Chronicles of a New Mama (Part One)

Where do I even begin?? Becoming a mama has completely changed my life... for the better, but it is HARD! I'm so blessed to be able to stay home and be able to experience every milestone along with her. Sometimes those milestones though will make you a little crazy.

speaking of  an exciting milestone... we tried the shopping cart cover
yesterday for the first time at the grocery store... where is my
little baby? I see for sure a big girl now!



• First it all started with figuring out what the heck a growth spurt was... those happen frequently and you will know it when it happens... they get extremely clingy and want to nurse/eat constantly. For little C that happened at 2 weeks, 6 weeks (this one was a biggy!), 3 months and 4 months. Here we are now at 5 1/2 months and I'm thinking that another will be in our very close future.
• Second, I tried to figure out sleep training. After Charlotte went through the "4 Month Sleep Regression" at 4 months, I decided to loosely sleep train her at 4 1/2 months and to my surprise she did amazing! I based my sleep training on Dr. Ferber's method of going in at timed intervals to soothe her until she could learn to self-soothe herself. I can now put Charlotte down for bed following her bedtime routine flawlessly without her crying. She will now sleep for 6-7 hours until waking up to nurse again. I'm not ready to night wean her yet but we will try it at 6 months.
• Third, here we are with naps. I'm currently working on "nap training" Charlotte. She was a champ with napping up until a few weeks ago (she would nap 1 hour to sometimes 2 1/2 hours)and now here we are all of a sudden with the "45 minute intruder" or sometimes even a 18 to 22 minute nap... which is not a nap in my book, especially when she wakes up unhappy and crying. The end of the first sleep cycle is 45 minutes and the "45 minute intruder" is when they wake up after that first cycle and not go back down. This is so confusing to me because Charlotte knows how to self-soothe at night so why can't she do it at nap time?! I can now almost set a literal timer and at 45 minutes she will wake up and not go back to sleep. All the books and websites say that if a baby wakes up crying then they are not ready to be up. So.... here we are with the 2nd day of "nap training" and I'm documenting everything (her eating, playing, and sleeping times... especially her waketimes during naps).

my documents of eating, playing, sleeping and waketimes



• I've read that if you miss the "window" of opportunity of optimal time then they will either go down for a nap overtired or you might put them down too early and they will cry because they aren't ready. What the heck?? So how are you supposed to do that?? So either you will have a baby that naps too short because they are overtired or not ready. My whole goal is to get her to nap well, go down easily (without crying) and stay asleep until she wakes up happy.

I'll let you know how the rest of this week goes with nap training... it's a little like being under house arrest here. We aren't going anywhere and we are trying to avoid minimal disruptions to her day so we can get this under control and maybe on some kind of a schedule. Here's how Lucy feels about this whole "nap training"...

Wish Charlotte could learn from Lucy about naps... hehe!



My next post "chronicles" will be about getting your baby on a schedule and sticking to it, and oh yeah that scary thing that happens anywhere between 4-6 months...solids.