Four month sleep regression

Well it has a name, if that helps (nothing else does).... four month sleep regression is when your previously quite-good-at-sleeping baby loses the plot entirely and starts waking up at all hours of the night. The forums are full of crazed parents trying to cope, with a lot of posts being written at ungodly hours.

Our baby had got as far as sleeping in two five-hour blocks, waking up just once a night for a feed and then happily back off to sleep within 20 min of waking. I was very happy and would have been happy with that for years, if necessary.

And then boom. Now he will wake 5-6 times a night, maybe once every two hours, maybe once an hour. Maybe (just to keep you guessing) he will wake half an hour after you fed him. The first few nights I was in shock. Then we tried to be logical - he would be given a feed at appropriate gaps, say 3-4 hours, and the other times Daddy would wake and put him back to sleep with just cuddles.

Now I just feed him, it's quicker and when you're a zombie it's hard to be logical, let alone start doing maths in your head regarding when he last fed, etc (even if it's just + 2, it's too much for the sleep-starved brain). Two nights of just four hours sleep left me weeping with exhaustion. The third night I dealt with it as best I could and then my husband took him away at 6am and wandered the quiet corridors of a hotel we were staying in (luckily he wasn't screaming) while I got in two extra precious, precious hours sleep. This meant at least I didn't wake up and cry but staggered along to a huge breakfast... carbs are the only thing you want when you're knackered, I'm afraid.

Theories range from they need solids (although weaning is now supposed to start at 6 months), to it being part of their development of new skills, see this post - scroll down a bit where she talks about the Wonder Weeks. Thing is, if it's him developing a new skill I expect something pretty damn amazing at the end of it. Tap dancing would do. 'I love you mummy' spoken clearly and accompanied with a hug might just make up for the lack of sleep.

I'm taking him to an osteopath in the secret hope this might help but who knows. "How long does it last?" ask all the forum posters and the answer seems to mostly be 2-4 weeks, but sometimes people say it's still ongoing months later.

Oh. My. God.

Forget pink and blue, let's go for aubergines

I think little baby girls look super-cute in pink frills, as do boys in blue sailor suits. But to be honest I also think either of them look great in orange, yellow, green, red...  and I think white and mushroom beige are pretty lazy excuses for 'unisex' clothing (take a look at BHS's unisex page if you want to see what I mean - dull or what?). Teddies and bunnies, robots and dinosaurs are great, but surely there are other things that can be printed on a babygro?

If you look for alternative baby clothes what you get is skull prints and funky slogans... amusing once in a while but really all I want is a wide range of fun colours and maybe a bit of variety or humour in the patterns: how about kitchen utensils, DIY tools, flowers, leaves and trees (proper botanical ones), fruit and veg, houses, cityscapes, proper animals not just cartoons, book covers and so on? Have some imagination, designers!

Anyway, rather than just moan about it I've done a bit of research and here are some great baby clothes sites that are definitely heading in the right direction (hats off to Sweden and fellow countries who seem to have a more interesting approach to designing for babies): it's a shame they're all more expensive than the standard 3 babygros for £15 from Mothercare (Mothercare, surely you could do this - a print is a print whether it's carrots or bunnies?).

Polarn O. Pyret Swedish - really fun clothes and very different cuts, a friend gave us a bright green and blue suit with a moose print, in a vaguely Asian-style cut, very cool.

Busy Peas I LOVE this, mostly because my husband is mad keen on gardening. The '100% home-grown' is cute enough but it's the peas, carrots and most of all aubergines that I think are brilliant.

Nordic Kids Again, the Nordic lot have it....

Impkids Nice, some unusual colours etc.

Tootsa Mac Ginty The world is full of colour is their calling card and sure enough all their clothes are unisex and very nice too. Animals (foxes, ducks etc), smiles, dots and British animals make up the patterns. 

Recognise yourself?

Brief one as Xmas parties and writing deadlines taking it out of me but - I defy any new parents of babies to watch this sketch by Mitchell and Webb and not recognise themselves after a night of bad sleep!

An Amateur Father Christmas

The first Christmas stocking my parents (sorry, Father Christmas) provided for me was not entirely successful. On Christmas morning they eagerly laid out the stocking in front of me and helped me unwrap the first gift. I was entranced not only by the gift but by the wrapping paper and happily began playing with it. They tried without success to interest me in the contents of the rest of the stocking. How easily a baby is pleased! My husband and I read to each other sometimes and worked our way through the Little House on the Prairie books (much better than the TV series!). In those, a memorable Christmas stocking contains a stick of rock, a tin cup and an orange, and Laura and her sister Mary are amazed at the bountiful gifts. Consumerism has obviously moved us all on a pace, but not babies.

But it would hardly be right for our baby's first Christmas to pass by without a stocking. As amateur Father Christmases, we are rather feeling our way through the process. My stepdad, who is Swiss, arrives in time to show us how it's done by providing a St Nicolas boot on the 6th December - one of my husband's wellies about the same height as the baby filled with chocolates, satsumas and nuts which we helpfully offer to eat on the baby's behalf.

We discuss stocking-filler ideas and in the end, deciding not to go too mad since he won't notice anyway, I order three different little musical rattle-type things, a little book of baby signs (I know, I know, baby-signing, how Yummy Mummy is that? But you know, if he could tell me what he wanted it would help sometimes!) and a little set of finger puppets. And of course there will have to be satsumas, chocolate coins and nuts. Otherwise the Christmas Police will get us.

I say little items. The rattles come in a massive box but thankfully I can extract them and repackage them into three individual dinky-sized items. It turns out the book, which online appeared to be cute and small, is actually massive (about two hand-lengths square) and the finger puppets come with an A4 sized song to sing. So neither of them is going to fit in a stocking.

Whoops, a stocking! He doesn't actually have one, I realised today, so a hasty order has been put in.

Hopefully it will get here before Father Christmas does.

Have Baby, Will Travel

Before our baby was born we loved traveling. We'd been to Japan, New Zealand, Morocco and so on and enjoyed it a great deal. We haven't traveled since he was born (three months) but have booked a few things to build up to it again.

First off a spa break - a member of our NCT group had one - as she said, good food for the grownups, a bar for daddy and massage for mummy plus a pool for baby was perfect. Consumed with envy for what sounded like a well-earned rest as the initial adrenaline starts to wear off we too have booked one - a two night spa break where we each receive three treatments, some friends live nearby for a pub lunch catchup, lovely local food and of course the all-important pool - baby is splashing way too much in his little bath and obviously needs the next size up! Looking forward to that immensely. The hotel is part of a chain (Shire) and they claim to be very child-friendly with things like teeny tiny bathrobes and milk and cookies at bedtime (not sure the baby can cope with that just yet but we'd like them!).

After that comes a trip to Paris via Eurostar (first proper train journey!), to a close friend whose baby is exactly the same age - we've not seen each other since they were born and it will be great to catch up, although we have only booked two nights away as we're wondering what a house with two babies is like!

Then at some point in the spring there will be a long car trip up north to visit the in laws - I hope the old trick of baby + car = sleep will still be working....

And finally: ta daa, the plane trip - probably the most daunting, when we go to Italy to visit some of my folks. This will be a longer stay, plus it will involve multiple forms of transport to get there... and he'll be weaning. Gulp.

Now I am wistfully looking through travel brochures wondering if a longer-haul trip will be possible at some point. Do you go when they're too small to know what's going on? Do you try to choose a destination that will appeal to them (although to a child under 2 probably anything appeals, it must all be utterly amazing and gobsmacking, even the M1)? Who knows, but it would be nice to get back to traveling again.

So I've found a few useful resources while reseraching:

Travel With Children by Lonely Planet - great book, a gift before our baby was born - to give us hope!

Family.com - oddly run by Disney although they list loads of attractions that have nothing to do with them: brilliant for USA trips, also covers a few other international destinations. Useful as they even have filtering by age of child etc.

Baby Friendly Boltholes - quite high-end but if you're desperate for some luxury!

Baby Goes 2 - very highly recommended in the media etc.

And my favourite item so far for traveling is this travelcot which lasts birth-2 yrs old (there's a bigger one too to go up to 4 but presumably by that point they can sleep in a normal bed). It weighs very little (why do most travel cost weigh 10 kgs? Seriously, that's two-thirds of your travel allowance on Ryanair!), folds into a nice little bag, pops up and self-inflates. Our baby has been using it for naps for over a month now, so is totally used to it.

We'll report back on that spa break.... 

It's the way you tell 'em

A baby laughing is an irresistible sound and very hard not to laugh along with. YouTube is overloaded with babies laughing - of which my favourite two clips are the laughing quadruplets (but just imagine when they all cry?) and the baby who laughs at ripping paper. Both are brilliant. Whole commercial campaigns are built around laughing babies.

But babies learn to laugh, and what they choose to laugh at (such as the ripping paper) can be mystifying. Some things, they learn are 'supposed' to be funny from us. My husband, convinced that all babies must love raspberries blown on their bellies, took a deep breath and blew a huge raspberry on our baby's belly. The response was widened eyes followed by sobbing in terror. The poor man had to start all over again with very soft bubbles and work his way back up. Now, apparently, it has become funny.
My baby cousin blinked in confusion when I lightly blew in his face and laughed. But by the fourth or fifth time he was starting to smile and then began to laugh, deciding that since I was laughing it must somehow be a funny thing. You could probably teach them to find all sorts of weird stuff funny.

But some things they decide are funny on their own. I discovered this by accident. While our baby grumbled over teething, I poked about in his mouth to see if there were any teeth showing, which provoked giggles and a wide-open mouth to facilitate my investigations. The inspection has now been built up into a comedy routine. Pulling back his lips from his gums and poking a finger against the gums inside, I keep up a manic running commentary: "What teeth? Where? I can't see any teeth! There are no teeth! You're making it up!" This is apparently very, very funny. I've no idea why but I think future trips to the dentist are going to be a lot of fun.

Lethal combo

A lethal combination of many factors has put a stop to all writing for a couple of weeks.

Teething brought drool everywhere, red cheeks and much grumpiness as well as not feeding properly (gums hurting when trying to feed). I am reliably informed this can go on for months with nary a sign of a tooth in compensation. Joy.

The 12 week growth spurt brought totally screwed up sleep patterns so we're back to twice a night waking after the bliss of just once in 12 hrs... sob. Please bring it back, God.

The 12 wk jabs brought hurting thighs (massive needles in relation to the size of his legs - if it was the same for adults the needles for me would be about 6 inches long) and much pained sobbing. Poor critter.

The growth spurt also meant moving along from swaddles to sleeping bags - something I so far have only cracked for naps (daren't try it at night yet) so a lot of care needed in putting him down once asleep as his arms are free to flail about.

Visitors cheered him up no end (grandparents are awfully good at a lot of fun games) but also proved so distracting that feeding had to be done in a different room and without even the TV on (which used to pass the time agreeably for me during feeds).

Meanwhile the growth has definitely affected his lungs. He always had a fair set on him, now they are amplified as if we'd just moved from acoustic to electric. Where did I leave the earplugs?

In compensation for all this he has learnt to laugh. Mostly at me when I tell him off for disturbed nights.