My son loves the hair dryer. Yes, the hair dryer. He can't seem to fall asleep without it, day or night. Once he is asleep, he is an awesome sleeper - the past week, he's been going 7-8.5 hours at night, conveniently starting around 10pm. Napping during the day is a little harder (sometimes we get in a long afternoon nap, sometimes it's just catnapping throughout the day), but still passable.
HOWEVER.
At any of these times, he's practically unable to fall and stay asleep without the hair dryer. Sure, if he's really sleepy, he'll fall asleep while eating, but he'll wake up within 5 minutes of putting him down unless the hair dryer is on. It's amazing. Practically the second we turn it on, you can see his eyes start to droop. We may need to invest in a sound machine if this continues. Anyone else have weird household contraptions turned baby essentials?
Also, at his one-month checkup last week, Nat clocked in at 9 lbs. 15 oz, sailing from 90th percentile length/10th percentile weight at birth to 90th percentile length/60th percentile weight now. That is up 4 pounds from 5 weeks before, or nearly 2 ounces a day. The doctor said .5-1 ounce/day is normal. Evidently our skinny minny is chunking up.
12 comments:
What a great post! I had problems sleeping last night. Maybe I should have tried out the hairdryer! ;-)
please please share with me your tips for getting him to sleep that long at night! i'm dying here...easton sleeps about 3-4 hour stretches twice at night. i would do anything for 7 hours straight. ps you can actually BUY tracks of random household appliances (like the hairdryer) on itunes if you search "baby white noise." i downloaded water ones (easton's latest thing) to my ipod and then hooked it up to portable speakers on replay all night long.
Josh had to be held upright to fall asleep. Around 4 months we found that he would also fall asleep if put in a vibrating chair. It saved our lives. The only problem was, he would awake the second the chair stopped vibrating. We had to track down a chair that had no "automatic off" function, and we went through a lot of batteries. Still, it was much better than trading off every 2 to 3 hours all night every night with who held the baby upright in the rocking chair.
Maren, I haven no idea! Seriously, it is not because we are doing something awesome that he is sleeping. We clearly have no idea what we are doing and somehow he must have just inherited his mother's sleeping genes. And I totally need to go search iTunes now!
Katie - I'm so glad you guys found something that worked for him. I guess that's the name of the game, huh - finding something your particular child likes!
The hairdryer was a lifesaver with Isaac in the early days, then we got a sound machine from a friend which has become the new lifesaver for both boys. It's magical. Buy one! You could also get your vacuuming done while he naps (that used to calm Samuel down when he was crying).
Simplynoise.com is a website that you might want to try. It will play continuous white noise. We used this website for Abe until my sister gave us a white noise stuffed animal. Both worked really well for us. :)
My little brother was the same way. If you fear that your hair dryer is going to give out, you can give the vacuum a shot. Same lulling sleepy sound.
With my brother, it was so bad that sometimes we'd have to go sit in the car and drive around the car again and again and again. Babies are so funny. :)
When I was a baby, I wouldn't nap without a vacuum on. Now, I can't stand them!
hey! saw your comment...and yes, we'd love to see you guys soon. we are around this weekend, for the most part. weird, that i am reply via blog comment but i just had to see what little nat is up to! and i think the blow dryer this is pretty cute...except you can probably expect to have to replace your current one soon. i doubt their "motors" are built to maintain that sort of use ;)
Hooray Nathanael!! Way to go on sleeping!
And I feel ya on the daytime nap, thing. Boston hasn't quite figured out the napping in the day. He does the same thing with sometimes long naps and sometimes only cat naps. We have had two days now, though, where he has stayed awake for over 6 or 8 hours in the day...that is rough!
And we found that the vacuum has helped, too.
I use a hairdryer regularly to warm up. I wouldn't be surprised if my mom used it when I was a baby for some reason...
Haha, Meesh - we use the hair dryer to warm up, too! We especially like to warm up our sheets with it. I wonder if early embryo Nat (when it was still cold out) liked the hair dryer back then, and still likes it now.
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