We really really don't want to jinx anything, but it looks like we may be turning a corner with Phoebe. The last few days have been much better in terms of the amount of screaming she does. She still gets fussy - especially at night or when she is put in the car seat - but she is getting a bit easier to soothe and sometimes we can even calm her down before she gets into full-on melt down mode. We have no idea which of the interventions that we have tried is responsible for this turn around, so we're going to just keep doing all of them. Eventually we'll probably try to phase out things like the baby Zantac and the probiotics, but for now, we don't want to risk a back slide.
On day 2 of reasonable baby behavior I said "who are you? and what have you done with our Phoebe?". Jeremy overheard me and without missing a beat he responded "I don't care, let's keep this one." I don't think that anyone will miss the old Phoebe - especially not our neighbors. Last week our next door neighbor (who we get along great with) complemented Phoebe on her lung strength. These people have two little boys so they are familiar with baby noise. The mom said "usually little babies sound like little kittens when they cry, but Phoebe ...". Yeah, Phoebe definitely skipped the kitten phase. I would classify her crying more as fire alarm-esque. The neighbors' little boy covers his ears whenever he sees Phoebe. I am sure it has not been easy to be our neighbor for the last six weeks!
Now we need to work on night time sleep. I was excited to read that some babies start sleeping through the night around 10 weeks. Then I learned that the clinical definition of sleeping through the night was one uninterrupted five hour stretch. What?!? Who came up with that?! Five hours does not a night of sleep make. At this point however, we would definitely take five hours on a regular basis.
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As I told Jeremy, all the interventions have probably helped, but turning six weeks old may have helped the most. Babies and children alternate periods of disorganization brainwise(and attendant crying, etc.) with consolidation of new patterns and learning (calm). I assumed he knew this already, from his classes and then learned that child development is no longer a core course for psychology majors.
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I've been informed by my wife that had I bothered to read the baby books ahead of time, I would have known this. Doesn't mean the interventions weren't worth it, though.
Men never read those books, at least according to Dad and Adam. They expect their wives to read the books and clue them in.
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