Changing it Up

Eli is growing fast.  He's 7 weeks already which is hard to believe.

We're already cycling through some changes and learning more and more about him.

asleep in his basket at a week old.
that is not how he fits in it now, and
that blanket was outgrown weeks ago

For the last two weeks or so he's been waking up around 5 or 5:30 and then going back to sleep but being very fitful.  Moving all around, waking and going back to sleep, kicking his legs and making cranky noises.  It didn't make for good sleeping for me because he's still in the little basket in our room.  Many mornings he found his way into my bed to nurse some and sleep some and try to keep quiet.  I was getting pretty tired.

So two nights ago around 5am he woke up again and this time I changed his diaper which was plenty full.  He went back to sleep and slept until 7:30 (praise the Lord) and he might have gone longer if the rest of us hadn't needed to get up.
Last night, same thing. changed him when he woke up at 4:45 and off he went back to sleep and he woke up with smiles at 7:20 this morning.  Ah.

that extra 2 hours of real sleep rather than waking and half-sleep is HUGE!

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The other thing he changed is that in the very beginning I was giving him a pacifier to help him suck and calm down because I don't want to become his human pacifier.  Then he just absolutely started to refuse it.  And when I say 'absolutely' I mean it.  He seems personally offended when I offer something he doesn't want and he very loudly lets me know that's not the right thing!

Pacifier face at 2 weeks old

Last night he was cranky and we're not sure why. He kept making the hungry noise and rooting so I'd try to nurse him and he'd latch on enthusiastically.  Then he'd suck, and get loud and push away and start to cry.  But immediately want to try again when nursing was offered.  I know he was getting milk because he was spitting up.  I wonder if it was something I ate.  It was incredibly frustrating because I wanted to help him and nursing usually calms him down, but this time it wasn't working.
 It took both of us bouncing and walking him all over for almost 2 hours to finally get him off to sleep. And then, he woke up after 20 minutes.  I got him settled and again it seemed that he wanted to wake up so I saw the pacifier sitting there and took a chance with it... popped it in his mouth and that did the trick.  He sucked soothed and dropped off.  It dropped out, he started up again, I popped it back in and off he went.. 2 more rounds of that and finally we got a good night's sleep.  whew.