Monday, October 22, 2007

Signs and smashing mornings

Wren made his first "sign" today. He copied me when I signed 'milk' and then did it again a bit later. I shall wait and see if he figures out he can ask when he wants.

He did well last night. He woke at 3.45am for a nursing and then did the 2 hour sleep till 5.45 but cried out only once and then slept-in until 6.30am. Fabulous. Of course I am now trying to make a theory about this and figure out what, if anything, I did differently. I can't tell right now.

This morning was good in another way. While I was out taking Frost to Zephyrs Joshua installed the clips on the kitchen cupboard doors. This should put an end to Wren's smashing spree. So far has has broken 3 bowls, one saucer and nearly a few glasses. He did the usual rounds of the cupboards but couldn't open any and moved on to ransack the recycling instead.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Baby Sleep and the law of diminishing returns.

It has been a while since I moaned about sleep deprivation but it hasn't been all bliss and 12 hour nights since the white-out. I changed my strategy from attempting to get Wren to sleep longer than 10.5 hours and decided to get him to go to bed later and get the 10.5 hours at a better time for me. Here is what happened:

Bedtime 6pm, wake-up 4.30am
Bedtime 7pm, wake-up 5.00am
Bedtime 8pm, wake-up 5.00 to 5.30am

As you can see there does not seem to be a one-to-one correlation between hours at night and in the morning. In fact, there seem to be diminishing returns. Last night Wren slept for 9 hours and fifteen minutes before being up for the day and that included his usual 3am-ish nursing.

So, here is my theory. Wren sleeps for 2 hours AFTER his early morning nursing. That means that when he was waking at 4.30am he used to nurse at 2.30am. (correct) and now that he nurses around 3.30am he makes it till 5.30am. Last night he woke at 3am (perhaps because there were a few noises at that time since Josh came to bed late probably due to having an X-box 360 and Halo 3 in the house, about which I shall say no more). So, he woke at 5am.

I am cranky.

I think that night weaning is really truly upon us. If he sleeps through that 3am business perhaps he will make it longer in one long sleep.

I am not sure what else to do because I am certainly not keeping on getting up at 5.30am when it becomes 4.30am at the end of daylight saving on Nov 3rd. That gives me 2 weeks to get Wren to a 6.30am waking.

I am grumble-bollocks X2 this morning.