About 1 week ago today, I noticed Finn getting fussy all day long and no longer seemed to want to smile and play. He wasn't sleeping much at all, maybe a 1/2 hour here and there during the day, although he was still sleeping well at night. I was finding my days of no sleep and constant fussiness/crying to be overly stressful and decided we needed to make a change. I purchased the book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" to see if it could offer me any insight.
At first I didn't think I liked it because it seemed too strict about sleep (since we have unique scheduling issues) and letting babies "cry it out" which I don't feel is right for infants his age. Basically the introduction made me feel so guilty about my ability to provide healthy sleep for my child and how that would affect him for the rest of his life. I wasn't sure I should continue reading it, but I soldiered on and, once I got into the specifics of the book, I understood more about what he was trying to say and recognized that Finn's recent fussiness and lack of interest in play might be due to sleep deprivation.
So, I reviewed the book "Happiest Baby on the Block" from the perspective of helping my baby sleep (which I discovered was the entire point of that book in the first place, although I had only used it as a way to stop crying). This included giving more opportunities to suck and swaddling with arms in. I was hesitant about the swaddling at first, because in the past he had seemed so resistant. So I started with just one arm in and one out, with wonderful results. Almost immediately, he was able to sleep for longer that 1/2 hour, because he wasn't startling himself awake! Then, instead of always trying to rock him to sleep (which I've only had limited success with) I started using the pacifier. He still won't take it right away and it usually requires me laying down with him to hold it in his mouth for a while until he figures out to get a good grip on it, but once he does, his eyes and body almost immediately relax.
So, with these efforts, he started sleeping.....a lot! So much that it almost seems too much. The schedule was erratic at first. I decided that every time he got fussy, I would go through my check list: Is he hungry? Is he wet? Is he uncomfortable/in pain? If the answer to all these questions was "no" then I began assuming he was tired. I started swaddling him right away when he would fuss after feeding and that calmed him quickly and with a little extra soothing, sleep soon followed most of the time.
Now the hope is to get on some sort of regular napping schedule. Today has been good, so far. He napped for 2 hours in the morning, was up for nearly 2 hours (and played with me for part of that time, which hasn't happened in nearly a week) and is now down for another nap, which as been going on for 1 1/2 hours so far. Hopefully, when he wakes up, he'll eat and want to play some more!
He's been going through an interesting (slightly heartbreaking) phase right now where he's on a Mommy-strike. He does not want to be held by me unless I am nursing him or he is extremely tired. I've had to adopt a new strategy in this case as well to keep him calm. So, after I fed him and changed his diaper mid-morning today, he immediately started to fuss when I picked him up off the changing table and held him to my body, so I put him in his bouncy chair for a bit and walked away. He calmed immediately and began to look around. After a few minutes, I sat next to him on the floor and made smiley faces and talked to him, to which he responded by smiling back. So far so good. So I tried to take it a step further and take him out of the chair for some Tummy Time (which hasn't happened with success for a week). He did pretty well on his tummy, but he still didn't want to lift his head much. I put up the toy bar Scott and Kim gave us and gave it a rattle to see if I could get his attention. It worked a little, he at least turned his head to look at it, although he did so by smooshing his face across the floor rather than picking up his head. Once he saw it (he smiled at the spinning wheel thing) he lifted his head a little but not much and got mad quickly. I then turned him onto his back and held it over him to see if he would play a little longer. He didn't pay too much attention to it at first but then he started kicking his legs and arms and he hit the ball with a bell in it. After a look of surprise, I got a big smile and several more after that every time he made contact with that bell. I took the crinkly butterfly off for him and tried to put it in his hand so he could feel it and make noise with it. He seemed less interested in that than the bell.
One thing I did notice while we played is that he seems to be preferring to turn his head to the left. At first I thought he was just preferring to look at the light coming in from the window, so I did a little experiment and turned him around so he would have to look to the right to see the light. He still kept his head to the left. I've noticed he's been sleeping with his head to the left as well. So, while we played, I tried to put the interesting things to his right and gently turn his head in that direction. He didn't fuss about it, but he would quickly turn his head back to the left again. Its something I'll have to work on, I guess. It's funny, because when he was first born, he only turned his head to the right and I was worried about the same thing. I did nothing to correct it at that time, so maybe I'll just keep an eye on it and ask his doctor at our next appointment.
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