Thursday, October 7, 2010

Sleep Feed Schedule - 7 months



Julia is finally starting to accept solid food. This is a pic of her enjoying some honeydew in a mesh bag, so she can safely gum and suck all the yummy juice without Mommy worrying about her choking on anything.

I've been trying to put Julia on some sort of daily feed/sleep schedule because her day is totally unstructured. So far, I've figured out that she can take 6oz of milk at maximum capacity. 4.5-5oz is her comfort zone. She usually doesn't drink more than 5oz at a sitting except just before bedtime so now I offer her 4.5oz in every bottle. This is what the schedule looks like at 7.5 months:

7am - wake up and 4.5oz bottle
8:15am - nap
9am - wake and play
10am - 4.5oz bottle
11am - nap
12pm - lunch (1oz veggie or fruit)
1pm - 4.5oz bottle
3pm - nap
4pm - 4.5oz bottle
5pm - dinner (1oz veggieo or fruit)
6:30pm - 6oz bottle
7pm - bedtime

This is really a rough schedule, because she doesn't have a set wake up time. I would never wake her up in the morning, because I need my sleep (LOL). So if she wakes at 6am instead, then the entire schedule is moved up an hour. If she wakes at 7:30am, then the schedule is moved off by 30 minutes.

Julia is not eating alot of solids at this point so her diet is still mostly breastmilk. I've tried feeding cereals (rice and oatmeal) but unfortunately every time I feed her a type of cereal, she gets a eczema on her face so she may be allergic to something. I don't know what it is at this point (I hope she is not allergic to rice!).

She's taking 3 naps a day which seems to be working well. Her awake time really isn't that long. I'm trying to figure out how to extend her nap times which would work better but so far no luck. I'm currently trying a technique called wake-to-sleep but it's only worked 2 times out of the 10 times so far. I basically tiptoe into Julia's room after she's fallen asleep for 25 minutes, then kinda rub her cheek until she moves her head the other way, and then I creep out quietly. This disturbs her from deep sleep, moving her into light sleep again so that she is in another sleep cycle. We'll see if I can do better this week.

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