Silja's Sleep Diary: six months old

Silja is six months old since yesterday, and although she clearly was not in the mood for partying, things are overall getting a bit better.

She's having a good long noontime nap right now, and it seems she's beginning to prefer this time for naps. In the mornings, she sleeps a bit longer than before, and although she might feed a bit between 5 and 6 am, she'll then sleep until 7.30 - and if she's not awake then the big kids will gently wake her up. 

The mornings seem to be the happiest time of her day, and when we leave for school after 8 am she's not yet ready to sleep, but as she can now sit up slightly, she enjoys just riding in her buggy and looking around.

This is actually a huge relief - she used to get really upset if she couldn't fall asleep in the buggy and I ended up carrying her quite a few times. She might nod off a bit on the way home, though.

Starting solid foods

We've just started her on solid food and after two days of spitting my sweet potato special back in my face she got a hang of eating from a spoon, and has pretty much eaten everything I've offered to her since. 

Except yesterday: she didn't really manage to sleep much on the way to school. She just dozed off for a few minutes after lunch, and couldn't sleep at all in the afternoon as I had to drive her sister to the dentist, and that was just too much excitement for her.

By dinner time she was a tired, nervous wreck. It seemed to me she was in pain as well, and as I couldn't figure out a reason, I suspected teething and gave her a bit of Calpol. This she mainly spat out, but as she was then covered in pink goo, I gave her a bath which seemed to help calm her down.

We could then have dinner in relative peace. Mid-dinner she suddenly pooped through everything she was wearing, looking much happier immediately - although the dinner had to be interrupted for another clean-up operation in the bathroom.

Obviously the solid food was not going down perfectly after all. Once we had eaten I gave Silja her dinner, some very watery mashed potato this time.

Unfortunately I hadn't mashed it quite well enough (I wasn't really focusing as I couldn't put her into her usual seat since it had just been pooped through), and she nearly choked on a clump, throwing up everything she had eaten.

There was absolutely no chance to get any more potato down her, and the evening ended with yet another bath and a very, very long breastfeeding session.

Most days are much better than that, and the nights, too. I'm quite surprised we haven't had any of these digestion issues at night, and bedtime is really very straightforward - a bit of milk, a gentle stroke on the head, and goodnight.

There's still a feed around 3am, but this is very quick and she doesn't really even wake up properly. So this is actually not too bad for a six months old baby.

However, she is now awake properly, singing quite contentedly to herself in the bedroom. Sounds like she's enjoyed her nap. And I'm done with my e-mails - finally everyone's happy. 



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