Since All of our non-esential stuff is packed, I can't check Jaxon's journal that I kept for him and then say things to myself like, "Oh, turns out this weird thing Cooper is doing that is giving me serious anxiety is not actually that weird, because Jaxon did it too!"
But I thought I would try to keep up with what Cooper is doing. One- because I'm not keeping a separate journal for Cooper, and 2. You just never know if any other babies will join our family that I will also feel the need to compulsively compare to his/her older siblings! :o)
Let me start this post with- I have been having some post partum depression and anxiety. It was pretty bad for about 3 days, but other than that is mostly manageable, and sometimes non existant. I say this because although sometimes I struggle, and sometimes things are hard for me, it's a ME issue. Cooper has got to be the easiest going, quietest, sweetest baby God has ever graced this planet with.
So here is Cooper's usual schedule. Well, I say usual, but he has not yet developed a "usual" daytime schedule which is one of the things that gives me anxiety. His naps in the last two weeks have been completely erratic, and waaaaay to short! I'm not saying "too short" for this mom who needs a break, I mean, 45 minutes, TOO SHORT for a newborn who needs rest and wakes up almost as tired as he was when we went down! BUT- I think I found the answer....more on that in a second!
So Coop has for the last 4 nights, slept through the night. He usually wakes up sometime between 5 and 6 (usually closer to 5) at which time I feed him and put him back to bed. He usually has a short nap of 30-45 more minutes and is then up for the day. If he wakes up for the first time after 6, I get him up and start his day, but I am going to change that now that I'm figuring him out a little... Anyway, once he is up, he usually can only stay up about an hour and then goes back down for a nap. While his naps have been cruddy and short and unpredictable, he usually has 4 naps and 4 waketimes during the day. I try not to put him "to bed" before 5:15 in the afternoon, but depending on the time of his last completely inconsistant nap, it is either 1. Really hard to keep him up that long, or 2. If he starts his last of the 4 naps anytime after about 3:45 he thinks he's down for the night! After he goes to bed, we give him a dream feed at 8, and a dream feed at 11 (Dave stays up for this one so I can go to sleep early, and he will be VERY glad when we drop this feed in a month or so!) and then like I said, Coop will then sleep till sometime between 5 and 6!
Well, after all these cruddy 45 minute naps I just reread babywise and was reminded about the 45 minute intruder! It says that at 6 weeks and about 4 months some babies start waking up after only 45 minutes because they are hungry, even though their last feeding in their cycle was a full feeding. So you can either get them up, feed them, and restart their 3 hour cycle of eat-awake-sleep from there... or option 2, you can try a dream feed and see if they will go right back down and then when they wake up give another full feeding to not change the current cycle. Or option three- you can top them off with a little more milk in the middle of their wake time (Not supposed to feed babies to sleep in babywise, so you gotta get a little more waketime in after that top off)
I have tried all 3 of those options in the last 2 days, and while not EVERY nap has been better, it has resulted in SEVERAL naps being better, including his current nap which is now at 3 hours and 20 minutes. I will wake him up in 10 minutes to keep him on his daytime cycle and getting enough calories so he will still sleep through the night!
Let's see, what else is new with Cooper?
~He smiles a lot at me.
~He hardly makes a peep. When I'm talking and Cooing at him, he will maybe once make a sound the entire time. Even when he "Cries" it is not a continuous cry. It's a few sad yelps and then some quiet to see what you are going to do about it before he does it again. The exception to this has been twice in the car when I must have strapped him in when he was already hungry, and by the time we got to our destination 15 minutes away, he was crying pretty hard! BOOO!!!
~He still has funny facial expressions, but doesn't do his shifty eyes anymore, which makes Dave sad.
~If for some reason he falls asleep in my arms, or drifts off while taking a bottle, the first thing he does while his eyes are fluttering closed is give a few big smiles. I think maybe he is still dreaming about heaven and smiles as soon as he closes his eyes and starts those memories!
~He loves to wave his arms and legs at the hanging toys on his mobile. He gets these huge eyes when he actually makes contact, and it seems like he thinks really hard about how he did that and trying to do it again.
~He has the crustiest eyes ever! Poor kid has two clogged ducts, and when he wakes up, he can usually barely (or not at all) open his left eye and the right eye is not a heck of a lot better! He also has a rash on his face. It's not bad, and is probably just excema, which I had terribly as a child. He has a dr's apt. in two weeks, and as long as niether of these things get too much worse, I will just as about it then.
~He is turning more and more into a babywise baby. He just really can't get comfortable being rocked to sleep. When he's tired and ready for bed, he just wants his bed! Poor grandma- this is her worst nightmare!
~He still knows his mama. I still love it!
