Grace in the Evening

Well, it's been a rough couple of days for the new Mom. The other night, nothing would calm Grace enough to keep her asleep. She would go to sleep in your arms, but put her down and she would wake-up. This is all fine and good in the afternoon when I can hold her for several hours. But not between the hours of 11 pm and 5 am. Like most babies, she has her days and nights backwards.

So, we did a little research to see what we could do to help her understand that night is for sleeping. There's a whole list of things you can do and we have adopted a lot of them. For example, at night, we keep the room fairly quite and don't do anything to stimulate her when she's eating (no talking to her, no playing with her, no TV, ...). The hardest one is letting her cry for 5 minutes. We only do this after she's been fed and held for an hour and checked to make sure nothing else is wrong (no fever, no wet diaper, not hot, ...). The first time, it only took 3 minutes and she was out. I think I cried more than she did. Last night she cried (half-heartedly) for 5 minutes so I went to her and gently rubbed her head. She went straight to sleep. No crying at all after the 3:30 am snack. It's only the meal between 10:30 pm and 11:30 pm that is the issue. I think she's figuring it out. Or maybe we are figuring it out together. I think it's more traumatic for me than for her.

She is defintely her mother's child. Evenings are my time as well. Here she is during one of our evening play sessions. She spends some time on her tummy and some time propped-up on the Boppy to let her look around. When she's propped-up, I read to her and we play with our hands and feet (OK, really her hands and feet). It's such fun!

The green pacifier is the one she was given in the hospital. We'll have to keep that one. She doesn't use the pacifier a lot. Only right before a meal or right after. Even then, you have to be with her or it pops out after 10-15 seconds. You spend most of your time giving it back to her. She never really goes to sleep with it. She's a lot of fun. We are enjoying every minute we get with her.