We're headed north to Toronto for the long weekend and this will be Jack's first plane ride (I should post his passport picture on here, it's HILARIOUS!). Any advice from you traveling mamas on what to bring, what we should use at the airport or just travel tips in general? I'm a bit nervous on how this is going to play out.
I've gotten advice to breastfeed on takeoff and landing anything else I should know?
So as some of you might remember I have a thing about 7s. They appear in my life all the time. I can't even tell you how excited I was that Jack was born on Feb. 7th exactly 1 month before my birthday on March 7th. It's these kind of coincidences that are constantly popping up.
Well earlier this week we got a call from the Cryobank informing us that they have vials of Jack's retired donor available...7 vials to be exact. Amy and I are beyond excited. We used are last 2 vials on Jackson's conception. Since his donor was retired we accepted the fact that when we made an attempt for kiddo number 2 it would be with another donor. We were completely at peace with this as we believe that it's not your genetic make up that defines a family. Now that we have this chance we feel very fortunate that we are now able to try again with the same donor. Jack is so cute, how could we not want to try again with the same guy!?!
We got the green light from Jack's pediatrician to start him on solid foods. He is a natural eater. We started with sweet potatoes. His list of foods now consists of sweet potatoes, rice cereal and butternut squash. I found a great website to help us make our own food and keep track of what foods are good for him at certain ages.
Make Own Food: http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/
4-6 month food chart: http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/solidfood4to6montholdbaby.htm
Night 2
The night started out rough I'm not going to lie. We started out with our same bedtime routine, Jack started to get drowsy in the rocking chair so into the crib he went. The thing with Jack is he's an all or nothing kinda guy. So once his tush hit the crib the water works and glass breaking screaming began. I once again tried to soothe him in the crib and picked him up when needed. As soon as I would reach in to pick him up he would stop crying. After 30min I couldn't take it anymore. He was getting so worked up and when I picked him up he would be gasping for air because of how hard he had cried. It was so sad. So after walking him around the house for a bit and giving him tons of cuddles, I sat in the glider again and rocked him to sleep. All told it took us about 1 1/2 hours to put him down.
At 10:00 I dream fed and we were off to bed waiting to see where the night would lead.
12:00ish - woke up and we soothed him back to sleep
1:30ish - fed him and he went right back to sleep
4:00ish - fed him and he went right back to sleep
6:00 - woke up for the day
Even though the night started out bad we made some serious progress during the night!! I can't tell you how much difference getting a solid 2 - 2 1/2 hours sleep in a row makes.
I would give tonight's attempt a C simply because the beginning of the night was so horrible.
Night 3:
It took as an hour to get him to go to bed tonight. BUT tonight was done with no screaming!! Same routine as the two previous nights. While I was rocking him in the glider he did cry but he eventually settled after 5-10min. When he was getting drowsy off we went to the crib again. Same thing happened as the other night. Soon as I laid him down, his eyes popped wide open but this time there was no blood curdling screams. I sat beside his crib with my hand on his chest for about 30-45min as he talked, laughed and squealed. As he started to get sleepy (again) he did start to whimper but he slowly faded to sleep on his own. When I thought he was sound asleep I took my hand off his chest and left the room.
Jack woke up and 9:30 for a feeding, it had been 3 1/2 hours since his last meal so we decided to feed him 30min earlier than normal. The rest of the night played out like this:
12:00 - feed
2:30 - tried to soothe then ended up feeding
4:42 - soothed, gave up after 45min I fed him and when we put him in the crib he was wide awake. He talked and squealed as I sat next to his crib. He fell asleep on his own a little after 6:00.
7:00 - awake for the day
Looking at this I know we're feeding him too much but honestly I'm sick with a cold (which I know I caught due to lack of sleep) and we can't take sitting with him for an hour while he cries so we give in and feed him cause it's the easy way out.
Amy wants to go on record and grade this night an F. I'm a little more positive because he did put himself to sleep twice so I give it a D.
Thanks for all your encouragement and advice.
I thought I would document how things progress as we try and get Jack back to his old sleep schedule. I wanted to write this out so we would have a place to go back to to see what we've done and also to open things up for any advice you might have.
As a back story, Jack's bedtime routine consists of a bath, feeding, rock in the glider as we read a book then to bed in his crib between 7-8. I would then dream feed him around 11 and he would wake up around 3am for a feeding, go back to sleep immediately and he'd wake again around 6:30 for us to start our day. Well this awesome routine started going down the crapper almost 3 weeks ago. He has reverted back to being a newborn and is up all night long. Amy and I are barely functioning and are at our wits end. I have had multiple breakdowns and we are to the point where we dread when the sun goes down.
At first we thought it was a growth spurt so I would feed him each time he woke up but a week in we realized he was just comfort eating so now we try and soothe him to back to sleep rather than feed him every time he wakes up. It isn't helping that his naps have become affected as well. What used to be 2 hour naps are now down to 30min. So we have decided that we were going to make it our mission to take back control of the night hoping that things might balance out with his sleep all around.
NIGHT 1:
After much reading and discussion we figure that Jack is overtired so we decided to put him to bed earlier than normal. After his regular bedtime routine I put a drowsy Jack in his crib a little after 6:00. The moment I put him down the drowsiness went away and he was wide awake. Since he wasn't upset I left him in their and sat beside his crib as he babbled away. After 10min he started to get upset. I would soothe him in his crib, unless he got hysterical at which point I would pick him up and soothe him before putting him back down again. This went on for 2 hours, until he finally went to sleep at 8.
I dream fed him around 10:00 and put him back down. He then woke up at 10:30ish screaming. He then proceeded to wake up every 40 min to 1.5 hours ALL NIGHT LONG. When he cried out when he first woke up we waited to go into his room to see if he could put himself to sleep, but every time he got really wound up we had to go in to intervene. Sometimes we could soothe him back to sleep relatively quickly other times it took longer to settle down and go to sleep. Each time he was asleep when we put him down but soon as we put him in his crib he went ballistic. I think the worst was around 3:30 when we were up for an hour trying to get him to go back down, I finally gave in and fed him even though he had eaten 60min prior. After eating and some rocking we got him back down around 4:30 only to have him wake up again at 5:00.
Guess we'll try again tonight and see how it goes.
If we were giving grades for effort we totally deserve an A but I'd have to give last night's attempt a solid F.
Amy is coming home today!! After being gone all week. I can't express how excited we are for her return. This week has pulled me into too many directions than I can handle and I'm slowly starting to lose it. We've both missed her terribly and Jack will be happy to have his personal pillow back.
If anyone out there has seen a 16 lbs, 27 inches tall, blue eyed boy that only wakes up once during the night could you please send him back home? I fear he has gotten lost and doesn't know how to get back to us.
Don't be fooled at first glance if you think you see him, this baby is a very slick, sly and crafty boy. He has even left a decoy baby in his crib thinking his mamas wouldn't notice that he was gone. Unfortunately, said decoy baby is waking up every hour almost on the hour every night so his mamas have quickly wised up that their baby is missing.
He may fight you when you reason with him to return home, at 4 months old I'm sure he thinks he's old enough to make his own rules, get up when he wants, eat when he wants but he is mistaken. Please tell him that although we do very much love the precious decoy he has left for us we want our baby back and are willing to negotiate.
Although rarely seen of late please keep a look out for the baby boy seen below.
I'm going to take the lead from others and try and post a picture every Friday. We'll see how long I can keep it up for.
How lucky are we to wake up to this every morning?!?
Amy left this morning to go out of town for work so the babe and I are on our own. Yesterday I decided that I'm going to put my big girl panties on and that we would be A-OK.
The morning started out great (except for Jack's latest sleep issue which will be another post). We got out the door on time, didn't have to turn back around because we forgot something and we had a no cry ride to daycare.
We get to daycare and I open the back car door to the happiest smiling baby you could ever imagine. Dislodge his car seat from the base and find this:
Jack rolled over from his tummy to his back today. He only did it once and I'm not sure that it wasn't a fluke but either way it's officially going into his baby book as roll over day. He's growing up too fast !!
Today we are heading to San Antonio for the second parent adoption. It sucks this is needed but we are still happy to have Amy 100% Jackson's mom on paper to put our minds at ease. In our hearts she has been his mom since the beginning.
We are very fortunate to live in a state that permits second parent adoptions. Considering we live in Texas you would think we would be one of the unlucky ones. It was a relatively simple process. Amy had to get a back ground check and we had two home visits with a social worker. After that it was a visit to the court house with Jack and it's official.
Us with the Judge
Us with the Attorneys
I'm Adopted!!
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