I LOVE this age

         I keep telling Cale how great Jake is and how much fun he is RIGHT now. He's old enough he's starting to interact, but still my little baby. What's more, I'm getting comfortable now, and more confident in the choices I make.

          We've been dealing with some teething issues I'm pretty sure. There have been two situations in Jake's life that he has cried in pain, and I know it was pain, when he got his shots, and when I accidentally nipped the end of his thumb with the nail clippers. These cries are cemented in my memory, because they shattered my heart, so when I see them I'm assuming it's teething, combined with suddenly loving to gum everything, and massive amounts of drool.  Friends of mine have mentioned Camilia drops, and they have worked WELL. Since then I've been getting myself aware of suppliers.

         I think we also might be dealing with some sleep regression. I've started doing a LOT of research on 4 month sleep regression. Apparently with babies, there are multiple times in a baby's development that they deal with sleep regression, but the 4 month mark is a little different than the others. In a nutshell this is when babies start to develop their REM sleep patterns. There are those who say that the way to "survive" it is teaching your child to self-sooth and learn to put themselves back to sleep. We have had nights where Jake has gotten up only once, we've even had one sleep through the night. So when every hour and a half started, it kind of stood out.

          We've been focusing on proper naps, and an earlier bedtime, and it's been working well. What's more encouraging him to get himself back to sleep when he wakes up. Now we're not 100% leaving him to his own devices, we purchased a new sound machine that has music options for settling and soothing, and it REALLY seems to do the trick, even better than the white noise we used before. Last night he woke up 2 hours after he went to bed, and went back to sleep on his own. I didn't actually have to get up with him until 3am, it was amazing.

         Here is confession time, I am developing one kind of bad habit with him, and I'm not sorry for doing it...we'll see down the road. Jake usually wakes up between 5 and 6:30. As a fan of sleep I tried something one morning, and it has become our morning thing now. I nurse Jake laying on my side for a short period of time, and we go back to sleep in our bed. I know it's not a deep sleep because I'm very much aware of him being there, but that little bit of extra rest and of course the snuggles, get me ready for our day.

         I stand by what I said, I love this age.

K, Luv Ya, Bye!

Nancy