Success in small doses.

Every day and night Eden and I sleep together and I've decided to put an end to that during the day. The only way I can teach her that sleeping on her own is okay is to make her sleep on her own. So nap times are now practice times. I've been reading on the Dr. Sears website that if a baby has a problem falling asleep without the breast or bottle then try keeping the breast or bottle in the mouth when putting them down. Well obviously Dr. Sears doesnt have a breast and doesnt realize I cant keep my breast in Eden's mouth while she soothes herself to sleep in her crib. Not only would that look awkward, i'm also not so dedicated to breast feeding that i'll stick my boob through the crib bars to calm a crying baby. BUT I can give her a bottle and do it. So now I have been putting Eden to sleep with a bottle, transfering her to her crib and if she awakens from the jostling, quickly putting the bottle back in her mouth where she drops back into dreamland. The only problem so far is that she doesnt sleep deeply. So if she wakes up and looks around, even if its only for a few seconds, she freaks out. Unfortunately I can't do much about her seperation anxiety and as with Gabe, its going to take persistence, reassurance, and determination to get her to self soothe. Eventually, she'll get there and maybe then I can sleep longer than an hour at a time!

On the Gabe front, he has been saying a few more words which is a bit of a relief to me because I think he might be a little bit behind in his speech. I know they are supposed to have a language explosion between 16 mos and 24 mos, but so far it hasn't happened. At Gabe's age he should be saying 6-10 words that doesn't include names of family members and pets. At the moment, he can say about 8 words but they aren't clear and I'm not sure how worried I should be about that. I think if he hits 2 years of age and is still hard to comprehend then I will take him to the doctor. He might have to get into some speech therapy. The doctors did warn me that being premature and a low birth weight can affect some aspects of cognitive development so I'm just going to keep an eye on it. I hope he doesn't need any more specialists because its hard feeling like somehow you've failed your child. On the bright side he's adorable and can for now, get by on his looks ;)