Category Archives: Co-Sleeping

Second Born

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Payson

I feel like Payson doesn’t get enough blog time. So this will be all about her.

Payson will be ONE in THREE WEEKS. I cannot believe it. She is so funny, and gives such amazing hugs and snuggles. She still doesn’t nap very often, but when her sister is sleeping she has so much fun playing with all the toys by herself.

She cried for the first 6 months of her life. NON STOP. And one day I put her down around 6 months of age and she started to crawl, I have no idea how she learned. She has not stopped moving since that time. She started walking around furniture at 7 months, and started walking by herself at 10 months.

climberShe is really tiny so it is adorable watching her walk around. She weighs around 16-17lbs and is just a skinny mini. She loves to climb onto anything she can haul herself up onto. She still nurses very often, and I love our time together. She usually ends up in bed with us around 6 in the morning so we get to have lots of time snuggled close. She also loves me wearing her in one of our carriers, it means she gets to be extra close to mommy, which is perfect for her.

She loves saying Dada, Mama and I am pretty sure she says KITTY. She also really likes going “aawwww” whenever she does something she wants us to see or notice.

She really loves playing peek-a-boo, and laughs so much when you tickle her. One of her favourite things is to snuggle a doll or stuffed animal, and she loves to put anything she can find over her head.

She has 1 tooth that she got when she was almost 11 months old and there is a second tooth coming…soon I hope. She has found that she can eat even MORE food with that one tooth and loves to eat anything and everything. We did BLW (Baby Led Weaning) with her and she has always been a great eater.

bath

She is finally starting to like the bath, or at least tolerate it. BUT she will only stay in and not cry if it is Stefan giving her the bath. Otherwise she wants me to hold her. But it is nice that she is getting clean more often and not screaming the whole time.

Speaking of Stefan; Payson is finally starting to really love on her daddy. She was very attached to me for the first part of her life and didn’t really care for anyone but me. But now she hugs and snuggles with Stefan and he could not be more thrilled to have another little lady in love with him.

So in three weeks you will get to read another little post all about my baby turning ONE!!!!

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Oh My Payson

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3388_10151145329023796_303284211_nMy Payson is growing up. She just had her 4 month shots (a little late as she will be 5 months in 11 days), and she weighs almost 14lbs. She loves to laugh…and cry. She can roll over, but only when she wants to and doesn’t do it often. She prefers to be in my arms than anywhere else (which makes her daddy sad). She will only sleep curled up next to me in our bed, which I don’t mind because she sleeps most of the night that way and I am more well rested. She has decided that her goal in life is to try and eat our food, but she has to wait until November when we will start Baby Led Weaning with her. But she has licked an apple and her sister has shoved various foods in her mouth.

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She loves to be worn in our Boba wrap and carrier, mainly because it means being extra close to mommy. She loves to lick and chew on her left foot, or my finger. She loves to chat with us and really wants to sit up. I know she wants to play with her sister but is still a little scared of her (for good reason, Capri loves her just a little too much).

She is currently taking some medication to help with her acid reflux which was making her a very sad girl. She is a bit happier on it, but still IMG_2249not the most content baby. She likes sitting in her chair and playing on her mat in small amounts of time.

We love her so very much and are excited to watch her grow. We pray for her each day and ask God to bless her and enrich her life.

She gets a lot of nicknames around here like Paycy Macy and Pay Pay, and her sister refers to her as baby.

 

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Mommy Guilt – Her own Room

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I have written about how we were co-sleeping part time and Capri sleeping in her pack and play next to my bed and now I have to write about the move. Today is Monday and last Wednesday Stefan decided we should move Capri into her nursery.

Let me sidetrack for a moment to say I use the word nursery in the loosest form possible. It is our spare room that happens to have all of her stuff in it but not very organized. My dream when we move is to actually decorate a room for her. But I digress.

So Stefan suggests we move her because the last week or so before the big move she had been waking up every hour to two hours (instead of the normal 3-4 hours) and I feed on demand which resulted in a very tired mommy and baby. We realized that she can go longer periods of not eating (in fact she went 5.5 hours on that Wednesday night in the evening) so she should be able to be okay in her own room.

Stefan said for the first night I could feed her at midnight and then again at 4am. If she cried before that he would go in and make sure she was okay and giver her the soother if she needed it. He knew that if I went in I would just end up feeding her. So that is what we did. She was up a fair amount but Stefan dealt with it and she was fine. I however stared down our baby monitors that we were using for the first time (the staring would have worked better if they were monitors with a web-cam but instead I stared at a red blinking light). In the morning she was up fairly early and would not go back to sleep so we brought her into our room and I got to cuddle with her for a few more hours and sleep.

She has now been in her own room for 5 nights. I am feeling less of the mommy guilt and only think I am abandoning her a little. She still comes into our room in the mornings for the last hour or more of sleep which I am perfectly okay with.

When we move into our new place (where ever and whenever that may be) I told Stefan I really want a comfy chair (not a rocking chair) in the nursery for when I feed her because I always fall asleep. Currently I am feeding her on the spare bed we have and cuddling up with my giant gorilla Eddie (Stefan doesn’t like him because he says Eddie stares at him). But he works as a great cushion while I feed Capri.

How a 10lb baby takes up the whole bed is beyond me – a post on co-sleeping

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I never thought I would co-sleep. Both Stefan and I are super heavy sleepers and we are both very active sleepers. I was always worried that if I did co-sleeping I would roll over onto my baby or hit her in the head.

Well that all changed. From the first week that we had Capri home I started pulling her into bed with me around 5 or 6 in the morning. I would either put my nursing pillow in the middle of the bed and she would sleep there (that way there was something between her and us so we had less of a chance of hitting her). Than slowly I started just putting her head on my arm and she would sleep like that. This way her head is not on a pillow or on the mattress and I can feel her.

We do not full time co-sleep. I usually bring her into bed around 4 or 5 now (usually after she wakes up from her last feeding around midnight). I do this because she loves to cluster feed in the mornings and it is just easier if she is next to me.

For her first month we had a king size bed which made co-sleeping a lot better, now we are back to a queen size bed. I cannot figure out how my little tiny baby takes up most of my sleeping space but she does. I love these times though. She loves snuggling with me and drooling on my arm and I love it.

Many people (me included before I started doing it and researching it) think co-sleeping is super dangerous. Well just like most things if done wrong it is. Babies do not need pillows to sleep on so don’t use them with your baby because they do pose a suffocation threat. Watch your blankets, you don’t want to pull them up over your babies head. Capri sleeps with her head at my chest level (this will make breastfeeding easier when she doesn’t need helping getting to me), I have to make sure my blankets do not come up very high because she is lower down on me.

Take your time and research safe ways to co-sleep. Make sure you do not co-sleep if you have been drinking or doing drugs because you have a very high chance of hurting your child. Also studies have been done showing that it is safer to co-sleep with a baby that is breastfed because they wake more and are normally lower down and not on a pillow, where bottle fed babies tend to be placed higher up on pillows. So just make sure you are safe about it and enjoy the snuggles with your little one.

I am sure there will be a follow up post to this when I stop letting her sleep with us. Though she sleeps in her own bed for most of the night so it shouldn’t be as hard as full time co-sleeping babies.