I’m at home right now in the first of 3 days off this week to spend with Allie. Jayne left for New York last nite. For next week and half of the following week, Jayne’s friend Missy will be here to care for Allie in Jayne’s place. That’s right, our nanny found us a relief nanny, AND “trained” her, too! Allie seems to love Missy so much and so quickly that Jayne’s jealous. It may be weird and cute, but I’m happy so many people love Allie.

Allie’s napping right now, and I have beets baking to puree later on. Earlier after we played for a bit indoors, we went for a 40 minute walk around the neighborhood, during which she hummed along with her musical toy and pointed at crows and random things. Putting her down for naps and even bedtimes are psychologically easier on me, now, because she basically does it all herself. I go thru a small short nap routine (putting her fuzzy blanket in the crib, turning on the air purifier, closing the bathroom door), and then she’s already pulling toward the crib. I put her in, she rubs her cheek on her blanket, smiles at me, I whisper a nite-nite to her and walk out as she smiles at me. She takes however much time she needs to settle down (usually 10-20 mins in the AM nap, up to 30 in the PM nap, so I get her in the crib in plenty of time), and she naps for a little over an hour in the AM, between 1-2 hrs in the PM. At bedtime, she rarely falls asleep nursing and stays asleep for the crib transfer anymore, so I lay her gently in her crib and leave to let her settle down, which she does quietly, sometimes bear-wrestling for awhile, but she does.

I think why it was so nerve-wracking before, was because she didn’t have the ability to help herself sleep or stay asleep or go back to sleep, so I had to bridge that gap, but there was only so much I could do. I had to hold her and gently sway back and forth until she’s comfortable enough to fall asleep against me, then transfer her to the crib, praying that if she wakes up a little, that it’s not so wide awake that she’ll be up wailing as soon as she hits the mattress, necessitating me to pick her up and try to soothe her again. If she woke up due to noise or whatever back then, she was unable to soothe herself back to sleep, so the nap was over and I’d just have an overtired kid on my hands until the next nap. Same thing with bedtime. Now that she’s older and has had plenty of practice between then and now self-soothing and getting used to the more common sounds, she doesn’t wake up, or will just sick her thumb if necessary, close her eyes or flop in a different position, and go back to sleep. Since she bridges her own gap between awake and sleep, all I have to do is get her to her crib at the appropriate times.

Her AM nap used to be 1.5 – 2 hours, but it’s been closer to an hour these days, and one day she skipped her PM nap. Since that’s not the nap that’s supposed to disappear (the AM nap is), I looked it up. So turns out that the AM nap is supposed to decrease and start to disappear between 10-12 months (i.e., now), but if the PM nap starts to disappear, it’s because the AM nap is too long. To protect the PM nap, which is to stay until she’s past toddlerhood, she’s to take no more than a 90-minute AM nap. The way to do that is to wake her between 60-90 mins at her 9am nap, and/or put her to bed a bit earlier at night so she’s better rested in the mornings and less dependent on the AM nap to catch up. I don’t really want her to go to bed that much earlier as she typically in her crib by 7pm these days, but maybe I’ll move it up 10 mins or so on days when she’s had more active time before bed, or woke up earlier from her 1pm nap.

I feel most of the depression waning away, now. (Ha, as I typed that, the gardeners showed up and started blasting their noisy mowers, leaf blowers and weed whackers outside her room, but seeing that she’s already been sleeping 1:05 hrs, if this wakes her up it’ll save me the trouble of having to wake her so that she’ll hit her PM nap on time.) Things are easier on me as they go from my control to Allie’s own control. There’s less pressure on me to figure out what to do to help her out, and feeling like a failure if I can’t get the result. Pretty much all I’m responsible for in the day-to-day these days where Allie’s concerned is that she gets to nap when she needs it (9am & 1pm), and she eats well, and she’s safe.

Allie’s interest in milk is waning, and I didn’t pump at 5am for the first time on Saturday and Sunday, so my milk supply just from that has dipped dramatically. I hope the 8 gallon baggies in the freezer is enough to get her through her first year until we can switch her to cow’s milk, but I’m not too stressed about it, especially since she nurses just fine, still. She’s down to drinking 14.5 oz in bottles at home a day when I’m not here, and I’ve been pumping/storing 9 oz a day or less, but she nurses for all her milk intake when I’m here on weekends, and she still gets her daily morning and bedtime milk from nursing. I think my stockpile is fine even if I stop the 5am pumpings altogether, which I think I’ll do since I’ve been only getting 2.5 oz from that anyway after I’d stopped this past weekend, which is hardly worth the early risetime and the milk-storage and washing pump parts, etc.

Huh. This kid is still sleeping through the gardening noise, at 1:22 into her nap.