8 months!

This post is long and there aren't any pics because the ones we took on his 8 month birthday are still on Tim's computer, which is currently out of commission. Sorry! What I've recorded here is more for my sake than yours. I am feeling a little nostalgic and since I have been less than diligent with the "real" baby books, I needed to document this stuff somewhere! I also needed to document the secret to our sleep success (okay, semi-success) so that when our next baby is a terrible sleeper, and I am in the sleep-deprived mommy fog that I am now emerging from, I will be able to refer to this post and remember what worked, for Dylan at least. So here it goes...

Wow. It has been EIGHT months since Dylan arrived! In some ways it feels like it's been so much longer than that, like he's always been in our lives - how could he not have been? And then sometimes it feels like we just got home from the hospital, like he should still be a 6 lb, squirmy little newborn. How is it January already?

Before you are a parent, people tell you that you will love your baby like you never knew you could love another person. You believe them because you don't know any better. And then you become a parent and you learn that those people were absolutely right. Dylan gave us a hard time his first few months, but despite all the sleepless nights and painfully long car rides, I have loved that little boy with all my heart since the minute he was born...well since even before that but you get my point.

When, as a new parent, people tell you that you will love your baby more and more each day you just don't think it's possible because there's been so much love from the very beginning. But it is possible. Watching Dylan grow and learn and become his own little person is totally amazing. And I really do fall in love with him more and more each day. It sounds corny and impossible. But it's not - it's totally true.

No doctor's appointment this month, so we don't know exactly how much he weighs, but both Tim and I agree: Dylan has been been puttin' on the pounds! Our flying "superbaby" game has now become a serious arm workout! Perhaps it is all the "solid" food he's been getting. Dylan now gets 3 meals a day. He's still a BIG fan of the orange vegetables and fruit. Not super fond of greens. His newest favorite is banana (in controlled doses to prevent, well, slowing "things" down). He's also started eating those tiny Gerber "puffs". Probably not the most natural or perfect food but I discovered their value on a particularly fussy day in the grocery store. He really enjoys chomping down on a puff or two while he's waiting for me to get his meals ready. He recognizes the package and gets very excited when I shake it!

Also, he seems to have fallen in love with drinking from a cup! At every meal, I fill a tiny glass jar (a clean, used baby food jar) with water. During the course of the meal I help him take sips of the water and he LOVES it. He gets sooo excited when he sees me reach for the jar and is so happy when he gets a good sip of water. Often, the water dribbles down his plastic bib, but that's all part of the learning process...

Dylan is still talking up a storm. His favorite words are rararara, brabrabra, and, of course mamamama when he is upset or hungry. Those words don't mean anything, you say? Try telling that to Master Dylan.

He has started rolling a lot more often than he was doing previously. He doesn't really use it as a means of locomotion, nor does he seem even remotely close to crawling, but the rolling does come in handy when he's trying to find a comfy position to sleep in. He loves to take small toys out of his bucket and, less often, put them back in. He is able to mimic myself or Tim shaking a rattle and loves the sound it makes. He has also started giving me things. Like, this morning, he kept handing me his pacifier and once or twice even tried to push it into my mouth. So cute. And yes, I did say "his pacifier". See below for more details on this miraculous development.

He has weathered his first two colds and, while we all lost some (I mean a LOT of!) sleep, he was a trooper.

Speaking of sleep, we've seen some major improvements in the sleep department. Finally. FINALLY!

We are free of the swaddle. We no longer need to nurse/feed or rock him to sleep. And the night wakings have lessened.

These improvements did not come without some anguish (more for Tim and myself than for Dylan). I felt strongly that I didn't want to let Dylan cry himself to sleep alone in his crib as so many people urged us to do. I just could not handle hearing him get hysterical. Also, even if this was something I believed in (and it's not), I am pretty confident it would not have worked for Dylan. At least not without some serious damage to his psyche. He's a persistent little boy. So, we first agreed to stop the nursing to sleep. That was easy. We have had a bedtime routine since Dylan was 6 weeks old so all we had to do was switch the position of the feeding part. Dylan seemed fine with this. We were sitll rocking him to sleep and putting him down in his crib asleep.


Then we decided to cut out excessive night feedings. Since sleep experts agree some babies under one year old need to eat every 4-6 hours, we decided that I wouldn't cut out night feedings altogether, but I would only feed him if it had been 4 hours since he last ate. This part was very hard because Dylan had become accustomed to being fed everytime he woke up at night. So we rocked and jiggled him till he fell asleep only to have him wake when we would put him down. Even when I nursed him (at the agreed upon time) he would wake when I put him down. This was new.


So, we then made the decision to cut out the rocking routine. And since it was no longer helping, we also decided to cut out the swaddle. Neither tactics were getting us anywhere. We decided we would put him down in his crib awake with a little blankie, say goodnight, and leave the room. If he cried (not just whined but really cried), which he almost always did (if not at first then eventually), we would go back in and rub his belly, stroke his hair, sing to him, shush him, whatever, but we WOULD NOT PICK HIM UP. This was so hard for me to do but it was much better than letting him cry it out alone in his crib and we didn't have many other options. We had tried cosleeping a few times and no one seemed to get any rest that way. So unless I wanted to sleep with him in my lap in the glider for the rest of our lives, we had to do something. Using this method, he usually fell asleep within 30-45 min.


One night, after I had gone into his room several times to get him to go back to sleep, in desperation, I gave him my finger to suck on. This trick had not worked in over a month, but on this particular night, he took it! So, I quickly pulled it out, ran downstairs and grabbed 3 different types of pacifiers. I stuck one in his mouth and HE TOOK IT! And promptly fell asleep! Since that night, things have been so much better. Leave it to our son to be the one baby in the world who decides at EIGHT months that, "Yeah, I guess this pacifier thing isn't all that bad...". Seriously.


So these days, we put Dylan down with his blankie and his paci and he's usually asleep within 15 minutes. Sometimes he'll wedge himself into a corner of his crib and cry because he can't figure out how to unjam his body from the crib slats or he'll throw his paci and then get angry because he can't find it when he wants it. But these are easy problems for us to fix! We still have a few nights a week when he'll wake up after 3 hours and want to be fed. He'll take the paci for a few seconds then spit it out when he realizes there is no milk coming out. These nights are no fun and it usually winds up taking 30 min to an hour to get him to go back to sleep. If he's still up when the time for his next feeding arrives, I feed him and he goes back down easily. This is something we'll eventually have to work on but for now I am happy with the progress we've made. I am happy to get up just once or twice a night...versus the every 30-90 min wake-up call I used to get!


So, great job Dylan! You are a curious and determined little boy with a heartbreaker smile and an unbreakable spirit! I know this will bring you great success. I am so excited to watch you continue to grow.