Early on when Alethea first came home from the hospital we used a blanket to swaddle her.  That lasted all of a week, since she would always get her arms out.  So then we bought a fleece sleep sack that had a separate wrap part that went around her arms and had a giant patch of Velcro to hold it shut.  About a month later she had figured out how to weasel her arms up and out of that.  It was at that point that we began calling her the Houdini of Swaddle.

Having decided against other swaddling products available in local stores as being too easy for our Houdini to escape from, I went online and found the Miracle Blanket.  There is a lot of nice verbage on their website, but as Peter put it, “It’s essentially a straight jacket for babies.”  It doesn’t have ties, but it does have two flaps that go over the arms and tuck in under the baby and then two longer flaps that you wrap several times around the child to hold the arms securely in place.  Just what we needed.  I ordered one and it worked so well, I went back later and ordered a second.

So we used the Miracle Blankets for about three months, but then she started to get her arms out of it.  I’m not sure how, since often the flaps for her arms would still be tucked neatly underneath her back.  Despite her Houdini like maneuvers, I had decided that we should swaddle her as long as possible, since it really does help her sleep.

But the last straw came the other night when I went into her room at 4am, an hour after Peter had been up to reswaddled our escape artist, and found that she had managed to roll over so many times in her crib that the Miracle Blanket wasn’t even on her, but was instead rolled out in a line across her bed, like some sort of discarded mummy wrappings.

I told her then and there, “That’s it.  We’re not swaddling you any more if it means we have to wake up once an hour to rewrap you.  You’re just going to have to learn to sleep without it.”  And so she is.

Today is Alethea’s five month birthday.  Happy Birthday, Baby!

Since we don’t have another well-baby check up until six months, I don’t have any current stats for height/weight, but I do think she went through a growth spurt the week after her last visit to the pediatrician, so she’s definitely getting bigger!

This month has brought about huge changes in Alethea’s gross motor skills.  At four months, she was just beginning to roll from back to tummy, could only sit if she was really slouched over and supporting herself with her hands and didn’t really seem to be aware that crawling was even a possibility.  Now at five months she can roll over at will, any time, on any surface, even if she is swaddled.  We find her wedged into all sorts of funny positions in her crib and she’s never in the spot I put her down when she wakes up from her naps.  Just this past week or so her sitting has improved so much that she can sit with her back is straight for several minutes and she can even sometimes reach for toys without falling over.

The biggest development though has just happened over the past few days when Alethea has begun to do something of a cross between an inch worm imitation and an army crawl.  She doesn’t get very far very fast, but it is unassisted forward motion nevertheless.  Yikes!  Time to go baby gate shopping.

As far as sleeping and eating go, we are still not on solid foods because every time we try, Alethea ends up with horrible gas and can’t seem to sleep at night. For a while in the middle of the month, I felt like we were making progress with sleeping issues, but after Alethea got sick, everything went bad and even though she seems to be feeling better now, the disruption has caused some regression in her sleeping habits.  As I posted previously, I was hopeful that being able to move around would help her sleep and she does seem to prefer being on her stomach, since that’s usually how she ends up, but it doesn’t seem to have made any change to her inability to sleep for longer periods.

Other than huge changes in her motor skills, this month has continued pretty similarly to the fourth month.  I am still not eating dairy, although I missed cheese so badly in the middle of the month, I had an experimental dairy eating day, but Alethea was terribly gassy that night, so I’m back off of it once more.  We continue to use the swaddle/pacifier combo for sleeping.  I’ve tried a few times to put her to sleep unswaddled and she either doesn’t go to sleep or it takes her a really long time and then she takes a very short nap, so we’re still working on that transition.  In the middle of the month, she was putting herself to sleep without the pacifier once or twice a day, but since she got sick, that skill has not returned.

While I am long over-due for a good night’s sleep, it sure has been fun to watch her change so much this month and she certainly seems to enjoy showing off rolling every which way!  She is such a happy child and seems delighted by anything new or shiny or bright.  The best way to get her to stop crying is to take her outside or for a car ride and then she forgets whatever upset her because she is too busy looking around at everything.  The other day when we went to Target, she just laughed the whole time, up and down the aisles, she was just giggling away.  It was so funny!

Over all, this month was a bit easier than the last so I’m hoping that means that we’re making progress, even if it is a bit slow in some areas.

Got a couple of cute pictures of Alethea all dressed up and ready to go out for her mother’s birthday dinner.

Alethea says “Thank you Aunt Leah for the fabulous outfit”

Every morning when I go in to get Alethea, the first thing I do is to look at her eyes and see if I can see any hint of brown creeping into her baby blues.  I love her eye color just like it is right now.  It’s kind of a rich blue/gray and I think it’s the most gorgeous eye color!  If it were a paint chip, it would be called “Deep Water”.  (And by the way, how do you get the job of naming paint colors, because I sooooo want that job.  Or the street naming job, then I could make “Central Parkway”, “Line Drive” and my favorite “Order In The Court”, but I digress…)

So far I haven’t really noticed any change in Alethea’s eye color.  They may be slightly darker than when she was born, but it could just be my imagination.  For now, I will continue to wait and wonder, will it be blue or brown?

Alethea’s night wakings don’t seem to be improving much.  We have okay nights and bad nights, but only about once every two weeks does Alethea sleep for more than 4 hours without waking.  I keep getting my hopes up that something will improve her sleep, like turning three months old, or starting zantac or eating solid foods.  Well, three months wasn’t a magic number, the zantac is helping feedings be less of a struggle, but was not a sleep miracle and as for eating solid foods, that gave her such bad gas that she was waking up once an hour to pass gas, so we are taking a break from solids and will try again later.

While I am not enjoying the sleep deprivation, I am coming to accept that it is what it is, and that I can do my best to make her comfortable and help her learn that night is for sleeping and she has to sleep in her own bed, but in the end, it is up to her to figure out how to stay asleep.  And like learning any other skill, it may take some time for her to get the hang of it.

Speaking of skills, Alethea is getting to be a real pro at rolling over in both directions.  She was practicing a lot yesterday and seems to enjoy the freedom of movement.  However, she does get frustrated that once she gets on her tummy, she can’t move forward.  Her little legs start madly pushing in the air, but she only occasionally gets them to push on the floor and move her forward.  She has managed to push herself a little bit with her arms though.  The other night she rotated about 270 degrees of a circle while on her stomach just by pushing to the side with her arms.

Now I’ve heard that once kids get more mobile, they often sleep better because they can pick the most comfortable position to sleep in.  I know I shouldn’t get my hopes up again, but maybe…. soon?….