Here we are in June and our daughter is another month older!
As I mentioned in my previous posts, my husband and I are starting to feel more confident in our roles as parents to this precious baby. Does that mean its easy for us? No. Does that mean sometimes we aren't whiny zombies? Definitely not.
In fact, I'm feeling rather zombie-ish as I write this blog right now. Elise has been going back and forth on sleeping well. It's been hard on us. We aren't quite sure why she's doing this and there's about a million reasons we could guess at. We just do our best to take it one day at a time and continually support one another. I try my best not to wake Josh knowing he has a full and busy week at work, and he comes home to surprise me with coffee today. Its the little things that get us through these trying times!
Back to Ellie.
She is DAYS away from crawling. She tries so hard every day. You can hear the determination and frustration in her voice. We do our best to give her ample opportunity to try to crawl throughout the day and encourage her as she tries to figure it out on her own.
As I also stated in a previous blog, Elise is also showing signs that she may be ready to start solid foods soon. This is an especially big deal for us since she's EBF and has relied on no one but myself for her nourishment thus far. She will still mostly rely on me for nourishment, but starting solids is a step towards toddler-hood for her. One more step towards not being our little baby anymore!
We've been making quite a few changes around our home to adjust to Elise's changes. We purchased a high chair so that she can sit at the dinner table with us for family meals. We have been holding her in our laps so far which has meant we have taken turns eating and trying to keep her out of our food!
We also bought Elise a Jenny Jump Up! She was obviously getting bored with her bouncy seat and was almost successful in pushing herself up and out the back of it while I was showering one day. I was one scared momma! She got a kick out of me jumping all wet and soapy out of the shower to strap her back in. Ah, motherhood!
Elise has become such a fun baby to be with everyday. She's much more interactive now. She watches and listens as I speak to her. She will laugh and giggle when we tickle her or make funny noises. Daddy is much better at this than I am.
I've been reading lots of baby books lately. The one in my previous blog (BLW) and now I'm also reading The No Cry Sleep Solution. Josh and I are not comfortable with allowing Elise to cry it out (we have our reasons, you can ask if you'd like). So we've been forced to search for alternatives to sleep training. Because waking up every two hours for 45 min isn't going to possible for us to keep up for a whole lot longer.
We were discussing again last night how the type of parents we've become isn't at all what we expected of ourselves. But we are flexible people. We have no qualms with asking people for input or advice, and we will try anything within the realm of what feels right for us and our daughter. I realize we aren't quite the hipster parents in that we didn't really co-sleep and I didn't constantly nurse out in public without a cover. Nor was my labor completely natural. I did have an epidural. But I am glad that I didn't have to be induced.
But as far as the last five months have been going, we've surprised ourselves with what paths we are choosing to take in raising our daughter. Baby led weaning (which means I could be breastfeeding past my original goal of 12 months), we did room share (but not bed share) for 3 months, I'm EBF until Elise chooses otherwise, and we refuse to give into the enormous amount of pressure every parent tends to receive about letting their baby cry it out (CIO). Two years ago, if you had told me all this, I'm just not sure I would believe you that we would take this route. But here we are!
I feel like we've got a good mixture going on and most importantly, we feel good about our decisions and think its the best path for our child. That alone has been giving us confidence in ourselves as parents. I just hope we can continue to make decisions like this together.
I am nothing like the parent I thought I would be and I'm not the same parent I was when Milan was a baby. On the surface many may see me as a hippie, home birthing, natural parenting freak but there is really no label that fits who I am and I'm ok with that. I do things based on what I feel is right with the best knowledge that I have. With my second baby I've learned to just "wait it out" and follow my instincts a lot better than with my first. This time goes by so quickly in the grand scheme of life.
ReplyDeleteI also don't like to label my parenting when it comes to sleep. I gave in to the CIO phenom with Milan and I regret it immensely. Yes, she slept through the night much sooner than Camly but it wasn't worth it. Now we are working through some trust and fear issues during the night. She has become a roomate for the time being and I have no idea how long it will last but however long it takes to build her trust and ease her fears of her room. Maybe it's just my guilt talking but I don't think it is. I think a lot of it has to do with CIO. As for co-sleeping, co-rooming, or whatever else books want to label, my method of sleep training is whatever is going to give us the most sleep without jeopardizing our trustful relationship. Most nights Camly is in her room but some nights we both get more sleep when she sleeps in my bed.
I'm sorry to hear that about Milan! That's def a fear we have with CIO!
DeleteI don't think our parenting style has a label either. It's becoming a rather eclectic combination of styles and schools of thought and random ideas from other families.
I'm reading this book now, but yes, I've told Darla, at this point I'll try anything safe that doesn't involve CIO as far as sleeping goes!