Changing preferences
Her opinions on sleep are definitely changing. This morning when she was tired I layed down with her, nursed her, and then she fussed and pushed me away. Yeah. So I scooted back a foot – still close enough to stroke her hair and put the paci back in when she pulled it out – and let her be. I had to give her my shirt to grab in her hands, but then poof, sleeping baby. I walked out of the bedroom with the biggest “WTF?” look on my face.
Next nap didn’t work quite the same. She’s fighting it: grabbing at me, giving little “I’m so tired!” whimper-cries, nursing, not-nursing. I just have to wait for her to settle down. She’s trying to figure it out, but I can tell she’s a little bit frustrated. Oh, then she got the hiccups. How irritating.
The word of the week is PATIENCE.
She’s recently (like last week) learned how to grab her paci, and she’s obsessed with it now. Which is just so effing irritating because she pulls it out every 30 seconds – and she doesn’t know how to put it back in yet. So it’s *suck suck* *pulls it out* *holds it up and stares at it* *drops it* *cries and roots*. Repeat about ten billion times (slight exaggeration). She does it all day long, but it’s worst when she’s tired because she continually wakes herself back up. Headdesk. I cannot wait until she learns to put it back in. I may cry tears of joy.
But all that being said, it’s kind of cool to see her learning new things, exploring what her hands can do, experimenting with cause-and-effect.
It will be a looooong time before she can put it back. This was the age when we “lost” the pacifier. It got to be too much frustration. Surprisingly, within 24 hours the “need” seemed to have disappeared and they learned to fall asleep without it. Not saying this is what you should do, but it worked for me with both kids.. My nieces on the other hand had pacifiers until they were nearly 4 years old because they absolutely would take hours to fall asleep without it.
Oh boy. If she doesn’t figure it out for a while then, yeah, I could see us losing the paci. Right now I just let her pull it out and play with it and I don’t put it back unless she demands it back (like when she’s tired). She doesn’t necessarily need the paci to sleep, but it’s either that or my boob, lol.
My niece was like this with her paci…so my sister just gave her a 2nd one for her hands and the one in her mouth stayed put for the most part. You might want to give that a try….but overall…sleeping patterns evolve so quickly when they are this young that just as you think you are getting it…things change up. you are right…patience is all you can do right now. She will settle into a new routine sooner or later…just don’t expect it to last too long… :)
kd
Yeah, Erin NEEDED her pacifier at this age. I don’t remember how long it took her to learn to put it back in though. Patrick, at this age, switched to his thumb. I think he just got frustrated by losing it too. lol
I love watching my children learn things. I don’t think it ever gets old, it just gets more complex. Patrick recently mastered the doorknob and is so proud of himself. lol
It only took my daughter a couple of weeks to figure out how to put it in her mouth. They were a frustrating couple of weeks, but we made it through them. We took away her paci around 13.5 months and it was rough for a couple of days and then no problems. Every baby is different…you’ll figure out what yours needs!