4 months old!

Little P turned 4 months old! We had her check up on January 18th. She is growing healthy and everything is going great. Here are her current stats:

Weight: 14 lbs. 11 oz.         78th percentile
Height: 25 1/2 in.                59th percentile
Head: 15 1/2 in.                  10th percentile

The Dr also cleared up a couple of questions we have had. I asked about Peyton's gas issues. She said that there is not a lot that we can really do to help with her gas since I am already off of dairy. She said that most of the time the gas comes from sucking in air while eating, usually with bottles. She is getting more bottles now since she is in daycare, but other then that not all the time. We also asked about when we should start solids. They told us that we can start cereal around 5 months, and then fruits and veggies around 6 months. I told her that I was planning on making all of Peyton's food instead of buying it and asked if there was anything we needed to know in regards to this. She told me that that's fine, but not for the cereal. The store box cereal is iron fortified and we need to use that since she is breastfeeding still.

The last question we asked was about her sleeping. I told the Dr that she has been sleeping through the night, but was just starting to not want to fall asleep if I am nursing her in the chair, she is going falling asleep if I am laying in bed with her. The Dr told us that now is the age that we need to start letting little P cry herself to sleep to help teach her to fall asleep on her own, otherwise we would end up with a spoiled baby.  I nodded my head with her, but was not looking forward to doing this.  After the Dr I discussed all of this with my husband and that night we decided to put her in her crib partly asleep and see how it would work. Well let me tell you that this was the worse thing we have ever done. Peyton just screamed and screamed, and screamed for 2 hours. She did not calm down at all, let along fall asleep. I ended up having to sleep with her in the guest room just so that she would calm down enough to sleep, and let me get some sleep too. I don't know how some parent can let their babies cry themselves to sleep. If you have ever done it, it is the worse feeling in the world. I definitely am not a proponent of this method, but it might work for some.

Since this appointment we have been battling with Little P to sleep at night for more than an hour at a time.  We have tried everything that we can think of to help her sleep. We have started a regular bedtime routine consisting of a bath, baby massage, change into her night-time diaper and pajamas, followed by a bedtime story and then nursing. This seems to work some with helping her fall asleep initially, but does not keep her down. We have started to put her down on her belly too, which I know you are not suppose to do, but it seems to have helped with her naps during the day as well as sleeping longer stretches at night. We decided to do this because she would startle herself every time we went to put her down in her crib on her back. This just was not working for us anymore.

We also thought that maybe she had an ear infection because she had been extremely fussy when normally she is not, but the Dr said no. So we discussed that maybe she is starting to teeth, even though there are no visible tooth buds yet on her gums.  The Dr also recommended that we start giving her a little cereal at night to help fill her up during the night. So last night we gave her some cereal for the first time. Well as most first time parents know the first time you feed your baby food, more ends up all over them then actually in their mouths. But we tried again this morning and Little P definitely ate more this morning and opened her mouth for the spoon too. So we will see how this works, and if it helps with her sleeping at night.