It seems like Dorothy did a whole bunch of stuff yesterday. Rolling over, feeding herself, sleeping on her tummy, and staying up all night - it was quite a day!
In the morning, I gave her some tummy time and tried to get her to learn to roll over. She'd done it twice in five minutes a couple of weeks ago, and then not at all (at least not without major assistance) since then. Yesterday morning changed all that. She rolled from her tummy to her back (with her left side going up and over) at least 8 or 10 times, half of which were without any assistance at all (the other times I put my hand by her foot so she could push off more easily)! She showed her new "trick" to her Mommy last night and to the ladies at day care this morning.
In the evening, when I was giving her a bottle, she tried grabbing the bottle. I placed her hands around the bottle, and she was able to hold it up all by herself (previously, when trying to hold the bottle, she'd push it sideways out of her mouth). She in fact held it for practically the entire feeding (5 ounces). It was only the very end where I had to help hold it, to ensure she got every last drop.
Since she'd been so successful rolling over earlier in the day, and could in fact support her front weight on her hands (i.e., not her elbows - her arms were straight), I decided to try getting her to nap on her tummy. My mom had given her two naps in one day on her tummy back at the end of July (and I just realized that I never wrote that event up). She slept for 1.5 and 2 hours each time that day, which was very impressive, given that Dorothy normally sleeps for 30 minutes per nap. Unfortunately, that night she woke up at 3am and didn't want to sleep. We weren't sure if it was the long naps or other stuff going on at that time that caused her to be so awake at 3am. Anyway, I decided to try again. The first time I got her to sleep on her side, and she went for 50 minutes. Pretty good. For the next nap, I got her onto her tummy, and she slept for one hour and 20 minutes! Great!
Not so fast. I don't know if it's connected or not, but Dorothy proceeded to wake up just before 3:30am. I'd been working late, and didn't get to bed until almost 2am, plus I was 'on duty.' Dorothy wasn't upset at all. She was just very awake, and wanting to play. Giving her a pacifier didn't help her to stay quiet (we don't care in theory if she's awake, as long as she lets us sleep; unfortunately, a babbling baby is hard to sleep through). So I eventually got up (4:30?) and took her upstairs. She proceeded to enjoy sitting up and playing until 5:45am, the little twit. ;-)
The average amount of sleep she's been getting has been averaging around 12 hours per day, plus or minus an hour. One of the baby sleep books we have suggests that babies her age average 14-15 hours of sleep per day, with 2-3 daytime naps of 1-2 hours. So she's not at all "average." But she's been relatively consistent, and seems happy, so we're not stressing too much about her not getting enough sleep (the only stress we have is from the ways her "under"-sleeping causes us to suffer from lack of sleep).
Posted by Tom Nugent at September 1, 2004 09:58 PM