Happy 5 Months!

Happy 5 Months Aubrey!

We had our 4 month check up late and know that almost 2 weeks ago she weighed 15 lbs 6 oz. Which was a little off than what I guessed! She is 25 1/4 long. Both are in the 70th something percentile. The doctor told us to go ahead and start introducing solids. So she tried some oatmeal this month and has been introduced to carrots, sweet potatoes, peas and applesauce. Her favorite is the sweet potato. She says "Mmmmm" when she eats it. I just tried peas today... she is not a fan!

This past month we accomplished a major milestone (as I like to call it). She now naps all by herself in her crib!!! Many of you know that this is a HUGE deal to me because up until a couple weeks ago she would only nap when being held. Every single time we put her down, she would wake up and cry and then the whole rocking/patting process of getting her to sleep would have to happen again. This was soooo incredibly annoying, especially in the middle of the night when we spent almost an hour sometimes getting her back to sleep. It became an even bigger issue when she started to roll over at night and would wake herself up. We had to rock her multiple times during the night to put her back to sleep, and hope she wouldn't wake up when we put her down. UGH!

Surprisingly, this was fairly easy to fix. It's almost as though one day it just "clicked" for her. One morning for a nap I decided to put her in her crib awake and see if she would fall asleep by herself. I knew that learning to sooth herself to sleep was the key to all the night time wakenings. She fussed for maybe 10 minutes and then she was out! OMG! I was so shocked. So all day I did that and after a week she pretty much got the hang of it. Sometimes for naps she needs to be patted on the back to fall asleep but she is becoming better every day at soothing herself to sleep. I seriously drove myself nuts with reading all of these books written by "experts" to help teach your baby to sleep better. They stressed me out more than anything else. I realized that all it takes is common sense and knowing YOUR child. The only good advice I got was this:

Rolling over, crawling, walking, etc. does not just happen over night. Babies practice these skills every day until they are mastered. Learning how to sooth oneself to sleep is also a skill that must be learned. How do you expect a baby to learn if they are always being rocked/held to sleep? Give your baby the chance to practice and learn!

Here is a silly little video of her in her jumperoo (you can ignore my over the top mommy voice :) --