Sleep! Oh How I’ve Missed You!

It has taken 8.5 months, 2.5 months longer than her brother, but I can now confidently say (*bites lip & frantically searches for wood*) that Millie is sleeping through the night! For the past week, Millie has slept through from about 6.15-6.30 until between 6.15-7am every single night with just one stir around our bedtime for her dummy…in fact, she stirred last night then settled herself back to sleep without the dummy!

WOOOOOOHHOOOOOOOOOOOO! I FEEL HUMAN AGAIN!!!!!!

Forgive me but I feel that deserved to be shouted from the rooftops! With my search for work having begun, I was nervous about struggling to get up at the crack of dawn for work while still getting up in the night!

Strangely, it is now like my body has gone into catch up drive! Wanting to catch up on all that missed sleep from the last 9 months. I struggle to wake up and then feel exhaustingly tired around mid-afternoon! I can even go back to sleep if I wake up early – I never used to be able to do this; once I was awake, I was awake for the day.

Dreams are also on catch up. Not sure if you know this but when you don’t sleep much, you have less REM sleep (which is when we dream). Dreaming is our minds way of processing what has happened during the day and storing new things we have learnt etc. It is important for us to dream. So when we do get a good solid night of sleep, we tend to dream more to make up for the lost dream time before. So I have been dreaming lots of weird and wonderful things but nothing of interest to blog about (you really don’t want to know about how I couldn’t shake poo off my hand do you?!).

Anyway, back to Millie! Other than the sleep, not much else is new. She is eating with vigour, trying everything (EVERYTHING!!!) in site…well as far as she can bend in double & stretch to reach. Still no moving by way of roll, crawl, bum shuffle or commando crawl! Apart from the odd occasion when she rolls back to front in her cot & then complains because she is stuck! For the time being, I am enjoying being able to plonk her somewhere and for her to stay there so, although I don’t want to hinder her moving progress, I am happy for her to do it in her own time.

We have 2 teeth! Two teeny weeny but very sharp little bottom teeth! This is already making a difference with her eating. She actually uses the teeth to rip food off a bigger piece now.

            

Her babbling has a range of dadadadanananananalalalalalagagagagaga now and sometimes she sounds like she is trying to sing or have a conversation with you. So cute!

I feel she is on the verge of clapping. She loves watching what you do with your hands and occasionally brings them together but that’s as far as it goes.

She is at that age where everyone wants to talk to her! Supermarket shopping can double in time as we get stopped by every other person who wants to talk to her. I love it and feel so proud but it does make shopping to a restricted time-limit rather challenging!

Callum is lovely with her and apart from wanting to take ownership of all of Millie’s toys but not so keen to return the favour with his own, he really does love her and looks after her. I really hope (and I can see that it might) that stays with them throughout their lives as they grow up. Seeing them together I know we made the right choice of trying for a 4 year age gap.

I feel so very blessed!…and human!

Millie at 7 Months

 

As Millie is approaching 7 months old (in 2 days) I thought I’d give a bit of an update on how she is doing, aside from the weaning.

Millie has been sitting up well now for about a month, first sitting up at about 5.5 months. She still has the occasional fall so I do still protect her but she is much better at correcting any over-balance.

I feel like we’ve been at the are we, aren’t we teething stage since forever! Second guessing every grump or symptom. Every week is a different teething symptom. Last week was the acidic dribble causing her a sore mouth, particularly where her dummy rubs (she only uses it at night) and crying out randomly in sobbing tears (Millie doesn’t really cry, just sort of grunts when she is tired or hungry so this really breaks your heart), this week is the snotty bum! Still no sign of those blasted teeth though! She has been particularly unsettled today leaving me confused an hour after waking whether she wants to go back to sleep as she only had a short nap last time or whether a couple of hours after her last feed she wants feeding again and only having a couple of ounces.

One thing that I have noticed, where teething is concerned, that is different to Callum is the acidic dribble. Callum wasn’t much of a dribbler at all really but he had the most awful nappy rash. So red raw that it was close to bleeding and took ages to clear up*. Whereas Millie is a dribbler. Millie gets sore around her mouth with dribble rash but doesn’t suffer from nappy rash (*quickly touches wood/forehead*, not so far anyway). I guess that’s it, Callum swallowed his dribble so it caused the rash at the other end.

Back to Millie progress!

One thing I’m loving at the moment is her babbling. I noticed about 10 days ago that she was saying a kind of “dadadadada” which I was most excited to tell Stuart about…and immediately started to counter with saying “mmmmm mmmmm mmmmm” back at her to no avail! But now she also says “lalalalala” and “blablablabla”. I love it, its adorable!

Things that make her laugh are squealing or screaming at her; whispering into one ear or nuzzling her neck. She also loves Round & Round the Garden done on her tummy and then tickling the right side of her neck getting excited as you walk up the fingers to her neck. Oh, and of course, Row, Row, Row the Boat with actions!

She has rolled back to front, properly with no assistance, just the once but yay, she has done it!

Callum is so good and lovely with her. He’ll have cuddles with her and try to get her to hold his hand. He asks to kiss her goodnight when she is going for a nap. He is still quite protective over his toys…just he wait until she starts crawling!

Lastly, to finish on my favourite point, when I pass Millie over for someone else to hold her, she looks at me as if making sure I’m not running off anywhere. The love I feel she has for me at that moment, in that one look, just makes me feel so warm inside and melts my heart.

* Click here for what I tried & what worked on Callum’s acute nappy rash