8 months!

Eeks time really flies. I have friends who delivered their babies after me who are already going back to work, and I cannot imagine how that must feel. I'm sososososososo thankful that I am able to stay home to look after babyAC. 

Anyway, a quick update. 

- We're trying sleep training and it takes him about half an hour to get to sleep. About 3 hours later, he wakes up once for a feeding, then manages to sleep for another 6 hours or so till the morning. He has another feed, and sleeps for another hour or two. 

- He can crawl forward now, but still not fully on his arms and legs. He'll put his head down, and scoot his legs forward, and his arms pushes him forward when he lifts his head. Heheh. However, his preferred mode of getting around is by "walking". He still can't balance himself, but he loves when we hold him up so he can "walk" around. His legs are constantly kicking too. 

- He loves his fruit, especially banana, papaya, and durian. Apple makes him poop so we feed him applesauce when he hasn't done a poo in a few days. He's ok with vegetables like carrots and brocoli, but I have to admit I've stopped making veg purees and just steam them. Sometimes when I eat yong tau fu, I may give him some of the cooked soy beans which he likes too. 

- It's time to shop around for a pre-school for when he turns 18 months. I'm still undecided at what age we want to put him in a pre-school, but probably somewhere between 18-24 months. The waitlists are long though, since there are so many young families around here. 

- Still no signs of any more teeth, but he is using the two little lower teeth to good use. He can bite off (scrape off, rather) little chunks of food, leaving little dents in whatever we feed him. It's quite cute. 

- The babbling! He now says bababa quite a lot, sometimes hababa. I'm still waiting for him to say mama. Hehehe. He's startes blowing raspberries again, so sometimes he'll start going ppfffbbbtttt and his face will be covered in saliva. 

Can't imagine that he has been outside of my belly for almost the same amount of time that he's been inside, and that's so amazing. I'm so blessed to have this wonderful family.  

Sleep Training

Ah. Sleep training. There are so many different schools of thought with varying methods on how to go about this. But one thing was common, it's important for your baby to learn how to fall asleep on his own at some point. 

The past one or two weeks have been quite rough at night. Not sure why babyAC wasn't sleeping as well, and would wake up crying and would require a lot more soothing and rocking to get him back to sleep. And he was waking up more and more frequently, almost every hour. I was exhausted and he wasn't getting enough sleep. Even his naps were getting shorter, and while he was still a happy and energetic baby in the day, he was getting really cranky in the evenings. 

I attempted to sleep train him on Wednesday night using the Ferber method. The idea was to let the baby cry for 3 minutes, then soothe him, and if he cried again to wait for 5 minutes, then 10 minutes. I waited 3 minutes, then 5, then broke down crying at the third set after only a minute or two. Told +3 that I couldn't take his crying and ran back into the room to hold him. 

It's tough! 

He didn't sleep well, and while I couldn't bear to see him cry, I was also worried that he would get too used to being picked up the moment he started crying. Not really a good habit to cultivate. 

We read about the Weissenbluth method, which was a cry-it-out method that really seemed harsh. No going in to comfort the baby, because repeatedly going back in would keep escalating the baby's crying when he sees you. +3 felt that this was a better method to adopt. 

Last night, babyAC was fussy. We did his usual bedtime routine of a bath and massage, and tried to put him down to sleep. He cried for a bit and I tried leaving him, but finally gave in to nurse him and he fell asleep. However an hour later he was awake and crying. 

+3 said to let him cry so I left the room, bracing myself. It was probably one of the hardest things I've done as a mother, hearing my baby cry and not comforting him. I was sobbing on the couch while +3 was comforting me. Twenty to twenty five minutes later, the crying subsided and babyAC was "singing" his sleep-song (long waaaaaaa waaaaaaa waaaaaaa sounds) and half an hour after he started crying it was silent in the room. We went in to check and he had fallen asleep! 

He slept for 5 hours and woke up, and I nursed him, and put him back in his crib. And he went right back to sleep for another 4.5 hours and is still sleeping. Woohoo! 

I don't know if how long this is going to take but I'm glad he is getting a few hours of sleep at a stretch again. Let's hope he sleeps better and easier! 

Out of Sorts

Sleep deprivation is an interesting thing to experience. Today, I paid my credit card bill twice, took a video of my receipts when I was planning to take a picture, and gave babyAC an empty sippy cup. I need to sleep. 

Run!

Woah it's been yonks since I did any actual exercise (before pregnancy perhaps?) and today I decided to go downstairs and either run or swim. I'm not as exhausted these days taking care of babyAC, and my nanny comes over to help on weekdays so I figured that I don't have any excuse not to use the facilities here. Especially since we are paying a pretty penny for maintenance. 

It started to drizzle so a swim wasn't a very good idea. Dusted off my running shoes instead, dug up my running clothes and headed downstairs. 

For a first run in forever, I think I did pretty OK. Completed about 3.6km in half an hour, inclusive of warm up and cool down walking. I'm knackered and my legs feel like jelly, and I'm about to pass out soon, but I'm glad I did it. Now let's try to do this more often!