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At first I tried to sit on the mattress holding Eric in my arms and rocking him - but he was fighting and crawling away from me, so that clearly wasn’t working. Then I put him in the cot and he started to scream - I lied down on the mattress beside the cot, said good night to him, put my hand through the bars and near him and just lied still.

First couple of weeks it took Eric 45 minutes of crying to fall asleep - but he wasn’t crying alone in the room, I was right there (pretending to be asleep) and he knew it. So finally he would settle down, crawl underneath my hand, hold it in his arms and fall asleep. I would get up, cover him with a blanket and leave. Then after a couple of hours he was waking up again, I would go into his room, lie beside him and after crying a while he would fall asleep again.

In the third week he was waking up and crying but I didn’t go to him immediately and sometimes he could fall asleep on his own. Other times I had to go into the room and lie next to his cot, sometimes even to pick him up and put him on the mattress near me, patting on the back and shushing until he falls asleep - then I put him in the cot.

In the fourth week he was waking up 2 times at night, one he was settling himself and the other I had to help him to go back to sleep. Usually the first time was around 1am and the second around 5am in the morning - I was feeding him then and he kept on sleeping till 7 - 7:30 in the morning.

Finally after a month I knew - this routine was working, because Eric got used to sleeping in his own room, in his cot, wasn’t afraid of being alone or in the dark, and I only had to settle him once or twice through the night. Considering his previous sleep issues that was a huge achievement for me - I managed to avoid sleep school and gave my baby good sleeping habits on my own.

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This time I wasn’t going to try the ‘controlled crying’ routine because it failed me twice in the past and I didn’t believe in it any more. So we got Eric his own room and put his cot in it - in the old house he slept in our bedroom. I put a mattress in Eric’s room by his cot so that I won’t have to lie on the floor.

So my sleep school had 3 stages.

Stage one was to get him tired by the bedtime. The tricky part was to not over stimulate him and minimize the excitement - so we ruled out wrestling and running around. Quiet activities like reading books or singing songs or petting our dog worked well for that.

Stage two was to have a getting-ready-for-bed routine - first we were bathing Eric and putting his flannel pajamas on him. The next step was sitting him up on high chair and giving him warm formula milk. That filled his little tummy and made him sleepy.

Stage three was saying good night to everyone and going into his bedroom, I turned the lights off and had a little night light at first - later I gave it up because Eric didn’t need it.

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To make it easier, there is a game mom and dad could play - it’s called “find and tell”. Whatever worked for you, Mom - tell the Dad. When you tried to wipe the face of your protesting baby and knocked down a bottle lid, baby started laughing and forgot about protesting – tell Dad about that little success. He will be able to do the same when it’s his turn to feed the baby. Now Dad - you may think that Mom knows it all, but you’d be surprised :). It is because women and men do things in such different ways, your little team has twice the chances to win – compared to every one of you alone. Dads can come up with solutions Moms would never think of and vise versa.

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Have you ever thought “Will I ever be free to follow my dreams, to have fun, sing and dance, and feel young and beautiful again?” Have you told yourself “Babies are no fun, what was I thinking having a baby?!My life is a total mess now :(”

You have… and so have I.

But you know what? It’s just one of those days and if you keep it together and sleep it off, you’ll feel much better in the morning.

Here’s what helps me to get through the day:

Just remember - your life is much better than it seems right now

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We have moved home and it was one of the hardest days I had to go through, a lot of unexpected things happened and a lot of plans got messed up. So here is the list of what went wrong and what I would have done differently.

1) We packed most of the boxes and left just “a couple of things” to be packed in the morning of the moving day. Huge mistake! The sticky tape and the boxes have mysteriously disappeared and Rob had to search the whole house for them, rushing and cursing, he barely made it before the movers van arrived.

Note to self - leave nothing unpacked, everything should be ready and waiting before the moving day.

2) Our boxes didn’t fit into the movers van. Two weeks before the move Rob and I had a huge argument about how we will move our stuff, he insisted on hiring a van and doing the loading/unloading himself, I voted for removal truck and a couple of movers. We compromised on hiring a van with a driver that will help Rob to load and unload the things, and after that van was packed to the full capacity and all the gaps were filled, a pile of boxes and things was left and I remember looking at it in total shock, thinking “How the heck did this happen?”

Note to self - hire a big moving truck, remembering that one often underestimates the amount of accumulated possessions, especially the bulky baby stuff.

3) We got a late toll payment notice because with all the excitement of moving Rob drove on toll highway and forgot to call and pay the toll on time.

Note to self - next time plan the rout a day before and if it includes tollways, buy the passes in advance.

4) The cleaner we hired to clean the house after we’ve emptied it did a crappy job and I had to do some extra cleaning myself. It was exactly what I was trying to avoid - having to entertain a baby without any toys (everything packed) and to clean the house at the same time. Looking back I see why it happened - she gave us a quotation based on 4 hours of work and realistically speaking that wasn’t enough to thoroughly clean the house, I’d say it should take 6 or 7 hours. We chose her because she was cheaper than the others and that backfired when it turned out that she simply charged for less time than others.

Note to self - next time if a person gives me an unrealistic estimate, don’t hire them no matter what.

5) The new house wasn’t connected to electricity and gas on the day we moved. It was pure luck that Rob noticed it early, when he was unloading the boxes, called the company, demanded to have the house immediately connected (as we were assured by their email) and they sent someone to do whatever was necessary fix our connection. Apparently, although we have gone through their online process of signing the contract, confirmations and the like, something went wrong in their system and our customer file wasn’t created properly due to some computer error.

Note to self - don’t trust computer systems and online sign-up processes, do it the old-fashioned way, call the company and discuss all the details with a real person.

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Funny, my baby didn’t like the lumps in his puree - but liked to chew on steamed carrots and broccoli. He was grabbing them from the tray of his high chair and nibbling little pieces, squashing them with his gums and swallowing with such an expression on his face, as if he was eating a lemon

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By 9 months Eric was able to walk holding my fingers for support and he liked that new way of moving a lot. He started to walk around the furniture and through the kitchen, pushing his high chair in front of him, and holding on to it like a mini-walker.

Finally, today (at almost 11 months) he was with Rob in the garden picking leaves and pulling out grass, and Rob saw him standing up not holding on to anything. He was balancing on his feet and clearly didn’t need any support. So Rob tricked him into making his first steps, holding his hands at first to get him started and then letting them go – he kept on walking and made 3 steps! Then they came in, totally blew me away with the news and Eric walked from Rob to me a couple of times, clearly very proud of himself. My baby can walk now!

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For a while it was very convenient – to feed Eric all I had to do is to get a jar out of a freezer, heat in the microwave and dinner was ready. What I didn’t know was… that at 8-9 months it’s time to introduce lumps. Yes, lumps – the book says that many babies who feed on purees have problem with lumpy food, and suggests introducing lumpy food as early as possible.

That was easier said then done but finally I came up with this idea – what it I leave some cooked veggies whole, for example carrots and broccoli, and then chop them into tiny pieces and add to the puree. That worked like a charm, but I had to go slow. If I made the puree too lumpy, Eric would get frustrated and stop eating. So I was holding 2 jars – one with a puree and the other with chopped veggies and added them spoon by spoon to the puree. When I’d notice Eric getting impatient, I’d give him puree with no lumps to encourage him.

Another idea for easy lumpy food was couscous. It is very fast and easy-to-cook (takes 5 minutes tops!), nutritious and tasty, my baby totally liked it. It is a bit dry so adding it to a sauce or vegetable puree makes the best combination.

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Finding out the reason was one part of the problem - finding out why he was constipated was the other part. It took us two weeks of experimenting with the food he was eating, tummy massages, trying different stool softeners to finally get it - he wasn’t getting enough liquids. I thought that 3 solid meals, water and 3 breast feeds a day were enough but apparently it wasn’t so.

But how do you get more liquids into a baby that doesn’t like drinking water? My first idea was to feed him more soup. He agreed to that but it didn’t help with the problem. Then I tried giving him juice which he didn’t like at all. My last idea was to give him some formula. It felt weird to be giving formula milk to my breast-fed baby, but it was the right thing to do.

Once I started to give him formula milk – he totally changed into a much happier child; the constipation has disappeared and never returned. Hooray!

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Another way of knowing that you’re baby is eating right is to follow his weight. Usually the doctors/nurses who are weighing your baby use charts to draw a line to see how his weight progressing. If that line stays within the same percentile - then your baby is eating fine, but if it falls down to a lower percentile and continues growing in it - that could mean that the baby’s not eating enough.

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