At the start Liam slept most of the day but the nights became more difficult. Around 00:00 he will start crying and nothing we do can console him. This is the most heartbreaking feeling - an inconsolable baby! All sorts of questions then start popping into one's head - should one use a pacifier? How do you know what the right temperature is for your baby and how much clothes / blankets to put on? What is cot death and how do you avoid it? - yes I was still checking during the night when Liam was sleeping that he was still breathing! There is no one simple answer to these questions and every question seem to spark several different answers.
Some say the pacifier prevents cot death - I can't help to wonder how they can with certainty say what prevents it if they haven't really established what causes it. Some mums say that they used a pacifier with one child but not with the other and that they will not use it again as it creates a dependency and the baby struggles to learn how to fall asleep without it, causing problems later. Some say it's a blessing to use a pacifier as it gives you some peace. With Liam we did try a few evenings to give him a pacifier, but he never seem to take to it and kept on spitting it out. We used our pinkie fingers instead (nail towards the tongue) for him to suck on to console the worst part of the cry and to get him to a more calm state. That works to some extent but not always. I found the book 'The secrets of the Baby Whisperer' to be quite helpful in understanding the different cries and a book called 'Baby Sense' to understand the sensory input that the little ones receive.
In the end we try to find the reason why he is upset and treat the cause - again, a VERY difficult process of illumination - mostly his tummy was the problem and we think he had lots of cramps - so lots of burping, softly jumping up and down, rubbing his back, etc. In the beginning the room was definitely too warm and he was overheating - we struggled a bit but later go the room temperature to just over 21 degrees Celsius and then have him in a long sleeve sleep suite and under one blanket. Later his nose became blocked and he struggled to breath - rightly or wrongly we used a saline solution for his nose and put a drop or two of Karvol at the top end of his moses basket. Other times he was crying because he spit up and his clothes became wet (he doesn't like wet clothes against his skin at all!), sometimes it's because the person holding him is upset/frustrated - they are soooo sensitive to one's mood / heart rate! Liam become quite upset quite quickly when one of us were upset, which is extremely difficult to control when you are tired and just want to sleep! Sometimes it helped to switch from me to Gavin or vica versa as the one is more calm than the other at that point in time and then Liam calms down, other times it's just impossible as both of us as we became so knackered! I'm sure there are a million other reasons causing them to get upset, but we try to deal with it one reason at a time! We're just taking this one day by day and hopefully he will be sleeping through the night soon enough!! Pretty please, let that be soon!!
