Silja's Sleep Diary: six and a half months old

Silja is six and a half months old and I'm taking the calculated risk of writing this as she's working out with her baby gym on the floor.

She can roll about and moves a lot now, but can't proceed in a straight line, which leads to a lot of frustration as she can't usually reach the toys she sees right in front of her.

She's also weaning very well and taking three solid(ish) meals a day - it feels like my kitchen is a baby food factory.

Long days ...

Her sleeping might be better, too - but honestly I'm not quite sure.

Her naps are still all over the place and rather short. Mostly it's two naps - morning and afternoon - but if she misses her morning nap then it's a longer one at lunchtime, and on a couple of days she's napped three times.

She's really cheerful and well rested in the mornings and is getting up slightly earlier, say 6.30 rather than after 7am, but then in the evenings she's very tired and cranky at dinnertime.

We have dinner at 7pm, and although I've tried to make sure she's well fed, bathed and otherwise happy at that point, she's usually too tired to be pleasant dinner company.

She seems to enjoy bedtime stories with her older siblings, however, and even if I feed her and cuddle her while I read to them, she will not fall asleep before the bigger kids are tucked in their own beds and all is quiet. She then feeds a bit more and nods off in my arms, and I put her in her baby cot to sleep.

Since she's become more mobile we've had to adjust her cosleeper a bit so that she doesn't roll all over the big bed. We've lifted the rail up between the cot and the bed just a little so that the lower side of the cot is resting on the floor.

This is probably not the official way of using the removable side but it seems to attach quite securely to the cot, and it's just high enough that she can't roll over it, but it's still easy for me to reach her. We'll probably need to put it up all the way very soon.

... long nights

As for nights, I'm not quite sure what's going on, as it seems that although she's waking up, I'm not! I honestly can't tell what time she's been up for a feed, as I don't wake up properly enough to put the light on, sit up to feed her and check the time. I just grab her and lie her down next to me and feed her lying down.

It probably helps that the summer is coming, the nights are lighter and there's a good chance of actually finding a nipple without putting the lights on.

I seem to be getting better at putting her back to her cot after a feed, too, as I keep waking up well rested, and she's mostly in her cot in the mornings. My completely uneducated guess would be that she feeds once or maybe twice, but not for very long. I'm thinking that, at six and a half months old, we may well be approaching the time when feeding at night is more of a comfort thing and a habit, rather than her being really very hungry.

But now it's lunch time and Silja's done with her exercise. I need to figure out if she's mainly tired or hungry. Probably both ...



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