Sleeping... part 2

Over the last few weeks we've introduced a bottle of formula around the last feed time. It seemed to make a difference for a short while, and then, it seemed that it didn't and baby girl continued to wake every three hours even after taking 9 oz! The health visitor advised us to keep trying, and that she couldn't really be hungry three hours after such a large feed. It seemed to me to be more habit than hunger that was waking her up, so we spent the last week or more trying to rock her back to sleep when she wakes in the night, and, when that failed, at least it meant we had extended the period between the feeds slightly. Over the last few days she seems to be improving. We've had a couple of good nights where she slept from 7pm through till 7am, waking only once during this time for the bottle feed. A few more nights like this would be great.

Meanwhile she is just lovely during the day - she's making all kinds of expressive new vowel sounds and gurgly noises that are just wonderful to hear - and she is obviously delighting in this new found voice of hers.

Sleeping beauty..

We've had a couple of breakthroughs in terms of sleep recently and are just hoping this lasts. Firstly, after a couple of weeks of night time feeds every 1 1/2 to 2 we've both been looking and feeling like new parents again. The health visitor suggested that now it might be an idea to start introducing one formula feed around our bed time to see whether it made Jessamie sleep any longer. Although I was initially reluctant to do this we gave it a try and have had positive results. We decided not to wake her, but to wait until she woke up herself - this has varied from around 10pm to as late as 1.00am. Not only did she take it eagerly, but she took much less time to feed, then settled quickly and for 5 hours the first night and for almost 7 hours last night.

The other major breakthrough we're calling "sleep by bunny" - basically she is now able to sometimes get off to sleep without thrashing around and fighting it when she senses she is going into her cot if we give her a soft toy to cuddle. Her current favourites are her little pink teddy (thanks aunty Sue!) and a bunny hand puppet (thanks to Jo and Alex!). See picture! I'm having particular fun with that one, and feel I might be able to get a job as a children's entertainer. The red cow is still a favourite, but as it has a bell in it its best kept away at bed time!

Grandparents

Here are some recent pictures of the grandparents - both Nanny and Grandad and Mami and Papi have enjoyed visiting recently, and little Jessamie has really enjoyed being the centre of attention!