Bew's Corner: Training Clark - November 12, 2008

Just thought I would start off the post with a cute picture of the boy. He is really smiling a lot these days!

Its been almost two weeks since our last post so I will try to catch up on what has been going on. After trick-or-treat last weekend Jason and I went to Carnegie's in Greenfield for my birthday dinner, while Tom and Sara babysat. The food was awesome, and it was really nice to get dressed up and have an evening away from the baby. This last weekend we spent mostly watching football (of course). On Sunday though my friend from high school Adam, who is also a big Steelers fan came by to watch the game with us. My mom also came in on Sunday night to stay for a couple days. Here is a pic during halftime of the game. Its a good thing we took the picture then because no one was smiling after the end of the game :(

From November

I called this post training Clark because we discovered this weekend that Clark would no longer take a bottle. He had taken it several times prior to this, but we had tried two or three times recently and he just absolutely refused. I read on babycenter.com that this was a pretty common problem around this age with breastfed babies. That they had no problem taking a bottle when they were younger, but at some point just stopped and had to be retrained. There were 571 people that had written in with their stories and suggestions to this problem on the website, so this must be a pretty common.

Anyway, on Monday I had my mom try to give him one when he got up in the morning while I showered and got ready for the day. No Dice. We tried all day to give him a bottle of my breast milk, we changed positions, tried swaddling him, tried before naps, after naps, all day long. He is a stubborn baby. We also went shopping on Monday so while we were out I picked up a new bottle that is supposed to be shaped more like a breast. Yesterday, I tried again, I pumped and put breast milk in the new bottle and offered it to him several times through the day. After a while he quit crying when it came near him, and even let us put it in his mouth, but he never started to suck on it or swallow. He took maybe a half oz of what ran out into his mouth, so I ended up nursing him all day.

Today I began again, I pumped this morning into the bottle and offered it to him first through the morning. He still wouldn't take it. I ended up nursing him at 10:30 because I was meeting a friend for lunch. After lunch I pumped again and offered him the bottle, he did not like that idea. So I put him down for a nap without nursing him. He slept for about 5 mins and then woke up crying, so I went in and offered him the bottle again. Finally he started to take it! He only took about an oz, but it put him to sleep and I was able to get him down for his nap (which is how I have time to type all this up!) Anyway, I have the bottle ready and waiting for him when he wakes up. I am more stubborn than he is, and I need to be able to leave him for more than two hours at a time!!! In fact I am back to work for a half day this Friday and Clark will be home with Jason so we are hoping he will be able to take the bottle nicely by then. This is one issue I will not cave on to an 8 week old. Although I do hate to see him cry.

Also along the lines of training the boy, I am finally starting to get him down on a nap schedule. He is at least taking a morning nap around 10 for an hour or so, and then yesterday he napped from 1:15-4:15, that was really nice. I got him to sleep around 1:15 again today and it is 2:20 now, so hopefully it will be another long one. We tried to start a better bedtime routine last night too, but we are not sure if he needs another evening nap, or if we should just keep him up until bedtime, so we are experimenting a little bit with bedtime. My goal is to really work at this the next two weeks before we are home for a week during Meghann's wedding and Thanksgiving, in hopes that it will make traveling with him (and leaving him with Grandparents) a little easier.

OK, so enough about my struggles with the baby here is a really cute pic of Clark and his Dad.