Dear Mason: 4 month edition

Mason,
This last month has seriously flown by faster than any month yet!! I feel like we just took your 3 month pictures then blinked and you were 4 months.

You are seriously growing!! Mom & dad were both chunky babies so I think you are taking after us. I absolutely love all of your little rolls though, they are just adorable! Your current stats are: 15 pounds 7.5 ounces (50th percentile) 24.5 inches long (20th percentile sorry shorty!) head circumference of 42 cm (61st percentile). The nurses kept commenting on how cute you were! They said your head was just perfect and you reminded them of a Gerber baby. You just soaked in all the attention and love my little ladies man! You are wearing size 2 diapers and already in 6 months clothes.

We are still exclusively giving you mama's milk & we seem to have found a medicine that works for your reflux & a diet that works for your tummy. Prevacid has been a game changer in your life! You seriously only fuss if you're sleep or hungry now! Your tummy prefers only whole foods: meat, eggs, vegetables, fruit, whole grains, nuts and absolutely no dairy. At first this was an adjustment as mommy ate mostly corn dogs and raisin bran all of pregnancy. I've always wanted to have a clean diet but loved junk too much so I am very appreciative of you for making me do it! During the day on the rare occasion that we bottle feed you you will typically drink about 5 ounces. However, lately after the 5 ounces I still need to nurse some because you are hungry. At night you are still drinking 8 ounces. We have found you sleep much better when we give you an 8 ounce bottle at night so we aren't going to stray from that.

We still have you on a very strict schedule and it works wonders for you. You & I have developed quite a day time routine. I know exactly what time you will want to eat, take a nap & (most of the time) wake up.

5-5:30ish: Wake up. Mom & Dad aren't ready to face the world yet so we put your paci in and you go back to sleep.
6:30: Wake up & have your first feeding the we make breakfast together and hang out.
8:00: Nap. This my child is the nap you are the most strict on. There is not a single day you have been awake at 8:01.
8:45: Wake up & play. You aren't much of a morning napper. Typically only 30-45 minutes is enough to get your energy boosted back up.
9:45/10:00: Brunch feeding
11:00-11:45: Nap
1:00: Lunch feeding
1:30-3:30: Nap
4:30-Snack feeding
5:30-6:15: Evening nap
7:00: Bath
7:30: Books & Bottle
7:45: Bed

Last month we began sleep training you, let's just say we failed miserably but this month we mastered it! Last month we also put you in your crib at night but this month we started having you sleep exclusively in your crib. This was a sad transition for mommy as I loved having you sleep on me for naps. There is just something so special about snuggling your sleeping baby. You have always had this thing where you love to fall asleep on my chest and bury your face in my neck. I miss it so much!! But I know that my job as mommy is to raise you to be independent so I have to just keep reminding myself of that because I know this is just one of the many many times in your life I will have to watch you become independent.

And becoming independent you are! Growing up daddy was very independent, he still is actually. His family tells us that his sister always wanted him to play but he was happier to play on his own. I am seeing this characteristic develop in you. At night you are happy to put yourself to sleep even if we leave you in there and you aren't that tired. A couple of nights you've laid there awake for 30+ minutes just playing with your fox & looking around until you drift off to sleep. A couple of times you've even woken up and laid in your bed playing with your hands and fox for 30+ minutes. During play time you are happy to sit in your high chair and play with your toys if mom has something to do.

You love your fox buddy so much! He is a big source of comfort for you. To fall asleep you rub him against your face and then play with your head. This month you started putting him over your face to sleep. It terrified me the first time you did this, but no matter how many times I take if off your face you put it right back over.

You are moving on to bigger toys. In past months your play mat was your go to toy. Now you don't prefer it as much. You enjoy to sit up and play in your high chair.

You also got a new jumping toy that you absolutely love!

You still enjoy hanging out in your swing. However this month when we put you in it the right way you completely flip yourself to lay sideways in it & you are even more content when you lay in it that way.

You also are in love with your new baby carrier the Baby K'tan. This is one of our best investments! If you're asleep while we are out you are content to stay asleep in it & at home while do chores you love to face outward in it! You pretty much love anything that allows you to explore the world around you!

You are absolutely positively always happy, smiling and laughing. We feel so incredibly lucky that you are this way. When we go into your nursery and say "Buddy are you awake?" Your face completely lights up and you rarely stop smiling until your next nap. You find the joy in absolutely everything in your life & I pray that you always have this quality. TV shows, baths, swimming, mommy & daddy's faces, when we talk to you, your toys, even when you're nursing you will stop and look up at mommy & smile. When I say "drink your milk" you stick your tongue out, break out in the biggest smile, & crack up then go back to nursing. You also think it's hilarious when your daddy drinks from a cup, we don't know why but you always crack up! Your smile completely lights up our days!

You have always loved when mommy kisses you! Lately when I lean down to kiss you, you will grab on to the side of my face, it's my favorite! Even when I just bend down to talk to you, you will put each hand on either side of my face and just talk to me. You're the same with holding my hands or arms. If I put you on my lap you want to hold on to both of my hands. You completely melt my heart, Mase!

You still love church. You no longer sleep through the songs, now you are awake & alert & looking around taking in all of the sights and sounds around you. We still aren't ready to send you to the nursery quite yet.

Currently we think you may be teething. We don't see or feel a tooth yet but your bottom gums seem to be swollen, you've had a low grade fever off and on all week & and the last couple of days you aren't your independent self. When you're awake you seem to only be content if mommy & daddy are holding you & you have something in your mouth. For now we are just soaking up all of the extra snuggles from you!

*We celebrated the 4th of July

*You finger painted for the first time

*You went swimming in your shark pool with dad

*We survived dad's first week long trip
*You've started consistently sleeping through the night
*You are constantly laughing
*You were baptized
*You still hate tummy time (we've kind of given up on this)
*You discovered your tongue you stick it out all off the time!!!!
*Mom had a dentist appointment so you had your first non-family member babysitter
*You're discovering your voice more & more. When I say something high pitched you will screech to mimic me. When I talk in a low voice you talk normal.
*You tasted your first thing that wasn't mommy's milk. You ate the grocery list on a trip to the store with dad.

*You had your first IV stick. This was more painful to mommy than it was you I think. We had to redo our newborn screening & mommy was totally not prepared for them to actually draw blood. There were definitely tears but you did surprisingly a lot better than I thought you would. I think mommy cried more than you did.

Mason, you are growing up so fast! I love the personality that we are seeing you develop! You are the happiest baby we have ever seen. I pray that you always find joy in everything the same way you do now. While you are a very scheduled baby, you're really pretty chill & don't really cry unless something is really wrong. You are still mommy's little boy & it melts every bit of my heart! We are already seeing that you look to mommy when you're upset or hurting and you look to daddy when you feel silly or want to play and laugh. You bring more joy than you know to our lives! We hope that every single day you know just how loved you are Mason Porter!

Love,
Mommy & Daddy

Mason's Baptism

Blake & I both grew up in a Methodist Church & we were both baptized after going through a confirmation class in our preteen years which was wonderful, we both understood fully the commitment we were making when we were baptized. We talked about what we wanted to do for Mason & for us it just felt right to baptize him as a baby. We wanted to give the greatest gift God had ever blessed us with, our baby boy, back to him & commit to the Lord to raise him not only in church but to truly know him & his word. It was a special day for us. I was OF COURSE emotional as always and cried as Pastor Larry baptized our baby boy. We had lots of family there & it meant the world to us to have them share in his special day.

"Train a child up in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6

To Sleep or Not to Sleep?

I've wanted to blog about our sleep training experience for quite some time, but I first wanted to make sure we had totally mastered it first as not to jinx myself! Do I really believe in jinxing? No! However, I do believe children are born with some kind of sixth sense! It's like they know you say "yeah he is sleeping great" and decide to say "HA! I'll show you sleeping great lady!" Just yesterday I was telling Blake I felt the worst piece of advice a sleep deprived mom can get is "nap with the baby naps." Remember that sixth sense? I swear every time I decide to nap Mason knows it and wakes right up as soon as I've fallen asleep with more energy than humanly possible. However the days I just know he won't nap so I don't even try to nap the kid sleeps for 2+ hours. HAHA!

When we first had Mason I think I read about every book I could get my hands on. I stressed about scheduling, getting him to sleep at night, what was I supposed to do?! Why did this baby not come with a sleep manual?! I felt like the number 1 question people asked was "how is he sleeping at night? Is he sleeping through the night?" If we said no we got that look of pity. It was almost like whether we had a "good baby" depended on if our baby slept through the night. I hated that feeling. Luckily my pediatrician was so wonderful letting us know that she didn't want us to sleep train until he was a little older & not to worry about it. Oh how I wished I would have taken that advice! I am a type A person so I continued to scour books and feel guilty when we would tell people no, our son wasn't sleeping through the night like maybe I was already failing as a mom?! So new moms out there.....if your baby does not sleep through the night it does not mean your baby isn't a "good baby" don't let anyone make you feel that way!! Just like with anything, babies have to be taught how to sleep and they just aren't ready to when they are itty bitty.  

So our sleep training adventure started when mason was about 3 months old. Because we had a hard time with finding the right fit for his acid reflux medicine his pediatrician had us keep him in his rock & play until about 2.5 months then we transitioned into his crib. After we got him in his crib we realized we had developed a monster of a problem. We LOVED rocking mason to sleep. We both felt like rocking our sweet sleeping baby was the best feeling in the world! UNTIL that was the only way our baby wanted to sleep. We would rock and rock and rock and he would be passed out asleep then we would lay him in his crib and I swear he would open his eyes the second his body hit the mattress. One Sunday night after a combined total of maybe 2 hours of sleep and 8 hours of rocking we decided there has to be a different way! So we started to read about how to make it happen. There are so many different methods out there we just felt lost!! I knew that the one method I could not do was the extinction method where you just say goodnight and let them cry until they go to sleep and don't go back until the morning. I know there are some moms out there that do and that's ok, it's just not something that was going to work for Blake & I. As we read through our Baby 411 book we first found out that babies can get overtired and not sleep well...what in the world?! That's a thing?! The more tired you are the better you sleep is how we thought it worked. So we decided to move his schedule up a little to get him in bed earlier & I'll be darned if they weren't right about the overtired business. Still baffled by this! We then found a method that worked for us. We would let him cry for 2 minutes go in comfort then 5 comfort then 10. I believe it's called the Ferber method. So we tried that and it seemed to work for us. Well it worked at night. Then during the day he would wake up from his naps & I was going to make darn sure the child wasn't overtired so I would end up just holding him for lots of naps. I justified that he needed me & I needed him since I was going to work soon. Those were my favorite days we would just lay and snuggle every nap time! Things were going great UNTIL he started waking up from 1-3:30am every night. WHAT?! I was dying I held him all day & then we were up taking turns for 2.5 hours. That did not bring out the best in any of us!!! I remember one night Blake saying can you go get him & I thought I was thinking in my head but it came out of my mouth "no, sorry I just don't want to." Oops!! God bless that man he said simply ok & got up and went and put him back to sleep. He is a man of extreme patience & I am daily blessed by that. It was July 1st when I finally said enough is enough I can't survive like this but don't know what to do!! So I called the pediatrician. I felt completely ridiculous going in because I didn't know how to put my son to bed but Blake was leaving for the following week for work & I knew I could not survive doing it alone for 1 week holding a baby all day and being awake for 2.5 hours at night because a nap wasn't going to happen during the day, remember my kids sixth sense thing? 

So of course she told me that my baby was spoiled. I mean yes, I already knew this. The child stopped crying the second I opened the door to go pick him up. She gave us a few methods we could try. One was to sleep in the room and slowly move further away each night until you are out of the room. Let's just say sitting in the same room with a baby who is screaming and you are standing there saying it's ok don't cry but not picking them up, that's just torture for everyone! I wasn't about to do that, my heart would have broken and we would still be in the same boat. Actually we'd probably all just be in the same bed. So we settled for the second method: Continue the schedule: Bath at 7, feed at 7:30 & bedtime after that. However, no more rocking to sleep. Put him in the crib sleepy & calm and walk out. When he cries wait 5 minutes and go in. Pick up calm down put back down. Then 10 minutes, then 15 minutes, then every 20 minutes. At first I was thinking 20 minutes?! I can't do that. Thankfully I think my son knew that because we have never had to do more than 10 minutes. She said the first 3 nights would be the hardest but it would get easier each night. I asked about naptime and she said no more holding for naps, if he woke up and wouldn't go back to sleep then he was up & he would learn that he was too tired and nap better next time. I think our pediatrician is the best in the world! She's been so amazing to us so I just decided to trust her & as hard as it was to do, I knew I had to do it for both his & my sanity when Blake was out of town. We left the dr. that day & I didn't put him in the crib once. I was determined to hold him every second of that day & start sleep training that night. He did surprisingly well that weekend & on July 4th he started sleeping through the night. We didn't actually think the timing through as we were stuck at home during the 4th of July weekend & the madness of fireworks around us being so loud but it didn't seem to bother him & as I said, sanity was more important for us at that time. 

Thankfully this process worked for us! Mason has slept through the night (7:30-5:30/6:30) for the last 18 consecutive nights, with the exclusion of 1 night where he woke up at 12 and we put his paci in and he went straight back to sleep. He actually now prefers to put himself to sleep. When we rock him we know when he wants to be put his in crib because he starts thrashing around and when we lay him down he goes straight to sleep. 

I have to completely brag on Blake because he was an amazing help through it all! He was having to go to work every day & then he was doing the waking up with him in the night most of the time so Mason wouldn't have the expectation of eating when he saw me (because we were told he doesn't need night feedings anymore either). I truly realize every day I hit the jackpot with that man!

I also owe a huge thank you to my friends Lynzi & Lauren who have baby boys themselves and have been some of my biggest supporters as we went through sleep training & as we continue to go through other milestones. It's through our friendships that I have realized that this is just part of the process & having a baby who doesn't always sleep through the night doesn't make you failing at motherhood or make your baby a "hard" or "bad" baby. It just makes them a normal baby! 

My biggest advice to myself for my next baby: relish the quiet night feedings where it's just you and your baby & the times your baby wakes up at night & just needs you to rock them or comfort them. It doesn't last forever & in the grand scheme of life it just a blink of an eye & it's over. Those are some of the sweetest moments & while I'm so glad Mase is sleeping so great, I do miss the quiet nights where the world is asleep and it was just me & my baby boy bonding.