Go The F*** To Sleep, The Reboot

Tags

breastfeeding, infant sleep, night weaning, nursing to sleep, parenting, sleep, sleep patterns

People love to ask you how your baby sleeps, and I have occasionally told people that Fritter sleeps “great!” only then to clarify to say that she still wakes several times a night.

You see, our bar is set LOW.

Until he was nearly two, Owl was waking multiple times in the night, usually every hour and a half.

 

Meanwhile, Fritter from day one would sleep in two to three hour stretches. There were some caveats – she couldn’t be put down, for example. I tried. Oh, how I tried. But if you put her down, she would wake up, until about 11 pm in the evening.

Those first couple of months I spent my evenings watching The Mindy Project with her nursing and fussing, and about an hour after she fell asleep I would transfer her to the Moses basket and she would sleep for another couple of hours.

Compared to Owl, that felt like a MIRACLE.

Once my anxiety about SIDS was relieved enough that I could leave her alone to sleep (around 5 months), I started nursing her down on my bed and then just sneaking away. By adding our trusty old Sleepy Suit to the mix, I was actually able to pick her up off of the bed and transfer her to the Pack N Play next to our bed (the successor to the Moses basket).

And so, I have been pretty okay with her sleep overall. She would go down to sleep at around 8 pm, sleep until midnight, until 3, until 5 or 6, and then until 7 or 8.

I could HANDLE that.

Plus, she has two solid naps a day, one in the morning at around 9:30 am that often runs until 11 or 12, and another around 4 pm that goes until 5 or 6.

Golden.

But lately, that has been falling apart.

Electing A Lovey… AGAIN

Tags

comfort object, lovey, sleep

Some of you remember Owl’s sleep.

Or lack thereof.

You may also remember my frenzied research into classically conditioning sleep using sleep aids and my selection of a toy to help with this project.

That didn’t go so well.

At the time, I was really thinking of Pavlov’s dog and researching toys that made noise to help Owl sleep. I thought that if he could mash a button and turn on a conditioned sleep response, that would be wonderful.

Unfortunately, the toy I chose was large, firm, and not very cuddly.

Then, one night, he developed an irrational fear of it, and that was that.

It might amuse you to know that he found it recently and had no memory of it. I showed him how you could press the button to make music. He listened to the music for a few seconds and then quickly demanded to know how to turn it off.

“I’ll save that for the baby,” he said firmly.

He never did develop a true attachment to the seahorse or any other object. My sister in law made and sent a cute blankie for him when he was a baby and while he still likes to lie on it occasionally, he never developed the kind of fixation on it that I had for my own “blankie”.

Anyway, lately I’ve been wanting to try again with Fritter.

Fritter is actually a pretty good sleeper. At night she’ll sleep three to six hour stretches and naps frequently during the day, although they’re generally cat naps.

That being said, sleep experts all recommend a “lovey”, and as someone who had one herself, I know the comfort it can bring. I want her to experience that.

This time, instead of thinking Pavlov, I just started researching popular lovies. What do kids fixate on?

Well, it seems like every site I find on the topic votes for a blanket with a head.

I’ve seen these around. My neighbour’s oldest son had a blanket with a dog head called Puppy that he lugged around everywhere. I think they’re weird looking, personally. What do they represent? Is the dog’s head severed and tied onto the blanket? Is it a skinned dead dog?

But you can’t argue with results, and according to the internet, kids love it. A blanket with a head combines the physical comfort of a blankie with the friendship of a teddy bear.

The most commonly recommended lovey is a product called Angel Dear. They have dozens of animal-headed blankets all under $20 in price. Price is important because parents warn you to buy multiples for when the original inevitably gets lost  or destroyed (I never lost my blankie, but I do remember my mother doing major repairs on it at regular intervals). Parents also claim that they wash really well and hold up to heavy loving.

Except I don’t like their lamb version, and I have it in my head that Fritter needs a lamb, because she’s an Aries who was born in the Year of the Sheep/Goat/Ram.

Besides, the Angel Dear blanket really is a head on the corner of a blanket. You can’t even pretend that it’s a whole animal.

Then I found the Gund Huggybuddies. The lamb version is darn cute, and it looks like an actual lamb, albeit either a skinned one or perhaps just an anorexic. Out of 49 reviews on Amazon, not one is below 3 stars. Parents claim that they wash well, too, and kids love them. The only complaint is that the head is pretty big – much bigger than the Angel Dear version.

So I ordered it in.

We’ll see how this goes.

Dear Fritter – if you have a horror of sheep as an adult, it’s probably my fault.

A Letter To Parents of Colicky Babies

Tags

babyhood, colic, inconsolable crying, infant, newborn, normal, one month old, parenthood, second baby, second child, sleep

Dear Parent Of A Colicky Baby,

I know your pain.

I know how it feels to walk the floors for hours and hours every day, and night. I know how it feels when you read the definition of colic – crying for more than three hours a day, more than three days a week – and think, “there are babies out there who cry THAT LITTLE?”

I know how it feels to look jealously at couples in restaurants who are casually eating their dinner while their tiny baby slumbers peacefully in a car seat next to their table.

Meanwhile, YOU left your baby with a selfless friend or relative and you are trying to have a brief meal together to salvage your relationship even though you know that at this moment that your friend/relative is walking back and forth while your baby screams and screams.

Maybe you have said to each other “never again”.

Maybe you have already decided that your first born must be an only child because there is no way you can survive this a second time.

I know how that feels, too.

But.

Let me tell you about a different kind of baby.

Meet Fritter.

She just turned a month old, and almost all of my photos of her feature her doing something very strange…

Making Friends With The Night

Tags

dark, kids, night, sleep, toddlers

So, thanks to summer long days, I guess it’s been a while since Owl was outside at night. I took him to a friend’s house and left her house late.

When I went to carry Owl into the house he suddenly looked up, then clutched my neck tightly in fear and cried out,

“Sun OFF! SUN OFF!” and pointed at the dark sky.

I wonder what it’s like to suddenly realize that the sun has gone out.

“No, no, honey,” I said, “The sun just went to sleep. It’s night time. See? It’s dark out.”

“Sun aseep. Dark out.” He took a moment to chew on that. Then he pointed again. “A plane!”

“No, honey, those are stars. The stars are out, because it’s night time.”

“Stars out. Night time. Dark.”

“Yes, it’s dark because it’s night time.”

He thought about this for a minute, and then cheered right up.

“Hi, stars! HI, DARK!”

A Day In The Life

Tags

babies, schedules, sleep, toddlers, work, working mother

I thought I would transcribe my last 24 hours or so for your perusal. Behold the glamorous existence of the working mother of a toddler. It’s going to be exciting. Are you excited?

4:02 AM

Perfect Husband brings Owl to me in bed, as neither of us feels able to deal with another wake-up. Owl nurses and I go back to sleep.

5:19 AM

Awoken by a heavy weight bouncing up and down on my neck, the musty scent of a pee-filled diaper, and a tiny voice going “Mama Horsey! MAMA HORSEY!”

Go back to sleep after giving a quarter-hearted “neigh…”

5:23 AM

“Mama up! MAMA UP!”

“It’s still sleepy time, Owl.” He may or may not understand me, because I am speaking directly into my pillow.

5:26 AM

“MILK! MIIIIIIILK!! PEEEEASE!”

6:35 AM

Perfect Husband walks into the room to find me lying prone with Owl nursing upside down on top of me, with most of his body sprawled on top of my face.

6:38 AM

I am slapped repeatedly on the head.

In Which I Get Medical Advice From An Oompa Loompa, And Distrust It

Tags

baby, colds, common cold, coughing, daycare, doctor, pediatrician, sick, sleep, toddler, virus, winter

Owl coughs.

He’s been doing it for months and months. Ever since he got croup, really. It’s practically part of his personality, now. We hardly notice it. His nose runs, and it gives him post nasal drip, and then he coughs, mostly at night when he’s lying down and we’re trying to sleep.

(Incidentally, this is hilarious, especially when you’re really tired.) 

At first I took him back to the doctor for it. Each time the doctor told me it was “probably viral” and that colds are common in the first winter in daycare.

“He’ll basically have colds non-stop all winter,” said the pediatrician jovially (my pediatrician looks exactly like a human sized Oompa Loompa. Not the weird orange men from the Gene Wilder film but Oompa Loompas as described by Roald Dahl).

How I imagine my doctor’s family must look

Plus Owl tended to pick up worse colds from his visits to the doctor’s office. So I gave up.

But Daycare Lady didn’t.

“I’m sure he needs antibiotics or something,” she said. “He’s always coughing, and it sometimes sounds like there’s boiling water in his chest.”

Every now and then the coughing gets worse.

It happened again this weekend. His coughing was so bad that PH was up with him again and again in the night, and gave up entirely at 3 am  when he handed me Owl in bed (usually it’s between 4:30 and 5:30 am when Owl joins me in bed).

Even in the car he’d cough and cough. When he breathes his chest sounds like it’s percolating coffee.

After the third night of this PH said, “take him to the pediatrician.”

Daycare Lady wholeheartedly agreed.

“You have to PUSH them. My brother is a pediatrician and when my little girl was small he told me that from what I was saying over the phone, he was sure she had pneumonia. I took her to the ER and the ER doctor said she was fine! Viral! Go home! So I said “you PROVE to me it’s viral!” and I insisted on an xray and the xray showed pneumonia!”

So I went in determined this time.

When Jolly Doc came in I explained that he has been coughing for months. Sometimes it’s worse than others but always THERE.

“Does it get better and then worse again?” he asked.

“Yes!”

“It’s a cold.”

“An eight month long cold?”

“No, he just keeps getting colds one on top of the other. Happens all the time in daycare in winter.”

“But it’s June!”

“The cold season seems to be lasting longer than usual. We’ve had a cool spring.”

“But there’s only four other kids at his dayhome and none of them are sick!”

“You can’t tell me that the other kids never get colds.”

“No, they get colds occasionally, but they get sick, with stuffy noses and coughs and fevers and then a week later they’re over it. Owl’s symptoms are non-stop, and his nose rarely gets really clogged. It’s just constantly draining clear or yellow snot.”

“Because he keeps catching new colds before the old ones are done! I see this all the time. There’s no point in doing tests and no medicine will help you. His lungs don’t sound asthmatic, and I don’t think it’s allergies – you say it happened all through the winter, so it’s not likely seasonal.”

“Some units in our complex have had problems with mold, but we vacuumed and washed his bedding…”

“Yeah, and he hasn’t had a history of lung problems or breathing problems. This doesn’t look like allergies. It looks like a cold.”

“But he always looks like this!”

“Yes, well,” he laughed, “we call them “snot-nosed kids” for a reason!”

He DID say he would refer me to an eye doctor about Owl’s clogged tear duct. He said they usually resolve on their own but after a year he gets them dealt with “you’ve been surprisingly patient.”

Yes, well, considering my child is constantly coughing, a teary eye hasn’t really been high in my priorities.

I left feeling so frustrated.

How does he know that Owl hasn’t had the same persistant infection ever since October? Maybe he fights it off for a while and it keeps coming back. Why is he the only kid in his daycare who is constantly coughing up phlegm?

would you like some snot with that?

But I’m really frigging tired and I don’t see why he is constantly suffering from colds that no one else seems to be giving to him, or catching from him.

Beware The Seahorse, Children. It’s All… Soporific And Stuff.

Tags

babies, childhood, conditioning, fears, psychology, sleep, weird

Okay, here’s where I explain the loss of the seahorse.

Remember the seahorse?

We really came to depend on that seahorse. During the whole Go The F*** To Sleep incident, Owl would often drift off to sleep staring dreamily at the seahorse’s glowing tummy.

When he started daycare, the seahorse went with him every day to help him go down at nap time.

Then, one Saturday a couple of months ago, Perfect Husband picked me up from work and told me that Owl was afraid of his seahorse.

“Don’t be silly,” I told him, “he fell asleep to it just last night – he just lay there and watched it until he drifted off, while I hummed in the rocking chair.”

“Well, he found it today and he brought it to me, so I turned it on for him, and he started to scream.”

“He must have just gotten a teething pain at that exact time. It must be a coincidence.”

To prove PH wrong, I turned on the seahorse and showed it to Owl when we got home that night.

…He took one look at his musical bedtime pal and burst into horrified, heartbroken tears, and ran off to find his Dada.

Monday afternoon, when I picked him up, Daycare Lady told me that Owl hadn’t slept. He kept standing up in his playpen an screaming in a heartbreaking manner which was entirely unlike him.

I couldn’t understand how he could have developed a fear of his seahorse literally over night, but it was looking more and more like this was, in fact, the case.

I asked Daycare Lady if anything bad had happened to Owl with the seahorse – maybe another child had thrown it at him?

No, she didn’t think so. She checked with her helper lady, and helper lady hadn’t seen anything like that either.

In any case, the next day he went to daycare without the seahorse and slept fine.

So I put the seahorse aside for a while.

I miss the darn thing because now if I want Owl to go to sleep without being on the booba, I have to sing “Mama’s Going To Buy You A Mockingbird” over and over and over and over again. I have had a sore throat lately and this ISN’T HELPING.

Besides, the music is soothing and I missed that, too.

In our organizing stint last week I dug up good ole’ Glowy again, and I offered it to Owl. It had been months. Surely… whatever it was that upset him about it… was forgotten by now.

It started well.

He seemed happy to see it and reached for it. He even pressed the belly to turn it on.

Words cannot express the look of betrayal that crossed his face when the music began to play.

WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO ME??

The crazy thing is, every time I turned it off, he’d go over to the thing and turn it back on. 

"hey, it stopped! Let's just press the tummy and..."

"ARGH OH NO, WHY??"

(click the pictures for close-ups of the agony)

"HOW CAN I BEAR THE PAIN??"

"Hey, I didn't say TURN IT OFF..."

Suffice to say we’re baffled.

Sleep Update – Still A Night Owl

Tags

babies, night weaning, sleep

I haven’t updated on the Owl Sleep Situation in quite a long while, and there’s a reason for that.

I have no idea what the hell is going on.

If he were sleeping badly I could say “his sleep still sucks!”

If he were sleeping wonderfully I could say “his sleep is amazing!”

But it’s so random, so unpredictable, that I honestly don’t know what to tell you.

The GO the F*** To Sleep program works – I’ll give it that. The day before Owl started daycare he slept through the night. But then daycare messed it up. Once we were convinced that he wasn’t starving to death, we decided to reinstitute the program. But Owl kept getting sick.

It basically has been yo-yoing like this:

We start getting Owl to sleep without the breast at night

He starts sleeping for longer stretches.

He gets sick.

He coughs himself awake every 20 minutes.

We get desperate and start letting him nurse himself to sleep.

And then it starts all over again.

After the croup incident we decided to kick it up a notch by actually night weaning him. We tried the Dr. Jay Gordon method, which I discovered through the Leaky Boob.

It is very much like my No Cry Sleep Solution method, which is very like Pug Mama’s Go The F*** To Sleep method. But just as Pug Mama’s method was No Cry kicked up a notch, the Jay Gordon method is kicked up another notch, because he has a TIMELINE.

I didn’t blog about it because I had no time for blogging because I hated my life.

But it totally worked. We were tired, but even by the third and fourth night there were huge improvements seen. It helped that Owl is an old hand by now at being refused booba at night. Once he catches on that we’re serious again he goes right to sleep.

In fact, on night 5 he slept through the night. We were like “THIS IS AMAZING.”

Then guess what happened?

GO ON, GUESS.

Right. HE GOT SICK. The next night, night 6, he coughed himself awake CONSTANTLY and while he would go to sleep if one of us sung to him from the gliding rocker, he would immediately start to cry when that same parent left the room no matter how deeply asleep he appeared to be when we tiptoed out.

PH wanted to give in. I refused. I ended up falling asleep ON THE FLOOR next to the crib and waking up very, very stiff two hours later.

The next night, night 7, was worse, if anything. I fell asleep on the floor next to the crib again. PH dubbed me insane, said there was no point in sleep training a sick baby, and I reluctantly agreed with him.

Owl had found his way back onto my boob.

When he got better we tried to re-implement the criteria, but we couldn’t quite make it through the night. At around 3 or 4 am, we’d let him come to bed with us. After all, we said to each other, Dr. Gordon says to pick a 6-7 hour stretch through the night. Instead of picking 11-6, maybe we were just going to do 9-4.

And that’s sort of how it stayed. On good nights, Owl sleeps until 3 or 4 in the morning, and then PH brings him to bed with me. On bad nights, he wakes up multiple times and we sing him to sleep, USUALLY without booba.

The first time PH said “It’s time to go to sleep, Owl”, and Owl immediately stopped crying and lay down, he said it was like a miracle. That’s what he does, now, because when he hears those words he knows it’s serious.

But I really wish we could get past that 3 am stretch, because it would sure be nice to wake up some morning without a baby jumping on my head or trying to tie knots in my nipples.

And I’m sure PH would appreciate NOT getting kicked out of bed at 3 in the morning every day.

So we need to crack down and finish the night weaning some time soon.

Unfortunately, now we’ve also lost the help of the seahorse, but that’s another story…

In Which We Do Not Take Medical Advice From L.M. Montgomery

Tags

babies, coughing, croup, illness, parenthood, sleep, wheezing

You can sleep WHEN I CAN BREATHE

Little Owl has kennel cough.

Er, I mean, croup.

Right.

…

…

…

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

…I’m awake.

Anyway, this may or may not be related to the fever of 39.5 from last week. 

Might not be.

He started coughing a weird barking cough that sounded like kennel cough on Monday night. But Daycare Lady said she heard no coughing at daycare the next day. But he was up all night Tuesday, too, coughing and crying and refusing to sleep outside of my arms.

Wednesday, again, Daycare lady heard no coughing during the day.

Until about 4 in the afternoon, when he began to wheeze. The Daycare lady was concerned, but pointed to his cheerful demeanor and good appetite.

Thing is, when Owl’s appetite disappears, that’s when I should rush him to the E.R. because I don’t think I have ever encountered anything that made him turn down food, especially Daycare Lady’s lamb stew with barley.

But he was definitely getting worse. 

“Every time he gives that sad, wheezy little cough, I feel like someone has just killed a kitten in front of me,” PH complained. “A sad, tiny, mewling kitten, and God just, like, SNAPPED ITS NECK.”

That night I ended up in locked the bathroom with the door closed while the hot water from the running shower filled the room with steam, until my baby stopped coughing and dozed off.

A consultation with Dr. Google revealed that he did not, in fact, have kennel cough, but croup.

“Then we should give him ipecac” I announced.

PH looked horrified.

“NO! Why would you do that to my baby??”

“Because when Diana Barry’s little sister was sick with the croup, Anne of Green Gables saved her life by giving her syrup of ipecac!”

But PH felt that perhaps a 19th century fiction novel might not be the best source of advice for treating our baby, so I was officially out of ideas.

…

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Sorry, I was just resting my eyes.

Daycare Lady took him the next day anyway, because he had no fever, was otherwise quite cheerful and she really didn’t think he was contagious – or that if he was, he had probably already passed it along. However, his wheeze was getting worse, and I ended up leaving work early to take him to the children’s walk-in clinic.

The doctor was concerned about his airways, gave me steroids, and told me to bring him back if they didn’t make a big improvement.

They didn’t.

“I would stick an ice pick into my own eye socket if it meant that I would never hear that cough ever, ever again,” PH told me.

Cue another night of steamed-up bathrooms and PH sleeping downstairs while Owl restlessly wiggled and coughed and wheezed through the night in our bed.

…

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

No, really, I’m awake.

So the next day I took him to the pediatrician again.

Happily, the doctor said his wheeze was getting better, and recommended adding some whacking doses of Tylenol to the steroids.

He’s getting better.

But he is still ending up in our bed, wiggling and coughing and kicking at his Daddy while he noms onto my boobas from the most improbable angles.

PH said one time he woke up in the night, and we were both asleep, but Owl was collapsed over my face, his bum up in the air.

We’re all a little tired. And by a little, I mean

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

PH gave me a bit of a sleep in today. I’m hoping he’ll be able to take a nap this afternoon.

And we’re PRAYING that Owl will be all better soon, because tonight is his last dose of steroids.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz………………………………..

Boob-Lady Is Back To Work, and Babby Is Starving, But Happy…

Tags

babies, breastfeeding, milk supply, pumping at work, sleep, working mom

Well, Babby, or the artist soon to be known as Owl, survived his first week away from me. Four full time days away from me, and then another with his Daddy.

He doesn’t seem to mind in the least. He watches me go in the mornings, but he doesn’t cry. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop; for him to say, “Wait a minute, you leave me here EVERY DAY!!” but so far it hasn’t happened.

Daycare Lady doesn’t think it will happen, because he’s “such a happy, confident little guy” but NotMaryP, who has 19 years of experience on my own Daycare Lady, warns me that pretty much every baby goes through some separation tears in the first month of settling in.

In the meantime, I’m wavering between deep relief every time he lets me escape with a minimum of guilt, and slight concern that my baby doesn’t care whether or not I’m around.

Pumping at work is a problem.

A vet clinic is not your normal work atmosphere. There are hypothetical lunch breaks (we certainly go 30 minutes unpaid each shift for said lunch hour) but whether or not one gets to take an entire one, or even one at all, is left very much up to fate.

You have to understand that this is not a problem with THIS clinic. This is a problem in ALL clinics. When the vet needs you to restrain a thrashing patient, or when a surgery needs to be done, or the phone is ringing off the hook, it is simply Not Done to say “I’ll be with you in 20 minutes.”

So some days I get time to scarf down a lunch, and other days I do not. Pumping has to wait until a lull, and it gets precedent over eating. Sometimes that lull doesn’t happen until one in the afternoon, when my breasts are full to the brim. Even so, it’s ten minutes of agonized hiding in the bathroom and pumping away, only to produce 3 ounces total for my time.

And ten minutes feels like a LONG TIME when you can hear phones ringing, the vet calling out for help, and the “ding” of more people coming in the door.

In the morning, when Babby wakes up at 5 in the morning, I rush downstairs and pump a couple more ounces while PH tries to soothe a screaming baby who hasn’t eaten since 8:30 pm (on a good night) or at least one or two (on a bad night).

So he goes to daycare with 5 ounces or so of milk in his sippy cup, and Daycare Lady spoke to me on Friday and said that it’s simply not enough. He needs more. She talked to me about considering formula or cow’s milk to supplement.

I hate to go that route.

I had been hoping that solid food would fill that gap in his nutrition, but I guess it isn’t. And I can’t criticize Daycare Lady for simply not feeding him more. She gives me a run down each day of what he has eaten. The kid eats more than I do.

Here is Friday’s list:

• one egg scrambled with flaxseed pita
• One small bowl of cheerios
• one cup of blueberry yoghurt
• a few goldfish crackers
• one bowl of cut up pear
• one plate of rice with beef/lamb kebab and tomatoes,
• one bowl of plain Greek yoghurt
• one tablespoon of vanilla ice cream
• one bowl of cut up red grapes
• a few animal crackers
• a whole banana

And this is the day that she told me that he needs more milk.

She very well may be right, because for the last two days, basically since I got home Saturday evening until, well, NOW, Babby has been latched onto my boob.

His nights, which had settled down into a sleep through the night on a good night or one or two wakeups on a bad night, has relapsed into regular, every two or three hour wake ups. And he WON’T go to sleep without a good feed each time.

I feel like our sleep training has taken a serious step back, because he isn’t being sung to sleep the last couple of nights – he is nursing until he is finally sated.

HELP, SHE'S STARVING MEEEEEEEEEEE!

To be fair, when I put him down, he rolls over and goes to sleep on his own. But if we put him down before he is done nursing, he just screams and signs for “MILK” in an emphatic way which is impossible to ignore. We’re afraid to ignore it, anyway, after the “he needs more milk” talk.

Do 11 month olds go through cluster feedings? 

What do I do? Get a better pump? Put him onto cow’s milk? FORMULA?