Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! We hope you are doing well and are enjoying the day - spending time with family, exchanging gifts, and celebrating the greatest gift of all: The birth of our Lord Jesus.

We were able to witness Sarah opening gifts for the first time this morning. She caught onto the concept about the time we were finished. :) We are looking forward to spending time with Tim's family this afternoon and mine tomorrow. We are so thankful to be in Ohio this Christmas and to be able to enjoy everyone around us!

Of course a Christmas post is not complete without pictures! I realize these are only of Sarah, but I will post more after our family celebrations...and perhaps one or two will even include Tim and myself! :)

We are very pleased with Sarah's current sleep schedule. We have had to let her cry it out in the middle of the night a few times, because she has not fallen asleep in a resonable amount of time. I think we are being very lenient - Tim was up with her for an hour last night before he let her cry it out. However, she is going to bed without issue at 6:00 pm, and the past two mornings she has slept in until 8:20! When she sleeps in, she does not need a morning nap. She just takes a one and a half hour nap around 12:00, and she is a happy baby! We still have some issues to work through, and it still takes her awhile of crying before she falls asleep, but things are WAY better than they were about 2 weeks ago at this time!

Tim and I are feeling a little under the weather at this time. We both have head colds and feel miserable. I had to come home from work early yesterday, but I plan to work a full day today. We are hoping we both feel better by tomorrow so that we can travel and spend Christmas with our families.

That's it for us this morning!

She cried it out...morning edition

Sarah only woke up TWICE during the night last night. Once at 12:30 for a bottle and diaper change, and the same at 6:15. Here's hoping this becomes a pattern! :)

She cried it out...

So more of The Sleepy Sarah Saga...

Wednesday night, Sarah kept waking up hourly. Around 1:30 in the morning her skin felt really hot, so I decided to check her temperature: 101.5. I made a phone call to the nurse on-call for the proper dose of Tylenol and gave that to her. She fell asleep taking a bottle and slept well for the next hour. I, of course, stayed awake listening to the monitor, convinced she was going to have a seizure. (I have since learned that it is a sudden rapid change in temperature that can cause a seizure in infants...not a fever in general.) I woke her after an hour to check her temp and it was 100.5. We all slept well until the morning, and she had a low-grade fever for the rest of the day. I'm not sure what that was about, since she had no other symptoms and was relatively happy throughout the day.

Thursday night was more of the same: frequent waking. She would fall into a light sleep only to wake herself up about an hour later.

Today we made the trip back to my parents' house. They are out of town at the moment. After walking/rocking/swaying Sarah for an hour and a half tonight, we decided to take advantage of the empty house and let her cry it out. She threw up twice at the very beginning. I have to give her credit for her aim though: It landed on the carpet, not on her sheets or blankets. (Sorry about that Mom.) She had a 50-minute period of angry wails (not cries...angry wails) before falling asleep in a heap in the corner of her crib.

I feel like we accomplished something tonight. I felt awful hearing her cry like that, but I truly think it is the best thing for her. She needs to learn to soothe herself to sleep, and I believe she will get better quality sleep once she learns that. So will Tim and I. :)

Sarah's Sleeping - Update

In my last post, I mentioned a book I have been reading: Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth. In this book, he states that the majority of infant sleep problems are related to chronic fatigue, usually brought about by an inappropriate sleep schedule. In reading his book, I realized that many of the things he mention pertain to Sarah: Fighting sleep for hours at a time especially when exhausted, waking several times during the night, inconsistent nap schedule, requiring motion in order to fall asleep, etc. He offers some suggestions on how to remedy the situation, and we began making changes on Monday. Here is a run-down of our experience so far:


Monday morning: Awake at 7:15. (Goal: Between 6 and 7. So far, so good.)
First nap: 11:30 - 1:00. (Goal: 9:00. Not good at all.) This followed a long period of walking.
No attempt was made for a second nap since the first was so late.
To bed: 5:45. (Goal: Between 6 and 8.)
Middle of the night wakeups: 7:00, 9:00 (for 3 hours!!!!), 2:00, 5:30. Each wake-up required walking, bouncing, feeding, etc. to get her back to sleep. We were not happy.

Tuesday: Awake at 7:30. That's pretty consistent.
First nap: 10:30-11:15. That timing is a little better. However, Tim walked her for an hour before she fell asleep.
Second nap: Ha! She cried in her crib for an hour and never did fall asleep.
To bed: 6:15. That's right on target.
Middle of the night wakeups: 7:00, 9:30, 2:15, 5:30. Each wake-up required 10-20 minutes of sitting by her bed, rubbing her back. We can totally handle that!

Wednesday: Awake at 6:30. That's a little too early for our liking, but if it makes a happy baby we'll do it.
First nap: 9:20-10:05. Hey, that's right on target!
Second nap: 12:35-1:20. We just need to work on getting that one a little LONGER.
To bed: 5:45.

I am excited to see what tonight holds. Hopefully things just keep getting better and better! :)

Go, Baby, Go!

We went to my parents' church last Sunday, and my mom was working in the nursery. I went to pick Sarah up after the service, and my mom was very excited. "You have to see this", she told me. Then she set Sarah up with this toy, and the girl was off! This is just a little clip:

I purchased a book today titled "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child". I am very excited about what I am reading. I am looking forward to putting some things into practice over the next few days and seeing if that helps Sarah's sleep habits. She currently does not go to sleep unless you walk her - whether it is nap time or bed time. She fights you even when you do that, and it can take hours to get her to sleep. She wakes in the night and cannot put herself back to sleep, so we have to walk her again...only to have her wake up when we set her back in her crib. The whole process can take hours, and it is draining on the entire family. As I said....I am looking forward to reading more of this book and putting it into practice. I will keep you posted on how it goes!