Life...

Life is all about the journey.
It's about finding out who you are,
and what you believe.

It's about listening to your own voice,
and trusting your own heart.

It's about following your own path,
and chasing your own dreams.

Sleep, what is that?!

I thought getting such little sleep when Dagney was a newborn was bad, well him being 6 months and barely sleeping ever is even worse! I feel like a zombie most days and I am surprised I am actually still alive. Ever since 3 months old when he started on his new Neocate formula his sleeping schedule changed, he added in another feeding which is apparently normal when babies who have had GI tract problems and pain before are now able to eat without being in pain do. So I thought okay, in about a months time he will be out of it, yeah well I was wrong, very very very wrong. 4 months rolled around and he started the waking inbetween sleep cycles and then 5 months rolled around and he was waking even more, then now 6 months and he is waking himself even more with his added lets roll over in my sleep, get stuck and call for help from Mom to come rescue me. I just want to get the record straight I am not complaining about getting up to feed him 3 times a night, those are easy, its all the wake ups from when we put him down  till 7am in the morning that are bugging the heck out of me and I barely get 2 hours of sleep in a row together.
  When all these wake ups happen and I am overly tired, like zombie tired I start to become a major bitch and I snap so easily at Dustin. Dustin isn't doing anything wrong, but I some how manage to find something to bitch at him about and I am seriously afraid one of these days he is going to through his hands up in the air and leave me, because I will be too much to handle, which I wouldn't blame him to say the least, I barely can stand myself when I am like this.
  So I am currently reading the No Cry Sleep Solution and I am hoping that it will give us some tips on how to get him to sleep a little better. I am not asking for a full 8 hours of sleep, but I really like at least 3-4 hours of sleep in a row so I can get at least some REM cycles in there. We will see. I was reading that napping or lack there of can contribute to the amount of wakening he has through out the night, which I highly agree. Dagney will nap anywhere from 20-40 minutes twice a day. He has totally taken out his third nap now and only has two. I don't mind, because its less work for me to get him to sleep. But she talks about sitting with them while they sleep and when they switch sleep cycles to get them back to sleep however they like to be soothed. So today for his morning nap I let him sleep for 20 minutes while I pumped then I went in there and sat beside him and sure enough when he switched cycles he woke up and I shoved his soother back in his mouth. It worked the 3 times he woke up and sure enough instead of a 40 minute nap he had about an hours length of one. I haven't read ALL the way through the chapter yet, but I know you are suppose to do this for a week and they will start to be able to switch through their sleep cycles on their own and fall back to sleep on there own. So once he starts to get more sleep during the day hopefully it will help at night time.
  A friend of mine, Francesca had mentioned to me that her eldest daughter didn't start sleeping through the night(baby sleeping through the night which is 5-6 hours) until 10 months so there is still hope to get some sleep, but I have to some how survive until he is 10 months. Oh goodness! 4 more months to go I guess.
  Anyways, it is a start to something hopefully good. We both need and deserve sleep.

Dagney's heart.

Dustin and I took Dagney to his pediatric cardiologist appointment yesterday, which wasn't that nerve wrecking as much as I thought it might be. She did an ultrasound on his heart which went pretty smooth considering towards the end of it Dagney was getting really fussy and squirmed around a lot, but I fed him and it kept him still to get some more pictures. She said his heart looks PERFECT! That hole that they discovered at 3 days old has closed nicely so we don't need to be concerned anymore. What a relief! We did mention to her the heart defect that Dustin's Father had and died from in his early 50's and she said IF anything shows up in Dustin(the heart defect shows up when you are older and is hereditary) to bring Dagney back in to see her and she will refer us to the cardiologist team at Sick Kid's Hospital down in Toronto. He will be monitored if that is the case. But other than that nothing needs to be done and just hope all is well from here on out with his heart. This is such great news and I am soo beyond happy that his hole has closed and his heart is perfect. With all the health problems he has had since day one of being born everything is starting to go the right way and fall into place. As a mother this makes any bad day into a whole bunch of happy ones.