That’s just how we roll. . .

Henry rolled over last Wednesdsay! During his usual highly agitated tummy time session, he ended up flipping himself over. Every time we’ve put him on his tummy since then he’s made the rolling attempt, although is only sucessful maybe 50% of the time. It takes work, all this moving.

He had his four-month check-up this week, and is now 14.5 lbs, and 25″. That’s just about the fiftieth percentile for both height and weight. His head measurement, however, is in the 90th percentile! My mom reminds me that our family tends to have very large heads, and that hats never fit us right and headbands always give us headaches, so it looks like he’s picked up that genetic element.

Henry also got his next course of immunizations at the checkup, for DTaP (diptheria, tetanus and pertussis/whooping cough), Hep B, IPV (Polio), Hib (influenza) and Pneumococcal conjugate. They combine some of these, but it still ends up being three shots. Fortunately, at my doc’s, they send two nurses in to administer the shots, so he gets two at once, and the third shot a split second later–it’s over in about 15 seconds. He did pretty well, so i was thankful for that.

And I had a long conversation with the doc prior to the vaccinations about immunization in general. I was really surprised to learn at my various moms’ groups that several women chose not to immunize at all, and many others chose to forego the polio and hep B vaccinations which they believe to be low-risk for exposure. My doc had a LOT to say about how foolish he believes skipping immunizations is, and how he believes there’s a lot of propaganda without scientific basis in the media that scares people off from immunizing. He also pointed out that in a city like ours, with a large international community, there may be more strains of various things around. All in all, I’m pretty satisfied with our decision to proceed.

Other than that, still not a lot of sleep happening. . .the doc suggests it’s time to start doing some fuss/cry-it-out at night, and that he’s getting up so frequently because we’ve basically trained him to go to sleep only in our arms, and frequently nursing to sleep for middle-of-the-night wakings. I’m still hesitant to try this any time soon–he’s got a 19-week growth spurt coming up, and we’re doing a a good deal of travel in December, so we’re going to continue to ride this out and see where we’re at in January when I return to work and Dad takes over night time.

Lots of smiles, gurgles and vocalizations now too–it’s definitely fun!  I had hoped to have some new 4-month pics to post, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet–hoepfully tomorrow.

What’s so funny?

Apparently, kissy-face noises are!  Henry laughed for the first time this past week–when Daddy was playing a kissy-face game with him.  The best part about is that Henry then looked totally shocked, like, “what the heck was that??”

We have some recent video demonstrating the game that I’ll try to post soon.

Other than that, Henry’s enjoyed his mom-baby groups this past week.  He particularly likes seeing all the other babies, although seems very disturbed when he hears other babies crying.  I guess this is common behavior for infants?  Something about the crying trips their empathy trigger.

The mom/baby groups are always interesting to me because they tend to be very left-leaning in regards to parenting.  As somone who considers herself to be left-leaning in general, it’s strange to find myself a moderate or even conservative at these groups.  During one of the recent meetings, I had my eyes rolled so far back in my head at something another mom was saying, I saw the moderator notice me and quickly say, “Ok, thanks for sharing so-and-so, let’s move on.”  In my defense, the other mom is kind of a self-righteous moron and in the space of about two minutes managed to call formula “fake food” and imply that using formula or having your baby sleep away from you creates self-centered, materialistic children who form bonds to objects rather than people.  Do you see why my eyes were rolling??

ZZZZs

A lot of you have asked recently how Henry’s been sleeping. It’s funny just how much time I spend thinking about sleep. . .probably inversely proportional to how much sleep I’m getting.

I’ve been attending some mother-baby groups in Madison, one at Happy Bambino on the east side, and one at the Madison Birthing Center in Middleton. Sleep was the topic of discussion at both baby groups in the last week, and it was extremely reassuring to hear that vast majority of moms have babies that aren’t napping well during the day, aren’t sleeping well at night, or some combination of the two. Interestingly enough, a good 75-80% of the moms are co-sleeping with their babies. Of the small portion of us who aren’t co-sleeping, I was the only mom that didn’t have her baby in the bedroom with her (in a crib or bassinet or whatever). This is a pretty accurate insight into modern parenting trends, I think–or at least modern parenting trends here in Madison.

At any rate, Henry’s usual night sleep patterns involve a 3-5 hour stretch starting around 7:30pm. He’ll get up to nurse , go back to sleep for another 2 hrs, get up to nurse again, and then pretty much be up and down (nursing on and off) for the rest of the night. Some nights, if he sleeps a good 4 or 5 hours for the first chunk, I’m feeling pretty good the next day. Other nights, if he’s up every 1-2 hours, I’m functional, but not particularly “with it.”

During the day, you’d think he’d make up for any night sleep deficits, but it apparently doesn’t work that way. He will usually take three brief (30 min) naps –one in the morning, one around noon, and one in the late afternoon. The days when he would take hour+ naps seem to be long gone, and it’s a little distressing because he clearly needs the sleep. .. by the end of the day he seems pretty exhausted and cranky.

We haven’t totally given up the idea of “sleep training” at some point, but a few things are holding me back. My pediatrician says he’s still too young at this point for any sort of “cry it out” sleep training, which makes sense to me. Also, Henry’s got the sort of temperment that doesn’t seem like it will work well with a “cry it out” method–by that I mean when he cries, he can work himself up into hysteria, and not be able to settle down. I think other kids can cry themselves to a calmer place, but my guess is that sleep-training Henry would involve hours of screaming, vomiting, etc ., and I really don’t feel great about that.

So what am I planning to do? Well, we stick with what works for right now–Henry still likes to be swaddled (at least, it seems to help settle him), he likes to be walked or bounced to sleep, preferrably to loud music. Daddy has made a few great mix CDs that work great for this. We use white noise in his room when he sleeps. And he sleeps in his swing (not running). Every day we try him in his crib, and every day he wakes up screaming in it, so I’d say he’s not ready for it yet. Something about the shape of the swing, which is an infant reclining cradle style, seems to work better for him than the crib.

And the thing that has worked the best has been simply adjusting my expectations, and taking the long view. I found that I was dreading night time a lot, stressing about whether it would be a good night or a bad night, and often unable to fall asleep myself because I was just listening for him to wake up anyway. What I try to focus on now is that this is a relatively short period in our lives, and soon enough he’ll be sleeping longer and longer, and someday he may even sleep through the night. And that someday, I will even miss these nighttime feedings, when it’s just my little baby and I curled up together, safe and warm and happy.

Henry update

If you haven’t visited lately, make sure you scroll down to see all the recent pics. Henry gets cuter by the minute, it seems. He’s also turning into a big boy before our very eyes. Some cool stuff he’s doing:

–talking (more than just coos) a lot!

–pushing his legs to stand up whenever he can

–responding with big smiles to his favorite new game, in which Daddy crawls across the floor and kisses Henry.
No, he’s still not even close to sleeping through the night or even taking some good naps, but he’s pretty awesome just the same.

Henry with Grandma & Grandpa Nolan

Henry with Kathy

more recent pics. . .

Here’s some recent pics …