This past month has been full of so many changes for Olivia. She went from pulling up to cruising and from tentatively rocking on hands and knees to full-on crawling. I'll post the movie I made of her crawling--she's scary good and fast.
Also this month: sleep training! We used a method Chris found called "Positive Routines." Basically, you let the baby get tired by moving the bed time closer to when the baby actually falls asleep (8:30 for Olivia). You then use the night routine of bath and bottle and cuddles to associate those things to being tired and then going to sleep. The goal is to put the baby down while she is still awake but drowsy.
The first night she was out like a light, and we thought, Hey, this is easy! Well, the next night she figured it out and was not as pleased. We had to employ a little crying it out, but it only took 20 minutes or so before she fell asleep. She also slept through the night both nights. A few days into it, she seemed to be getting tired earlier and I didn't feel it was fair to her to keep her up so late, so we moved the bedtime to 8:00 pm and then shaved off ten minutes a night for a few nights.
It seems like it's working well and she's sleeping through the night every night (but waking at 6:00 am SHARP!) and we're back to our previous bedtime of 7:30 pm.
Naptime is not as successful, as her daytime sleep schedule is less predictable and actually quite sporadic. Three mornings in a row she woke up at 6 only to fall back asleep at 8 and sleep for two hours. Other times she sleep for 30 minutes and then is wide awake the rest of the afternoon. It's a mystery.
We had our nine month check-up with Dr. Carol today and Olivia is right on target for her developmental stages. Here are her stats:
