Last night was a big step for us. Lila slept in her nursery, by herself. When I was pregnant we'd decided that at 4 months we would begin thinking about transitioning Lila out of our room (depending, of course, on numerous factors). So when 4 months came along we did that. She's sleeping clear through the night with no wake ups for feeding or changing. She was sleeping easily in her Co-Sleeper and not having to fall asleep in bed with us before being moved. She is drinking expressed milk from a bottle and not nursing so I don't pull her into bed with me in the morning to nurse. All in all, it was a pretty perfect scenario for this big move. The only thing we were missing? A video monitor.
When I was expecting I had given Jason the job of finding us a monitor since he was the resident electronic expert. Haha. This is probably why at 4 months old Lila still didn't have a monitor. So a couple months ago I started looking for options to give to him for him to decide on. After looking up just about every baby monitor there is and comparing prices and reading review after review after review, I settled on 2 choices with a HUGE price difference. But also a rather large difference in reviews. In the end, we decided on the more expensive 3.5" Motorola MBP36 Remote Wireless Video Baby Monitor with Infrared Night Vision and Zoom. I had a 20% off coupon and a $25 gift card so we got the one with 2 cameras at BrU which equaled out to the same price as the 1 camera one on Amazon. This way we can have 1 camera permanently mounted in the nursery and use the other camera for travel purposes. This monitor has literally everything I could ever ask or hope for in a baby monitor. It has a better connection (2.4GHz) than most of the other wireless monitors (900MHz) as well as offering 2 way communication.
I can hear everything in her room and I can talk to her through my monitor if I need to. Jason and I tried it out from across the house and it worked beautifully. It also has a 3.5" color screen for daytime (and I can zoom, tilt and pan with my monitor) and it switches to Night Vision automatically when the light is low. The night vision is great as well, and I could very clearly see her moving when she dreamed. The top of the monitor has 5 LED lights that correspond with sound so if you have the volume off for one reason or another you can SEE the level of sound by how many lights are blinking. The monitor even has a temperature reading as well so you can make sure the room isn't too hot or too cold for your baby (and in FL where it gets super hot this is really useful!). And, even though we likely won't use these since Lila really likes the whales on her Sleep Sheep, the monitor and camera have 5 lullabies built in that you can choose from your monitor to play over her camera. So cool!
Okay, now that I'm done pimping the virtues of the Motorola Monitor, let me continue. So we went to BrU yesterday evening and picked up our monitor and came back to the house to set it up and move things out of our room and back to hers (like the changing station and clothes and blankets). My room seems so empty now without all her stuff, and her room feels like a nursery again. She'd fallen asleep in her swing while we were doing this, but when we finished I scooped her out and swaddled her up and she was WIDE awake again. Which made for some cute pictures, as you can see. She was FASCINATED. Since she has taken a few naps in there she wasn't entirely unfamiliar with her nursery, but her eyes were glued to the bunny mobile. After taking a few pictures we removed the bumpers (so don't freak out that I let her sleep alone in there with bumpers, Mom) and put them away and I set about folding her diapers and putting them in the diaper stacker which finally has use now, and by the time I had finished she was passed out once again. So I stared at her for a few minutes, kissed her goodnight, turned off the lights, checked for cats, and closed the door to let my baby sleep on her own without me.
As you can imagine, I was glued to the monitor from the second I left that bedroom. Every grunt and I was grabbing it and checking it and asking Jason if she was okay and are we sure this is the right move and what if she
needs me?! And he was just like "... Katie. She's fine. You didn't do this when she was in our bedroom with the door closed. Relax." Which was true, and ridiculous of me, but it's just such a big step!! So I tried to calm down and watch Green lantern with Jason (it was on HBO On Demand). Then I pumped (and watched the monitor) and washed and refilled all my bottles and parts (and watched the monitor), and went to bed (and watched the monitor) and I must have fallen asleep because I woke up feeling as though I was run over by a truck and Lila was grunting and shimmying on the monitor so Jason fetched her and that was my first night not in the same room as my baby! It was hard and broke my heart a little but I have faith tonight will be easier and by next month I can do it without thinking twice. And at least now it's just me having a hard time transitioning. I think if she was having a fit about it I would totally not be able to do it. It's hard enough as it is!!
They grow up so fast.
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