Blogging Backlog: Max's Happenings

Max has been doing really well the past 2 weeks. The first 5 months of his life have been really rough, but I'm beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It just seems like it's been one thing after another with him and it felt like I would never have a good night's rest. It got to the point where I was in such a "funk" that I hated the feeling of not sleeping and all the side effects from it.

I ended up having to go on antibiotics again and the last time that happened it totally made Max's digestive tract go crazy and I really didn't want to go through that again so I just decided to wean him and put him on formula. At first I felt really guilty since I nursed E for a year and I was expecting to do that with Max, but I got over it real fast. It's actually so nice now. I always felt like I was second guessing myself with Max since he is such a sensitive baby...is he getting enough? was it something I ate? is he still hungry? is he just crying because he wants to cry? what am I doing wrong? why isn't he sleeping? Formula has taken a lot of the guess work out of the situation so formula has made things so nice for us!

Since we made the change to formula, I also decided to get this whole sleep thing worked out too. I told Ry that I'm just going to re-read all the sleep books that I read with E and give each book 2 weeks and if it didn't work then I'd move on to the next one. I started off with Babywise and it worked after about 5 days and we are now on to much better naps and nights. I stopped swaddling him, got rid of the reflux wedge that the Dr. had him sleeping on, and I started sleeping him on his tummy. Now he is the easiest baby to put down! Oh my goodness! Maybe this whole no binky thing is a good thing?! I just remember with E having to go put in his binky all the time and since Max has learned to put himself to sleep without one, it makes life so nice! He wakes up once in the night and for awhile he was my alarm clock for boot camp (up at 4:45 for the day), but we're trying to get him to sleep until 6:30. It's going pretty well.

It's amazing how things change when a baby sleeps well! He's happier, I'm happier, who can ask for anything more?! He's starting to roll all over the place and he can sit up a little bit on his own. So we're beginning the phase of mobility. Time to baby proof! He's also enjoying the world of new foods. So far he's tried bananas, sweet potatoes, and apples. Not a big fan of bananas which is kind of surprising, but we'll keep trying.

So Max is doing a lot better these past few weeks and is growing up so much! He'll be 6 months on Sunday! We're going to have to celebrate!