11^th February

I have been so exhausted the last few weeks and it all came to a bit of a head at the weekend. I was so tired that I was starting to stutter and get my words round the wrong way. Sonny is five months old and still up at least once, but usually twice, a night to feed. I normally cope by making sure that I go to bed early at 9pm a couple of nights a week and set the alarm for 10.30pm to feed Sonny. There’s no time to catch up on sleep during the day now that Alicia no longer has a lunchtime nap.

On Saturday night we had some friends round for dinner. We all had a lovely time but by about 1am I was starting to get tired, especially as I knew I would be up again in the night. I went to bed at 1.30am but had a very broken night’s sleep; Sonny wanted feeding every two hours with the added nightmare that Alicia was having bad dreams. When Sonny woke at 6.45am I started to cry – I just wanted to get some sleep!!!!

I have since decided that it is time to try Sonny on solids. He feeds well in the day so shouldn’t really need any milk at night. I know the advice is to wait until six months but I just feel that he is ready, hungry and obviously in need of the calories. I started today with a small bowl of baby rice which he absolutely loved! He fed from the spoon straight away so I am sure that he is ready if he has the reflex to feed and swallow in that way. Hopefully he will start sleeping a little better now.

Alicia’s behaviour has been awful this week but I know that half of the problem is that I don’t handle her as well when I’m tired. She wouldn’t leave my neighbour’s house when it was time to go home on Wednesday – she was running away and hiding whilst shouting at my neighbour and myself to just go away and leave her alone. I was so embarrassed! I took her to one side and explained why we needed to go home. It came out quite calmly when what I really wanted to do was scream at her and carry her home. She has also not been doing as she is told – I have had to ask five or six times for her to do something simple like put her coat on or go up the stairs. This is very frustrating but again I think it has been compounded by me being so tired. I usually try to make little tasks into games, we will go up the stairs acting as cats or I’ll pretend to put her coat on instead of mine, I simply haven’t had the energy to find the inspiration for that this week! I’m not doing any jobs tonight just a nice long bath then to straight to bed!

12^th February

I have just re-read last night’s diary – what a Moaning Minnie I am!!! Everything seems much better today – Sonny slept until 6.30am yippee!!!