The Beginnings of Sleep Training

Well, this week Gabe turned 25 weeks, and I decided it was time to try to night-wean him (aka get him to sleep past 3 or 4 in the morning to a more reasonable wake-up time).  Granted, he sleeps well from 7:30pm to sometime between 2-5am typically, but 5am or later would be more reasonable in my opinion!  I am a morning person, but not 3 or 4 in the morning!

I didn't think I'd be the biggest fan on "cry-it-out" (leaving him alone in his crib crying until he fell back asleep), so I am working with waiting a minute or two after he starts crying before going into the room and then soothing him by patting or rubbing his belly and popping his pacifier back in & staying until he falls back asleep.  NO picking him up and NO nursing.  Oy, it's hard!  Previously, when he would wake, I would nurse him and he'd be back asleep in 10 minutes or less.

So, our first night of this not-so-structured sleep training was spent with on and off crying (aka wailing since he has no "soft" volume) from 3-4am.  It wasn't straight through the hour, and, every time I said I would pick him up if he continued one more minute, he would stop and seem to go back asleep.  Finally, he passed back out around 4 and slept all the way till 6:20.

The next night he slept 7:30-5:00.  A fluke; I am now sure of it!

The third night, he woke at 3am again, but it only took a half hour of on & off crying to get him to fall back asleep (with my rubbing his belly and putting the pacifier back in).  The next day was Sunday; he took a cat nap during the last half of Mass, but then he had TWO 2-hour-long naps during the rest of the day!  Impressive, since Gabe is more often a cat-napper (20-45 min) and rarely takes naps over an hour.  We'll see how things continue as time goes on...

(Wow, I did not expect to take half of the blog talking about sleep training!  My apologies to anyone who has since nodded off to sleep themselves!  ...But perhaps this is good documentation for when he's an adult so I am able to tell him he was a pain at least for ONE aspect of his infancy!  He really is a good baby overall.)

Gabriel hit a few milestones earlier this week.  He managed to figure out how to roll from his back to his belly (click here for a video) and started making a "pthhhh" noise (that video here; sorry it's a bit dark - tough lighting in the evening with my phone's camera).  I am still working with him on sitting up on his own, but he is much more sturdy than before.  I also found that we can now "dust" a piece of fabric over Gabe's face and get lots of giggles (video here)!

This week we also attended the christening of Hudson (Gabe's Godparents' new little guy).  I have no idea how the ceremony went, as I was the honorary photographer (and I hope Chelsea got at least a few good shots from what I took!) and was kind of distracted with that, but I am sure Deacon Ron did a nice job as usual.  Craig, Gabe, & I dressed to match in various shades of purple (had to use his suit from Auntie Lorene again before it gets too small!). 

[On a side note, I never realized how difficult it is to find something to wear when you are a nursing mom.  I have all these lovely dresses, but many of them are not convenient for nursing.  That's why you'll see that I changed to a more suitable outfit at the after-party in one of the pictures below.  Most tops are ok because you can layer with a nursing tank top, and one shirt goes up as the other goes down to provide a lot of modesty coverage.  But that's definitely not the case with dresses with high necklines!]

Craig & his mini-me

The Kozaczka's awaiting the start of Hudson's baptism ceremony

Gabe & his Godmother at the after-party

Fun at the after-party

Lastly, I decided to pull apart my frozen breastmilk stash and figure out how much I really have (out of curiosity and the fact that I would like to not have to pump during work when I return in August.  Not to mention pumping at night is becoming really tiresome!).  Turns out I have 405 oz in 3-oz bags, plus 2 gift bags full of breastmilk bags of unknown volumes (I am "guestimating" 25+ oz).  So, at about 430 oz, that is about 14 days of milk if Gabe doesn't nurse and takes approximately 30 oz per day.  Too much math for you?  Haha!  I figured out that I can make up at least 2-3 weeks worth more over the summer by pumping at night.  (And if I can get the worm sleeping longer, I can spread out my pumping times and get more sleep of my own!)

Normally, I would add some other pictures from the week here, but I accidentally put a lot of them in the last blog post.  Oh well!  Here are a few I missed:

Halfway into 1st 2-hour nap (via the video monitor)