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EATING and SLEEPING.
I have a feeling that you won’t find these topics nearly as interesting and all-consuming as your Momma does, at least maybe not until you have a baby of your own. But trust me, these topics take up a lot – actually most – of our time. And for that reason they are deserving of being recorded.
As for eating…
Learning how to keep you happily fed has been a challenge. I think I mentioned before that since we didn’t have any difficulties in the beginning, I assumed that we had it made in the shade. Turns out things have been more interesting than that. Thankfully, you are outgrowing your Karate Baby phase and have almost ceased using me as a punching bag while you’re eating. You still do this sort of push-up-bear-hug move where you hug, squeeze and push. Then, you keep those little arms flexed, and I mean rock-hard flexed, until you’re finished eating. But at least now you’re not knocking yourself off me all the time wailing because you think I’m taking it away. Karate Baby phase lasted about 6 weeks and it peaked right before you started successfully grabbing at things. It makes total sense in retrospect that your arms and fists hadn’t caught up with what your brain was telling them to do. Your relief is almost palpable. The constant “swing-and-a-miss” routine you had going on there for awhile must have been extremely frustrating.
As for those grabby little hands, they like to grab hold of everything now, including me. In addition to my hair, lips and fingers, you like to pinch little chunks of my flesh when you’re eating. I have little bruises from your pinchers and scrapes from the little talons I can never quite manage to file frequently enough. I’m not complaining though. Honestly, it doesn’t really hurt too much and it’s funny. You take your eating very seriously. You hold on for dear life. I always knew you were trying to “help.” What you do now still isn’t quite technically helping, but it’s not as counter-productive as the martial arts. A definite improvement. So, good job, little one!
Our new dilemma stems from a combination of a slight lack of patience on your part, my own body’s uncooperativeness, and this incredible growth spurt you seem to be on the past couple of weeks. You want to eat all the time. So much that I started to get worried and began pumping regularly just to see how much you were getting (which turned out to be plenty.) It’s just that you don’t particularly enjoy nursing. At least you don’t SEEM to. You enjoy being full, but you don’t enjoy the process. And you love bottles. Your eyes get so wide they look propped open and you stare off into space while polishing off 5 ounce bottles (still Mother’s Milk of course, with Newborn nipple for slow-flow still attached) in minutes. It’s miraculous how fast and hard you eat. The bottles you’ve been getting for the past couple of weeks maybe have played a part in your increased impatience at the effort it takes to eat directly via the source, but truly you have been this way for months. You want me to “flip the switch” and it frustrates you greatly that I don’t oblige. To make matters worse, my let-down reflex seems to be getting slower and slower. It could be the stress of anticipating your demand for fast food. And maybe, like I said, the bottles have exacerbated the issue. At any rate, sometimes these days it takes a good two minutes of vigorous suckling in order to get things going. And that wouldn’t be a problem except you seem to think that 5-10 seconds should suffice. I feel for you. I do. It’s hard for me to watch your growing impatience, frustration and see you look at me with those painfully questioning eyes. I’m probably projecting, but you seem to think that I’m depriving you intentionally. We have both ended up in tears several times over the past couple months. I wish I could speed it up for you. I’ve read that I could pump prior to feeding in order to save you the frustration, but frankly, I don’t love the idea of being reliant on a pump to breastfeed you.
But we’re working on it. I’m making sure I drink plenty of water and I’m watching the clock more vigilantly (if that’s possible) to make sure you are actually hungry before unsnapping. I try to talk softly to you and encourage you during your frantic attempts to cry your way to an instant full belly. I’m also trying to cuddle with you and talk to you for a few minutes beforehand and to take some relaxing, centering breaths. But relaxing is hard when you know that if you don’t there will be adverse affects. It’s like lab coat syndrome where patients show abnormally high blood pressure only in the Doctor’s office.
I will say though that this last week since we’ve been back home have been exponentially better. I think just being back in your glider in your room has calmed us both down and made us a little more comfortable. That, and I’ve minimized pumping to once or less per day. Who knows? Maybe the pumping itself somehow affected my let-down. At any rate, it’s getting better.
Oh, and for the record, none of these difficulties exist when you wake for night feedings. Feeding you at night – aside from the fact that I have to be awake and it’s the middle of the night – has always been a much more peaceful and enjoyable event for both of us.
I’m not worried though, and still no talk of formula feeding. We always manage to get through it and it IS getting better. I love you, little one. Thank you for being so patient with me. I’m doing the best I can and I know you are too.
As for sleeping…
You are a little angel. After reading Secrets of the Baby Whisperer, I have a better idea just what an “easy baby” you really are (with the exception of your eating habits perhaps.) Both Daddy and I took Tracy Hogg’s temperament quiz, both coming to the same conclusion that you are somewhere in the range of a “Textbook” to “Angel” baby. So, we have it REAL good. You are a doll, a sweetheart, a delight. Thank you. I’m not saying that it’s all been perfectly easy and without effort. Far from it. I’ve been working to sleep train you since you were about 6 weeks old. I’ve read the books, done the obsessive worrying, and tried my best to follow all the right advice. And your Daddy is super supportive. Whatever I say we need to do, he agrees – and helps. But that shouldn’t detract from the very important detail that if you were not cooperating, all the sleep training in the world wouldn’t have made the square peg fit in the round hole. You go with it, for the most part.
I have been recording your sleep habits in an excel spreadsheet in graphic form for about 2 months. Every time you go to sleep, wake up, and eat I record it in bar graph with each activity represented by a different color. This, at recommendation of Marc Weissbluth of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. Of everything promoted in his book, this is my favorite. Now, all of this may sound a little Wacko, obsessive-compulsive, but it’s really only sliiightly manic. I promise. It’s great to be able to – at a glance – see what your sleep habits have been, and how they are progressing. It does take a little work, but not much. My laptop is always running anyway so it’s just a matter of remembering to click the mouse a couple of times whenever you change activities. And it continues to help me figure out when the best time to put you down might be, if you’re really hungry or fussing for some other reason, and whether or not you’re getting enough restorative sleep in a 24-hour period.
So, what is your sleep schedule like these days? There are always exceptions, and seeing as how we were on the road for 2 weeks this month, there has been some extra variability. But here’s the gist. You wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, literally (well, not the bushy-tailed part, although your hair is WILD, Girl) between 5:00 and 7:00am. You take a morning nap usually within an hour and half to two hours of being awake. This nap still varies in length. Anywhere from 1 hour to 3 hours. But it is almost always at least 1 hour. Sometimes you wake up before an hour has elapsed, but if I go in and replace your binky, you will usually fall back asleep without assistance and without drama. You usually will then take another two 1-hour-or-more naps over the course of the rest of the day. The times for these are not exact. I just put you down in your crib whenever you start giving me your sleepy signs. These, for you, include the following: red-rimmed eyes, staring, yawning, ceasing smiling and general fussiness (athough if we make it to fussiness, I’ve waited to long and it’s sometimes a little harder to get you to go down). Usually, I catch you as you start to become more “quiet” in your behavior and less interested in what’s going on around you. That’s the best time to put you to bed without incident. I never let you nap for more than 3 hours at a time, but I never wake you from a nap otherwise, rather I let you sleep until you wake up on your own. Bedtime is anywhere between 6pm and 7pm, whenever you show your sleepy signs. You usually sleep for a good 5 or 6 hour stretch at which time you awake (usually around midnight), tummy-growling, for a feeding.
ASIDE: For every stage of your development there is a new question every one has to ask. We have traveled from “When’s your due date?” to “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?” to “Have you chosen a name?” to “How old is she?” to “Does she sleep through the night?” I don’t mind too much, but the latest question is hard to answer. According to how *they* (Doctors I guess) score it, you’ve been “sleeping through the night” since about 2 months because they think sleeping through the night is a 5 or 6 hour stretch. Of course, that’s not reeeeaaally sleeping through the night, especially when you go to sleep at 6:30pm and wake up at midnight. So, instead of explaining to people that you DO sleep through the night but not REALLY, is kind of annoying because it’s confusing and I don’t really know how to answer without totally boring the asker who certainly doesn’t want this kind of hour by hour breakdown. Boring and overly detailed, kind of like now. Anyway…
You eat for about 15 minutes then go back down for another 2 to 4 hours and wake up for another feeding . This last feeding is the most variable. Sometimes it’s at 4am, which Mommy is NOT thrilled about because it means I have to get out of bed a second time in one night, or sometimes you make it all the way until 6am, which is great. I’m totally thrilled when you sleep until six. It usually doesn’t happen. When it does, we get up for the day. When it’s earlier, I put you back down in your bed for another 1 to 2 hour stretch.
It terms of getting you to go to sleep, I have absolutely no complaints. You are a complete saint. You LOVE to go to bed when you’re tired (but not over-tired.) In fact, you love going to sleep so much that despite all my best efforts to follow the resounding advice of all the sleep experts out there who say to follow a routine before every bedtime, I can’t manage to get you to want to stay awake long enough to establish one. I mean, there are certain things we do before you go to bed, but all-in-all they last less than 5 minutes. More than that and you start fussing in my arms because you want to be lying down in your bed and falling asleep. You’re That good about it.
The “routine” that we follow consists of changing into your bed clothes, putting a binky in your groping mouth, sometimes reading you a book (but you usually fall asleep or fuss, so I’ve been skipping this a lot lately),and saying a short prayer with you and Daddy or Mima or whoever happens to be over with you in your special cradle-like hold. Like I said, less than 5 minutes, by which point you are rubbing your face all over me, fussing to be put down. Then, I give you one of the blankets crocheted (which are great because not matter how tightly I experimentally wrap them around my head, I can still breath) by your great Grandma McIntire and the deal is sealed. You love those blankies. You close your eyes and rub them on your face, turn your head to the side, and suck, suck, suck on your binky. And then I walk out of the room. Some nights your Daddy or I have to replace your binky once, or maybe twice because you knock it out of your mouth while rubbing your blanky on your face. But that’s it. Then, you’re out like a light within a few minutes. Like I said, you’re a saint. I have a lot of favorite things about you, but this one is a HUGE blessing. I expected huge bedtime battles, and so far, you have made my life easy when it comes to bed.
Don’t get me wrong. I would love to not have to get up twice a night to feed you. But we’ll get there, and I’m counting my blessings. You are still obviously hungry when you wake me up and after you’re done, you almost always go right back to sleep without even the aid of a binky. So even though it’s been 5 months since I’ve had more than a 4-hour stretch for myself, I’ve heard enough horror stories to know I have it really good and I’m not going to complain. After all, if I really want to sleep for more than 4 hours at a time, I could always go to bed at 6pm. Ha! Right!
Oh, and I don’t usually feed you RIGHT before bed. Generally, I have fed you at some point in the hour or so before bed so feeding you again would just instigate a battle. That works out because I really like the idea of the Baby Whisperer’s E.A.S.Y. method (Eat, Activity, Sleep, Your time) so that you don’t become dependent on eating to go to sleep, and it’s already what we do most of the time anyway.
By the way, more on Tracy Hogg. She’s awesome! Anyone who can come up with cool, uncontrived, sensible workable acronyms of practical, step-by-step methods, gets my vote. Plus, she made me feel pretty good about the way your Daddy and I parent. I kept finding myself thinking, “We do that. We do that. We do that,” as I read her book. I’m convinced that all the things we’ve done, how we make sure you get enough sleep, how we adore you, and interact with you, and let you be a part of everything we do, and respect you for the amazing little person that you are…all of that contributes to you being the genuinely bright, happy, smiling baby that you are. And that feels good, because I want you to have the best of everything and it’s a lot of pressure being a first time Momma who is learning as she goes. But again, I have to give credit where credit is due. I think we do a good job, but you are also a very good little girl. Then best, even. One of God’s little masterpieces.
But just for the record, here are some other things that seem to have worked for us.
….always putting you to bed when you’re still awake, but sleepy
…recognizing your sleep cues and putting you down before you reach an over-tired state
…making sure you get your first nap of the day within 1 to 2 hours of being awake, even if it’s inconvenient for us (with very few exceptions)
…consistently making sure you get at least 2 more naps (at first it was just the attempt, now you actually sleep every time)
…following a routine before naps and bedtime (even if it’s short)
…putting you to bed in the early evening, 6pm or 7pm (again, inconvenient but worth it)
…always treating night time like night time, whispering or not talking at all, no lights, no playing
So after all the reading, I still don’t know entirely what I think about “Crying it out.” I have gone back and forth between thinking it might be necessary and thinking it’s absolutely horrible and unacceptable. Right now I comfort myself with the knowledge that I haven’t had to make that call yet. You don’t fight sleep. When I first read about attachment parenting in the Sears books, I was determined that I would never ever let you cry. After I read Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child (Weissbluth), I was convinced I would HAVE to let you cry. Now the Baby Whisperer has me convinced that I don’t have to choose one route or the other and perhaps I don’t have to let you cry it out OR let you make all the decisions about when you sleep. It’s been comforting to me that there is a moderate alternative that I think will work, when the time comes. But I’m not writing it in stone. I know too many parents who claim to have tried everything, and finally succumbed to “Ferberizing” or some variety of walking out of that room and shutting the door on a wailing baby. Ugh. I hope I don’t have to do that. Like I said, comforting that I don’t have to make that call now. We’ll just have to see where we are in a few months.
In more sleeping news, you have now slept in your own room in your crib for the entire night twice now. Woohoo! Good job, big Girl. You’re all grown up now. Incidentally, we lost power last night (only the second night we’ve been dependant on a monitor to let us know if you’re awake and need something). Momma wasn’t aware that Daddy, noticing this at 4:30 this morning, went and slept in the guest room to be near you in case you needed him without bothering me about it. What a good Daddy!
And in other sleeping-related news, we are re-visiting weaning off the binky. I’m concerned that as you get older you may use it to manipulate us into coming to visit you in your room after hours, even though so far it hasn’t posed any problems. But you obviously still need it to fall asleep. So, we’re beginning the slow process of giving it to you less and less, only when you ask for it. I have no idea if this idea of mine will take, or how long I will stick with it, but we’re at least making the attempt.
One last, last thing (sorry for the novel). After rereading this I sense that I may be coming off as rigid. But none of our rules, are actually rules. They’re guidelines. I don’t believe in rules for the sake of rules. It’s all about keeping you as happy and healthy as possible. We’re just trying to be the best parents we can be, parents who make loving, thoughtful choices. But we will be flexible! I promise. And I’m probably not as wacko as I sound. Well, maybe. But I assure you I am even more in LOVE with you that I sound!
More on your other skills, quirks, and how much I adore you next time.
Besitos!