I can remember reading a couple of books before I had babies and one saying about learning the baby's cry. It made no sense to me at all and even after the first couple of weeks of a new born I still didn't know what they meant. But at about 8 weeks-ish it kicked in - I got it and understood what they meant. To anyone else it might have sounded like my baby was crying, but actually it was a noise that he made when he was settling himself to sleep. It wasn't a 'I need feeding' cry, but just a 'I might need some help to get off to sleep please' cry.
But thinking about this is a nice conduit into the next few weeks - if anything else crops up about those early days, I'll definitely mention it, but onwards to the 8-12 weeks period. For me I am now in the throws of my 3-hour routine. Up at 7am every morning.
No swaddling anymore (that stopped at 10 weeks - later than with my first, which stopped at 6 weeks - he was a huge bruiser and bashed his way out of it, the little devil) and on to the growbags. If you're like me, you'll have baby in their own room, in a cot now for all his sleeps. I think this is a good aim to have.
Why on earth do people want to share their evenings with their newborns downstairs with them? And a doubley why on earth would you want to listen to them farting and wriggling around in bed in your room through the night?? As far as I'm concerned, his is where independence starts! A good aim is to have baby upstairs in the evenings at about 6 weeks (if not before - up to you obviously). Our first was great at this, the second let the side down slightly and didn't settle well in the evenings until about 15 weeks. Hubby thought we had a dud, but I was convinced it was about sleep training and we would get there - low and behold we did! I (yet again) refer to my 'it's hard work' statement. We had many an evenings where one or both would spend a few hours upstairs going in and out trying to help settle baby. But those few weeks have been totally worth it. By 4.5 months we were through the worse and baby settled by herself upstairs at 6.30pm.
I digressed slightly - so, still with the dummy, baby is now sleeping upstairs. I don't know about you, but it can be sooooooo frustrating trying to keep baby sleeping. How can you let the washing machine go full on fast (loud) spin for 20 minutes and not a peep, but if you nip to the loo doing some bonkers tip-toe dance to avoid creaky floorboards, trip and the tip of your big toe touches one and makes the slightest noise, you end up with whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa and you've buggered it up!! Grrr ... Anyway, aside from the floorboard dance you hope no one you actually like ever sees you do, it's nice to have a half hour/hour through the day to yourself.
This is the peak period of your 3-hourly routine as soon it's about to change to the really good one - the 4-hourly routine. Oh boy, I love this one. More on that to come.
Oh, and one note about swaddling - if someone says to you 'oh, no my baby won't be swaddled' - bollocks to that - of course they won't if you loosely pass a flimsy piece of cotton over them. Get a decent blanket and wrap fairly tightly around their arms/chest. So maybe cross arms over chest and wrap across so you can tuck one side under baby's back to keep it 'done up'. Please be sensible here - obviously you can't restrict their breathing, so don't do it too much. Just think - if I was wrapped up in it like this, would it feel too much or just right for me? If the latter, you've done a stirling job!
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