Before I got pregnant I saw a "Line a Day" five year journal at a gift shop and I bought it, determined to chronicle every day of my child's life for 5 years.
Sometimes I have up to 4 days of catch up to do. But generally I follow through and try to write a little story every day, something new he is doing. I was hoping to somehow capture the baby steps of development, all the "firsts." It shouldn't be too hard, right? Every day, write something new.
Except it doesn't work that way. The changes are so subtle, or maybe so sudden, that I end up writing things like "A has been turning the pages of his book during bedtime story." Daddy doesn't know when he started, and we've only been reading him a book for 3 days but his grandma read him a cloth book, maybe he turned the pages for her?
I also ended up writing "A drank water out of an open cup all by himself" on several days. I guess I captured the first time he did it, but did he really do nothing new on the other days?
Babies develop at lightning speed. One day they have teeth. One day they can drink out of a cup. One day he will use a fork and a spoon and sleep by himself.
In the early days, when I was obsessed with where and how the baby slept (because he would only sleep on me, latched onto the boob), someone said to me, "The nights are long, but the years are short."
Indeed. And I'm capturing at least five of them, in slow motion.
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
The baby is upside down
Our baby has slept in our bed since birth. First on my chest, then in the crook of my arm while nursing.
That stopped working because it was killing my back, and the baby was crying for boob 10-11 times a night. I was going slowly insane.
Around 5.5 months we hired two sleep consultants and tried to sleep train him. It failed spectacularly after some promising progress and I was not ok with letting my gorgeous smiling baby cry so much at night time. It did not feel right. If he wasn't ready to sleep by himself, and I loved having him with me, why should I try to force him?
We went to Australia and he was back on the boob all night. At the age of 7mo, we came back home and he was still nursing all night and my back was killing me. I decided something had to be done. I decided to stop nursing all night.
I was not interested in night weaning - I believe my son needs to eat at night, particularly as his weight gain really slowed the 3 weeks we tried to sleep train and he was being restricted to 2 night feeds. I can hardly even believe I did that. What was I even thinking? I restricted my child's feeding. I always said there were two things I'd never deny him - comfort and food. My boobs are both to him, and I denied him.
There was something I didn't get, that I get now. Just because we do things one way, doesn't mean we have to stop doing them if they don't work anymore. It means we just need to find a new way to do them, that works for both of us.
So I decided I would still feed him at night, as much as he wanted, but we would do it sitting up and when he was done I would put him down.
He cried for many, many nights. He was not impressed by the new arrangement. But I did not cave, and eventually he accepted the new normal.
Of course his sleep is still pretty shithouse. He wakes up anywhere from 45 minutes to 3 hours after being put down, and then every hour or two until morning. Sometimes around 3am and usually around 5 in the morning he struggles to go back to sleep; at 3 he might be awake rolling around behind me for an hours, and at 5am I have to put him on my chest to help him sleep until after 6am.
Going to bed is a production each night. We let him brush his own teeth, have started reading him a story, then I nurse him and then put him down on the bed. He rolls around. He blows raspberries on my arm. He curls into me then away from me. He touches my face. He scootches up to the top of the bed and scratches the wall. I pull him down, or roll him away, or towards me. He might cry. He grabs his feet.
Bedtime takes like 40 minutes. I often need dad to come in for reinforcement and sometimes, after long enough the baby cries and I need ot give him more milk, after which I will put him down and he will curl into daddy and go to sleep.
Other times I try to lay with him until he goes to sleep and he just won't stop playing, so I call daddy. Last night, daddy lay next to him quietly and he ended up turning himself upside down on the bed and falling asleep.
Maybe this is progress. I don't know. Sleep consultants and sleep experts would say that he has too many sleep crutches or sleep props and that's why he isn't sleeping through the night. I think he doesn't nurse enough during the day and that if he stopped eating at night, he'd not put on as much weight as he should. But I also think, once he starts crawling it's not safe for him to sleep in our bed and we will need to put him in his crib.
All I know is that I know nothing. My kid is cute though.
That stopped working because it was killing my back, and the baby was crying for boob 10-11 times a night. I was going slowly insane.
Around 5.5 months we hired two sleep consultants and tried to sleep train him. It failed spectacularly after some promising progress and I was not ok with letting my gorgeous smiling baby cry so much at night time. It did not feel right. If he wasn't ready to sleep by himself, and I loved having him with me, why should I try to force him?
We went to Australia and he was back on the boob all night. At the age of 7mo, we came back home and he was still nursing all night and my back was killing me. I decided something had to be done. I decided to stop nursing all night.
I was not interested in night weaning - I believe my son needs to eat at night, particularly as his weight gain really slowed the 3 weeks we tried to sleep train and he was being restricted to 2 night feeds. I can hardly even believe I did that. What was I even thinking? I restricted my child's feeding. I always said there were two things I'd never deny him - comfort and food. My boobs are both to him, and I denied him.
There was something I didn't get, that I get now. Just because we do things one way, doesn't mean we have to stop doing them if they don't work anymore. It means we just need to find a new way to do them, that works for both of us.
So I decided I would still feed him at night, as much as he wanted, but we would do it sitting up and when he was done I would put him down.
He cried for many, many nights. He was not impressed by the new arrangement. But I did not cave, and eventually he accepted the new normal.
Of course his sleep is still pretty shithouse. He wakes up anywhere from 45 minutes to 3 hours after being put down, and then every hour or two until morning. Sometimes around 3am and usually around 5 in the morning he struggles to go back to sleep; at 3 he might be awake rolling around behind me for an hours, and at 5am I have to put him on my chest to help him sleep until after 6am.
Going to bed is a production each night. We let him brush his own teeth, have started reading him a story, then I nurse him and then put him down on the bed. He rolls around. He blows raspberries on my arm. He curls into me then away from me. He touches my face. He scootches up to the top of the bed and scratches the wall. I pull him down, or roll him away, or towards me. He might cry. He grabs his feet.
Bedtime takes like 40 minutes. I often need dad to come in for reinforcement and sometimes, after long enough the baby cries and I need ot give him more milk, after which I will put him down and he will curl into daddy and go to sleep.
Other times I try to lay with him until he goes to sleep and he just won't stop playing, so I call daddy. Last night, daddy lay next to him quietly and he ended up turning himself upside down on the bed and falling asleep.
Maybe this is progress. I don't know. Sleep consultants and sleep experts would say that he has too many sleep crutches or sleep props and that's why he isn't sleeping through the night. I think he doesn't nurse enough during the day and that if he stopped eating at night, he'd not put on as much weight as he should. But I also think, once he starts crawling it's not safe for him to sleep in our bed and we will need to put him in his crib.
All I know is that I know nothing. My kid is cute though.
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Patience
Two days ago, my grandmother said to me, "Who would have said you'd be such a good mother."
The comment stuck with me. I took it as a compliment, if back handed. Who would have thought? Why would anybody NOT have thought?
Today she said it again, so I asked her about it. She said that I had a lot of patience for the baby.
I have been very intentional about being patient since the baby was just a few weeks old. He would fall asleep at the breast while eating at night. Because he ate very frequently and slowly and required a nipple shield at this age, this was VERY frustrating for me because he would fall deeply asleep and then would wake up again a short while later, still hungry, and I'd have to sit up and feed him again. I remember at one point shaking a bottle of tums by his head and being rough in moving him, trying to wake him. And I remember feeling like a shitty mom for doing this. I had this kind of "ah ha" moment - this little person was depending on me. Leunig was in my head, there are only two feelings, love and fear, and what was I afraid of? That I'd have to wake up again in 45 minutes? That I'd be tired? The main thing he needs is my love. My love and my love and my love. My love in the way I handle him. My love in the way I touch him, respond to him.
As time has wore on, the challenges are different. We always had easy diaper changes during the day - slow, calm, I would talk or sing him through it and he would cooperate. Then there were some times when I felt disconnected from him, he just wanted to wriggle and wouldn't let me change his diaper. I had to resist the urge to rush through it, to try to force him. I started giving him time. So he wanted to look at the wall - ok, he wants to look at the wall. Will something bad happen if he looks at the wall instead of finishing his diaper change right now? What was I afraid of? Nothing to fear there. Out of love, I would wait. I would try to notice.
Now I ask him everything. Is he ready? I've learned that sometimes, when he complains at a diaper change, he just wants a hug. I offer him a hug and then he lets me get on with it.
Patience. It's a funny thing, something all my life I thought would elude me, and then I had this child and almost 9 months later, I've developed patience.
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