Milestones!

Every new experience your baby has is so exciting. The first time they hold your finger, the first time they smile at you and yes, the first time you get peed on is an exciting day too. I can honestly say this week has been the most monumental in Jaggers entire 16 weeks of existence. Side note- how has he only been in my life for 16 weeks! It feels like he’s been a part of my life forever! Anyway back to the story, in exactly 1 week my son had his first real giggle, rolled over and started sleeping through the night! Is that normal to have so many milestones at once?! Well for my Jagger boy it is and each one was amazing in its own way.

 Let me start with his first giggle. I get weekly emails from BabyCenter and the bump and as of his 11^th week it was saying he should be giggling. Being a crazy Jewish mama I started wondering why my boy wasn’t giggling. Was he depressed? Was I not fun enough for him? After asking Shai almost every day for a week I realized I’m being crazy and reminded myself that each kid develops at his own pace and I finally got over it. He was handing out smiles left and right and I should shut up and take it. On Saturday we are hanging out at Liats apartment with my parents in town from Florida and Kevin (her husband) parents here from South Africa all just playing with the kids. His mom was making funny noises at J and he just burst into laughter! I was DYING! It was the best sound I have ever heard and brought us all a huge smile. I seriously cant wait for all you new mamas out there to hear your baby giggle because it is the BEST!

Now the roll over story is one that makes me a little bit sad. While Gen Gen is away on her last baby nurse job, I have this amazing girl Ali who comes 2x a week so Mama can have a little break. She came yesterday morning so I headed out and went to the gym. On the way home I bumped into Shai on the street and he tells me “something big happened today” and proceeds to tell me that our boy rolled over. I literally yelled NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO in the middle of the street because I couldn’t believe I missed it. I’m with this kid 24/7 and he decided to do tricks while I try burn off my baby fat. The good news was that Ali saw it coming and somehow got it on video, so while I was getting my legs waxed I watched my son roll over for the very first time. And yes, for those of you wondering, I cried watching it and I’m sure the very nice lady at the threading place thinks I’m psycho.

Now for the very best moment yet…Jagger is sleeping through the night- wooohoooo!!!!! I have been waiting for this moment since the day he was born when a full nights sleep went out the window. We had spoken to our pediatrician at his 8 week check up about sleep training and while he is ALL for crying it out, he says feed on demand till he’s at least 12 weeks and showing signs that he can do it, like sleeping 8 hour stretches at night. In our house whatever Dr Barry says goes, so my little doll was happily chugging a 6 ounces at 4am every night. At our 3-month appointment we re-addressed the sleep issue and we went home with a homework assignment. We needed to put J down after his 7pm bottle awake. This was going to be a challenge because come 6pm this boy starts fading and ALWAYS fell asleep on the bottle, then we would put him down and he would sleep till his middle of the night bottle so we thought nothing of this. Ok it was time to switch things up in the Shustik house. We started feeding him with the lights completely on while having semi loud conversations in order to keep him up and it worked. The first night we put him in he cried for 4 minutes, stuck his thumb in his mouth and was out. We couldn’t believe it. For the next few nights we did the same and J was a champ, he would roll around and “talk” for a few minutes then fall asleep. Phase 1 complete and not bad at all! We were now ready for the cry it out for the 4am bottle which I was dreading! Its one thing to hear my baby cry at 7pm while Shai’s up and were eating dinner and can talk to each other but I was terrified for this one. Shai asked that we wait to start this on a Friday because he wouldn’t be able to work after a night of screaming and I agreed. However J threw a curve ball at us. That night that we discussed it (last Wednesday) he decides to wake up crying at 1230. This was very weird because he hadn’t had at 1230 bottle for weeks now. I look at Shai and tell him the plan has changed and we had to start now. I did as Barry said, I waited 5 minutes then went in and rubbed his belly for 20 seconds, told him I loved him and walked out. HOLY SHIT I have never heard this kid cry so hard. He said we can keep going in at 5-10 minute intervals if we wanted but I saw how much worse it made him and I realized I needed to just let him cry. FML! Shai lay there with a pillow over his head and I sat up with my hands over my ears staring at the monitor and clock preying it would stop. It lasted for 36 minutes with very few intervals of calmness and finally he gave up and crashed. This was probably the hardest 36 minutes of my life. I started thinking maybe he was hungry or something’s wrong, will he hate me? Am I fucking him up? But I had to keep reminding myself that Liat did it with Tyler and he is one of the happiest kids I know. Ok I figured we are in the clear for the night but I was wrong. 416am rolls around and he’s crying again! I took a deep breath and waited. This time it lasted 16 minutes. I was so tempted to go in and feed him but knew if I did that the previous cry session would have been a huge waste and he would always think I was coming in. Kids are a lot smarter than we think! So I finally got myself back to sleep and the second he woke up the next morning at 7 Shai and I both ran in there together, looked over the crib and Jagger flashed us the biggest smile. Ahhh what a relief. He didn’t hate us!!! Thursday night rolls around and I am DREADING it. We put him down, have our night get in to bed and although I was asleep, I was waiting for the screams to begin. All of a sudden I wake up at 620 and realize, he’s not only still asleep but didn’t make a peep the whole night! I was so excited, proud and most of all shocked!  Every night this week he has gone down at 7ish and I don’t hear from him till 6ish in the morning, with the exception of Tuesday nights 10 minutes of crying at 430 (not sure what that was). Let me tell you, its life changing to get a full nights sleep! Maybe I'll even get out of my leggings one of these days...Maybe.

I’m sure many of you out there are thinking I’m a cold bitch for letting a baby cry and believe me it was NOT easy but I think its important for babies to learn to self soothe and to give them a chance to gain independence (when its age appropriate of course). Co sleeping or feeding on demand till Jagger is one is not something I wanted to do and I am very happy with my decision.  Now don’t any of you go putting evil eye on me because mama needs her sleep!!