Brooke has her third cold in the 6 short months of her life. She is a trooper and refuses to let it bring her down. She is cheery and smiley, but irritated by her inability to breathe and the constant boogers all over her face. Her current cold got me to thinking more about her current sleep schedule, and how we are doing with her nap routines, etc. Often a cold will create issues with sleep ... and it has. Brooke cannot breathe well at night and has spent the past few nights fitfully sleeping. We can hear her heavy breathing on the baby monitor and watch her thrash about as she tries to get comfortable. She is a thumb-sucker, which is near impossible with a cold. Her nose is stuffed up ... and when she puts her thumb in her mouth she essentially has no way to breathe. She keeps trying, finds she cannot breathe, cries, and then goes through the cycle again. Poor baby :(
Napping
I started an ab class almost 8 weeks ago (currently in its 7th week). I mention this because its a good reference for Brookes morning nap. She comes with me to this class, and I have had to do some tricky navigation as it conflicts with her nap schedule. When we started, Brooke was taking 3 45-minute naps each day. She was waking up at 7AM (for the day ... she also woke up at 3 or 4 in the morning to eat) and taking her first nap at 9AM. She would last about 1.5 hours between naps. About 1/2 way through the class (so 3-4 weeks ago) Brooke began to be able to last longer between naps. She didnt need her first until 9:30, and then she was going about 2 hours between naps. In the past 2 weeks or so she has essentially moved to a 2 nap schedule. She takes her first about 10AM, but it now lasts 1.5 hours (versus the 45 minute nap) and her second nap around 2PM (also usually 1.5 hours, but not always). Its pretty amazing now much you can see change in just a few weeks!
Nighttime Sleep
For a few weeks now I had a pretty good feeling the Brooke could easily sleep through the night, and was getting up at 3 or 4 really just to see me. I figured I could ignore her when she woke up and she would go back to sleep, but she was always so happy and giggly and thrilled to see me (more so than any other time of the day) that I didnt want to give up that excited greeting (even if it was at 3AM). In the past 2 weeks I have increased Brookes solid-food intake at night. This has obviously filled her up a bit because she drinks less milk before bed (her own choice, not by us giving her less). In addition, she no longer gets up at 3 or 4 to eat again. There are pros and cons to this. She is officially sleeping through the night ... which is good. But, because she doesnt get up to eat in the middle of the night, she wakes up hungry. And since she is hungry, she gets up early. She used to get up at 7 (7:30 on days she really wanted to be nice to me) and now she is always up by 6:30. The other negative is that I no longer get my happy middle-of-the-night greeting. When she gets up at 6:30 she is a bit dazed, and irritable. Since she is so hungry, I cant even change her diaper. She doesnt want to cuddle, or chat, or do any sort of bonding. She must eat immediately ... the little girl is all business :)
Eating
For the first year, babies get most of their nutrition from milk. When she was born she was eating every 2 or so hours (even at night). That moved to 3 hours...and now its every 4 hours (or longer). Brooke is now on two "meals" per day, a Breakfast and a Dinner. For breakfast she eats rice cereal and a fruit. For dinner she eats two different vegetables, probably about 3/4 of a cup of food. Each new food she tries she has to have for at least 3 days to test for allergies ... so we introduce one at a time. So far we have had: apples, pears, sweet potato, butternut squash, zucchini and peas. She vetoed peas the 1st time and had them again last night. She wasnt thrilled, but her reaction was not as severe. Whether she likes them or not ... she has to eat them 2 more times so we can officially rule them to be "safe". After that we are onto green beans!
By 9 months Brooke should be on 3 meals a day. I dont think we will have a problem with this since she is already eating 2 meals at 6 1/2 months :)
