I’ve become obsessed with creating healthy sleep habits for Mo. Rationally, I know that I shouldn’t worry too much about this, because, as I said in a previous post, I believe it’s pretty difficult to mess up your kid significantly more than anyone else…

We’ve gotten nighttime sleep down pretty well, and I’m confident she’ll start sleeping through the night in the next 2-4 weeks. Now my problem is napping. How long should she stay awake? Should I wake her up to feed her? Is she napping enough or too little?

I downloaded “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child,” and although I’m still only about 20% through (gotta love the Kindle app) it is significantly better written than “On Becoming Babywise.” So that right there is one reason that I tend to put more faith in this book. I have now spent around $50 on baby sleep theory books, and I hate, hate, HATE that I’m helping to prop up what is so obviously an industry based anecdotes and quackery. But what else is there to do? I’m a horrible improviser. I just need someone to tell me what to do.

So far, Healthy Sleep Habits doesn’t diverge significantly from Babywise except on one point: waking up the baby to feed her. I’ve been waking her up every 2.5-3 hours during the day to eat, so that she starts to understand the difference between day and night. Also, I was under the impression that if she eats more during the day, she won’t need to eat as much at night. Now I feel like maybe I’ve been ruining her sleep.

Is she going to turn into a serial killer if I wake her up to eat? I don’t know, maybe… Probably not. It does seem a little counter-intuitive to wake up a sleeping baby. On the other hand, it also seems like she’ll be hungrier at night if she eats less during the day. I think I’m going to keep doing what I’ve been doing until I’m done with the Healthy Sleep Habits book, and then make a decision from there.

And if I still can’t decide what to do, I guess I’ll just download 25 more books on the subject…

Today was Mo’s one month check up. Since she was still not up to her birth weight at her two-week check up, I was pretty anxious to get her weighed again. She eats 30 ounces a day, so it’s kind of inevitable that she would gain weight (her family is not known for our awesome metabolisms after all), but I was still anxious to make sure she’s growing properly.

She is growing properly, as it turns out. A lady never reveals her weight, but she had gained 2 pounds in a little over 2 weeks, and grew 1″ longer.

The doctor didn’t intentionally make me feel guilty for switching to formula, although he did ask me why we decided to switch. I’m not exactly sure why he wanted to know – my first reaction was “none of your business” – but he seemed totally fine with it.

In the mean time, I am still working on the productivity issue. Today, I managed to make a batch of Milk Chocolate-Guinness ice cream. It’s pretty good, and as an added bonus, I had half a can of Guinness left over, which I promptly drank. I mean, I couldn’t waste it, and it would have gone flat pretty quick, so I drank it. At 3 p.m. Yeah, whatever.

I have a long list of other things to get done this week, but there is an episode of Bones on the DVR waiting for me. Maybe tomorrow…

The little girl went 5 hours between feedings last night! According to my sources (the Internet), that is technically considered sleeping through the night. I respectfully disagree, but it was pretty nice sleeping from 11:30 – 4:15 last night, so I’m not complaining. Twice is a trend, so we’ll see what happens tonight. So far today she has been a peach. (I was gone for half the day, but my mom assures me she was a peach.)

So, my mom babysat today because I had a doctor’s appointment. Since Mo was asleep pretty much the whole time, my mom cleaned the patio. This is what I love about Polish women. You can’t just sit around while the baby sleeps. But my house is pretty clean, so there aren’t a lot of options for a restless babysitter. So, she took the hose and some bleach and washed the moss off of pretty much everything out there. My real estate agent will be pleased.

Not wanting to waste a babysitter, I managed to do a little shopping at the second-hand store. I love buying used clothes. I can afford to buy new clothes, but buying used clothes is so much more rewarding. I got 6 shirts and a pair of shoes for $80. Oh! Remember when I used to post “stuff I bought?” Here we go:

• Blue Banana Republic tank top
• Grey and white Gap tank top
• Cream BCBG MaxAzria tank top
• Teal Lucky Brand tank top
• Cream Calvin Klein cardigan
• Floral Olian tunic
• Brown Kenneth Cole wedge sandals

Well, the tunic is technically a maternity top. I kind of could tell by how it fit, but you know what? I am still wearing some of my maternity tops, and I don’t care who knows it. I lost all the pregnancy weight, but I could still use a few hundred sit-ups, so flowy tops are my friend, ok? No judging.

I also brought in a bag of maternity clothes to try to sell. They were a little backlogged, so they hadn’t gotten to my stuff before I left. Unfortunately, they can’t tell me over the phone how much they are going to give me (WTF?), so I need to go back tomorrow. Normally, I wear my clothes until they are nowhere near buy-back condition, but since I only wore the maternity clothes for a few months, I think this is probably my best chance to make a little money back. So we’ll see…

Right now, I am trying to get the little one to take a nap. Her schedule has been a little weird today, so she’s not wanting to sleep right now. What I want to avoid is her falling asleep right before her 8:30 bedtime meal, because then it will be harder to feed her. She needs to sleep now so she’s awake enough to eat 3-4 ounces. She’s totally overtired right now but fighting sleep. I wonder where she gets the stubbornness from?