stretch it to 10 minutes
Stage 4: At around 12 minutes she possets, I pick her up and immediately she stops crying and her eyes droop, clearly she is exhausted from the crying, but as expected from this strong-willed little girl, the second I so much as lean over into the cot she cries. But I resist her another 5 minutes till I hear her posset again! All this crying is causing reflux. I pick her up, clean her arm and the blanket swiftly and immediately put her back in the cot. I am determined that this would be the 20 minute stretch that will end in sleep.
Stage 5: she's tossing and turing, still crying, but her cries are becoming less passionate. I'm watching the clock it's been 18 minutes now... Finally she just stops crying and is sleeping! I hang around in astonishement, 2 minutes later a last attempt at crying, but then she sleeps, and sleeps... 20 minutes exactly! I love you Baby Sense!

So now the plan is that everytime she wakes in the night I will follow the same sequence. The thing is this whole experience just makes me think of a line in a movie I watched ages ago. It was one of those shark atttack movies and Shakeel O'Neil's character says: "When you hold a hot pan, a second can feel like an hour, but when you're holding a hot woman, an hour can feel like a second..." Well when you are listening to your baby cry for 20 minutes, it feels like a century!

Stay tuned for an update on the rest of the night and sleep training day 2 coming soon on a blog near you!

The tooth has emerged!

Yay! There was one particularly miserable day and voila! the tooth emerged. Now all it has to do is push upwards. So for now Sumayah is very pleasant during the day... until the next tooth breaks through that is! She still wakes every hour from midnight onward, but at least I don't have to rock her to sleep or anything. Most times I can just pat her or put the dummy in her mouth. As I said in a previous post, it's amazing how little sleep one can actually function on!

There's been quite a few other happenings since the new year... 2010 definately has some change in its pockets! For one, I have decided that I need to ease back into work, get back into my field in particular. I started my Masters when Bilaal was born, but put it on hold when we moved to the UK. I would really like to finish it, but I need to get back into the field of practice before I can do that. However as I've said before I really want to continue being the main carer to my kids if I can so I will only be working part-time. So that left the question of childcare for Sumayah. I explored different options, sought advice from various sources and have since decided to try the employ of the lady who currently works for me once a week. My husband's granny is staying with us for a while so it's the perfect opportunity to ease into it and she can suss out this lady's ability to handle Sumayah during the day. So I will in all likelihood be posting about how this is going in the near future.

Then there's the matter of Bilaal turning 5! I've been on the internet looking for castle cakes because we having a little bash for him at this place called Fantasy Park where they've got a fort and castle maze and so on so I thought I'd do a whole 'Knight and Lady' theme. With him turning 5, also comes applications for grade R for next year. For a long time now I've felt that my toddler is officially gone and in his place this... boy has appeared almost overnight! On the one hand I am enjoying his independence and ability to do things for himself, but on the other hand I miss that little doting boy who used to hug me and smother me with kisses and used to tell me every single day without fail, "mommy you beautiful". Also with an independent mind comes whole new way of communicating and reasoning. I have to remind myself to try not to get annoyed by his constant questions about EVERYTHING! I know that is a normal, important stage of development, but it can be sooo tiresome! Nonetheless he really is a charming boy and no matter how irritated I sometimes get... I love him to bits!

Wordless Wednesday 5

Holy Ha...

Yesterday I has such a good chuckle, because once again Bilaal's enquiring mind was the object of my amusement. The conversation went something like this:
B: Mommy, what does holy mean?
M: Umm... what do you mean, use it in a sentence...
B: You know like when daddy says holy crap.

I just burst out laughing and told him to ask his dad.

Make your appearance dear Tooth!

For the past few weeks now the ridge of Sumayah's bottom centre tooth has been just visible, but no swollen gums. There's been drool enough to fill a river, but alas, the tooth is yet to emerge. So yesterday I noticed the tooth just next to it is also peering through the gums. Now I'm starting to think these damn teeth are taunting me... perhaps because they know I am looking for an excuse to make pancakes? But seriously, when will these teeth finally emerge. Last night Sumayah was very restless, waking every 30 to 60 minutes. And usually when I hold her she sleeps, but not this night. When I eventually brought her to the bed just to get some shut eye, she just kept wriggling and moaning. So I can only assume it's the gums that are bothering her. I put teejel on but it only helped for about an hour. So if it is the teeth I can only hope that they will show there tiny heads soon!

Wordless Wednesday 4

What a calamity!

So maybe the title of this post is exaggerating the situation a little, but it certainly felt like a calamity at the time. On saturday I had the not-so-brilliant idea that we should all go to the gym together so Yaasier could do his workout, Bilaal and I could have a lekker swim, and Sumayah... well Sumayah was to be left at the childcare. Now bear in mind the last time I took her she was only about 3 months old and alhtough they only care for babies from 6 months they made an exception on that day because I didn't know. She was of course perfeclty fine because she had not yet developed the I-want-nobody-but-mommy syndrome yet. Well at 6 months old she most certainly has, so of course little miss mommy veskrik just screamed her little lungs out at the childcare. I was in the pool with Bilaal when they apparently called me a few times over the loudspeaker, but I didn't hear a thing. Yaasier went to get her and called me, so Bilaal and I hurriedly got out of the pool, got dressed and we all went home... after a whole 30 minutes at the gym! Needless to say none of us were very impressed with the whole situation. Well I guess we won't be trying that again in a hurry!

The tummy creep

Sumayah is now 6 months old. I can't believe it! Bilaal doesn't understand this whole month age thing so he insists she is 0 years old. Now I can tell him she is actually half a year old. But chronological age aside, she is also developing at such an alarming rate. A few weeks ago she started moving forward on her tummy, slowly but surely she will get to where she wants to be. She may look like an injured soldier, but it gets the job done. The tummy creep every now and again turns into an all-fours position, but when she tries to crawl she falls flat on her tummy again. She also has a tooth coming. Well i say coming, but the ridge of the tooth has been showing very slightly for almost 3 weeks now and no sign of any upward movement yet! And then there's the continous babble. What started as spitting sounds as seen in my video post has now progressed to real babble. Now i know it's too early for words, but I swear she says 'mamma'. Well I'm just taking it as this anyway, it makes the night waking more bearable when I am rewarded with 'mamma, mamma'.

Last night while she was sleeping in my arms, just before I put her in her cot, I gave her a warm hug and kiss and told her that I love her. And I really, really do!

phrrrrr

deleted post

Well so I have just been told that my post 't' is for tette was in poor taste, if anybody who has already read it agrees, I do apologise. So I have deleted it.

Between Friends

The journey of social learning continues for Bilaal... When we were down in Cape Town for the holidays he had a feast of social opportunities with friends and cousins. Now he and my cousins son enjoy each others company for the most part, except for the teasing. See my cousins son keeps telling Bilaal he's a baby, you know in that wela kabela sing-song tune. Bilaal didn't know how to handle this except to keep shouting "I'm not!". After the first encounter it bothered him quite a bit so we talked it over and explained to him that it was just teasing and that the best way to handle it is not to let the person teasing you see that it bothers you, and to retaliate with clever responses and not neccessarily to be rude. My mother-in-law role-played the situation with him where she pretended to call him a baby and he would laugh at her at say "so are you!" in a very playful tone. So the next interaction was on the horizon and Bilaal was very excited to put his new skill into practice. He did pretty well, but obviously the teasing is not going to stop immediately... these things take time. The funny thing is the next morning when I told him he did well, he asked me, "but how come when I said 'so are you' it didn't work?"
So I asked him, "What do you mean? What did you expect to happen?"
To which he replied, "I expected him to shut down."
I had contain my laughter at his response and explain to him that it would take time but that he did really well and should continue.

So the next time he saw his cousin there was no taunting, but while they were eating his cousin kept telling him to stop talking. Now believe me Bilaal is a real chatterbox, even we are constantly telling him to stop talking when he's eating otherwise it takes him 45 minutes to eat a peanut butter sandwich... believe me I am not exaggerating! So anyway his cousin kept telling him to stop talking to which Bilaal replied, "I don't want to stopt talking, you stop talking."
Cousin: "No you stop talking"
Bilaal: "How come I must stop talking but you can talk?"
Cousin: "Because it's my house"
Bilaal: "No it's not, it's you daddy's house"...

Just a little debate between friends hey!