Today Ingrid fell asleep on her own for the first time, with no crying and no help from me. This may sound about as newsworthy as “Dog bites man” but for me this is a big thing.

It’s been 4 weeks since Ingrid first fell asleep in the bed (although with a lot of help in the form of rocking and patting). But it only worked during the day: in the evenings she got very distressed as soon as I put her down on the bed. So for her night-time sleep she’s still been falling asleep in the sling.

This week she moved into her cot, and getting her from sling to cot seemed like a fair bit of trouble… so I thought I’d try without the sling again. And it worked surprisingly well. There was a little bit of crying that was easily stopped with some rocking, but she never got really upset.

Today I put her down in her new cot, propped her up with a heavy firm pillow behind her back, and waited for her to show her displeasure. After a minute or two I got bored waiting so I left the room and decided to come back as soon as I heard a peep. And it never happened. She put a thumb in her mouth and lay there until she went to sleep (which took around 15-20 minutes). Totally awesome. That was over 2 hours ago and she hasn’t woken yet.

I am so impressed with my baby, and so glad that I had the patience to let her learn this skill at her own pace. (I hadn’t been at all sure about that!)

The picture was taken during a daytime nap. She’s sleeping in her lovely Grobag, for which I really want to thank my friends at work! I don’t think she could have managed this evening’s performance without it, because she would probably have kicked off her covers before she had time to fall asleep.

One of the most frequent comments in our house has lately been “Man undrar vad som händer i det där lilla huvudet” (“One wonders what is going on in that little head”) – along with such parental staples as “She is so cute” and “She’s a silly little thing”, of course. Because I really can’t help but wonder.

How well does she see? How far, how fast, how sharp? Can she see the cars driving by in the street when we’re out walking, or does that happen too fast?
Does she remember places? Does she recognise the house or the yard?
Does she recognise the play mat when she sees it from a distance, when I’m carrying her?
Does she remember sequences? Does she understand that sitting in the pushchair means that we’re going out, and that stomach medicine is followed by feeding? Would she understand that certain words precede certain events? Is she as teachable as a puppy? More? Less?
Does she recognize the toy that she last played with a month ago? Does she recognise the lullabies she hears at night?
Does she have intentions? Does she grab at a toy in order to put it in her mouth, or does she grab it because her hand happens to touch it, and only stuffs it in her mouth because that’s what one does with things held in the hand? Does all the kicking and leg-waving happen because she wants to move her legs, or do the legs move on their own? Does she splash in the bath water because she likes the sound or the sensation, or does it just happen?
Does she “talk” with intention? Does she cry because she has a problem, or because she wants us to fix the problem?
How does she know that pulling her facial muscles like this makes a smile? How does she know how to make the expression on her face kind of match the one on mine?
Why does rocking calm her?

The Internet was no help at all with this topic (except for one really interesting article about baby vision) so to slake my curiosity we have now bought a book (Lise Eliot’s aptly-titled What’s going on in there?) which will hopefully answer some of these questions. The author seems to have asked herself very similar questions, and being a neuroscientist, she set out to answer them. Looks very promising!

Ingrid, meet the carrots.
Carrots, meet Ingrid.

Ingrid’s enjoyment of the encounter surpassed all our expectations. The carrots could not be reached for comment.

She had no objections to us stuffing food in her mouth, and seemed to quite like the taste. Of course very little of the food was swallowed – most was sort of smeared around the mouth and face. Nevertheless, the first steps were most encouraging.

We tried a new position for Ingrid in the sling yesterday. She sits in a sort of lotus position, with her legs crossed and knees drawn up. She seemed to like it.

It looks as if I’ve grown a second head, doesn’t it?

Every time I go out with Ingrid in the sling, I am surprised by how much heat she generates. She’s like a little nuclear reactor. In the beginning I always put on far too many clothes – just whatever I’d wear without her – and ended up shedding almost everything. In fact once late November I walked around in a short-sleeved t-shirt, plus Ingrid in the sling, and I was still sweaty. But that was a fast walk because I was in a hurry.

Now that I’ve learned my lesson, I normally just take a thin rain- and windproof jacket to keep my back and my arms out of the wind. Ingrid herself is in her indoors clothes. If she’s awake and her head is outside the sling, then she gets a little hat as well. That’s it! And it’s quite enough to keep both of us toasty, even when the temperature is below +10°C.

Going out with the sling therefore takes very little preparation. It works great, for example, if I need to go out while she is napping: she doesn’t notice anything at all. The hardest part is putting on and lacing up my boots: with her in the sling, it’s a bit hard to reach my feet. Just like when I was pregnant, in fact.

Last Thursday Ingrid was due for her 4-month immunisation. For some reason I was totally sure that Friday was the day, and only found out I was mistaken on Friday morning, when I wanted to check the exact time.

Today I was on my way to the Estonian embassy to get a passport for Ingrid. Halfway there I realised I had forgotten my own passport at home.

So while the acute sleep deprivation phase may be mostly over, long-term chronic sleep deprivation is definitely still here with me, with all its subtle ways of undermining me. My brain feels broken: I forget and misremember things. I cannot concentrate. I am short-tempered and irritable during the day. My immune system is messed up: I was actually really sick for several days, for the first time in at least 3 years.

I need at least 8 hours of sleep a day in order to feel rested and fully charged. In wintertime, with those long dark nights, slightly more. Now, of course, I’m nowhere near that.

A typical night can go something like this:

• Go to bed at 10. Give Ingrid a last feed. She is done and sleeping by 10.20. I fall asleep a bit later, maybe 10.30.
• Ingrid half-awake at 0.30. I try to get her back to sleep because if I feed her now she will be hungry twice more before it’s time to get up. Give up at 1 and feed. She falls asleep at 1.20. It takes me a while to go back to sleep since I’m now wide awake.
• Ingrid wakes again at 3. Feed. So drowsy that both of us are asleep again within 10 minutes.
• Ingrid starts making noises at 4 – probably because the previous feed was so short (since we both fell asleep halfway through). Feed again. Ingrid asleep 4.10; myself 4.20.
• Ingrid starts shifting around and floating out of her sleep around 6. I manage to keep her almost-sleeping for another 30 minutes by gently rocking her now and again. At 6.30 she’s awake for real, kicking and wanting to play. I take her out to the living room, change the nappy, and let her spend a while on her own. I go back to bed and doze for 15 minutes, by which time she is bored – not crying, but making enough noise to wake me again. I move her to a new place and doze for another 10 minutes.
• More noise from the living room at 7. Give up and get up.

Time spent in bed: 9 hours.
Sleep: just under 6 hours, broken into 34 pieces.
Dozing: around 1 hour.

Somehow I still function surprisingly well despite this constant shortage of sleep. Mothers have been doing this for hundreds of years, after all.

Ingrid’s recently discovered ability to fall asleep in the bed has meant a huge improvement in this regard. I used to have to wait until the weekend for a chance to catch up at least part-way. Now I can get an extra hour or so, if I’m lucky, during her morning nap. When the morning nap didn’t work (this weekend) I was reminded again what a difference it makes. I was so relieved when I managed to get her to sleep in the bed again today!

This month Ingrid has focused on sticking things in the mouth. Hands, above all, seem to be made just for this. Thumbs are great for sucking, but so are all the other fingers, singly or together. Two hands are better than one hand. She even tries to spice up breastfeeding by adding hands to the concoction, and inevitably ends up frustrated when breast and hands don’t mix.

Hands are also slowly becoming useful for other things. First she started pushing the mirror and the stand-up toys on her play mat towards the mouth (where else?) with her whole hand. Then she discovered the meaning of fingers, and started gripping things and pulling them towards her mouth (of course). Next step: gripping things that do not dangle right in front of her mouth. Next step after that: touch typing.

Still, hands are fun rather than useful right now. Screams, smiles and sucking remain her three main means of survival. And luckily the first one is gradually getting less important. Crying used to be the primary method to make things happen, but now she is also using her irresistible smiles to charm people.

Oh, and of course Ingrid is still growing like a maniac. She has practically outgrown her Moses basket, and her bouncy chair (which is supposed to be suitable until 6 months), and the baby insert of the pram, and her bath support as well. The Moses basket is about to be replaced with a cot very soon, and the bouncy chair is gradually being phased out while she’s getting used to a high chair.

The bath support is still in use, because I haven’t found any alternative… She is definitely too wobbly to sit unsupported in the bath. And the only other bath support I’ve seen was labelled “Up to 8 months / 70 cm / 8 kg”. Well, Ingrid is no more than halfway to 8 months, but she’s about to reach 8 kg any moment now, so her chubby little body is certainly not going to fit in that thing!

I am appalled by the amount of garbage that the average baby produces. Dirty nappies make up about half of our household garbage. Or to put it differently, we now produce twice as much garbage as before. Official estimates back up this estimate.

I had a little look on the Internet and it turns out that disposable nappies are even worse than I thought.

• No one knows how long it takes for disposable nappies to break down in a landfill – they haven’t been round long enough. The first disposable nappies ever used (1970s? 1980s?) are all still around. Estimates range around hundreds of years. And some parts will never break down.
• Marketing for eco-disposable nappies claims that these break down in six months. But they don’t mention the fact that this only works if the nappies are composted – the breakdown process requires sunlight and air, which the nappy won’t get if it is buried in a landfill.
• Raw sewage can normally not be disposed without treatment… but dirty nappies go straight into landfills, of course, with all the bacteria they carry. Eeugh!

In order to do something about this, I have decided to experiment with cloth nappies. Besides, I’m not very impressed with any of the disposable nappies we’ve used – they leak. The cloth ones can hardly be any worse.

My trial pack from The Nappy Lady arrived today, with one Tots Bots Bamboozle, one MotherEase One-Size, and a MotherEase Air Flow wrap, plus some liner samples.

These things look almost as easy to use as the disposable ones we’ve been buying until now, and a lot more cosy. Soon we’ll see how they work in practice.

These last two weeks, Ingrid has been uncharacteristically discontented with life. I put her in her dev chair; a few minutes later she’s not happy. I put her on the play mat; moments later she starts whining. I turn her on her tummy; soon she is crying again.

Part of the unhappiness seems to be due to frustration. It looks like she wants to move around and see new things. She seems quite frustrated when her attempts at crawling-like movements lead to nothing. And sitting in a high chair has been more popular than being stuck in the dev chair: she’s upright and higher up, and gets a better view. Being carried around the house is even better.

But I’m starting to suspect that some of the fussing may be due to impending teething. No teeth are visible yet, but Ingrid drools like a St. Bernard and suddenly LOVES to chew on things. Everything she gets her hands on has been going straight in the mouth anyway, but now she prefers hard, chewable things, and chews vigourously. Unfortunately she hasn’t yet learned to hold on to things very well, and definitely cannot pick them up. My fingers have therefore gotten a fair chewing – they’re practical because she doesn’t need to hold them in place.

But getting baby drool all over my hands, arms and sleeves is getting tiresome, so today we’ve practiced holding on to things. I tease apart her clenched fist, put a toy in place, and guide her hands to a position that keeps the most chewable part of the toy pointed towards the mouth. It’s going to take a lot more practice, but at least my fingers get a break.

Well what do you know. The medium miracle was followed by the long-awaited major miracle within a week.

Last weekend Eric was unwell so I was in charge of Ingrid and never got my long catch-up nap, which I had been looking forward to. Then Tuesday and Wednesday (yesterday) Ingrid woke me at 5 and then again at 6. So I started yesterday rather tired.

So tired that when it was time for Ingrid’s first nap I tried putting her to sleep in the bed, hoping that I could get at least a quick nap. The previous attempts have been utter failures and I have given up after 20 minutes of screaming. This time took her to the bedroom, lay her down on her side and rocked her through 15 minutes of intermittent crying. By the end of it she was deep asleep, and a few minutes later so was I. Wonderful.

Much encouraged by this success I tried it again today (having been woken at 6 again, and feeling rather under the weather due to some sort of bug I’ve caught) and to my great surprise it worked again! We both slept for over an hour, which is more than she’s ever managed in the pram. Pure bliss.

Laying her on the side appears to be the key. When she wakes early from her night sleep (early = before 10pm when I give her a last feed) I always find that she has slipped onto her back. I’m not sure if that happens before she wakes (and causes her waking) or after (because she starts kicking and squirming). In order to get her back to sleep I need to shift her back into a side-lying position and then rock her until she calms enough to realise that she can use her hands for sucking, and not just for angry waving and hitting. After that it only takes a few minutes for her to fall asleep.

It’s not a foolproof method and doesn’t work every time, or I wouldn’t have gotten up after 45 minutes of crying this morning. But it’s far better than what we had before. I can’t help wishing that I’d realised this earlier… but I’m really happy it works so often now!