Adventures in Ferberizing

So not much interesting has been going on recently.  But I figure I should do 1 or 2 of these a month, so even though this isn't really an update per-se, here is this month's David update...

There are 2 books that every new parent needs.  The names of these sacred texts were passed on to us by some awesome friends when we had David, and now I'm passing them on to you:

1. The Happiest Baby on the Block by Dr. Harvey Karp.  We managed to read this one before he was born.  It's a pretty quick read that could really be condensed into 2 8.5x11 sheets of paper, but I fully credit it with keeping us out of the emergency room before the Glenn.  As you may or may not know, David was not allowed to cry for more than like 10 minutes until that surgery had passed.  That book taught us how to comfort him quickly so that he never did.

2.  Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems by Richard Ferber.  When you do a google search for "Ferber" (probably bing too, since they just copy google's results), every hit is a link saying OMG DON'T FERBERIZE YOUR BABY UNLESS YOU HATE HIM.  I am here to tell you that's a load of crap.  We went back and forth about going the Ferber route for 2 months before we just decided to just get the book from the library and see what it says.  Needless to say, the interwebs critics have probably never actually read what he has to say.

David never has liked going to bed at night.  He would get mad as soon as he realized what time it was.  It didn't matter whether we held him or put him in bed, he was crying.  Most of the time, for a minimum of 30 minutes before sleepiness started overcoming anger.  And truth be told, it wasn't THAT bothersome, we just knew it wasn't sustainable.  He was going to have to figure out how to fall asleep by himself one way or another.

Ferber has a chart of how long to let the baby cry before you go check on him the first time, second time, etc.  He tells you in the book that night 1 is the worst in terms of how long it takes for them to fall asleep, night 2 takes about half the time of night 1, then night 3 and on are smooth sailing.  So night 1 was Saturday.  We put him in bed at 9 P.M.  It took him 25 minutes to fall asleep.  Yes, that's right, he cried LESS for the worst part of being Ferberized than he ever had with anything else we had done.  Night 2 (Sunday), right at 12 minutes.  And on top of all of that, he sleeps through the night.  As in 11 hours straight last night without even waking up from being hungry.  We will see how tonight goes, but I am wildly optimistic.

Otherwise, everything seems to be going swimmingly.  David has started eating some solid foods once a day. He started with brown rice, which he was kinda meh on.  2 weekends ago, we (read: Christy) made him some barley & carrot mush, and he has had a change of heart on solid foods.  She started throwing in random fresh herbs this weekend, and he seems to like that also.

David has a short pediatrician visit this week to get his last Synegis shot (respiratory syncytial virus or RSV antigen) of the year, then he gets his second flu booster early next week.  The doctors are all really paranoid about him getting any kind of respiratory sickness, so David gets lots of extra preventative maintenance.  He's gotten pretty good about shots though, last time he only cried while he was actually getting the shot and stopped almost as soon as it was over.  I keep telling him that a shot should be no big deal when you've had your chest cracked open, but he disagrees.

Christy has continued to keep the picture albums updated, along with one or 2 videos that she randomly takes.  So be sure to check back occasionally to watch him get bigger.  Until next time...

Pardon my progress..

I'm re-jiggering the picasa albums into manageable sizes, so if you try to visit any of them in the next 48 hours or so, you may not be able to find what you're looking for.  I'll update the side perma-links when I'm done.  TIA.

5:00 PM Edit:
Ok, everything is fixed now.  Links on the right work, albums are sorted by month (mostly), and I've separated out the surgery pictures into their own albums so that you don't have to look at Borg-baby every time you open an album.  Happy viewing!