And Then EVERYTHING Changes

I felt like I was starting to get the hang of this motherhood gig. Canon would wake up around the same time in the morning, and then he'd need a nap at predictable hours. He was basically awake for a little over an hour and then slept for about and hour, then awake for just over and hour and then sleep for about an hour...on and on through most of the day. Sometimes he'd go shorter or longer, but it was easy to tell which he needed when. Well...then he hit the 3 month mark, and everything changed.

I wasn't sure what was going on... is he teething? is he just transitioning from several naps to only a couple naps per day? is he becoming too reliant on us to put him to sleep that he can't soothe himself back to sleep on his own? The questions could probably keep going, but either way, Canon is growing older and his sleeping patterns are changing. He now stays up for at least 2 hours at a time, and his first morning nap seems to be just a catnap. Then again, maybe I'm just not timing things right. There are so many things I still have to figure out about this being a mom thing. Today he slept for about 40 minutes before he woke up again after being up for 2 hours. I knew that wasn't enough of a nap, but I realized that he hadn't eaten since for a long time. So he nursed for a while and then fell right back asleep. Phew! His nap turned out to be about 2 hours by the time he was really ready to get up. YAY! He does still sleep, so that's the good news.

The bad news is that I was expecting that by now I'd be getting more sleep at night. He used to wake up about twice for feedings in the early morning hours. Now he seems to be waking up every 2 hours again, and I'm not sure why he doesn't just sleep as long as he used to. The first few times that he woke up several times in one night I figured it was because he was cold. His room has 2 windows in it that are not very good at keeping out the cold of winter, so we have a space heater aimed into his crib. On really cold nights I turn up the heater. The more recent times that he gives us a bad night I notice that he seems quite warm, not hot enough for me to actually undress him so that I can take his temperature under his arm, but warm enough to think he might have a slight fever. Turns out, he's been showing several signs of teething. I've been giving him doses of baby Tylenol when I feel that he's warm and really fussy and I can't figure out what else it might be. Usually within 2 minutes he's no longer fussy or irritable.

I don't really know if he's teething or not because I can't find any places on his gums where a tooth may be cutting, and he doesn't act irritable everyday. I figured that if his gums were hurting on one day, they'd be hurting every day until the tooth cuts through. Maybe he just gets random fevers or I dress him too warmly for sleep. Either way, I feel bad when he's upset and there's nothing that I can do to help him. Thankfully it doesn't happen all the time or even every day. So far he seems to be a very happy boy, and that makes me glad.

It used to be so easy to get Canon to fall asleep at bedtime. I would watch him for cues of tiredness, and then start the routine of bedtime feeding while I read a story (or two or three), prayer, and then put him down. If he didn't look tired enough, I'd read longer, but he usually comes really close tyo falling asleep as I read to him. Now I feel like he takes a lot more coaxing. A few recent nights I spent over 2 hours trying to get him to go down. I now realized that he's probably just going to have a later bedtime. When I try to put him to bed at the usual bedtime, he treats it like a nap and wakes up after an hour or so to play. He just doesn't want to go down before he's ready, and that can get frustrating for both of us. I feel so horrible keeping Canon awake if I think he ought to go to sleep, but I realize that he'll only go to bed when he's ready. It takes me longer than I might like, but I think I'm getting used to this new nighttime ritual. I think he's going to be an 8:00pm bedtimer! We'll see though.

Here are a few more recent pictures of our little guy!

Make a Smilebox collage