Playing catch-up

Due to a busy end-of-the-week, a wonderful weekend guest, and internet outages, I haven't been very good about blogging, so here's a quick update on all things Baby MJ.

On Thursday, I met up with Connie Jones, who was my mentor during my student teaching and is now a great friend. Her son and daughter-in-law gave her grandbaby #1, Charlotte Lee, in late February, and she was anxiously awaiting grandbabies #2 & #3, twins, her daughter's firsts, due beginning of May. We had just arrived at the Westerville Rec Center to stroll our babies around the jogging trail when she got an exciting call. Lyndsey's water broke! They weren't sure how long it would take for the babies to come, so Connie and I went ahead with the walk. While we strolled, we talked about baby milestones. Charlotte is sleeping through the night, at a mere two weeks older than MJ. Connie had suggested this tip to her daughter-in-law to make this miracle happen: stir a tablespoon of rice cereal into the baby's last bottle of the night. Now, I'd read about people doing this, and had also read that the trick doesn't work, and said articles advised against it, suggesting that the baby will sleep as much as she needs and will begin sleeping longer stretches when nature allows her. However, later that night, I talked to my mom and she said she used to do the same thing for me, and I was sleeping through the night by the time I was one month old. My conclusion: screw nature. I'm giving the rice cereal a shot.

My BFF, Kristen, flew in from Georgia on Thursday night. I picked her up about an hour after I talked to my mom, so I didn't get a chance to get any cereal. I had told Kristen about all of my baby sleep issues, so I'm sure she was excited to experience them for herself. ;)

It didn't take long for her to get the full MJ treatment.

Since Kristen's flight didn't get in until 10:30, MJ had her sleep routine (bath, bottle, book, bed) before we left to pick her up from the airport. Instead of putting her into her cradle or crib to sleep, I put her into her car seat, and she slept like an angel from the time we got into the car until we got back home. Then, it was apparently play time.

MJ was up every hour to two hours.

Poor Kristen.

Friday was a better day. I guess MJ was tired after her performance the night before, so she literally slept all day on Friday. I had to wake her up every three hours to eat, but she immediately went right back to sleep each time. Part of her sleepiness was due to the fact that we kept her moving. We were either in the car or pushing her in her stroller pretty much all day. We hoped that all that day-sleep wasn't going to ruin her (and our) night-sleep, so to make sure, we bought some rice cereal during a quick trip to BabiesRUs.

That night, eager to experiment, we gave her a soothing bath (during which MJ totally peed all over Kristen's jeans and sweatshirt - I guess she needed christening), then gave her the spiked bottle of (what we hoped would be) magic sleep elixir. She wouldn't even wake up when I sat her forward for a burp! She slept beautifully from about 9pm to 2am, nursed and had two ounces of supplement, then slept again until 7:30am! Success!

On Saturday, MJ was back to her old non-napping ways, but she still managed to sleep from 10 - 3, then from 3:30 - 7:30 that night. Finally, Sunday was another day of napping. I think she's deciding that she's only going to nap well every other day. Honestly, if she keeps up this nighttime sleeping pattern, I'm okay with the every other day good-napping.

Now, if only we could drop that middle-of-the-night feeding.