Nathan is now 10 months and this month flew by! We were away in France and Spain for 2 weeks and now I am back at work 2 days a week, so the weeks really have sped along at a rapid pace.
Nathan's tenth month has been tons of fun. He is now properly pulling himself up to standing and does it with ease. He prefers to be standing above all other positions and can walk along holding onto the edge of the sofa. He hasn't mastered crawling yet but can now get onto his hands and knees. He also somehow manages to maneuver his way around the room by shuffling and wiggling his body. I have to be extra careful not to take my eyes off him for even a second because of how much he gets around. He has fallen down a lot these past weeks as he learns how to balance on his feet, but the falls don't seem to bother him too much.
Nate now raises his hands into the air when we ask him "how big are you!?" and he is starting to point at random things from time to time. He loves to put things inside containers and then dump them out again. He also has started putting objects into people's hands. His middle top tooth on the right has popped through his gum this month and I think the left one is close behind. He has been in some discomfort from the teething but nothing too bad.
I think the most exciting thing (for me) this month is that Nate has started sleeping through the night on the odd occasion. He first slept through the night (from 9pm to 7am) when we were in Spain and my husband and I were shocked; we figured it was just a one time thing. But then he did it again a couple nights later! Since we have been back from our holiday, he has slept through the night at least 5 more times. I have no idea why he started sleeping all night; I did nothing differently and I am still nursing him to sleep. Maybe he was just ready? In any case, I'm extremely happy that we never had to do any sleep training, despite the pressure to do so from Health Visitors.
Today Nathan had his first settling in session at nursery. I met his key person and she discussed with me all the details about how nursery will work. I feel much happier about nursery in general now that I have met his key person. She is experienced and friendly and seemed to really bond with Nathan even after just an hour. I take him back on Friday to drop him off with her and the other children for an hour without me there! I'm nervous, but feel confident that he will be in goods hands.
And now for some obligatory photos of Nathan's tenth month :)
Now that Nathan is well over six months old, the question of sleep training seems to be the hot topic at my baby groups.
Sleep deprived mums clutching strong cups of coffee and wriggly babies ask the other mums in the room for advice. They want sleep, lots of sleep, but they don't want to leave their child crying alone in a dark room either. They are lost.
I feel lost too. I am usually the mum in the corner of the the room listening, taking in the advice being dished out, but not getting involved. That's because I never really believed in sleep training. I have never forced Nathan to cry himself to sleep, never denied him a night feed, never done any training. (Well, actually, one night we tried the pick-up, put-down technique but we got to pick-up number 65 (!) and quit).
But you see...I was eavesdropping as usual last week at my Tuesday group and got all confused. A Health Visitor had joined the group and she said the official stance is that babies over 6 months old should "all be capable of sleeping through the night". And if they don't the parents should "do controlled crying to get them to sleep through".
So then I started to feel guilty (you know, the usual mom guilt thing). Was I denying my child sleep because I didn't want to sleep train? Was a few hours of crying actually for his own good even though it went against everything I believed in?
I went home and had a cup of tea and mulled the whole thing over. I was still confused, but I was also angry. Angry that no matter what choice I make I will feel guilty. If I don't sleep train, the Health Visitors will make me feel guilty that my child isn't sleeping through the night; if I do sleep train I will feel guilty for letting my baby cry.
Nathan has never slept through the night, but I just don't think I am ready to let him cry himself to sleep. I may never be ready. [By the way, I don't have anything against people that do sleep train. I know they do it for the right reasons, but it is just not for me...at least not right now.]
In my confused state, I started reading different articles online, and I found comfort in this statement from the Kellymom website...
Remember that night waking in babies and young children is normal and temporary!
Children grow out of night waking, even when we do nothing to discourage it. This period of time will be a very tiny part of your child’s years with you.
So I am going to just ignore the Health Visitors for now and continue to remind myself that this is all temporary.
