The Nose Knows

A few weeks ago we officially moved Stella to her crib. She did wonderfully as we were strong at establishing a routine for bedtime when she was tiny, and holding true to the routine the little bean falls right to sleep.

Also after the stay in the hospital it all proved too stressful for me to produce milk and Stella wouldn’t even take my breast, so we moved to just formula about two weeks ago and this combined with sleeping in her own room helped mom and dad to alternate nights.

However, lately she’s started a new waking time, an extra one. She use to sleep from 7:00PM to about 3:30AM. We would get up with her, feed her and she would fall right back to sleep until 7:00AM. But for the past two weeks she’s been waking up about 11:00PM eating a little and falling back to sleep, or should I say struggling back to sleep. No we don’t stick a bottle in her right away. We’ve tried the patting, the soothing, the singing, the mobile, the white noise machine, the swaying, the binki, but all this only leads to her crying louder so we resort to a bottle.

On Wednesday of this week I tried the rice cereal for the first time, hoping it might fix the 11:00 waking. Well she woke up, I think out of habit, but I was able to rock her back to sleep. The only catch is I also wrapped her in the nighty shirt I was wearing before I laid her back to bed.

Now the thing I’m learning about this baby thing is to not try two things at once, in this case it was the rice cereal and the nighty shirt. Trying two things at the same time will only keep you guessing which one worked, as you don’t have a control group and are too scared to take one or the other away.

Last night we didn’t have time for rice cereal, and she work up at 11:00. It was Michael’s night for the early shift (as we take shifts, not nights now) and he tried to do all the soothing, nothing worked. Then made her a tiny 3oz bottle (she’s drinking 6oz at a time). She only drank 2oz and feel back to sleep. She struggled though, and I got up… I remembered the nighty shirt from the night before so I did the same thing and she snuggled right up to it.

She naps so well in my bed against my pillow, she's even able to "self-sooth" when she's in my bed. I have now made the connection it’s about the smells. My smell in particular.

I’m working on patenting an air freshener that you can load your mommy smell into…. :-)

CIO

I hate acronyms, I always have. I especially hate this one. I quickly realized between all the baby blogs and websites that acronyms are a common thing among this community. I would spend hours Googling them only to find out DH meant “dear husband” and other stupid stuff people could just as easily type out then come up with an acronym for.


So when I first starting researching ways to help Stella “self sooth” so she can learn to fall asleep on her own, CIO was something I came across. CIO stands for cry it out. Again no need to shorten it, not even for a text message in my opinion, but nonetheless they did. Michael and I both agreed at this young of an age Stella wasn't ready for many self-soothing methods, especially CIO. . .

We’ve enrolled Stella in a daycare, I won’t disclose which one as I’m about to bash on it rather hardcore. And I guess they really shouldn’t take it personally, I would bash on any place we take her because it’s impossible to find quality care up to my standards.
The first week Stella only attended two days as the rest were snow days. We both got the pleasure of sleeping in and snuggling. So this week was her first full week there. (Disclaimer: this week in general was a rough week. She had a cold, got her first round of shots, and developed a fever, so anything on top of that was going to cause me to breakdown).

Wednesday was the roughest night of the week. Her fever was highest, she was really stuffy, and she seemed to be going hoarse. Michael dropped her off on Thursday morning and the infant teacher mentioned that she sounded hoarse the previous day. Michael agreed and told her we thought it was because she was sick. My baby was still hoarse the next night, again still thinking it was the cold.

Friday night I picked her up and the teacher in the infant room was from another room, subbing, but she was young and talked a lot. (A good thing for a mother looking for information other people might not tell you.) I saw Stella was sleeping in the crib and asked how they were able to get her in there (as we still haven’t put her in the crib at our house, and the last I heard from daycare she was “spoiled” and would only sleep if someone held her or was in the bouncer). Well come to find out they’ve been leaving her in the crib and letting her “cry it out” until she falls asleep.

Now will someone please tell me how long a baby has to cry to make their voice hoarse and why in the hell did they let her cry that long. Momma ain’t happy.

CIO-WTF!