Rolling Over!

Hannah can roll over!!  She is rolling over like crazy.  The other day I had her on the floor doing tummy time and she must have rolled over 10 times in less than 10 minutes.  I kept putting her back on her tummy and she kept rolling over.  So fun!  I didn't get her on video that day, but we did capture her rolling over a few days before that.  If she started rolling over at 5 weeks, I think we have our hands full!  We have a VERY active little girl!!

Click on this link to see the video of Hannah rolling over!

Rolling Over

So this is love...

I am in love!  While reading Hannah a story before nap time today, I got so wrapped up in how much I love her.  I finished the book and just starred into her eyes for the longest time.  Before long, tears were rolling down my cheeks.  I love her beyond words!  Before I had her, I knew I would love her, but I just didn't understand how much until now.  Don't get me wrong, I loved her from the moment I saw her (really from the moment I found out I was pregnant), but contrary to popular belief, this "big" love that I have for her now was not present the moment she was born, or even in the first week of her life.  You don't often hear this from a new mom, but I found that first week to be so overwhelming and emotional that I really didn't feel very connected to Hannah.  That was really hard on me.  I expected to just fall madly in love with her the moment she was born...but that just wasn't the case.  Thankfully I had a sweet friend tell me that it was completely normal to not feel that instant love (if she hadn't told me that, I would have continued to feel awful!).  I didn't realize that it would take some time for the love to grow and develop.  I did love her, just not like I do now!  I would do anything for her.  She is so precious to me and I am so thankful for her!  We waited several years for her...we pleaded with the Lord to bless us with a child...she was SO worth the wait!!

My love for Hannah so often reminds me of the Lord's love for me.  I now have a greater understanding of how much He loves me.  And even though I love Hannah more than words can express, I know that the Lord's love for me (and for her) is so much greater.  Wow!  I am so undeserving of such a great love.  But He loves me unconditionally, something I really didn't understand until I became a mother.  No matter how many times Hannah spits up on me, has a major diaper blow-out, or wakes me up in the middle of the night, I love her!  I love everything about her because she is apart of me.  How much more does the Lord love me...I am His creation.  He sent His Son to die for me.  Words cannot express this kind of love.

Crying It Out

Crying it out isn't for the weak!  We have started letting Hannah cry when she goes down for a nap and at bedtime.  It has been tough!!  We had gone back and forth for a few weeks about what we should do as far as sleeping goes.  For the first week or two she was an amazing sleeper, sleeping through the night (7 hours) at just five days old.  But at around week 3, everything changed!  Our sleepy little baby suddenly woke up to the world and decided that she didn't like to sleep.  She was still giving us good sleep at night, once she fell asleep, but it would sometimes take hours to get her to doze off.  UGH!  So at 5 weeks we decided it was time to let her cry it out.  No more going back and forth to comfort her and rock her and to give her the paci.  It was time...for all of us!   I just didn't realize how extremely hard it was going to be to listen to my baby cry!  It truly hurts me to hear her scream!  There is something inate in a mother that makes us want to run to our crying baby and comfort them.  I have shed just as many tears throughout this process as Hannah has!  Some nights, the only way I can get through it is by going downstairs and watching tv or surfing the internet, just so I can't hear her.  Amazingly, Brian is able to sleep right through it!  That really baffles me!!

I know there are different schools of thought on letting a baby cry it out.  Some say that a 1 month old (or 5 week old in our case) is too young to self-soothe.  While others say that you should let them cry it out from day one.  So, what is the right way?  I spent hours trying to decide what we should do, talked to friends, read blogs, searched the internet, and talked to our pediatrician.  It seemed that the more research I did, the more I realized that it was time.  While there was still conflicting advice out there, the majority of what I found was that crying it out (under the supervision of watchful parents) is soemething you should do now, rather than later.  While not every baby needs to cry it out, if you have a baby with lots of energy and that fights sleep (like our little Hannah), crying is something that they need to do in order to release that energy. 

When we started on this cry it out journey, I started keeping track of each and every minute of crying and not crying so that I would know exactly how long she spent cried before falling asleep.  This has helped me so much!  It helps me to see just how long the crying has gone on (always much shorter than it feels!) and helps me to see the progress she is making (one step forward, two steps back at times).  So, I wanted to share our progress with you, just in case you were curious.  When I was doing my research I wished I had come across a website that gave me step by step instructions on how to implement crying it out, but I didn't.  So here you go!  I hope this helps someone!  I sit with a clock and the monitor while I write down the minutes and it really helps me to disconnect from her crying (surprisingly) to treat it like a project.  I turn the volume off on the monitor when she is crying and just watch the little lights until they stop.  Then I turn the volume back on so I know if she is making noises or silent.

Day 1 - April 15, 2010

Nap

• Put Hannah down at 2:30pm (after a full feeding)
• 5 minutes - crying
• 6 minutes - no crying (noises)
• 3 minutes - crying
• 24 minutes - no crying (silent) YEAH!!
• 3 minutes - crying
• 27 minutes - no crying (selent) YEAH!!
• 8 minutes - crying
• Decided that she had done well enough for Day 1, so I brought her down to her swing and let her finish her nap there.  She slept until 6pm in the swing!

Bed

• Put Hannah down at 10:09pm (after a full feeding)
• 3 minutes - no crying (silent)
• 9 minutes - crying
• 37 minutes - no crying (silent)
• 9 minutes - crying
• Went in to comfort (this was a rookie mistake...I should not have done this...now you will see the rest of the night spiral out of control...opps!)
• 5 minutes - no crying (silent)
• 5 minutes - crying
• Went back in to comfort (opps!)
• 4 minutes - crying
• Went back in to comfort (I melted down!  I even fed her again at this point, because I just didn't know what else to do.  Had I just left her alone from the beginning, she would have fallen asleep much faster!)
• 2 minutes - no crying (noises)
• 2 minutes - crying
• Finally fell asleep at 12:13am and slept until 6am!

Day 2 - April 16, 2010

We were out and about during nap time today, so didn't put her down in her crib.

Bed

• Put Hannah down at 9:35pm (after a full feeding)
• 9 minutes - crying
• Fell asleep at 9:44pm and slept until 3:30am (which is not normal for her, but I was thrilled and considered this a great accomplishment!)
• Total amount of crying = 9 minutes :-)

Day 3 - April 17, 2010

Again, we were out and about during nap time, so we didn't put her down in her crib.

Bed

• Put Hannah down at 11:08pm (after a full feeding)
• 6 minutes - crying
• 9 minutes - no crying (noises)
• 1 minute - crying
• Fell asleep at 11:24pm and slept until 5:30am  YEAH!!
• Total amount of crying = 7 minutes

Day 4 - April 18, 2010

Nap

• Put Hannah down at 3pm
• 3 minutes - no crying (noises)
• 3 minutes - crying
• 7 minutes - no crying (noises)
• 2 minutes - crying
• 5 minutes - no crying (noises)
• 3 minutes - crying
• Fell asleep at 3:23pm and slept until 6pm
• Total amount of crying = 8 minutes

Bed

• Put Hannah down at 10:13pm
• 9 minutes - crying
• 1 minute - no crying
• 3 minutes - crying
• 5 minutes - no crying
• 5 minutes - crying
• 1 minute - no crying
• 1 minute - crying
• 25 minutes - no crying
• 11 minutes - crying
• 11 minutes - no crying
• 6 minutes - crying
• Fell asleep at 11:31pm and slept until 6am when I had to wake her up! 
• Total amount of crying = 35 minutes (A tough night, but worth it in the end!)

Day 5 - April 19, 2010

Nap

• Put Hannah down at 2:20pm
• 4 minutes - no crying (noises)
• 7 minutes - crying
• 3 minutes - no crying
• 1 minute - crying
• Fell asleep at 2:35pm and slept until 5pm
• I brought her down to her swing to finish her nap (until 6pm)
• Total amount of crying = 8 minutes

Bed

• Put Hannah down at 10:43pm
• 3 minutes - no crying
• 3 minutes - crying
• 1 minute - no crying (noises)
• 2 minutes - crying
• 1 minute - no crying
• 4 minutes - crying
• 1 minute - no crying
• 1 minute - crying
• 1 minute - no crying
• 2 minutes - crying
• 1 minute - no crying
• 1 minute - crying
• 3 minutes - no crying
• 3 minutes - crying
• 28 minutes - no crying (finally alseep??)
• 6 minutes - crying
• Finally fell asleep at 11:44pm and slept until 6am when I woke her up
• Total amount of crying = 22 minutes

Day 6 - April 20, 2010

Nap

• Put Hannah down at 2:28pm
• 6 minutes - crying
• 5 minutes - no crying
• 2 minutes - crying
• 10 minutes - no crying
• 1 minute - crying
• Fell asleep at 2:53pm and is still sleeping (praying she stays asleep until 6pm!)

4 Weeks Old

Hannah is 4 weeks old today and 1 month old on Sunday (April 11th).  WOW!  1 month seems like such a milestone.  Hard to believe it has been that long (I always say that, don't I?!)

Brian's parents and sister were here for Easter weekend and his parents stayed for a few extra days.  It has been so nice having them here!  They just left and I am a mess.  I hate when family leaves...it's so hard!  I wish everyone lived in Atlanta.

Hannah has changed so much in 4 weeks.  She is so much more alert now and has longer periods of awake time (sometimes those awake times happen to be when she is supposed to be going to bed...oops!)  She is generally a very happy baby and doesn't fuss much (unless she is hungry or overtired).  We have been working hard on getting her on a schedule and it has been going fairly well.  The only problem we have been having is after the 10pm feeding, when she is supposed to go down for the night, she is typically WIDE awake and fusses if we try to put her down in her crib.  So we are going to work on trying to keep her more awake during the evening hours so that she is tired by 10pm and ready for bed.  Hopefully that will work!  Last night she ate at 9pm and was asleep by 11pm.  Not too bad!  However, she did wake up at 3am, which hasn't been happening lately.  So I fed her and thankfully she went right back down.  Now we just have to work on getting her to sleep until 6am again.  Maybe tonight?! ;-)

Hannah is also smiling now!  It's so exciting to see her smile!  We have yet to capture her precious smile on camera, but hopefully soon.  Her smiles are still sporadic, but when they happen, they are definitely not gas!!  She also loves to stare into our eyes and is content to do that for quite some time (as long as her belly is full).  Her neck is getting so strong (thanks to the fact that she sleeps on her belly) and she has even rolled over to her back from her tummy a few times!  Such a big girl!  She is able to track objects very well now and when she's on her tummy she can easily move her head side to side.  She is making all kinds of noises now too.  I guess they are called "coos" but to me they sound more like grunts! haha  She is definitely a noisy sleeper.

My parents are coming to visit this weekend for Hannah's 1 month birthday!  YEAH!! :-)  Have I mentioned how much we love having family visit?  Again, we wish everyone lived in Atlanta!!

Hannah's First Easter

Today was Hannah's first Easter.  Brian's parents and sister are here to celebrate with us! :-)  We celebrated by going to church, eating a delicious ham dinner, and just relaxing the rest of the day.  This was Hannah's second time at church, but her first Sunday morning service.  She slept the whole time, but she is such a noisy sleeper that I ended up having to take her out so she didn't disturb the service.  At one point she made the loudest sound and the people around us couldn't help but giggle.  Too funny!  Luckily the overflow room was relatively empty, so I was able to watch the service while Hannah noisily slept away! ;-)  After church we came home and prepared our Easter meal.  (Well, technically Brian's mom did all the cooking!)  We had a wonderful ham dinner and Hannah slept the whole time so we were all able to enjoy the meal!  After our dinner we all just relaxed!  Such a wonderful way to celebrate this special holiday!