Time Flies: 6.5 months old

Jack is now six and a half months old. Here's a little recap of what he and we've been up to.

ROLLING OVER

Well, Jack finally learned to roll over - still lazy about it, but he'll roll over by himself if he's prompted and given enough motivation. A friend gave us a tip and said her daughter learned to roll over with the use of a mirror. Within minutes of trying it, Jack rolled over three times - thanks Jaime!

PULLING UP

Jack seems a lot less interested in rolling over and being on his stomach than standing up. He really gets a kick out of it when we offer him our outstretched hands which he'll take and pull himself up to standing. Uh oh.

THUMB SUCKING

Jack puts everything in his mouth and has been gnawing on this fingers and hands for a few months. Recently he has added a new twist to his repetoire and has been sucking his thumb.



BABY SIGN LANGUAGE

We are halfway through our Baby Sign Language series and can sign the alphabet and about 80 signs for a variety of foods, animals, colors, transportation, and words associated with bedtime. We are working on playtime and feelings next. That's the royal "we" meaning Mindy and Tom - Jack will hopefully catch up and begin signing back to us after a couple months.

"Baby" sign language is no different from using the standard American Sign Language with Jack. We say a word verbally and simultaneously sign the word. The idea is to foster a method of communication before he is able to verbally express what he needs, thereby mitigating frustration on everyone's part. Proponents of BSL say it can additionally strengthen the parent-infant bond, contribute to Jack's interest in books, some studies suggest it may accelerate language acquisition, build larger vocabularies, and slightly increase average IQ scores further down the line.

We'll see. In the meantime, it's just plain fun.



SLEEP TRAINING

Jack was a great sleeper from early on and we could always depend on him for 6 solid hours
of sleep, one night feeding, and back to sleep until the next morning.

Since he came home from the hospital, he has been cosleeping with us in our bed or next to it in a cosleeper. This sleep arrangement has been great for all of us - Jack's close proximity allowed Mindy to more easily breastfeed around the clock (especially after a C-section), we felt closer to Jack, and better able to attend to and monitor him.

We put him to bed peacefully awake and has had no trouble getting to sleep. It's staying asleep that has been an increasingly frequent issue in the past couple of months as he's been restless and waking several times a night. Usually a little shushing, patting, popping a pacifier back in, or reswaddling would put him back down again for another hour or so - but, he quickly needed us to soothe him again so he could go back to sleep. And he was increasingly distracted by us talking or walking in the room. The proximity to us now seemed like it was holding him back from staying asleep and robbing him of the deep sleep he needs. We decided it was time to start sleep training and to move him into his own crib in his own room. Before we started, our pediatrician assured us that at his weight and age, he should be able to sleep through the night without a feed, so we weaned him of his night feeding. He was also breaking out of his swaddle several times a night, so we weaned him of his swaddle which would allow him to self-soothe himself with his arms free.

We followed the SleepEasy Solution to sleep training which is a modified "cry it out" method. The first night he woke up several times as usual and we provided reassurance each time that he could get himself back to sleep. The second night was a dramatic improvement when he only woke up once needing reassurance and quickly fell back to sleep again. And on the third night he slept uninterrupted for nearly 12 hours and awoke with a smile that was a bright start to the morning for all of us!