The Crying Chronicles

I should preface this post by saying that in general, Charlie is a very, very good baby. He doesn't mind his car seat, he sleeps when we go out, etc. I must also add that I absolutely love that breastfeeding is working for us and that we get to bond in that way. There's just this one little issue...

For the past week or so, Mr. Charlie has taken to dominating my evenings with freak out after freak out. From about 6pm until 11pm is one long witching hour. At first, his red faced screaming resulted in me running around the apartment trying everything I could think of. Dirty diaper? No. Swing? No. Bouncer seat? No. Bounce and walk? No. The only fix was nursing him...sort of. When I would try to nurse him, he would eat for a bit, but then doze off and half halfheartedly suck as if I were a pacifier. When I tried to wake him up to eat more, another freak out would start. What was going on with this kid?! After reading an article on KellyMom.com, however, I learned that quite often babies this age want to cluster feed and comfort nurse to settle down from the day and prepare for the night ahead. It also could have to do with the numerous growth spurts that newborns go through during their first few months of life. Often this kind of behavior is diagnosed as colic or another digestive issue, not the need for comfort. The resulting good news? After his 11pm feeding, he calms down and goes to sleep until about 3am, then sleeps again from about 4am until 7:30am. Further good news? He'll grow out of it. Guess I can't complain about that!

Since my little discovery, Charlie is happier and I'm less crazy. Yes, he still wants to nurse almost every hour, but now I know to just let him nurse, sleep, and relax instead of trying to rush him off the breast so I could go get something done. Its natures way of slowing me down too, I suppose. Not a bad lesson to learn.

In a further attempt to help calm him, we got him a Wubbanub. Overall, Charlie isn't a binkie kind of kid, but he does like it when he's in need of comforting. The only problem was he couldn't hold the binkie in his mouth for more than a few minutes. He's got a strong suck, just not a lot of stamina. The minute he'd doze off, there went the binkie. In comes the Wubbanub; basically a little beanie baby attached to a newborn Soothie binkie. The baby can cuddle with the animal and hold in their binkie. Thank goodness for random inventions.

Charlie's froggy friend