Wed 25 Jan 2012
Sometimes you have to make a choice — eat, sleep, or pump? At 4am, I expected Allie to be up as her last meal was 8:20p (the pacifier thing worked this time, she fell asleep about 9:30p, rousing once but Mr. W kept me from going in and forced me to not look at the monitor, and she fell back to sleep for the night after 2 audible whines), so when Mr. W got up around then to go to the gym, I was unable to fall back to sleep due to my high anxiety level. She kicked around and roused silently a little in the other room, but went back to sleep. After checking email on my phone and brushing my teeth and washing my face (so I can feel good I took a little advantage of free time), I finally chose sleep, too. It took me over an hour to fall asleep. It seemed that as soon as I dozed, she woke up. It was just before 6am and she cried for a meal. I went in, fed her, put her back down in her crib, and she went back to sleep after more of the kicking around in silence. I chose to pump this time, so I’m still up now after pumping, labeling and storing, rinsing out the pump parts. Now I’m considering breakfast.
I heard the stepdaughter downstairs while I was pumping upstairs. When I was in the kitchen storing/rinsing, she walked out fully dressed and I asked why she was up so early. “I have to go to the museum [for a class]. Why are YOU up so early?” I almost laughed.
“I’m ALWAYS up this early with the baby,” I said and explained what I’d done so far.
“Is she up?”
“She’s probably kicking around right now.”
“Is my dad with her?”
“No, your dad left at about 4:30am.”
I hope one day soon Allie can sleep as well through morning noises as the stepkidlet.
Mood this morning: been feeling alone and kinda abandoned when Mr. W left. “You’re not alone, you have your baby,” he said. That’s why I feel alone. I still feel incompetent and am so fearful I’ll inadvertently, unknowingly do something or not do something and screw up her sleep pattern or developmental pattern and she’ll be a difficult baby for the next however long until I figure out how to correct it again. That’s why I read way too much research/books on baby sleep, trying to prevent “mistakes,” altho all the reading on opposing theories just further confuses and conflicts me. I know there’s no permanent mistake I can realistically make at this point, but that doesn’t settle me.
Read less.
I’m serious…I always felt like those books were written by one person with only the perspective of the small number of babies they new. And besides, they make it sounds like there is always some solution and some “correct” action to take, and there really isn’t. A lot of times, you just kinda have to wing it, and go with what works.
You will very quickly (you probably are already) become an expert in the habits and patterns of Allie. And then, just for kicks, she will change them, and you get to learn all over again:-)
The books are fine for ideas if you are out of them (like, maybe there is a bedtime routine thing you never thought of) but they are no “how-to” guides.
And mostly, just don’t feel like you are missing something or doing something wrond. Babies cry, sometimes for things you can’t fix. They also develop at different rates and have different little quirks…you gotta learn to just sort of go with it. I had one who had bad acid reflux, and one who had bad teething pains. One gets stomach pains and one has bad dreams. One walked first, the other talked first. One got her teeth first, the other learned to use straws first.
This is my long-winded way of saying: babies create enough stress as it is without you wondering whether or not the baby police think you are doing it right!
I’m going to try to take your advice and keep all the reading in perspective… but my brain keeps psyching me out. Thanks for the input, tho…I think of you and don’t know HOW you do it with two newborns simultaneously.
I must have read 80% of the “most influential baby sleep books” whichever ones showed up on any of the top baby sleep book lists I could get my hand on… The only thing that I found most helpful was the forum on Kellymom.com, those moms were just basically rolling with the punches and occasionally some of the vet moms came back to report “it has gotten much better now” and gave the child’s age, so I felt like I had something to look forward to.
if my kid woke me up at 3am 30 minutes after she went to sleep, I could go post a message, and 90% of the time a mom would say “me too, mine has been up since 2am” or something like that. Whatever I was going through, there was always someone else who had it tougher than me who said “wow your situation is worse than mine.” lol. The validation and the sense of “we don’t know what the heck is going on neither” helped me through that dark period of my early motherhood 🙂 NOne of the books helped. Advises stressed me out.
I was right there, and also found that my baby isn’t the worst out there. I met a dad of a 5-month-old who still wakes up and cries every HOUR at night, and not even because of hunger. But I think I found something that works for me, now. See most recent post. 🙂
I meant that the 5-month-old cries every hour, not the dad. =P