Nap re-training went really well over the weekend. After the stunt Allie pulled on her first nap on Saturday when I had to let her cry for 23 minutes before she went back to sleep for 2 hours (I had to wake her so that she didn’t oversleep), she didn’t try it again. She hit all her naps on time and woke up from them at the right times, usually about one hour and 45 minutes. No fits in between REM cycles, no rolling around in her crib. I did notice latency has increased (taking longer to go to sleep during soothing); it used to be about 10 minutes, now it’s up to half an hour on some naps, with sometimes a few minutes of protest crying before she zonks out. I wrote detailed notes of her naps and her behavior before and during them. I also did a 12-hour daytime timeline with color-coded brackets and instructions for naptimes and feeding times. Jayne got here late again this morning so I didn’t have a lot of time to go over all the specifics, just went over things generally. I hope she reads the chart and notes. Stepdaughter conversationally said yesterday that she was hanging out with Jayne and chatting and they saw Allie wake up and cry on the monitor, and that they waited 5 minutes before Jayne went up and got her. Stepdaughter almost said it in a defense, like, “We did wait, though — we waited 5 minutes.” 5 minutes is not effective, obviously, because Allie then learns she can easily outlast Jayne and get picked up early from the nap. The point is to have Allie in her crib for an hour whether or not she sleeps the full hour, so she doesn’t expect to play during naptimes. Given the chance (i.e. she isn’t getting picked up after her first REM cycle), Allie sleeps for at least 90 minutes in a nap, and soon doesn’t even bother moving much during that initial REM wake-up, but goes right back to sleep. Altho Allie was crabby and would cry for no reason on Friday, we got our happy smiling well-rested baby back on Sunday. We also got black-out curtains for her this weekend and Mr. W installed them right away. They block about 70% of daytime light. I don’t want it black in her room cuz I still want her to know the difference between daytime naps and nighttime sleep.

Pumping didn’t go so well. I get consistent advice from other pumping mothers to keep at it, pump before going to bed. The timing is fine because it would be about 3 hours after Allie last ate for the night when I go to bed, but I can’t get letdowns anymore. Squeezing the hell out of each side as I’m pumping on the hand-pump with the free hand yields about 5 mL per side in 10 minutes. Basically it’s a total waste of time because it takes me longer to clean the parts afterwards. The time could’ve been better served by sleeping. I finally pumped at 5:30a this morning before Allie’s first feeding of the day and got almost 4 oz total by squeezing until my skin burned. I know there’s milk in there, my body just won’t release it. The only reason I got out what I did this morning was because I was engorged from no release overnight. I wonder if my doing that would get me less at my first work pumping later.

Dodo yowled every 15 minutes starting at about 10:30p last night, lasting for 45 minutes to an hour. Then he started yowling every 10 minutes starting at about 4:30am this morning for over an hour. He yowled more over the weekend, too. Not sure what changed. His yowling is even louder. I’m still medicating him as instructed.

This weekend, I discovered that staying at home and just doing babycare is, surprisingly, easier than going to work. I’d expected to feel better knowing I’m getting a break from 24/7 baby issues, but it’s harder psychologically at work because not only am I not free from baby issues as I worry about Allie’s routine going nuts at home, but I have to worry about pumping (whether I can get away, where, how long I can afford to pump/store/clean, whether it’s productive). The baby stress is compounded, and I have work stress and obstacles on top of that. There’s a giant backlog of divorce cases the clerk’s office is distributing like crazy so I’ve been working like mad to try to get rid of the ones they’re assigning to me. I’ve made a sizeable dent, but not good enough. I don’t want anyone to have a reason to say I can’t leave work on time because of workload unfinished. It’s really hard to concentrate on each file’s details, however, when my anxiety level is so high about what’s going on at home. I think that may be affecting my (lack of) letdowns, too.