I was induced at 38 weeks as the doctors thought there was a risk that she was SGA. Thankfully she was absolutely healthy and born at 2.685 kg. The labour was much quicker than expected – my waters were manually ruptured at 11:30pm and Libby was born just over an hour later at 12:45am! We were able to go home from the hospital by lunchtime. Save for the concerns about her size, I had no complications during my pregnancy and felt healthy throughout.
Our breastfeeding journey got off to a bit of a bumpy start as I was suffering from cracked and sore nipples due to her shallow latch. I received help from an IBCLC on days 3 and 4 which made a big difference but I continued to experience pain for several weeks (albeit less severe) and at 8 weeks we cut her posterior tongue tie. This helped her latch and resolved the pain I was feeling and since then she has fed beautifully and we have had a very loving feeding journey together. Libby currently weighs around 6.8 kilos.
We waited until Libby was 6 weeks old to introduce a dummy, but she absolutely hated it and gagged whenever we tried to put the dummy in her mouth. We have also tried to give her a bottle of expressed milk on several occasions (since about 16 weeks) but she similarly resists and we haven’t been able to convince her to drink from a bottle. I have had limited success in SA – she drank about 60ml of expressed milk.
We have not yet introduced any solid foods at all as we have decided to wait until she is sitting up well on her own as a sign of her developmental readiness for solids. Our intention is to follow baby led weaning once solids begin.
As to sleep, when Libby was first born we were feeding her every 2 hours because she was below 3 kilos and so we were often waking her up to feed. After she reached 3 kilos we let her feed on demand. During the first few months she would fall asleep very easily after eating (food coma!), and would occasionally sleep for stretches of 4 or 5 hours… but then the dreaded 4-month regression hit. Since then it has been a real struggle to put her down for daytime naps or to bed at night. She also wakes more frequently.
Libby’s typical day is below, but her days do not always follow a set pattern. I feed her on demand and not to a schedule, but I have included the most typical feeds below.
~6:30 / 7 am: Libby wakes up, usually in our bed where she nurses shortly before waking up properly. Ben usually gets her up, changes her nappy and then plays with her for a little bit before going to work. I usually count the waking hours so the times below differ depending on when she gets going for the day.
~8am: Libby will feed around an hour after she first wakes up. She doesn’t feed immediately upon waking as she is in our bed and will nurse just before opening her eyes for the day (I don’t often wake up with very full feeling boobs as she frequently nurses throughout the early hours of the morning). She also usually does a poo around this time.
~8:30 – 9:15: I try to put Libby down for her first nap (about 1.5 hours after she wakes up). This is becoming increasingly difficult and at the moment she refuses to nap in her crib and she will only fall asleep in the sling or the Ergobaby, so I will wear her on me while I do chores in the flat. This nap usually only lasts about 40 minutes or less.
~9:30 – 11:30: I will do a nappy change and feed Libby on waking. Then she will usually play on her mat or hang out in her bouncer. On days where we go out, I will try to put her in her pram for a walk but she doesn’t seem to enjoy this as much as she used to (for the first 3 months she was very content in her pram and would sleep there for long stretches at a time, but now gets quite antsy and hardly ever falls asleep in her pram).
~11:30 – 1pm: I will try to put Libby down for her second nap (again about 1.5 hours after her last wake up). This has varying degrees of success. Occasionally I am able to nurse her to sleep but for this to work I draw the curtains, put on some music and lie down next to her and nurse her until she falls asleep. I can sometimes creep away once she falls asleep (it’s like defusing a bomb!), but often she senses when I am not there and will wake up. If I am next to her when she stirs she usually looks for my breast and I let her latch and nurse back to sleep so that the nap extends a bit longer. If we are out and about during this time of day, it is easier as I will put her in the carrier and she falls asleep easily (and will often stay asleep as long as I am moving until I take her out).
~1pm – 3pm: We will do playtime similarly to the above, or we take a class. She will also feed during this time.
~3pm – 4pm: I will try to put Libby down for her third nap. Similar process to the above, either by putting her in the carrier or lying down with her and nursing her to sleep. Occasionally, her second nap has started very late in the day (at around 12:30 or 1 or later) and then she wakes up at around 3pm. On those days I haven’t tried to go for a third nap because I’m concerned that she wakes up too close to her bedtime, so instead I have brought bathtime forward.
~4pm – 5:30pm: playtime as above, or a trip to the shops or she will be in her bouncer in the kitchen with me. She will also feed during this period.
~5:45 / 6pm: we do bathtime. I usually do this on my own as Daddy only gets home from work late during the week. I have the same routine with her each night – I set up the bath, towels, pajamas etc in her room and we listen to the same songs (Disney!) while I undress and bath her. We have recently started introducing some toys to bathtime. I will then give her a massage with some cream and dress her in her pajamas. Some nights (not always), I will sit with her in the armchair in her room and read her some baby books.
~7pm – 8pm: After reading (or otherwise straight after she is dressed), I take her to our room with the lights dimmed and put on music and feed her. We then embark on a long process of getting her to sleep, including me nursing her for fairly long periods of time (can be an hour or more) or her Dad walking around the room with her until she nods off. We will then put her down in her crib, which is the bedside Chicco. This is always tricky to do without waking her.
~8pm – 9pm: Libby will often wake up shortly after she falls asleep for the first time (maybe 30 minutes after falling asleep or less) and then one of us (usually her dad) will pick her up and walk around until she falls back asleep. This will often happen at least one more time and on the third attempt she is usually “down for the night”. That usually happens by around 9 or 9:30pm.
~9:30pm – 11:30pm: Libby will sleep well in her crib for 2 or 3 hours and then usually stirs at around 11pm. I give her a quick feed then put her back down. Sometimes she will go down quite easily, but other times she needs to be walked / rocked to sleep.
During the night Libby will usually wake at least twice. After the first wake up (around 1 or 2am), I often bring her into the bed and let her lie next to me and pretty much nurse as much as she wants and until she falls back asleep. We then co-sleep until morning. I’m often half asleep myself, so I can’t say with certainty how many feeds she does like this but probably around 3 (the last being usually shortly before she wakes up for the day). I do try to sense when she is stirring though and offer her the breast immediately in an effort to keep her asleep. Sometimes in the night she will wake up fully and I will need to walk around with her and rock her back to sleep, but it’s very difficult to put her back down in her crib so she still lands up sleeping in our bed.
As I mentioned, Libby has never accepted a dummy. I have also tried to get her to become attached to a lovey but she doesn’t seem that interested in it (maybe I should try encourage this more?). Libby still sleeps in her Love to Dream swaddle with one arm free, and we also place her in her Sleepyhead inside her crib to give her a sense of security (at least at the start of the night before she moves to our bed). Recently we have been almost exclusively co-sleeping, but without the swaddle. I think her main sleep associations are nursing to sleep, being in the carrier, and co-sleeping.
Putting Libby down to sleep (whether for naps or at bedtime) is starting to feel like a full-time job and takes hours and hours each day. I have been relying heavily on the Ergobaby to get her to sleep for naps. In addition, although I have been told that it’s impossible to overfeed a breastfed baby, I’m concerned that: (1) my only “skill” to settle her and put her to sleep is to offer her the breast, and I struggle to settle her without nursing; and (2) Libby never refuses to nurse, but lately she will occasionally posset and I wonder if she is taking in too much milk and feels uncomfortable afterwards.
I am a bit concerned that Libby isn’t actually getting 13 – 15 hours of sleep each day. Her naps don’t usually add up to 3 hours and her night-time sleep is less than 12 hours. There have been a handful of times where she has become overtired and her mood has vacillated extremely fast and she becomes quite hysterical. I try to pre-empt these moments by counting her waking hours and then almost forcing her into a nap by putting her in the Ergobaby.
Libby has her own room across the passage from our room. We change her nappies there and do bathtime there, but she has not yet slept there. Her cot-bed seems enormous in comparison to her crib (where she also uses a sleepyhead)! We are aware that she needs to transition to her own room and bed but I wonder how we can do this gently??
Aside from sleep issues, Libby is an absolutely delightful baby. She is very happy and smiley, she is giggly and loves to be held and gives wonderful cuddles. She is very alert and pays attention to what’s going on around her. She has a lovely disposition and is very sociable and affectionate. She is rolling from side to side and can roll from her tummy to her back unassisted (but not yet all the way from her back to her tummy). She also has good trunk strength and can sit well with a bit of support around her waist.
There is nothing else I can think of in her (or our) medical history.
What we would like to achieve now is a smoother bed time routine where I don’t need to nurse her for hours to put her to sleep or for one of us to walk around with her to resettle her after she wakes; and a good naptime routine in the day (ideally in her own cot). We are also mindful that the time is close to us introducing solids as well as moving her into her own room and we would like to make these changes as gently as possible for her. I am also somewhat torn as I love nursing Libby and I don’t want to deny her at night if she is hungry or even if she is just nursing for comfort. I want to feel secure that we are still meeting her needs.
