What time is it?

This seems to be the only conversation myself and my husband have had with each other over the last few weeks. We’ve had about 7-8 weeks of sleepless night, just relentlessness night after night. At first I thought it was her bad cold/cough keeping her up, so was giving her a mix of a bottle or water to settle her back to sleep. Once she was feeling better I thought stupidly her routine would go back to normal. No on it continued, awaking in a haze reaching to make a bottle and hoping she would sleep for at least 2 more hours. The thing was it was never consistent, sometimes a bottle was needed, sometimes just a cuddle. We are finally lifting out of the fog and I feel I have the energy to write about it. I got loads of amazing advice at the time, but nothing seemed to work immediately.

So some of the first things we changed were offering her a small snack when she came home from nursery, something easy and protein to help the sleep, so cheese, half a boiled egg, yogurt, pieces of chicken etc. She was getting 3 meals and 2 snacks at nursery so I didn’t think it was hunger keeping her awake, although the want/need for a bottle at night was intense! I also brought back her routine by about 15 mins, which we really struggled some nights to do as she was already going to bed at 6.30pm. I then try to wind her more before putting her down after her bottle so loads of back rubs until she snuggled in relaxed and fell asleep. We then asked the nursery to feed her 1 bottle less during the day, hoping she would eat more solids as during the weekends she didn’t seem to want/need that much milk (currently on 3 bottles a day, 2 x 4oz, 1 x 6oz at bedtime).

So after all of the changes we suddenly were having maybe 2 nights in a row of sleep, or awake around 10pm, cuddle or water then back to sleep for night. For a while then she starting waking earlier when no interruptions during the night, so we went through a lot of 5am starts also.

Now that I am seeing the wood for the trees (with much more sleep in me) I look back and look at Isobel and realise she has gone through a massive growth spurt. I do not really recognise my lovely little baby anymore. We had to do a clear-out of all her clothes as she seemed to have skipped an age grading size and gone from 3-6 mths to 12-18 mths all of a sudden. It is so strange as she was such a small baby and small for so long that right before my eyes she is turning into a little girl.

She is going through so many development stages also. Finally after weeks and weeks of trying, on my birthday two weeks ago, she finally began to crawl. Then this evening with the aid of a step in our flat she stood for the first time. I nearly cried. She was delighted with herself and did a little clap afterwards.

She is looking at her toys now with different interest too, and even found the on button for one of her musical teddies. It’s so lovely to see all these milestones.

I was really worried that when I went back to work full time, I would somehow miss all these events, but it seems she is keeping them all for us to see at the moment.