After a placid and happy couple of months during which there wasn't much in the way of major developmental milestones to notice (she mostly just drooled more, and slowly got better at sitting up), Dorothy suddenly seems to be kicking things back into gear. Within the last 24 hours we've had a couple of cool things happen.
First, Dorothy was sitting up unassisted for a relatively long time. But the cool thing is that, while sitting, she looked down at a toy block, reached for it, grabbed it, picked it up, and then put it into her mouth. So she was effectively doing three things at once. That may not sound like much to you, Mr. I'm-An-Adult-With-A-Fully-Developed-Brain, but for a baby it seems pretty impressive. She now has enough spare brain power to be able to leave the "sit up" control function idling in the background while grabbing stuff and getting it to her mouth.
Second, Dorothy's got a tooth. Or maybe two teeth, it's hard to tell. But this morning, while rubbing my finger over her lower gum, I noticed something that felt sharp. It was hard getting her tongue out of the way long enough to see, but we think we saw a tiny white bump down there. And Krissy at daycare felt Dorothy's lower gum (with rubber gloves on, because they're very good about controlling germs) and agreed that it's a tooth.
The sudden appearance of teeth (well, nubs at the moment) may explain her odd sleep behavior last night. When I picked Dorothy up from daycare, she'd just started napping. With only 20 minutes asleep before I took her home, I tried getting her to nap around 6:30pm. She'd sort of fall asleep, then she'd cry out, and half wake up. I'd soothe her, and she'd be instantly back asleep. I went out to fix myself some dinner, and she'd keep occasionally crying, but by the time I got in to see her, she was already quiet and back asleep again. This went on for more than 15 minutes before she was finally asleep and quiet for good. Perhaps it was the teeth that were irritating her.
But then she slept, and slept. I'd expected her to wake up within an hour. We decided not to wake her for a feeding. She wound up staying asleep until nearly 10:30pm, which means she was asleep for 4 hours and had gone almost 6 hours since her last feeding. Elizabeth nursed her, and Dorothy went right back to sleep. Then she slept for 7 hours - a new record!
I'm not sure we can expect this new, longer sleep cycle to be the new norm just yet, since it may be tied into a growth spurt (of teeth instead of overall) or something. But it sure was nice...
Posted by Tom Nugent at August 20, 2004 12:29 PM