News from the Beyond: Abby is 2 Months old!

... and is gracing us with some really nice smiles!

They are hard to catch on film - she tends to offer one and then will not be cajoled into repeating it.

The big news of the past week is that I found a way to calm Abby down during her evening fits of colic. From about 5-7 weeks, she was crying bloody murder every night from 6 to 9pm. I tried everything and everything I did seemed to make it worse. Even holding her close. And even leaving her alone for a few minutes. She was clearly overstimulated and nothing helped. It was extremely wearing and it was starting to really get to me. As well as keeping Jake up and annoying all of us through the repercussions of that. So I did some research and between 2 books with hugely different philosophies, I found a solution.

Book #1 was the Baby Whisperer. Actually it was getting the second book in the series that did it. I used the first with Jake but needed a refresher on finer points. I ended up rejecting a lot of it for now, at least, but I think quite useful is the notion that babies need a routine that repeats itself at regular intervals throughout the day. You can be really flexible, but the pattern is the same: eat, activity, sleep. I was doing the cycle already (And Abby has been fed on demand, but has naturally followed a nearly perfect 2 hour cycle during the day since about 3 weeks - she eats every 2 hours) but I had not paid attention to Abby's sleep pattern. When I actually looked at what she was doing, I realized she was not sleeping more than in 20 minute chunks all day long! Sometimes she was up for 2 full eating cycles in a row. Not because we were keeping her awake, but because she couldn't settle herself to good sleep. By 6pm, she was beside herself tired. And on days where we took car trips and she slept longer, the colic crying was reduced. I realized I needed to help her sleep more and better during the day.

(Note: I tried the calming techniques in this book first and they didn't work at all - in fact, they made things much worse. I think they are much better suited to older babies, despite all the hoopla in the book about getting babies on a 3 hour, crib sleeping routine from when they are three days old. Abby wanted none of it!)

Book #2 was The Happiest Baby on the Block.
This book has saved my sanity. It has a very long intro to some very simple techniques about how to quiet and calm a crying baby. Unlike everything else I tried, it works! And it works fast too, which is amazing. By doing the 5 S's in this book (they are listed in the materials I got from the hospital when she was born but the extra instructions in this book make all the difference), I can quiet Abby in 3 minutes flat, and often have her asleep in 10. The key to all of it is a very tight swaddle, which I had stopped doing at about 2 weeks. She protests, but I was wrong to listen. She is, in the lexicon of the Baby Whisperer, a spirited child, and is able to work herself into a frenzy just by letting her arms flail around. Without that disturbance, and with some other distractions for her little brain, amazing things are happening!

Now I regularly put Abby in her pjs around 6 pm right before Jake comes upstairs to go to bed, and then when she starts her colic caterwauling, we go downstairs, I swaddle her and do the other S's and she is asleep in less than 10 minutes every time. I put her in her swing in the den with me (swinging is an S!) and then at bedtime I move her to her bassinet. For the last 6 nights she has stayed asleep from 6:30 to midnight or so this way! Last night she went until 2 am! I am amazed. Thank you to Harvey Karp for this simple but powerful little book. I have used other ideas in the book to help Abby sleep during the day too - I feel like I know what she needs at this age better than I ever did before. She now has regular naps in all sorts of places: swings, bouncy seats, car seats, crib; whatever is convenient for us with the right technique works for her too. It has made me feel like a supermom. I know I can quiet her with these techniques at any time, day or night, and she will be happy.

So, that's been my big obsession of late. Here are some photos from the past 2 weeks:

She likes her baths now very much. After the first one, during which she yelled, they've all gone well. I tend to do them in the morning, right after my shower, when the bathroom is warm and full of steam. I try to clear her nose this way every morning too - she sits in her swing and naps while I shower. She's been having a terrible time breathing at night and steam is so much easier than the aspirator (which makes her howl).

I didn't realize how much her eyes are glued to me until I saw these pictures. She will stare into my eyes intensely sometimes during her meals.

An interesting expression!

This is Abby's official 6 week couch photo. We did this with Jake, taking his picture every week on the couch with his stuffed giraffe. The minute I put her on the couch, Abby got stiff as a board and screamed. It was such a pleasurable experience I have somehow forgotten to do it since!

I like this one. You can see how chubby she's getting, as well as more alert and coordinated. She does try to hold her bottles about half of the time, and actually does quite often! And I love this little sailor outfit.