Sleep

I snapped this picture during the refluxy/colicky phase, where Rory was fussy in the evenings (from 6-10 or s0). This lasted from about 5 weeks until 9 weeks. Now that she's a little older, she's going to bed at 6 or 7, which is amazing! She usually wakes up at 10 to eat and then again at 3 or 4, and then she sleeps until 7 or 8. So the night sleeping is going great.

Naps, on the other hand, are a different story. She started getting crankier and crankier during the day but refused to nap no matter what we tried, and we couldn't figure out what was going on. I finally checked out Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child from the library, which is based on a lot of sleep research and the author's experience as a pediatrician specializing in sleep issues. From what I understand, it sounds like Rory has gradually gotten sleep deprived. Apparently, babies her age aren't supposed to be awake for more than 2 hours, but they won't necessarily seem sleepy when they're tired. The more tired they get, the fussier they get--there's some sort of hormonal thing going on that makes them fight sleep the less sleep they get. Which makes no sense but definitely seems to be true from our experience.

Over the past few days we've been trying some techniques from the book, and they seem to be working. Things aren't perfect, but they're getting better, and hopefully she'll be back on a normal baby nap schedule soon. And she's a much happier baby now! She only fusses if we've missed her sleepy signals and it's getting close to nap time. So now that we're out of the colicky stage and she's starting to nap again, she's back to being our angel baby (almost). Whew!