Nahyun celebrated her Baek-il in LA and since then I feel like a lot has happened!
First off, we were so thankful that the dreaded 'first flight with a baby' went so smoothly. We changed our mind at the last minute
and decided to fly rather than drive the 6 hours. I was dreading the flight and imagined having a screaming baby with everyone around us giving us dirty glares, but thankfully she was very well behaved. Hopefully now, I can take her to Houston sometime within the next several months.
She changes everyday and I feel like she's a real person now!
She's so much more interactive, can play on her bouncer and is very opinionated as well.
While we were in LA, Stephen and I FIRMLY decided that now it is time to get her sleep trained and taking the bottle.
Remember my very descriptive problem of a boob addict? Well, we wanted to wean her and start feeding her pumped breastmilk since I'll
be going to Chicago next weekend for HaeJong's wedding. Well, we decided to do all this the same time.
Let me tell ya...it was 24 hours of "H-E-double hockey sticks" (as my sister says)
As soon as we got home Monday at 9am we started...
She went on a 12 hour sleeping strike and an 18 hour eating strike.
I broke down a couple of times, became very doubtful that this would actually work, and my heart just broke for her as she went from jamming her fist into her mouth and crying a sad cry to going absolutely hysterical at even the sight of a bottle!
I expected this to go on for at least 3 days..but today I feel like a liberated person with a perfectly independent and happy baby!
(I hope I'm not speaking too soon...)
But really, I am absolutely amazed at the change.
She's already taken several bottles, fallen asleep for 3 naps on her own with very minimal crying and is very happy when she's awake!
I am so relieved and happy!
UPDATE: Since the "training" everything has been very 'by the book'...it's been absolutely amazing! She has a very predictable schedule that occurred rather naturally since the sleep training but it's exactly what the book predicted. She falls alseep on her own and sleeps well. I've also re-introduced nursing so that I'm not always tied to the pump. Now she happily takes both the bottle and the boob (which is how she was for the first six weeks).
Ever since she was born, the things that I thought would be tough hasn't been as hard but there have been things that caught me off guard and I've had to learned along the way. Everyone has been telling me how good natured Nahyun is...and I realize looking back that it was me who had to be "trained" to instill good habits in her from early on rather than doing everything for my own comfort.
just a few Things I've learned:
1. Do not let her eat where she is to sleep
2. Falling alseep in a LEARNED process
3. Consistency, consistency, consistency
4. Routine, routine, routine
5. Heathly sleep consists of 5 components that must be in balance...never really thought about sleep in this way, but it's a very hands on task
6. I view sleep and naps so much differently now...it's become a very 'visual' thing.
7. Even within the first year, I have to adapt to different sleep phases she will go through
8. Before Nahyun was born, I wanted to be a 'cool mom' and not let her disturb my social life and take her along according to my schedule and not be so anal about schedules etc. But I'm learning now, that I'd much rather stay home for the time being to instill these long lasting habits.
