Day 1 of nap training has begun. Otherwise known as "go to sleep you tired little monster!" I am going to try and pick up on Radin's "sleepy queues" a bit more now and get him to take at lease one good nap during the day. I keep reading that once a baby gives you his sleep queue (yawning, rubbing eyes, etc) that you should put him down for a nap. BEFORE he gets so tired that he is crying. This is hard. I swear Radin yawns and then instantly goes into crying mode. Then he fights a nap all day long and is over tired and cranky. You can tell his body WANTS to nap; he's yawning like crazy, droopy little eyelids, falls asleep with a bottle, etc. He just fights it so hard. I have been told by our pediatrician that by 4 months babies need to begin falling asleep on their own. This will also help them go back to sleep if they wake up in the middle of the night.
So, Radin was yawning, rubbing his face, and generally looking sleepy. So I gave him a small bottle, which he of course passed out on. ::sigh:: I think doing that sabotaged me a bit. Oops. I then burped him, which woke him up a bit. Now he's getting a bit fussy. I lay him down in his crib with a light receiving blanket on him (it's fairly warm today). I rub his tummy and leave the room.
I can hear him throught he baby monitor as he lightly fusses. He's probably just thinking I set him down to use the restroom and will return immediately. After 15 minutes, he begins to get cranky. I go into the room, reassure him I am still here by rubbing his tummy and sshhhing him. This seems to backfire. He gets crankier. I leave the room again.
Now I am listening to him complain on the baby monitor. He is not outright crying, so I am leaving him alone. He is just fussing and sometimes doing his loud "aahh" noise. Oh and there's hiccups. Damn those hiccups.
This is torture. For me more than him I think. Everything in me wants to go in there and pick him up, feed himt he rest of his small bottle, let him pass out on me, and see how long he sleeps on me.
But that is a bad habit I am forming. I'll give it a few more minutes.
UPDATE: Radin began crying for real...so I went in and picked him up. He went 25 minutes in his crib without falling asleep. We'll try again later.
FURTHER UPDATE: After I picked up Radin from his crib, I went straight to the rocking chari and rocked him. Even thought he rocking chair squeaks incredibly loud, he fell asleep. I then placed him back in the crib. Let's see how long he sleeps.
