7 months

AHHH!! 7 months! Wow wow wow. You try to prepare yourself with your second child cause you know it goes by fast but dang. I can't believe how fast time is flying. Gracelyn is 7 months old. In the last month she has been sitting up and playing by herself. And has started crawling! I thought she might reach milestones sooner than Isaac but she's reaching them really fast! She's very jerky with her movements but she makes sure to practice every day, haha!

                                       Isaac wanted me to take his picture too lol

 She's been trying a lot of new foods. We are doing more of a baby led weaning approach simply because its easy for us to eat while she plays with her food. She's not a big fan of purees anyway! I've also added dairy back into my diet and she has definitely been more gassy but she just farts and is happy. I just can't overdo it!

 Wearing her is the best way to get anything done! We tried a back carry for the first time and she loved it!

I love dressing her up for church! After we got to church we realized she'd had a huge blow out diaper in the car seat so I had to change her. Womp womp. Thank the Lord for Oxyclean!

7 months has gone by so fast and our little girl is so sweet. I'm looking forward to making more memories with her

Gracelyn 6 mo update

Ah! I just realized I'm late getting Gracelyn's 6mo update on the blog.

She is doing amazing! I just love her so much! We are all pretty smitten. I feel like we have really gotten to that sweet spot. She's sitting up really well and loves to grab and play with toys. Or anything close by. She's about 16.5 lbs and in the 75th percentile. I don't really know how long she is the pediatrician we use doesn't always tell me all these little stats like Isaac's did in The Woodlands. You can read Isaac's 6 month update here. She is smiling and laughing all the time. She loves tasting food but isn't super crazy about swallowing it, haha. She'd much rather me give her a sweet potato fry to suck on over some puree. She's sleeping sooooooo much better. She wakes up 1-2 times a night but is in her bed from 6:30-7:30(ish) almost every night. She loves watching Isaac and he loves to love on her. Yesterday morning he heard her waking up on the monitor and ran as fast as he could to her room and threw open the door saying, "Hi pretty girl!" and it scared her so she started crying and then he started crying. And he said, "She's yelling at me!" it was so sad and sweet at the same time. He wants to hold her all the time and I have to watch him like a hawk because he isn't always the most gentle, haha. She sleeps in Isaac's old Zipadee-zips and I'm hoping we can get her out of them sooner than we did him!

Sleep training update

Ok! So last night was good! She slept most of the night and I gave her two dream feeds. One at 2:30 and one at 5:30 and I also changed her diaper at the 5:30 feed and put her in her crib awake and she slept until 8:45 this morning!! Naps were just eh. She slept 45 min the first nap then cried most of the second nap. I think she slept like 30 min. So we put her in the swing for her 3rd nap and she slept for an hour and 15 min. So tonights routine went like this:

Night 3

Bed 7:30
1st check 7:35
2nd 7:45
Asleep by 7:50!!

This is just super encouraging to me! She cried just for like 15 min! I feel like we are on to something here! I know that the crying is super hard but we have been very consistent and she's doing fine. Today was a lot easier and I think the next couple of days it will continue to improve. Even though I did this with Isaac I really hoped that we wouldn't have to sleep train Gracelyn or I hoped we could do a no cry method. It freaking sucks like really really bad. And there are so many opinions on letting your baby cry and how it goes against your instincts and all that. But I can honestly say that getting no sleep was not only bad for me and for her but it wasn't fair to Isaac either. I felt like I was so impatient with him. I think getting more sleep will make me a better mom and make us all happier.

Sleep training Gracelyn

Yeah. Sleep training.....

Not for the faint of heart. In fact it may break your heart into a million pieces. Actually, I guarantee it. Here' the break down of how its going to far. We are following The Sleepeasy Solution by Jennifer Waldburger and Jill Spivak as recommended by my pediatrician. It's basically the Ferber method where you let them cry and go in at different intervals for check ins. At the check ins you dont pick her up or touch her just use your voice in an upbeat tone and tell her how much you love her and that its ok for her to go to sleep now. Our pediatrician recommended it to me almost a month ago but I haven't been ready to do it until this past week. We had a horrible week and ended up cosleeping for most of the week. That is great for other people but I just was never comfortable and I slept so horribly that I knew something had to change. So we decided that since we had a long weekend to go ahead and get started. I could find a million reasons to put it off but its just prolonging the inevitable.

Night 1
In bed at 7:14
Crying started 7:24
1st check 7:30
2nd 7:40
3rd 8:00
The checks seems to make her more mad
4th 8:20
5th 8:40
Stopped crying at 9
Asleep 9:10
Total crying time an hour and 45 min
back awake at 9:35
Asleep at 9:40
awake 9:55
cried off and on until 10:40
Dream feed 10:50
Slept until 12;45 then cried off and on in intervals of 15 min or so until 2
Dream feed 2:15
Slept until 6:15 then up for the day....

Whew. It was brutal. We followed the same system for her naps. 2 hours after her wake time we were putting her in her bed for a nap and doing the checks. She slept an hour for her first nap then 45 min for the second. And for the 3rd and final nap we knew she needed a long good rest to ensure that she would be successful and not overtired for bed time so we opted to put her in her swing awake instead of her crib and she slept almost 2 hours. So now for Night 2.

Night 2
Bed 7:00
1st check 7:05
2nd 7:17
3rd check 7:30
we were going to do another check at 7:45 but by this point she wasn't crying completely anymore and the book says to stretch out your intervals if the baby is going 30 seconds or more without crying.
Asleep by 8:00 and its been an hour so far and she's still asleep so its been so much better than yesterday already.

She was really tired today until her nap in her swing but we can see on the monitor that she's already more relaxed tonight.

I hope this means we are on the down hill end of things and that the crying will be ending very soon. I hate it but we did it with Isaac as well and as heart breaking as it was it did work. You can read about that here.

Sleep training.

I'm at such a loss. I know I'm going to have to sleep train soon. We have terrible sleep associations that I've allowed to happen. I know better and I still let it happen. She has to be nursed to sleep. Sleeps in a rock n play. And sleeps in our room. Now I'm contemplating sleep training and I feel so guilty. It's not her fault that this is the only way she can sleep. I've done it and I don't know how to stop. I've been trying to not nurse her to sleep but I can rock and bounce her and she will just cry until I finally give up and give her the boob. There's no putting her down sleepy but awake. She has to be completely out. I don't know if I should let her cry it out eventually in her room or what. She wont nap in there. The only thing I can think to do is play in her room more and let her play in the crib so she gets more familiar with it. I don't know how to stop nursing her to sleep.

I just feel so guilty.

Gracelyn 5 month update

Wow, I gave birth 5 months ago! Time is going so quickly. Gracelyn is around 16 lbs and doing well! The only thing we really struggle with is sleeping. She is waking up so frequently I'm unable to keep count of how many times usually. It's different with her than it was with Isaac. He had bad sleep habits and I think thats partly the problem with her as well. But she is also having gas/tummy issues. So that has made it hard to do anything about the sleep problems such as sleep training. I'm trying to wait until her 6 month appt and see what her pediatrician recommends. Otherwise I'm cutting out dairy from my diet hardcore to see if that eliminates her pain and gas. She tried avocado from the first time this week! The first time she didn't like it and then the second time I mixed it with breastmilk and she loved it! She's almost sitting up but not quite. She is smiley and laughs at Isaac a lot. You can tell she adores him already. If he walks past her she starts smiling. It's so cute! She still wont take a bottle so we are going to start trying sippy cups soon.

I'd love it if she could sleep in her crib but we just aren't there yet. Maybe by 6 months!

A few pictures: