Lather it on at bedtime?!

Last night Cupcakes started crying early at 8:30pm. We tried comforting her and telling her that she started too early. It was not 9pm yet! We thought that she might have had night terrors, where babies wake up not fully awake and not recognizing where they are and whom they are with. We told her to open her eyes. She did, and that helped. I tried feeding her. That calmed her a bit, and telling her to continue to keep her eyes open seemed to continue to help between nursing sessions! We suspected that she might be a little sick with no obvious symptoms others than a little stuffed up nose and more redness in her face. I thought they were just pimples, and John thought that it could have been an allergic reaction. I nursed her about three times the next hour before she finally calmed down to fall asleep. (I forgot that I wasn't having dairy and had chocolate chip cookies. I cut out citrus which seemed to have been causing allergy on her butt. I didn't want to test dairy, but now we are.)

She just woke me up for her first feeding for the night. She had a diaper rash that was more widespread than the usual. I checked the clock, and it has been five hours since she fell asleep! (The diaper was heavy!) Minding Auntie Liz's advice about not nursing her to sleep to avoid having to nurse every time I put her in bed, I am hoping that she continues her trend of not nursing unless she's hungry. I wonder whether the bigger dose of milk from the three feedings helped her sleep longer. I wonder whether I cut her off a little early now and whether she's really still drinking when she sucks for longer than 20 minutes. (When she was younger the doctor said that they are just sucking after 20 minutes - to do it if I had time and wanted to.) She's been growing well with short nursing sessions, so I haven't questioned. However, she has been nursing more frequently the last two days with the short nursing sessions. (She's still nursing while I blog. I put her to bed, and she had asked to be burped twice. I just fly back in the bedroom when I hear her since I volunteered to be on night duty while on maternity leave. To let John sleep I brought her out in the living room for burping. She signaled that she wanted more milk when I thought that she was done before I changed her. There is always something to figure out about the little one.)

Auntie Angela had shared the secret of lathering a protective layer on before bedtime because her baby now sleeps through the night. Maybe that's what I do if she started sleeping for longer periods?! I have her covered for the next stretch.

I was still working on the bottle and bedtime crying. Now I have diaper rash to figure out, too, haha. I welcome your feedback.

She is now done feeding. I took a picture of her sleeping in my lap for the blog. Now I'll tuck my little monkey back in bed. (She won't need burping now that she's deep asleep. I woke her up earlier washing her butt, and that caused the need for burping.)