The latest thing that we are working on with Kayden is self-soothing. We read about it in books, we hear about it from friends, and we discuss it with doctors. An infant has to learn how to self-sooth so that they don’t rely on the parents to calm them down. This isn’t something they should be doing from birth, but around 2 months old they suggest that you begin to teach babies the strategies they need to sooth themselves. This is tied to a baby’s sleep cycle and how they naturally wake up every 60 minutes to change cycles. Anyway, this is a real challenge for me. As any mother can attest, hearing her baby cry is very difficult. Miss Kayden is no exception. Hearing her cry makes me want to cry, not to mention it brings my milk! I am getting better about knowing which cry is real and which cry is ‘Come on mom, just pick me up already!’ When there are tears, I can’t get to her fast enough. I think she is starting to work me though!
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[simage=661,144,n,left,right]Well wouldn’t you know it. She just worked me during this post! I had her in the swing and she seemed happy enough. She is learning to watch her mobile and she’s getting better keeping the soothie in her mouth (but she’s still pretty bad!). All it takes though is one smack to the face from one of her seemingly independent arms to ruin everything! Scotty is upstairs sleeping and since he has to get up at 4:00 am, I figure he doesn’t want nor deserve to listen to a screaming infant. So needless to say we are in the “infant stage” of teaching this infant how to self-soothe.

Quick sleeping update:
We have reached or pattern! I get up twice a night- 12 am and 3 am for about 35 minutes. I average about 8 hours of sleep in 3 hour increments. From what I read (Baby 411) we are right on track for a normally developing baby!
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