The "fall back" for daylight saving time this weekend has been more of a "fall apart". Ugh. Greta is a terrible sleeper. It. is. exhausting. I've resorted to counting bottles on the nightstand to tell how many times I get up in the middle of the night. A 3 bottle night is an average night. I've come to the realization that she will figure this out when she is ready. I've literally tried everything. One thing she is good at is taking naps. We can put her down for naps and bedtime awake and she will put herself to sleep. She usually naps great throughout the day and has been taking 3 naps a day. We are transitioning to 2 naps right now to see how that works. To remedy her terrible nighttime sleeping we've tried having her sleep more in the day, sleep less. Keep her up later, put her to bed earlier. Tried a dark room, used a night light. Kept her room cooler, or turned the heat up a bit. I've let her cry in the night when she wakes up to see if she will settle. I think her main issue is that she's a terrible eater. She only eats when she wants and how much she wants and you can't make her eat any more. When she wakes up in the middle of the night she just wants to eat and is right back to sleep. It's an easy fix but it's hard not ever sleeping for more than a 3 hour period before getting woken up. She's almost 8.5 months old and she typically eats only 4-5oz bottles. Very rarely will she eat more than 5 oz and often during the day she will decide she only wants 3.5oz. I've shed a tear or two throwing the liquid gold (aka breastmilk) down the sink when she wastes so much throughout the day. We've even tried giving her formula the other night to see if that would help her sleep more but she wouldn't take it. She's so fussy with her eating that even if she's hungry and downs her bottle by the time you go and get the next bottle to see if she wants a few more ounces the time it took to get the next bottle ready for her she will usually refuse it. It's kind of comical sometimes when she's eating because Chad will be feeding her and he'll call out to me that she may want a couple more ounces so I scramble to get another bottle ready so that when she's done with the last drop we can make an easy transition to another bottle. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't but if there is much delay in the bottle exchange she will refuse it. It's also been frustrating introducing solids. Some days she'll eat a few bites but most days she isn't interested. She seems to like sweet potatoes the best and doesn't like pears. Go figure, I have about 50 jars of pears sitting in the pantry that I got for a discount. On a positive note, it warms my heart to have her fall asleep in my arms after she eats in the middle of the night and just rock and cuddle her. She doesn't fall asleep in my arms much anymore so it's nice to just take in those special moments. I just wish they weren't at 3am. I guess I'll take what I can get.
Last night was an average 3 bottle night.
She is so happy and easy going during the day that she makes the sleep exhaustion worth it.
The weather has been absolutely beautiful these last few days.
Greta loves to sit on the grass and feel it between her fingers.
What a sweet little girl.
It was so hard to get her to look up at me. All she wants to do is touch the grass.
Greta took a long nap after baby storytime and then we took a trip to Minneapolis to check out some shops in NE Minneapolis. When we got back she took another nap and then it was off to our evening baby class. She was a bit tired because she hasn't quite adjusted yet to daylight saving time but I think she enjoyed seeing all her friends.
When we got home she got a second-wind and was laughing at her silly puppy Sofie.
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