CIO

Mack is twelve weeks old today! A huge milestone, in my book. I have not been shy about my dislike for the newborn stage, but I only had experience with our firstborn. Mack's newborn stage was a breeze compared to the first time around...possibly if I had this experience the first time, I wouldn't have such a distaste for this stage. I love that he is leaving the little alien (or 4th trimester if you read Karp) stage and making an official transition to the rolly, polly infant/human stage.

But twelve weeks in our house, also means learning to self-soothe.
Ahhh, a hard weekend to sit through.
Up until this point, I have followed the babywise, eat-wake-sleep framework, but I have fed on demand and helped him fall asleep by rocking him or putting him in the sling. I had this weekend on the calendar to cry-it-out because it was a holiday weekend and I would have Nick around to keep Charlie occupied, but I hadn't really decided on officially doing it until last Thursday. Why? Because our routine didn't bother me too much, I enjoyed holding him and having him in the sling and it worked with Charlie's outings.
But inevitably, there comes a time, and this weekend was it for Mack.

It is SO hard to listen to your baby cry. But, as a parent, I think it's easy to confuse hard with wrong. There are a lot of things in life that are hard, that bring great rewards and I think teaching our baby how to sleep is one of the greatest gifts I can give him and my family.

So our CIO journey began on Friday morning, and he figured it out pretty quickly, just like Charlie, but our biggest problem has always been sleeping through that 45 minute sleep transition, and Mack was experiencing the same problem. He would whine for a few minutes, fall sleep for 40 minutes, and proceed to wake up and cry out the rest of his nap. This happened for all four naps on Friday. But on Saturday, he figured it out, a switch flipped, and I had a beautiful sleeping baby boy that I had to wake up from every one of his two hour naps. Yesterday and today, haven't been as smooth, some naps are good, some are bad. He usually wakes up at that 45 minute mark, fusses and proceeds to put himself back to sleep, which is the goal.

Sleep begets sleep, right? Yes it does! Not only have his nighttime stretches been longer the last few days, but he is eating/latching better and it genuinely happy during his wake time. I love this stage of babyhood and I can't wait to celebrate it with better sleep for our whole family!

Mack's Twelve Week Schedule
7am: Wake & Eat
8am: Nap #1
10am: Wake & Eat
11am: Nap #2
1pm: Wake & Eat
2pm: Nap #3
4pm: Wake & Eat
5:30pm: Nap #4
7pm: Wake & Eat
7:30ish: Bedtime