Knitting My Son to Sleep

It was a wonderful two weeks. DH was home for all of it and, I must admit, I was quite selfish about sharing any of my time with him and the outside world. Thus, little blogging action! We had a great holiday with a nice mix of quiet family time (Christmas) with visiting (between Christmas and New Years) and company (just before Christmas and New Years week). We were all thoroughly spoiled by our wonderful family and friends and feel very thankful and blessed in every way.

DH went back to work on Monday so Iain and I are slowly trying to re-establish a routine. Only one of our usual baby programs starts again this week so I had a couple of girlfriends and their babies over yesterday afternoon so that the young ones could get reacquainted. Iain and I also attended a Pampered Chef party at one of those girlfriend’s homes on Monday night as well as attending our first La Leche meeting last night.

There were some stresses that arose with the holidays. Either because I was too busy (I tried not to be but was likely giving off ‘busy’ vibes) or because Iain is now distracted by EVERYTHING, he decided to stop nursing. Therefore, a great deal of the holidays were spent pumping and fretting over why a 6 month old who has not yet started solid foods would be weaning himself already. Luckily, he continued to want to nurse for his before bed meal and throughout the night. As a matter of fact, he refused the bottle at all at night which greatly assisted in making me feel better. As of Monday, we seem to be back on track with nursing during the day. I just need to be patient and allow him to pull off and look around and re-latch many, many times over the course of a feeding. The La Leche leader last night said that his behaviour is part of a developmental stage and, likely, he will go back to enjoying his usual nursing sessions at some point. I’m hoping!

Another thing we, or rather DH, noticed about Iain was how to get him to sleep for naps. I know I’ve said this before but our child does not sleep much during the day unless it is stroller or car induced. Yes, this means his nights are fairly pleasant and, luckily, despite the lack of naps, he is generally pleasant during the day. However, he was getting up earlier and earlier before the holidays (0430 – eek!) and going to bed earlier and earlier. We wanted to see if we could change his routine a bit. One day, after a very fussy morning without either of us being able to get Iain to have a nap, DH decided to take him for a walk in the stroller – a tried and true method for many parents I’m sure. So, he got Iain all dressed up in his fleece suit and then into his snow suit and bundled in a quilt. There was some screaming as is usual for dressing him up fully for winter. While DH was getting himself bundled, Iain fell asleep. On the kitchen floor. With lots of things going on around him, not the least of which was a black and white border collie wondering if she was going for a walk too (she was). Yes, Sir, there he was. Gone.

Now we’re calling Iain’s fleece suit his ‘super suit’ (The Incredibles can take some credit for this – DH is a fan). When Iain gets fussy during the day, usually indicative of naptime, we put him in his super suit and either walk him for a minute or two and put him down or….

Just put him down while I sit and knit and hum to him until he goes to sleep. He watches the fibre move through my hands and drifts off. Here’s proof of that process.

I haven’t managed to get much knitting done using this method as I’ve just discovered it but I have managed to knit a few more rows since last I wrote. It felt good too.

Happy 2008 to all you lovely knitters out there in blogosphere land!