The second move

As part of their advice to reduce the risk of cot death, the NHS suggest having your baby sleep in the same room as you for the first 6 months. This is only advice and I've spoken to lots of mums who moved their baby out earlier and had no problems. We decided to stick with the 6 months though and actually it's not been too bad - it's certainly been much more convenient for breast feeding in the night.

We knew the house move would happen about the time Z was celebrating his half-year and with all the other upheaval going on decided to delay moving him to his own room for a few weeks until we were more settled.

So that happened this week. It's been an interesting few nights and on the whole Z seems to have settled well in the new cot. In my mind, the fact we'd put him to bed at 7 normally and so he's been having the first few hours of the night alone anyway has helped, although I really have no idea! So far we've had a really disturbed night (waking every half hour between about half one and four), followed by an okay night, a really good night (slept from one til about six with no waking) and then we hit Saturday. What on earth happened on Saturday, we're still analysing - but again there's no real way we can know the answer!

Z ate late in the early morning on Friday so didn't really want a proper breakfast, and I don't think I boobed him afterwards as I normally would because he gorged himself on the earlier feed. Lunch was late (see post below) and then he didn't eat much dinner either. His naps were a bit out of kilter too and we tried to change the positioning of his bedtime feed so that he didn't feed to sleep. All in all this led to a good 45 minutes of howling and wailing when we tried to put him to bed. Checked for physical injury but could see none and he was warm, nappy dry. Gave him some calpol in case his cold was causing some unseen pain and I fed him to sleep. And again when he woke shortly afterwards. He slept with us that night, but still woke more often than usual for feeds. I think he must have just been desperately hungry.

So Sunday we reset everything to the way it used to be, made sure we had meals and naps at proper times and had a much better night. And no repeat of Saturday last night either. Thank goodness.

It is quite strange with him sleeping in another room though - I can't just lean over to check he's still breathing and am trying to resist the urge to go into his room frequently to check up!

We are starting to think also about how we get Z to sleep in the evenings. We reached a point in Ipswich where we could lie him down in his cot awake, read him a story and he would drop off to sleep himself. However now it seems that he'll only drop off if fed or rocked to sleep, which clearly needs to be got out of eventually as I'm planning to stop breast-feeding when he reaches a year. I'm not planning to consciously do anything about it just yet - until he's had several good nights in the cot at least - but last night it happened. Z fed, didn't fall asleep, I put him in his cot awake but tired, turned off the light and after a few minutes he dropped off. We'll see how it goes.