About a baby...

So it's been ages since I've posted and believe me I have lots to post about. I'll just give you the high-lights. The main reason I haven't been on blogger, in fact not even reading others blogs much either, is Jayden. The last few weeks we have seen a different side of our baby. And it's not been so pleasant. There has been lots of fussing and crying, a LOT of nursing, mainly to stop the fussing and crying, and quite a bit of sporadic sleeping schedules. Before the May long weekend he was such a great sleeper, went down easily, slept 6-8 hours before needing another feed, sometimes would even just take his soother and sleep another few hours. Then he mutated. First he stopped taking his soother, and I mean absolutely refusing it. He would scream in rage at the notion that I would want him to suck on that instead of on me. Because really, all he wants to suck on is ME. We've been attempting to get him to take a bottle every now and then. It's not going so well, in fact it's not going at all. Early on, I followed the bookly advice to introduce a bottle between 4 and 6 weeks of age so he would learn to accept it. He did ok. But since then he's had maybe 2 or 3 bottles, each one harder than before. I guess I should have been more consistent, but formula is expensive, and a can of it would expire before we'd use it all, and I don't have the time, energy, or such prolific supply to express milk for bottles, and it was just so easy to breastfeed exclusively. With Ian it was so easy to get 4 oz every morning that's how over-flowing with milk I was. This time I think my body just is more regulated, Jayden's a little bit better at nursing well at each session than Ian was. Needless to say it's been rough. And I really want him to last an evening without me. At the end of July I have a 10 year high-school reunion and a wedding that would be much easier if Jayden could be away from me and still get nourished. ((sigh))

And then TWO teeth popped out on the same day (June 2), and I thought "Great! Now we can get back to normal and he'll take his soother again, and he'll eventually get used to the occassional bottle and his sleep will get so much better." HA! Things just got worse. Even though he's on oatmeal, he INCREASED his nursing. Anywhere from 6-8 nursings a day now. Sometimes he'll want to eat an hour and a half after a feeding. It is now normal to have him wake up an hour or two after going down to eat some more, and he rarely goes more than 4 hours at night. And just getting him to sleep became torturous, for everyone. It's always worked to just put him down after a feed, while he's still awake but drowsy and then just leave. Why doesn't that work anymore? I've toyed with the idea of letting him cry it out. I just can't do it. He just increases in volume and hysteria. He cried for an hour and a half the other night before finally drifting off attached to me, because of course I caved and let him nurse to sleep. He's been doing so much nursing that it's beginning to feel sore, reminiscent of that first week all over again. I'm hoping that this is just a phase, a growth spurt, a bizaare side effect of growing teeth.

On a positive note he's rolling all over the place. He's become compulsive about it. I think perhaps some of his sleep issues are due to the fact that he can't help but roll over onto his tummy as soon as he's laid down, but he doesn't really like that, and because he gets a little wrapped up in his blankets he can't get back over and then gets cranky about it.
And he's almost sitting totally on his own. He lasts upright for a few minutes before flopping over, and then straight to his tummy, and then the complaining begins anew....

We introduced carrots for the first time. It was a disaster. First there was face making, then shuddering, then gagging, then choking, then NOT breathing, and then I was holding him upside down and finally there was puking of carrots all over and lots of crying. So we stopped the carrots.

We've started bathing the boys together now that Jayden's more sturdy in the seated position. Sure makes getting them both clean more efficient. It's fun too!


Jayden sure is happy when he's with Mommy ALL the time.


And then we tried peas. Wasn't too much different from the carrot episode. It's like he forgets how to eat when faced with something distasteful. Doesn't spit it out, but also doesn't swallow it, so it sits in his mouth gettng more spitty until it trickles down his throat triggering the gagging and choking. We ended the session before there was any puking.

And the cherry on top is that it's been difficult to coordinate the kids naps with Jayden being so fussy and nursing all the time. Consequently, I've been missing a lot of my daily naps. With our nights not going so well I've been feeling more tired than usual, hence the lack of blogging time. Any free time I get I spend vegging.

The last couple of days have seen an improvement. Here's praying this trend continues...

One exciting thing though. We're having Jayden dedicated to the Lord this Sunday at church. I like to think of it more as us as parents dedicating ourselves to praying for Jayden and asking for God's help to raise him in a loving home, knowing that we love, and rely on, Christ for our lives. Then we're having a bunch of family over for lunch. It should be fun.