cindy's world

It’s amazing how much of a set-back it is for me emotionally when a wrench gets thrown into the little I feel confident about. The night before Allie had her bedtime fit and wouldn’t go down to sleep after I’d already done my bedtime routine, I was just telling Mr. W that I used to dread evenings because it’s her fussy time when I would feel the most helpless, but now that I knew her bedtime routine and had her sleeping through the night, nighttimes had become the predictable easy times and I looked forward to them. And then BAM, she threw me that curveball.

Yesterday, she threw me another curveball — the same one, actually. Mr. W came home from work and we all went out to our favorite neighborhood Greek place for dinner. The family that runs it knows us so I always feel comfortable bringing Allie there in case she acts up. She didn’t; she hung out and did her own thing, charming the patrons. We had women smile at her, one grandmotherly type came by on her way out to tell us what a pretty baby Allie is. We came home and because Allie had a couple of crappy 30-40 min naps after her nice solid 2.5 hour morning nap, decided to put her to bed early after a bath.
By the way, altho she’d always had fun in the bathtub before, this time and the time before, she decided she hated the water and would now scream and cry her way through the entire bath. (We’re still only bathing once a week.) I don’t know what’s changed, except her preferences. Anyway, I was saying to Mr. W what a great baby Allie is and that I had thought she was colicky early on, but that now I’m convinced she is an easy-temperament baby who just was overtired in the beginning due to my ignorance of proper babycare. Famous last words, again.

So the bedtime routine went as usual; she’d spent so much energy screaming at her bath that she fell asleep early nursing. After getting her to weakly eat from both sides, I put her to bed. In 8 minutes, the cat, in our bedroom, started his yowling thing. I was downstairs and couldn’t make it upstairs fast enough to stop him. I could only watch the baby monitor on my cell phone helplessly as Allie roused…rolled to her left side in her soothing position to suck her thumb, and then…it didn’t work. She started screaming. Since she rejected her pacifier, I have no clue how to put her back down at night anymore. I went up and picked her up, she stopped crying. I put her back down, she started crying again. I picked her back up. She kept crying. Mr. W finally came in and said he’d take over and that I was too stressed. I was just angry at the cat. He told me to go to sleep.

I was unable to sleep, but did observe the monitor a little. Holding her in the bedroom wasn’t lulling her to sleep, so he went downstairs and put her in the swing. I heard the chirping sound of the bird sound effects from the swing. She was down there in the swing for quite awhile. Mr. W said she fell asleep in the swing and after he turned it off, she remained asleep. He picked her up and walked her up to her bedroom, where she was still nodding off on him. As soon as he went in, she started screaming and crying again. I got up and went to them just as Mr. W came to me, with the baby alone in the crib crying, to tell me he was going to bring her giant swing up here so she could sleep in it. I asked to try to put her down the way I nap her, which was what worked at her last bedtime fit a week ago (the only other one since she was 6 weeks old). She probably had exhausted herself by this point, because she got into her sleepy position with her right cheek against my chest, left thumb in her mouth, and was soon asleep on me. The only hard part was that I couldn’t see in the dark to confirm her eyes were closed, so I tried to go by sound and the feel of her body, and waited it out a couple of minutes. Then I gently lowered her into her crib. She woke briefly but went right back to sleep on her back, barely moving. The rest of the night went all right, except that every time Dodo made a noise I’d freak out. Dodo only had to be pulled from the door once before morning and placed in front of his food in our room.

I woke up a little past 4am when Mr. W got up to go to the gym. He tried to sneak out of our room to do all his getting ready in the bathroom downstairs to let me sleep, but I decided that since I was already awake and anxious anyway, I may as well pump as I was definitely engorged. By the time I was done with the handpump, he was gone. I snuck downstairs, stored the milk, washed the pump parts upstairs, and went to bed after laying awake nervously for almost an hour. Even my dreams were of the nervous, stressful sort.

Allie was awake in her crib, quietly kicking around and doing her own thing, super-early at something like 7:15am by the time I woke and checked the monitor. That’s 6:15a Allie-time. I gave her some time to see if she would fall back asleep, and when she didn’t, I got up, brushed my teeth and washed my face, cleaned out the cat litter (now that it was next to his food, I have to be more diligent), and went and got her. I noticed in the wee hours of the morning how it felt like I was afraid of her, like she’s the boss and I’m at her bidding, hoping she doesn’t bite my head off. It still feels that way now. I didn’t enjoy my time with her this morning like I had yesterday. I was just scared. I’m not sure what exactly I’m scared of, because it’s not like she could die or fire me or get terribly sick or get into much trouble at this age. But I just felt like I was insecure again. It remains so important that I nap her well, sleep her well, and there are all these external factors I can’t control, like garbage trucks, gardeners, neighbors’ noisy kids, a neighbor’s barking dog. Things are already tricky because of daily savings throwing me for a loop.

Allie didn’t settle right away when I soothed her for her morning nap earlier. She was tired and turned from side to side, rubbing her face in my shirt, but would pop in and out of the sleepy position. Each time she popped out, my anxiety level would go up. What if she doesn’t nap? What if all her naps today go crappy and she’s too wired to sleep tonight? What if what if what if… I couldn’t take the stress of things going “wrong.” I feel so emotionally exhausted and physically exhausted from just last night, and the prior nights of popping awake to shush the cat even though I should be getting at least 8-10 hours of sleep solid cuz that’s what the baby does. But I don’t; I get a few at a time between the cat, having to get up to pump, and the anxiety making me unable to fall right back to sleep after my night awakenings.

Good thing I have another therapy session coming up. I really am looking forward to Susanne coming onboard. These are all nothings to her, as I’m sure they ought to be. Mr. W has said a few times that he hopes Susanne is able to put Allie to sleep in a different way from the way I do, with the walking soothing lulling Allie to sleep before I put her down. I don’t know of another way that works; the putting down awake-but-drowsy technique just makes Allie pop fully awake and cry. Sometimes if I have an awkward or rough put-down and she wakes up more than just a little bit, she pops up wide-eyed, turns her head, and I know I’m screwed; she’s not going to be sleepy enough to drop into sleep. I’d have to pick her up and start the soothing all over again. Mr. W is unable to nap Allie unless she crashes from exhaustion on him, like she did on Sunday at Eddie & Michelle’s shower. There has to be a better way, but I’m not sure if the problem is with my ability to figure it out or do it right, or with Allie resisting any other way to go into her nap.

I need a break, but there’s no such thing. I’m down to 115 lbs, which is 3 lbs below my wedding weight. This isn’t a healthy sign.

I tried something different last nite — I moved Dodo’s food and water upstairs into our room so that there would be no reason for him to walk around the house at all hours caterwauling. It made a significant difference. I was able to close the door of our bedroom and only had to get up twice in the wee hours to bring Dodo, circling the door and meowing, to his food, before he went, “Oh yeah, I don’t need to go out,” and would eat/drink and settle back down to sleep. He still yowled once in awhile, but it wasn’t of a crazy duration since he had less surface area to proclaim as his territory. The baby slept through the night again, as did the hubby.

This Sunday, we went to Eddie and Michelle’s co-ed baby shower. It was a little challenging as the baby napped pretty poorly in the day (noises outside woke her up so that her 2 naps at home, which had been lately 1.5-2 hrs each, were only 30 mins each). She tried to sleep on the hour+ drive to Pasadena, but kept waking up when hubby made the car swerve or jolt. Nevertheless, she was a dream at the party! There were a ton of people there, bunch of kids running around and playing, the noise level was definitely higher than she’s used to. She handled it like a pro and was good natured throughout. Hubby held her the entire party, wouldn’t hand her off because he says I have her all day on the weekdays. So I enjoyed the people and the food as my arms and back got a nice break. Allie finally crashed in hubby’s arms without a fuss when she was 2 hours overdue for her afternoon nap, having been up over 4 hours straight.

I got to test-run Eddie and Michelle’s new nursery and glider for Allie’s evening meal. 🙂 They have very cute stuff. I think they’re ready to be new parents. You can see Eddie practicing right here:

Eddie still has to master the protective daddy face, though. Mr. W is an expert.

If you ask Allie to identify the newest glowing mommy-to-be, Allie would say, “It’s easy! I can do that in my sleep!”

As you can see, I was just happy to be among grownups again. Happy happy!
Don’t Eddie and Michelle look like they’re ready for Scarlett to come into the world? We need a 6th to even out this photo! Come on, Scarlett!

Here are some old friends we haven’t seen since…wow…their engagement dinner! I was just pregnant then. *reminiscing, looking at the photos from the link* Edgar and Ruby are now deeply in wedding planning mode. Big changes coming their way, too!

Michelle told me that a bunch of her friends from the party were exclaiming that Allie is sooo cute, such a pretty baby, and that she looks “just like her mom.” 😀 I’ll take that over, “That kid’s funny-looking. She looks just like her mom.”

The last change… yesterday was the first day of Daylight Savings. It’s the change known as the hated, dreaded, “spring forward” clock adjustment where we all “lose” an hour of sleep. I was trying to figure out how to adjust Allie, since she woke up at “8a” instead of 7a, altho she slept the same number of hours as she usually does. Due to all the good naps missed on Sunday, I simply put her to bed earlier than normal and she konked right out, altho that was 7:45p by clock time (or 6:45p Allie-time). I keep her bedtime flexible up to 45 minutes up and down, depending on her needs, so it’s not like she’s never gone to bed at that hour before. This morning, she roused at 7:50a (6:50a Allie-time), and went down for her first nap at 9:30a, so we’re doing fine. I’ll do the incremental adjustment if that’s even necessary. Ideally, the goal is for Allie to be up around 6:15a so that I can nurse her before leaving for work. Susanne will be here at 6:30a for a hand-off. If Allie’s bedtime remains 7p-ish, then we’ll have about 2 hours to spend with her after work and then I can still nurse her before bedtime. Given the early rise time, I may have to advance Allie’s bedtime, too, if she starts seeming fatigued. “That sucks, our baby won’t know us,” Mr. W griped. Maggie assured me that as long as we can keep our egos out of it when Allie cries for nanny sometimes, we’ll be okay, and that Allie’ll still love us. I just have to keep reminding myself that this is temporary, and in Allie’s best interest. For example, even if Allie doesn’t get up at 6:15a on her own in the mornings when I have to go back to work (thanks to daylight savings, I now need to push her morning rise time almost 2 hours back in the next month to make it “in time”), I can choose to wake her, then hand her off to Susanne, or let Susanne bottle-feed Allie’s morning meal, and I can keep working on getting her up earlier incrementally so that I can nurse her before leaving for work. It doesn’t have to be a hard deadline.

Biggest possible change of all: Mr. W is now advocating moving us all to Hawaii after his retirement, not Oregon. I wonder if people would come visit us if a flight is necessary.

A friend from jujitsu (also named Rebecca) told me that her baby stopped sleeping through the night at 4 months. She made mention of the developmental leap that occurs at 4 months, which is a major one and very disturbing to the kid. I asked what she meant, “stopped” sleeping through the night. She had to have meant that it was just a temporary stop while the baby was adjusting to the leap, right? No…she said the baby stopped from 4 months to 13 months. :O!!!

I’d never heard of that happening, where the baby regresses in progress for that long. She says that’s when you “sleep train” the baby into going back to sleeping through the night. I’d always thought sleep training was to get babies who don’t sleep thru the night to start sleeping thru. Rebecca think it’s not unusual for kids to stop sleeping thru at some point, at least for a few weeks, or until sleep trained. I know they co-sleep with the baby, so I’m hoping that’s the difference.

Last night, for the first time in awhile, Allie cried at 4am on the dot and I went in to give her a middle-of-the-night feeding. I was so scared she would stay up crying like she did after our bedtime routine, but she didn’t, she easily dropped off into sleep once I put her back in her crib. I was careful to let her doze a little on the Boppy for a couple minutes after nursing so she’d be properly sleepy when I transferred her.

She’s down for her morning nap right now, but instead of the usual 10 minutes it used to take me to soothe her, it’s stretched longer and longer and it took 40-45 minutes this time. She didn’t cry or fuss, but she just wouldn’t stop turning to look left and right, being interested in everything, and I couldn’t get her into her sleepy position (face against my chest, sucking her left thumb). She’d bounce right back up to look around her room again, despite the fact that she’d kept yawning. Her timing’s just a tad off today, since she fell asleep so late last nite, she slept in a little until 7:30a and I didn’t have the heart to wake her before then. The half-hour lateness plus how long it took her to soothe into her morning nap may throw off the rest of her day, making her biological sleepy times not match her old habitual nap times.

This developmental leap is really, really scaring me.

And the cat is really driving me and Mr. W crazy. I’m at the point where I’m willing to give him up to a loving home.

This is a public service announcement for breastfeeding moms.

Since Allie started sleeping through the night and going from 7p-7a between feedings, I have been waking up in the mornings terribly uncomfortably engorged. The other morning I woke up early after having nightmares that I was trying to get home to pump but got lost and couldn’t get home, so I tried to go somewhere like a public restroom to pump, but I couldn’t find my pump. And then I tried to find a store that sold pumps to buy a handpump to just do it anywhere, but couldn’t find a store that had them in stock. I woke up in pain.

So what I’ve been doing when I wake up at 4, 5am afraid my boobs were going to burst, was quietly take the handpump with me into the restroom, and sit on the toilet and pump out 2 oz each side. It’s just making me slightly more comfortable. I don’t pump till I’m empty because I know Allie would wake up and want to eat in a couple of hours. I also don’t pump earlier than that, like at 3am, because I’m still afraid she may have a random middle-of-the-night feeding call after I’d just cleaned myself out. I did see a potential problem with just pumping out the top 2 oz from each side and storing those 4 oz in the freezer for a future feeding, tho. Most of that pumping is foremilk (it’s practically blue, looking like skim milk), which is high in lactose and could cause the baby to have gas if not balanced out with hindmilk. So I don’t want a future Allie to be uncomfortable after that feeding. I decided to call Kaiser’s lactation clinic for advice.

The lactation nurse wasn’t all that concerned about the bag of mostly-foremilk. She was more concerned with my being overly engorged after 8-12 hours of no expression. If the baby were eating less and weaning off, 8-12 hours wouldn’t be a big deal because I’d be producing less, anyway. But since the baby is still very young at 15 weeks old, and I’m not at a point where I want my milk supply to lessen, she doesn’t want me to send my body the signal that we don’t need to produce milk for 12 hours at a time. That was a concern I had, too. What I didn’t know was that, as she told me, the over-engorgement for such a long period could cause an infection. She said if I get a fever or if my breasts feel painful and get red, to go to the doctor for possible mastisis. Her suggestion is that I pump before going to bed. Unfortunately, I’ve been going to bed between 8p-9p, so not a lot of time has gone by since I last fed Allie to get a lot of milk out.

I tried it her way last nite, and sure enough, I only got out something like 2 oz total. That’s very little milk considering I have to spend half an hour storing the milk and washing and drying all the pump parts afterwards. Hardly worth it. On the other hand…mastisis.

So now that it’s 10p and an hour past my new bedtime, I think I’ve stalled long enough to hopefully get a good drain before I hit the hay. I’m exhausted tonight; for the first time since she was 6 weeks old and I accidentally discovered she sleeps in her own crib at night better than in our room, I failed at putting her to sleep after her bedtime feeding. Usually, she is so drowsy after nursing at night that she only protests a little when I put her in her crib afterwards. If she protests, I’d just put the pacifier in her mouth and she’d fall asleep sucking. Sometimes the pacifier would fall out and it’d wake her up, she’d whimper, I’d replace the pacifier, and she’d go to sleep again. This may happen a few times before she’s down for the night, so I’d stay in her room for a little bit after putting her in her crib. No biggie. Since she found her thumb the other week, however, she’s rejected the pacifier. That was good in the sense that she could self-soothe so I didn’t have to stand by for pacifier duty. It was bad because the pacifier was the only way I knew how to put her to sleep so it took all control from me. I’d wondered what I’d do if my only method of putting her to sleep for the night disappeared, while hoping I’d never have to find out. Tonight, she had a FIT after I put her in her crib after nursing. She rejected the pacifier, and screamed and cried so hard I panicked. Mr. W took over and tried to pat her, played her musical seahorse for her, picked her up and rocked her over his shoulder in the recliner, nothing worked. I was instantly nauseated. She was likely just overtired, since the jackass neighbor ran his circular saw in the front yard all day, keeping her from napping more than half an hour on 2 naps, and then he took a break in the late afternoon and resumed using his saw outside after dark when I was trying to put her to bed! After nearly an hour of inconsolable crying, Mr. W finally let me take over. I did what I do during naps: held her so that her right cheek is against my upper chest under my chin, she sucked her left thumb (her fave to suck on), and she finally, somewhere in between convulsive piteous heaves, fell asleep on me. I then laid her in her crib on her back and altho she woke up, was too tired then to protest and went to sleep soon after.

I happened to talk to Nanny Susanne after that and told her what happened when we tried to put Allie down. She said it sounds like Allie was overtired, and told me what she used to do when that happened with a baby she was caring for. She basically described the same thing that I ended up doing with Allie, and described the baby’s reaction, which was the same as Allie’s. This makes me even more comfortable with Susanne.

Man, it’s never one-sided with this baby business. She’s sleeping through the night, which is GREAT, but then I may get a boob infection because of it. She’s up in hysterics instead of going to sleep, but the hardcore crying so drains a baby that she’ll konk out solid afterwards so that’s GOOD. I wonder if I’ll ever get used to this.

I gave noise-training a shot at the strong encouragement of a friend, Robin. After all, Allie used to fall asleep in the living room with the TV on when she was a newborn, and right up until she got sick and I had to nap her in her room for the elevated crib mattress and humidifier, she did take some naps in the living room. So maybe she’s not a light sleeper, but this is just a phase cuz she’s getting more alert, right? Here’s what happened as relayed in a conversation between me and Robin:

Me: THE JERK NEIGHBOR’S CIRCULAR SAW ON THE FRONT YARD WOKE THE BABY AGAIN!@#$ Why can’t he do his crap in the garage like everyone else?
Robin: Again, let the baby be exposed to some noise. You can’t tiptoe around her forever. She will never get used to noise. Leave a tv on at a normal level while getting her to sleep and nap in the room with it. Stuff like that. Your sanity and sleep will improve. 🙂
Me: okay, I’ll try to put her down for her next nap in the living room with the TV on, but history tells me that she won’t go down with that much noise around anymore.
Robin: Keep her around noise all the time and she will fall asleep even if she fights it. It’s not easy but not having dinner parties etc. because your kid is a light sleeper just doesn’t make for a fun few years.
Me: I don’t think it’s possible to turn a light sleeper into a deep sleeper, but I’ll use more background noise and see if it makes any difference.
Robin: It really does help. [Son] could sleep during anything. Even when we went bowling! 🙂
Me: oh, I thought he was born a good sleeper.
Robin: He was. But as kids get older stuff changes and you have to flex. So, when I couldn’t rock him to sleep, he got car rides. Then more noise as he could walk so he would stay in bed (if he was awake and could hear you in the next room would crawl out of crib). Had to stay up late and keep up with noise so he could ignore it and allow himself to sleep. For me noise would keep him up more than wake him up
Me: [8 minutes later] Allie’s now in her activity walker “listening” to a Friends episode with her back to the TV.
Me: [40 mins later] She couldn’t do it. I started soothing her to sleep in the living room by the TV. She kept looking around and wouldn’t relax. Then she got tired enough to start fussing. I took her to her room upstairs, and as soon as we went in and she was in the darker room with the air purifier humming, she relaxed and started dozing. As she was falling asleep on me, I started slowly walking out into the hall where some TV could be heard. She woke up, and I kept soothing, trying to get closer and closer to the living room again, but she kept waking up. So I finally gave up and went back in her room where she fell asleep immediately, and set her in her crib and closed the door.

Photos from last weekend, when Mr. W’s mom and dad drove out from Vegas to meet their newest granddaughter. It was a cranky weekend for Allie, but the photos don’t make it look that way! *patting self on back* (BTW, Allie made a poopie on the 8th day while waiting for her grandparents’ arrival Saturday morning, and hasn’t had another one since. =P ) As always, hover mouse pointer over the photos for captions.

Allie tries on her serious expression as she’s held by grandma.

“So this is another set of grandma and grandpa, you say?”

It was a beautiful 90 degree March day, and we had lunch outside.

Daddy thought it’d be fun to put her in the hammock.

“Please, God, don’t let me fall from this hammock like daddy did…three times. Amen.”

It was so warm daddy decided to give her a little sunbathing time. Just for a minute or two.

Allie got to do her new favorite thing: walking!

Yeah, that’s what I look like these days — hair out of my face and out of baby’s grasp, no contacts, no makeup. Sorry, people. I’ll make more of an effort when I go back to work. Maybe.

Monday morning, Allie’s having breakfast conversation with grandma. “This is what I, personally, like to do with a giraffe,” Allie is saying.

Munch munch munch. Her gums actually make squeaking sounds against Sophie’s rubbery legs.

Grandma helps Allie see herself in the mirror as grandpa looks on.

“Yeah, the mirror is great and all, but you know what I prefer? That’s right. My hands.”

Wonder Weeks warned that I’m 2 days into the new fussy period, which starts at 14 weeks, as the baby picks up connections between motions and actions to understand a whole set of “events,” such as a ball bouncing, the fact that she can move her hand and arm at the same time, in multiple directions, in order to grasp something she sees and then bring it up to her mouth, etc. This warning includes something about the baby having inconsolable crying. I thought, “Well, Allie may cry inexplicably here and there, but it won’t be INCONSOLABLE. She rarely cries as it is, and doesn’t cry for long.” OMG.

This morning, she was woken up after only 30 mins into her morning nap by the garbage truck rumbling and beeping around our cul de sac, so she has to hear it coming AND going. She woke up screaming and was inconsolable for the next 40 minutes. I couldn’t get her to go back to sleep, but she was exhausted, so talk about crabby. My in-laws came this weekend to meet her, and had to deal with a screaming baby, whom they also did their best to entertain. My mother-in-law fed Allie her bottle (thank goodness the boycott is over and she gulped the bottle down while I pumped upstairs), burped her, and things were calm for awhile as Allie smiled and played with them in her activity walker. Soon, she got crabby again as she was up way longer than she should’ve been before she would go down for her next nap. My in-laws left for home at this point to give me the time to console her into her next nap.

Allie was down barely half an hour, after a long hysterical soothing period, when the next-door neighbor’s gardener decided it was absolutely necessary to whack the little strip of lawn between our driveways for 15 minutes with a weedwacker. And a lawnmower. And then the weedwacker again. Allie woke up SCREAMING and was again inconsolable for a long time. For the first time, I believe she was screaming and crying (tears and runny nose and all) just for the sake of screaming and crying. When I played and sung to her and made a big smiley face, she’d smile back and sometimes let out a laugh in spite of herself, and then she’d realize she’s on the wrong emotion, and then she’d go right back to wailing. I believe this is a tantrum we’re dealing with. “I’m MAD cuz I’m tired and I couldn’t sleep, so I’m going to complain to you at the top of my lungs until you think you’ll never sleep again, either!”

It took close to another hour to calm her down. She could be distracted momentarily, but she’d remember, “Oh yeah, I was having a fit,” and then go right back where she left off. I fed her, took her for a walk in the backyard and then to the mailbox, and she seemed all right although a bit wired. Finally, she yawned, and I put her down after very little soothing. Great, cuz my back was killing me from carrying her without much of a break from all her crying today. So I put her down in her crib, pulled a receiving blanket up to her waist, tiptoed out, silently closed the door, breathed a sigh of relief…and then heard in horror a new motor sound beginning. I ran to the window. The neighbor across the street was using a circular saw in his front yard. Not in the garage, but way out in the front yard. I almost cried.

So far, Allie has stayed down. She’s most vulnerable to waking at the half-hour point, when her sleep cycle comes to a natural end before the next REM cycle hits. I’m praying to the nap gods to please please please let her sleep for at least 1.5 hours this nap.

AND YUP, 36 MINUTES, AND ALLIE IS NOW UP AND CRYING CUZ THE SAW JUST STARTED AGAIN!@#$ ALL THE CUSS WORDS IN THE WORLD!@#$ I WANT TO SAW THAT NEIGHBOR IN HALF!!!

*** LATER:
I tried to look online for advice on how to “noise-train” a baby, and apparently, you CAN’T:
http://www.babysleepsite.com/how-we-sleep/baby-sleep-noise-sound/
Not only that, but apparently, you SHOULDN’T:
http://www.sleeplady.com/baby-sleep/should-i-train-my-child-to-sleep-thru-noise/

I can’t find advice to the contrary. If you know something I can read that actually teaches babies to effectively to sleep through noise and it’s backed up by research or medical science, please let me know.

Now that my little girl is almost 15 weeks old, I realize there are some things I wish I knew before Allie came out into the world, such as:
* what growth spurts do to their eating;
* that it’s not only okay, but totally common, to supplement nursing with some formula while waiting for milk to come in the first couple of weeks, and it doesn’t mean your body isn’t or won’t produce milk;
* exclusively breastfed babies can go days, sometimes a week or more, without pooping once their digestive systems mature a little or when they’re going thru a growth spurt, cuz they use up all the stuff in the milk and don’t have any excess to make into poopies;
* babies need a LOT of sleep (like after every 1-2 hours of awake time), even when they’re not sleeping or napping on their own and need a little assistance;
* fussiness at night in a 6+ week-old could actually be a sign that an earlier bedtime is needed, and not just that the baby has colic or is generally crabby.

There have been things that have surprised me, too, such as:
* how much I resent anything that interferes with my baby’s sleep…loud gardeners (does that leaf blower need to be on when they’re just walking around the driveway?!), ambulance sirens (those drivers should find a different route!), screaming kids outside (it’s a SOCCER BALL, not a zombie chasing you for your brain!), careless door-slamming (you have fingers, use them to hold the knob and close the door instead of letting it slam!), the cat when he’s yowling all over the house (he KNOWS there’s a baby sleeping, he could smell it, he’s a cat!). That last one was a surprise; I thought NOTHING would come between me and my Dodo boy;
* the things I get ecstatic about when they come out of my baby…”Is that a toot? That’s a TOOT!” “*gasp* YAAAY, you POOPIED!” “GREAT burp, baby! GOOD JOB!” cuz any of these things trapped in her makes her uncomfortable, so we want them OUT, no matter how socially unacceptable it is for adults to do the same.

It’s been said many times that babies don’t come with instruction manuals. My therapist points out that all new parents at some point or another have felt bewildered, lost, scared, paranoid, and it’s not just me, because look at all the self-help baby books out there! There wouldn’t be such a market if I’m the only one who feels this way. So although the labor team that delivered Allie claims they didn’t leave her manual in there when they took her out, there ARE manuals out there available in a salad bar fashion. You pick the item(s) that work for you, and it could be a unique blend of techniques, tips, and education for each unique parent dealing with a unique baby. For me, after “Babywise,” “The No-Cry Solution,” “What to Expect in the First Year,” countless internet searches, countless texts to helpful friends, this is what I found worked for me:
“Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child” – Dr. Marc Weissbluth
“The Wonder Weeks” – Hetty van de Rijt and Frans Plooij
These two go well together for me because they answer my most burning questions, which are: (Stage direction: picture me dropping to my knees with an open-mouthed anguished expression, fists in the air, and dramatically screaming the following)
* WHAT is HAPPENING to my baby?! and
* HOW do I FIX MY BABY?!
The sleep book, as I have come to dub it, tells me what is going on developmentally in Allie’s little brain through her early growth in life, and how giving her the opportunity to be fully rested in spite of her growing restlessness helps her mood, her ability to absorb learning, increases her ability to adapt and thereby sets her up for successful future learning and adaptability. Plus, it helps me sleep through the night since she’s been sleeping through the night. Good nappers make good night-sleepers! This book teaches you how to help your baby become a good napper and good sleeper.
Wonder Weeks explains what developmental “leaps” the baby goes through at what point in his/her life, and helps you anticipate the signs that show that your baby is now at week x, which means she’s hitting a fussy period due to her current ability to sense y and z, and she’ll be trying this and that and you can help her learn these skills by playing this game or doing that activity. Apparently a baby’s development isn’t a seamless progression, it goes in leaps and bounds (and not in the figurative sense), so the baby goes through phases of behavioral changes which SEEM like a regression into cranky infancy. These regression periods were distressing to me until I learned this behavior is normal, and the clinginess/crankiness/crying are just passing phases as the baby tries to acclimate to the new perceptions her brain suddenly learns to picks up. (I used to think “OMG, this is the way it’s gonna be from now on, forever! It’s horrible and I can’t do it!” and my therapist said that’s the postpartum depression talking, the inability to see beyond the misery of the moment.) I am seeing Allie’s developments hit right at the points the book says they would. Like now, she’s entering a fussy period because she’s seeing faces and recognizing people, and would cry suddenly for no reason, sleep less well, but in improvements, she prefers to stand up and walk, roll to her side, and work on skills like that, so she finds the awake time more interesting.

Okay, and now she’s woken up super-early, crying from her morning nap, so I’ll have to end my blog posts for the same reason I’ve been ending most of my blog posts since her birth. Another sign that Wonder Weeks was right about her current fussy stage.

Sometimes Allie unexpectedly takes a long 2 hour morning nap so that I can do all the stuff I need to, such as wash and dry pump parts and bottles, tidy up the house, eat, change, etc. And sometimes, like today, she wakes up from that long morning nap for an hour, eats and plays, starts yawning and then goes down for another unexpected 1.5 (and counting) hour afternoon nap. I’ve had lunch in that time so I sit online and catch up on emails, blog posts, etc. And then some more time goes by, and my inbox shows no new activity. Where is everyone? Oh yeah, at work.

And then the issue resolves itself. By that I mean I see a FedEx truck pull up and haul a giant box to my door. I don’t want the doorbell to wake up the baby, so I intercept him at the front door and pick up the giant box, lugging it back into the house. What the heck is this? It’s freaking heavy! It’s from…”muscle egg?” And then I remember…Mr. W ordered raw pasteurized egg whites that are, like, chocolate and caramel flavored and stuff. And the giant-ass box threatening to break my back is wielding multiple stickers yelling, “REFRIGERATE or FREEZE upon ARRIVAL.” Great, I have to open this box and refrigerate what feels like the egg whites of a million hens.

Meanwhile, I realize as I’m lugging this about that I can’t close the door while I’m being dragged down by the giant box, so the delivery truck’s very loud rumbling is pouring in the front door…and sure enough, the baby starts screaming.

Refrigerate egg whites, get screaming baby, or finish this blog post?

Finish this blog post. The damn egg whites can wait.

Susanne texted me to call her last night while I was putting Allie through her bedtime feeding (another night of sleeping all the way through, and another day/night of no poopies). When I did, I was nervous. Mr. W said he was scared, too. We quickly agreed that if she says no, then we’ll ask if there are any non-monetary benefits we could provide her that would change her mind, such as more paid days off, since Mr. W and I have a lot of vacation days and holidays we can relieve her of duty. If she declines, then we thank her and move on to someone who’d be a better fit.

But Susanne said yes! She said she thought about it, and decided that if the money were the issue and we really would like her to be our nanny, and she wants to work for us, then it shouldn’t be just about the money. I thought that was a very Christian way of thinking. A working situation between employer and employee IS mainly about the money, but a more holistic view of it is whether it’s in both parties’ best interest, whether you like the person, it’s about the baby, and love, and helping others, etc. We still have to get together and crunch some numbers to decide how best to do this, but we’re gonna do it! YAY! She said the only hitch is that a family she babysits for had an emergency-type situation come up and they need her to be there full-time this month. She said they have no other option. That means that she can’t do a part-time trial period with me before she has to take over in May. That makes me a little nervous, but she offered to come over on weekends to acclimate to Allie’s routine, get Allie used to her, learn her way around the house and neighborhood. I agreed. At least that saves me some money for April, I guess.

I guess the bottom line remains the same — Susanne just needs to keep Allie alive until we get on the same page as to her routines and such. My cousin Jennifer only gave her nanny 2 days to hang around with her and the baby, learn their routine, before she went to work, and that’s working out just fine. Susanne is more than capable, and she asked to borrow and read the sleep book I’d referenced to understand my parenting routine, which can be done on her own without her being here.

Now I have to let down all the other potential nannies, the toughest of which will be Fernanda, still waiting to hear back after her interview with us.