More nursing, Mama!

[twirlingecho]

For the last several months, Ivy and I have a system for getting her to sleep. We lie down on her mat and nurse. As we nurse, she does yoga. All kinds of strange positions, including one where she's pretty much standing on her head with her feet in the air. Through all this, she's still latched on and sucking away. We switch sides and do the same thing. Then I pick her up, and we walk to help her calm down. Sometimes she puts her head down and starts singing herself to sleep right away, and then I can go lay her down... sometimes she stays asleep, but usually I nurse her a bit more to get her fully asleep. But sometimes, when we go walk, she just cries and cries and won't settle down. These times, I just let her cry as we walk for a while till she seems worn out, and then we go lie down and nurse some more.

Tonight started the same way... nurse and do yoga. But when I picked her up to walk, she just started screaming. We got as far as the bathroom door, and she pushed away from me, said, "Meh," signed "more," and leaned toward her mat. She was letting me know she wanted to nurse some more! So I just told her, "I know you want to nurse some more, but it's time to go to sleep. So we're going to walk for a while so you can calm down." She cried a bit more, but then settled down. Of course, when we went to nurse, she didn't do yoga, but kept some part of her moving so she would not go to sleep. Took another walk/nurse session, but after about 45 minutes, she's finally down.

I'm glad she's learning to communicate better, even if she's not got the sleep thing down yet!