Baby Gator: Progress

We've been making progress on the sleeping front. For the last 3 nights she goes to sleep with me at 11pm and sleeps until 4am. Then she goes back to sleep at 5am and sleeps anywhere from 7-9am. Getting those 5 straight hours of sleep for three nights in a row have been fantastic. Now here's the catch: I've been sleeping on the couch with her every night. It is nice because we actually get to lay down to sleep rather than me having to be at a 45 degree angle, but I miss sleeping in a bed, and I miss Mark. This weekend we are going to try transitioning into bed. I've decided I'm going to wait until school is out to even attempt to have her sleep in her own bed at night. Still working on it during the day without much success. She also currently takes a 3-4 hour nap in the morning, but then from about 3- 9 she takes these little cat naps and wants to nurse every hour. This is of course the point in the day that Mark gets home, and I just want a break. She does have random happy moments during that time period as well, but there doesn't tend to be a lot of downtime for me during that period. It's a very unpredictable time.

*** A miracle just occurred!!! I had gotten Olive to fall asleep and put her in her swing to sleep so I could get some things done. After about 15 minutes she had her eyes open, I decided to blog until she started crying, and somehow she actually fell back to sleep. No breastfeeding, no incessant walking, rocking, and shushing; she fell back to sleep on her own! Okay, she is swaddled, and the swing is rocking her; but still no adult intervention and she fell back to sleep.

Another milestone we reached this week was when I actually managed to get a picture of her smiling. She's been smiling for awhile now, but anytime I tried to get a picture of her she would stop. Now she has more and more smiley times so I finally managed to capture it. Almost every day she is extremely happy after her morning nap. I get at least an hour with her where she smiles and coos the whole time. I love it.

While the sleeping seems to have progressed a lot, the pumping is coming a bit slower. It's just hard to find the time. I only manage to pump 1-2 times a day. Hopefully having Mark here this weekend will let me pump more often.

And now for the good stuff, updated Olive pics: