First Flight, First Food and First Naps in Crib!

We are in Florida right now visiting my family. The trip down was completely uneventful. Ian was a very good boy. He slept in the cab on the way to the airport and then woke up as we neared the airport. We sailed through security with him and I nursed him at our departure gate. He stayed awake for the first 1 hour of the flight and after nursing again, he slept the last 2 hours. (As an aside, nursing in the middle seat on a plane is not so easy. Ian kept kicking the guy sitting in the window seat and if I tried to nurse Ian on the other breast, I just didn't have enough shoulder room to position Ian on my breast. I finally switched seats with my husband and had a little bit more room to work in the aisle seat, with my husband in the middle seat). Ascending and descending in the plane didn't bother him AT ALL. And as I carried the still sleeping baby off the plane, I joked to my husband, "I can't get this baby to sleep in his crib, but he's still sleeping after the plane's descent." I think a couple of people snickered when they overheard this.

We also gave Ian rice cereal for the first time two days ago. We mixed one tablespoon of the Earth's Best organic rice cereal with 3-4 tablespoons of breast milk. Ian did really well! At first, he pushed his tongue forward so that the cereal came right back out, but after 3-4 spoonfuls, he seemed to understand that he could swallow.


Overall, he appeared to enjoy the experience because he didn't scream or fuss and he opened his mouth nicely for the spoon. We also fed him the cereal twice yesterday. I was really hoping that the cereal in his tummy would help him sleep better/longer, but unfortunately, it didn't help.

My sister and her family came over yesterday and met Ian for the first time. My twin nephews were adorable. After seeing Ian for the first time, they finally understood why the little baby wouldn't be playing Wii Sports with them! My brother-in-law played with Ian a lot yesterday and Ian just adored all the male attention. He does seem to prefer males to females in giving up smiles.

And best of all the firsts, Ian napped in his crib for all 3 naps yesterday! Here's the back story: I'm an idiot. I decided that since Ian was breaking out of his swaddle consistently that we would just take it away. We then had a fairly crappy week of sleeping. But I finally picked up Dr. Ferber's book "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems" and we read that a child needs strong associations with sleep and a good routine in order to sleep well. And we realized that our child's strong association with sleep was the swaddle!! So we re-introduced it in modified form. We swaddled his legs, tummy and chest, but left his arms out. And it was immediately easier to put Ian to bed. He went to sleep quite easily, as he had before we had gone cold turkey on the swaddle. We then decided to swaddle Ian for each of his naps and that worked great too! Yesterday, he took a nap at 9:15 am (slept for 45 minutes), 12:15 pm (slept for 1 hour and 45 minutes) and 3:30 pm (slept for 45 minutes). No more naps in the bouncy seat! And we put him down for the night at 7:15 pm. He woke to feed at 10:30 pm and 3:45 am and he woke up a couple of other times needing the pacifier, but overall, it was just a more pleasant night than we've had in a long time.

The other thing that is helping Ian sleep is the Fisher Price Ocean Wonders Aquarium. My parents borrowed it from a friend. It has bubbles and music and lights and Ian stares at it in a way that he never stared at his mobile at home. And I truly think it helps him to fall asleep. We offered to buy it from my parents' friend, but she decided to give it to us for free! So we are most definitely bringing it back to Boston with us and may buy a second one from Ebay to put on the crib in day care.

Our next step is eliminating Ian's need for the pacifier. I will most likely enlist the day care to help with this. :-)