Bringing up Bébé

This book I have found essential in child rearing in the last few days. It is like I wish that I had read this while pregnant. I am so glad that I found it though, at last! You have had some good nights where you have slept through the night. However, those nights are few and far between and Mama has to get some rest. So do you! This book is about how the French raise their children, and I am inclined to follow their wisdom.  This is mostly for me... :)
Remeber these things for the present and future:

La Pause
1. Have an active role in teaching baby to sleep. Do this by intensely observing them. See if they are completely awake before picking them up. If they are transitioning from a sleep cycle to a different one, then allow them to do this.
2. Babies are reading for this sleep teaching by the first few weeks. Wait to go to them! This is helping me undersand why they are waking up in the first place. Are they truly hungry or are they just waiting to go back to sleep? Probably the latter if it is 2 a.m.
3. I should not hold, rock, or nurse the baby to sleep in the evenings, in order to help him learn the difference between day and night.
4. For week old babies: If they cry between midnight and 5 a.m., parents should reswaddle, pat, rediaper, or walk the baby around, but that the mother should offer the breast only if the baby continued crying after that.
5. From the child's birth, the mothers should distinguish between when their babies were crying and when they were just whimpering in their sleep. In other words, a mother should pause to make sure he's awake (Bringing up Bébé.)
6. If baby completely wakes, you pick him up of course.

I know this info will come in handy later (in a few days) and with our next baby, hopefully. Liv, you are such a wonderful baby I hope that I can help you have good sleeping patterns and get all the rest that you need! I really worry about it sometimes, but I believe you will get your own rhythm.

Update on you!

You are officially beyond 5 months now :) Actually, 5 months and 9 days to be exact! You are so lovely to be around because you always smile! If you aren't smiling at the moment, it isn't hard to get you there. You also slept through the night the other night. We're talkin' 8 hours miss! So nice, but I think it was a fluke :) No hard feelings, I promise. You are actually sleeping right now, and you have been for almost 2.5 hours. Pretty good for you, since you don't really like to take naps, and only go down for {at most} an hour. I love you anyway. We have fun together! It is hard to get you on a consistent schedule though since I am back to work a few nights a week...

Anywho, you can sit up on your own now! Very impressive. And you turn over from your back today to the left onto your stomach. You have only be turning to the right, so yay for you! You are such a darling baby. I love you so much!

Love Mama! {Pretty sure that is going to be your first word}