5 Months

Maddie is 5 months old. I wish I could say things are getting easier. I guess in some aspects they are, but I am as tired as I would be if she were still a newborn. I finally moved her to her own bed in her own room. At this point I am going to try whatever it takes to get her to sleep! The first couple of nights were pretty rough. She would wake up as soon as I would lay her down. She did not like being apart from me. But after a few days, she got used to it and is sleeping better...most nights. She still gets up every two hours. She has had one night where she had a 6 hour stretch and lately it seems when she gets up she eats, but not like she's really hungry. So I think she's just in some bad habits that we need to break.

Last night was the first night to feed her only every 4 hours instead of 2, and boy was it a long one. I fed her at 11pm and so she woke up right on schedule at 1am. I let her cry for a little bit, and thought maybe it would be best if I rock her (give her some comfort in a different way). This just upset her more. After crying off and on for about an hour she fell asleep, just to wake up again the moment I set her down. So after more comforting and rocking, I finally got her to sleep and in her bed at 3am. 3:30am, she's up and crying. This time I fed her and she went right back to sleep. Of course she was up again at 5am, but afraid of waking Nate again (he woke up and was playing in his room at 4am) I decided just to bring her back to bed with me. We shall see what tonight brings. More exhaustion I think.

I thought the problem might be that she isn't eating enough during the day. She never feeds very long. So I decided to make up a bottle of milk. The first day she was in hysterics, refusing the bottle until I finally broke down and put her on the boob. The next day I tried again. She ate about an ounce but it took forever, like she wasn't really sucking on it, just playing around with it. She took the bottle when she was younger and I should have periodically given it to her as she got older to keep her used to it. This bottle feeding is very disappointing for me. Not only to try and see if it would have helped her sleep, but also for some freedom. I cannot go anywhere without her in case she gets hungry.

We also tried feeding her cereal. It has not been a disaster, but she hasn't quite gotten the hang of it yet. She spits more out than she eats and lifts her tongue up over the spoon. I will keep trying this here and there, but we didn't even start Nate on solids until he was 6 months so I'm not real concerned about her eating solids right now.

Other than that, she is the same happy baby. She wants so badly to be able to do things. She is sticking that little butt in the air and kicking like crazy, just not going anywhere. She rolls around to get to where she wants to go.