I haven’t documented Colton in a little while and worry that I am going to forget all the juicy details of his beautiful life, so I am packing it all in tonight.

At around 4 months, Colton weighed 15 lbs and change. He was starting to tripod-sit, supporting himself upright with his hands and arms, which really impressed me. We also started to crank up tummy time at around this age to be more diligent in training his core muscles. What a difference it made in his overall strength. A few days after, Colton was rolling and then not too long after, he was able to tripod-sit for longer periods of time. We also started to spend a lot of time at the Little Gym of Oakville, exercising :). More on that in a future post.

At 4.5 months, we started playing around with his first solid food, Oatmeal, but only for fun at this point, not a meal replacement. He was absolutely ga-ga over the taste of something new and was literally ready to eat the spoon, too. Thank goodness for being able to capture these moments so easily on video because it was truly hilarious to watch him eat from a spoon for the first time.

At 5 months, Colton weighed 16 lbs and change, on track with doubling his birth weight! We continued to do LOTS of tummy time and by this age, he was able to sit upright for a few seconds, unsupported by me or his arms! He is also discovering his love for standing. :) We’ve also introduced pureed prunes to regulate his bowel movements because he started to go 8 days without pooping and it tripped us out :P.

Clearly Colton has been very busy with growing up, it’s no wonder his night wakings have been worse than ever, which leads me nicely to the topic of sleep training – Lord, have mercy, lol.

Rewind back to 4.5 months, we decided to start sleep training because Colton was determined to wake up multiple times a night and I was stuck nursing him back to sleep with each waking (15 to 30-minute process) and I was a zombie, albeit still a happy one, by morning. I mean, he was sleeping reasonably well by 3 months, giving us anywhere from 4 to 6-hour stretches then all of a sudden, we got hit hard with the 4 month regression and the night wakings were unreal. Don’t get me wrong though because honest to God, from the bottom of my heart, I love, love, LOVE every minute of every part of this whole journey. Nonetheless, I wanted my son to be a great sleeper because ultimately, it is good for everyone, himself included. So we moved forward with Richard Ferber’s gradual extinction / progressive-waiting method.

Day 1 was not too shabby – we handled it well and felt empowered by the results. He cried for 28 minutes at bed time and then no more than 15 minutes during 2 subsequent wakings that night. Looking awesome. Simultaneously trained for naps as well, and it was effortless.

Day 2 was great! He cried for 13 minutes at bed time and self soothed himself for 2 subsequent night wakings within 10 minutes and mostly just whined vs cried. WOW, I thought to myself. This is wonderful. Naps were peachy, too.

Day 3, the momentum kept going! He cried for 3 minutes at bed time and self soothed himself for 2 subsequent night wakings within 8 minutes. Amazing!! This is magic!! Naps continued to be peachy.

Then Day 4 happened. Complete regression. Cried 20 minutes at bed time and 30 minutes during one of his wakings, followed by several other wakings. It was just so much crying that night. We were caught off guard. It felt like Days 1-3 never happened and we felt discouraged. (Naps were still great.)

Day 5 was a slightly better night in the sense that bed time was effortless and he self soothed throughout his night wakings but it was worse than Days 1-3 because his actual number of wakings increased from 2x to 3x when it should have decreased by this point. (Naps still great.)

Day 6, he woke up 3x again. (Naps still great.)

Day 7, he woke up 6x!!! LOL. What happened?!?!?!?! (Naps still great.)

Day 8, I stopped documenting and was winging the training. I was exhausted and completely emotional. We were messing around and changing up Ferber’s method according to what made us comfortable and what allowed us to survive the crying, making the training inevitably ineffective. (Naps still great.)

Day 9, we persisted through another messy night. Not worth discussing. (Naps still great.)

Day 10, we decided to take our wins so far and stop training. (Naps still great.)

THE WINS:

1. We no longer nurse and rock Colton to sleep. This is a HUGE win.
2. We’ve weaned him off his swaddle, yay!
3. We can put him down in his crib awake during nap AND bed time and he will go to sleep all on his own. He will sometimes still fuss a little bit but nothing crazy. Bed time from start to finish is now a 30-minute enjoyable, relaxing process vs a 1.5 to 2-hour ordeal that sucked the life out of our entire evening!
4. Colton now consistently naps 3x a day for 1-2 hours at a time. They are NICE, CHUNKY, SOLID naps. I find myself anxious about what to do with all this extra time!
5. During his night wakings, I can soothe him and put him back down in his crib awake and he will finish the falling-back-to-sleep process on his own. The breast is still the fastest way to soothe him unfortunately but I need not keep him at the breast all the way back to sleep, which is PROGRESS. (However, he still wakes up a lot. In fact, he’s waking up every 1-2 hours right now. Did I mess up the training that badly? lol!)

Alright, so where does this leave us? We are probably 60% of the way there. And well, I actually know exactly why our training for the night wakings failed epically. Sleep training logically works best if the baby no longer feeds at night. This allows firm consistency in the controlled responses/comforting to the cries. For example, if baby wakes up crying at 10:00pm and has to self soothe all the way back to sleep and then wakes at 2:00am and this time, mom comes in, picks him up, and nurses him, a completely different response to the first waking, would this not be super confusing to baby? Now imagine every waking consistently required self soothing all the way back to sleep and mom never intervenes with a feed? Baby would catch on much quicker.

The challenge is my Colton is a big nighttime eater and it breaks my heart to cut it all off cold turkey. No one wants to feel like they are deliberately starving their child and there is debate as to when babies no longer need to feed at night, so I kept 1 feed during training but it was enough to weaken the entire thing and make it ineffective or at least slow to progress. My plan is to train for the night wakings a little later, maybe at 6.5 months, when I know for sure he no longer medically needs to eat at night.

For now, I’ll say this: it was by far the toughest week since giving birth and it was my first testing challenge as a first-time mom. I’ve entirely underestimated the emotional and mental readiness needed for this daunting task, walking into it excited when anxious was probably more on target. It’s the hardest thing in the world to hear your baby cry and takes every fibre of your being to not respond right away. It was a lot of emotional nights. But I know in my heart of hearts, it was the right thing to do and he is better for it. We will get there. :)

Despite all of this, months 4 and 5 are easily my favourite seasons so far and I will surely mourn for them. It keeps getting better and better. What was life without Colton?

Back again soon, xo.

Colton is 10 and a half weeks old already! He was weighing in at 13 lbs. and change right at the 10 week mark. While still in the 50th percentile, he just feels solid and really heavy, killing my back and giving me muscles! He is also measuring 24″ in length, putting him in the 85th percentile for height. After all, dad is 6’3. :P

Every week or set of weeks have their own challenges. The last 2 weeks have been all about creating a loose routine and paying a lot more attention to his sleep schedule. Surprisingly, I’ve found the last 2 weeks to be particularly stressful; more so than the previous earlier weeks, which tend to be the traditional more “stressful” weeks. I found and am still finding it difficult to balance the freedom of no-routine with the structure of a loose and eventual rigid/strict routine, which I understand is critical to fostering good sleeping habits. SLEEP is a beast of a thing to tackle with children.

1. He still doesn’t sleep through the night and wakes every 3 hours on average. On a few rare occasions, he falls under a sleeping spell and gives us a 4-6 hour stretch; this doesn’t repeat itself very much for the time being although we’re hopeful it starts to soon.

2. Ever since tuning in more closely to his sleep, I’ve learned he is a great napper. He will nap on average 3 times during the day for 1-2 hours each time. I’ve been guilty (pleasurably) of letting him nap on me because transferring him to his crib during naps has grown to become epic fails and before you know it, that nap window slips away altogether and you’re left with a cranky babe! Funny story: prior to letting him nap as he pleases, I actually tried to keep him awake during the day so he’d sleep longer at night! What a rookie mistake. Sleep indeed begets sleep is what I soon learned.

3. He has been sleeping in his crib at night since 7 weeks and continues to do so, which is awesome. We co-slept a bit from weeks 5-6 and while I loved every minute of it, I also missed sleeping independently in our bed without him, so it was nice to wean off of that quickly.

4. Bed time makes me anxious because it’s currently such a long and drawn out process. 65% of our evenings are spent trying to get him down for the night! His bed time was quite late around 11pm for weeks and trying to move it up is a grind. Oh the patience. I can’t wait until it gets more efficient!

5. We are starting to educate ourselves on sleep training. There’s a ton of stuff out there and hoping to find one that works for us.

Lots more serious business and challenges going on in these coming weeks; we’re just enjoying the ride while it lasts :).

New wanderlust / road trip print down below! I often make myself nostalgic with my own images – ha! I surely do miss being able to pack up, hit the open road with windows rolled down and music blasting, and drive somewhere. There are limitations now but such are the beautiful stages of life and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Colton is my biggest, brightest star, and has shown me the higher realms of love and happy hearts.

A few days past our 1 month anniversary with baby Colton but better late than never :).

It is now 4 weeks and 4 days. Time is eagerly flying and I am seeing him grow right before my eyes. Really holding on to these miniature days; he will never be this little again! Sure, some of the days can be tough, mostly because of sleep deprivation, but they’re so precious all at the same time, it’s utterly worth it. I’m a completely smitten mama.

In his week 4 appointment, he was weighing 9 lbs. 10 oz., gaining almost a pound from the previous week. We were feeding him roughly 120ml or 4 oz. of breast milk per feed via bottle leading up to that appointment so our experiment went very well. The problem is that it was just so. much. work. It was chaotic to pump like a crazy lady and wash and sterilize bottles and pumping gear around the clock. Between that housekeeping work and the actual feeding and soothing, I was a slave. It wasn’t sustainable.

So now going into week 5, we’re reverting back as exclusively as possible to the breast while supplementing with a single (or 2) formula feeds overnight to make sure he is fed and full. We have also opted for a part time night nanny Mondays through Thursdays, therefore, breastfeeding overnight wouldn’t make much sense if the whole point is to sleep through the night a few times a week. This is so Chris can go to work a human being instead of a zombie and I can get some legitimate rest, and formula feeding bridged that gap perfectly. Do what works, right? :) Formula is our friend, not our enemy.

Other than cracking the breastfeeding code, he is all around a true bundle of joy. He is smiling a ton lately and as much as I’d like to think it’s conscious, it’s probably still only some form of a reflex at this point. But that doesn’t change that fact that those smiles are hopelessly endearing and heart melting.

He is also blowing a ton of spit bubbles, which I’ve read is a sign of early speech development. Sure, we’ll take it!

By the way, had we not gotten the Fisher-Price My Little Snugapuppy Deluxe Bouncer at our baby shower, we would be in dire need of saving. It is the ultimate soother and our go-to almost every time he becomes inconsolable for whatever reason. It basically sings, bobs up and down, and vibrates and boy does it keep him at bay. Highly recommended. (In fact, I am blogging while bobbing him up and down on the bouncer at the same time. And he’s in heaven – what a win.)

That’ll be all for now, going to catch a snooze. xo.