Stir Crazy With Baby

I need to leave the house today. I just have to. So, I mean, yes, right now it's -14C out with windchill that feels like -26. But! In the afternoon it'll feel like -19, which is downright balmy in comparison.

And I haven't gotten out of here since Saturday. It's Wednesday. Jack is not showing signs of going stir-crazy, but I can't help but think he must be getting bored too. And even if he isn't, who cares?! The fresh air and a change of scenery are in order.

God, and this is coming from someone who used to be able to go four days without leaving the house pre-baby. But those days are gone. Staying in used to mean doing my full-time job and then settling into an evening of video games and TV.

Now I'm taking care of a baby, keeping track of his poops (Lots of those these days, for those who are desperately interested) and feeding him what I hope is a varied enough diet and trying to make the sleep happen.

I love the little guy. He's my Angel Puff. I've been calling him that, especially when he's wearing a sleep sack. But it gets tedious as we sit day after day in the living room and he plays with his toys. I stack blocks, he knocks them down. I read a book, he wants it read again. And then again. I put things in a container, he takes them out and puts them back in. This is fun for about 15 minutes before I need a break.

But taking him to, say, an Early Years Centre where there's tons of new toys he can touch, where he couldn't care less if I'm playing with him because they're super exciting on their own? Boom! My goal is to hit one up this afternoon, when that balmy -19 chill comes around. You know, if he naps for me.

He's napping now. This is great. I think I may have been putting him down too late before. He was just so jazzed over his new burgeoning mobility that I think I was missing his normal sleep cues and he was getting overtired and wired on a second wind. No more of that! Babies can be so counter-intuitive. Sometimes, against all good sense, the answer can be as simple as put them to bed earlier and let them fuss.

I already knew that because of all the reading up on this I'd done, and I still made that error. Screwing up with baby sleep is amazingly easy to do and seemingly simple to fix, except it's not because they're always changing and new developments throw wrenches into even the best sleep arrangements.

He stood, like, a hundred times yesterday. Under his own power. Just stood up briefly, and then plopped down, either on me or his little rump with a a giggle. This kept him up longer last night. Understandable, really. Probably be like if I learned how to fly today. I'd likely not be too keen on going to bed either. Hell, I have a hard enough time going to sleep under regular circumstances.

But I do think tiring out a baby is a great way to encourage sleep. I'll take him to the Early Years Centre after his afternoon nap, which please-please-please will be over by 3:00 and then I'll let him go nuts there for two hours. Hopefully that'll give him enough opportunity to use his little body and practice his spiffy new moves and will lead to sweet, sweet sleep.

That's my plan. Subject to change. Depends on the almighty nap. I had no appreciation for the militant nap scheduling some parents were all about before I had a baby of my own. Now? Kinda get it.

9 Month Old Baby Sleep

Jack's naps are killing me.

Well, no. His LACK of naps are killing me. My son was sleeping beautifully. He'd go down for two naps, after about three hours of being awake and his daytime sleep would be between two to three hours. Perfect.

Well, lately he's not interested in napping so much. I find him sitting up in his crib crying, even after yawning and rubbing his eyes. It's like his body is rewired to move, move, move right now and there's nothing he can do about it.

The Dude is home today and sorted out the nap. So Jack is sleeping (Oh my GOD, yes) but he was still up for four and a half hours before it happened, so he got overtired. It's been like this all week and it's changed his personality. Not like in a weird way, but Jack is usually very pleasant and happy-go-lucky. This week he's been clingy and dissatisfied with everything.

It's actually kinda subtle. He wasn't full-out crying and throwing fits. He was just less able to focus on playing with his toys, more needy for me to entertain him and less able to cope with getting bumps and thumps when he toppled over. Those changes combined made him seem like a different baby and I realize now just how important those naps have been. Good sleep has allowed his personality to shine through and being tired masks it with a veil of grumpiness.

And I don't like it.

I read between eight and 10 months is a developmental leap that affects sleep. Crawling, cruising, standing and even walking sometimes start occurring and crazy shit is connecting in baby's brain. And some of it is pretty darn neat.

For example, Jack is doing all those things except walking (So grateful-- not ready!) but I can see cognitive changes like understanding the word no. He knows what that means. I've started using it. Specifically, there's the TV. It's moved as far away from his reach as we can manage right now, but Jack can still reach it and there's a cord. So when he starts touching that area, I say "No!" and I give him a stern face and shake my head no.

And it works about 4 times out of 5. It took awhile for it to sink in and at first I had to physically move him away after saying no. But now he's letting go of the TV on his own, for the most part. I have to keep on him about it because he likes to see if this time he'll be allowed to do it, but I'm encouraged that saying no results in him usually listening to me. It's something I can build on.

So it's not all crankiness around here. My little baby is becoming more and more like a wee person I can truly interact with, with is quite thrilling.

He's still napping right now. Life is good.

Baby Thwarts Plans

You can begin the day thinking you're going to do certain things. Today, for example, I had a doctor's appointment for Jack. Then I was going to drop off my forms for the daycare. Then I was going to go on a walk with a friend and her baby.

I went to the doctor's.

So much hinges on the whims and rhythms of your baby. Jack opted out of a nap this morning, and snoozed for a measly 10 minutes in the stroller en route the the appointment. And somehow that sustained him (In poor humour) until 2:00. We got home, no stops to the daycare, no walk, and he went straight to bed. A lunch of solids? No time. Chug a bottle and sleep, for the love of all that is holy! Otherwise all is lost.

And sleep he did. And I laid on the couch and contemplated a nap, myself. Jack woke up very wet, hungry and teething last night at 2:00 a.m. and it took an hour to settle him. I was exhausted. But no nap for me. I don't even know why.

I've been giving Jack Tylenol for the pain. I do it for naps and night time sleep. He gets a half ml for naps and a full dose of a ml and a half for nights. I don't go out of my way to find alternatives. It works, it's safe and that's it. I give him Camilia during waking hours, just to take the edge off.

A mom I know posted a recipe for teething biscuits and I knew that unless it came with Tylenol icing, I'd not be utilizing this remedy. I'm always so impressed when a mom of a baby finds the time and motivation to make things instead of just going out and buying something to make things easier. I'm completely not that person. I come by it honestly, too.

My own mom, although she breastfed for six months, didn't go out of her way much either. She blended a portion of her dinner and fed it to me when I was a baby. No baby food recipes, no shopping for it either. I'd be willing to bet there was no homeopathy or the like either. This is the sort of thing I wish I could ask her. I'm so curious about the minutiae of how she raised me, how she managed. There's got to be some wisdom and help in those answers and I'll never really know.

For the record, Jack is 19 pounds and in the 97th percentile for height. According to my aunt's scale over Christmas, we thought he was 21 pounds. This is actually excellent news because I weighed myself too and that means I'm not as overweight as I thought.

And Jack is pulling up and cruising around.
I think he's going to walk any day now.
Serves me right for wishing he'd hold off till daycare. Dun dun dun!

Too Cold Out For Baby

There once was a time I could put my baby down to sleep and he'd fall asleep. He'd stay asleep until about 5:00, where he'd want a bottle and then I'd give him one and then he'd fall back asleep until 6:30ish.

This evening and yesterday evening and the one before that I had a baby who screamed himself to sleep. Because reasons. Reasons I don't fully know.

Oh, I could guess.

He was sick and then had a growth spurt and got into the habit of being picked up when he woke and then rocked in a glider with a bottle. How cozy. And no more of that because health is restored and that's not going to be a regular feature of life now because that ain't how you sooth yourself to sleep. But maybe he's still adjusting to that sad reality.

I can relate, though, to be honest. I've always been a crummy sleeper and when you find a sleep crutch, you become very resistant to sleeping without. But infancy is a good time to get with the program.

Another possibility is separation anxiety. He's become noticeably more attached to us these days and at night he may just not want to let us go anymore. I have less sympathy for that. Isn't that awful? But no, seriously, I can't be soft and stay in the room with him all night, loving him to sleep. He'll just wake up, I won't be there and then WAAAAHHH!

It's hard to listen to, it really is. Took him 30 minutes to calm down tonight.

And he's waking in the night, desperately in want of a bottle. I think it's thirst. The air is dry down there, despite the humidifier. He had a nosebleed last night. He's not taking in much, and he croaks when he cries, so that's an additional culprit.

And I feel like there's little I can do to fix this. Oh, I am a believer in sleep training. I've done it before and I'll do it again. I did it tonight. But shit. It's very taxing and I feel alone. I know I'm not; parents around the globe deal with this stuff. But I still feel isolated with this problem.

Also, I haven't left the house since Saturday and it's Wednesday. Prior to that it had been five days since leaving the house. At first it was being sick with a sick baby that kept me in. Now it's the damn polar vortex or whatever they're calling it. Take a baby out in a windchill of -30 with icy sidewalks? Well, that sounds right terrible.

I'm getting stir crazy. I do know I have to tour a daycare on Friday. That's a whole different post, though. Daycare. Good grief.

How To Wean Baby Off A Swaddle

So, I've been in post-swaddle hell for about... a month now. Jack has been busting out of his swaddle in strongman fashion for weeks. First we had to abandon the SwaddleMe swaddles, which at first were a godsend, making our baby sleep through the night at eight weeks.

Our little burrito boy at one month old
in a SwaddleMe.

They were too thin for an older baby, though, and the velcro, while mostly effective on a three-month-old baby was laughable in the face of a five-month-old baby, who could tear the velcro apart like the Hulk. We needed the industrial strength of the Halo Sleepsack.

Baby is snug as a bug in a really tight rug.
Halo Sleepsack.

This worked for another month or so, the flaps were longer (All the better for creating a nice, tight, full-body fit) and the velcro was longer and more no-nonsense. However, as great as it worked, I think a swaddle is something of a resistance trainer. The baby fights against it, even though he relies on it to sleep, and eventually becomes strong enough to break free. Every time. Sigh.

Night time sleep has been fine. No swaddle? No problem. He'll sleep sack it up, arms all everywhere and fall asleep. I think this is due to the sleep training from a couple months ago. Nap time? Pfft, forget it. It's been the bane of my week, as it's gotten progressively awful, I think triggered by a growth spurt.

So, what do you do? Well, you can try various products to keep baby's arms immobilized, very tempting if you have a baby like mine who prefers a soother but pulls the soother out and can't get it back in, or if you have a baby (Like mine) who scratches his face. But if your baby (Like mine) is rolling, sometimes you just got to bite the bullet and go swaddle free.

I tried various methods with poor rates of success.

1. One arm swaddled, one arm out.

Usually he'd just pull the other arm out. This really didn't work well.

2. Teach baby to sleep on stomach. 

Jack was rolling onto his stomach, which kept his hands off his face and less able to pull out his soother (Oh, he could still do it, but it was harder). So I thought, time to get him to sleep that way. I'd rub his back while he sobbed until he fell asleep, and this was time-consuming and annoying. It sometimes didn't work. 

3. Use your hands to hold baby's hands down so he doesn't pull out his soother.

This effectively makes you the swaddle. It was okay when it was holding one arm, but if he'd free the other one, you were screwed. At first this method was helping, so long as the arm didn't free itself, but soon it turned into a game for Jack and my presence in the nursery kept him awake. He'd bounce his body and giggle. Then he'd twist his body around to see if he could escape. Sometimes he'd come close to falling asleep, and I'd try to leave while he was still drowsy and BAM, arm whips up, removes soother, he grins at me and then cries.

4. Controlled crying while baby is unswaddled.

I'd leave Jack to cry for a few minutes and come back in to reassure him and then leave. I'd find my baby tired out from crying and as soon as he saw me he'd perk up, and we'd start over from square one. This was too infuriating to try too many times. Ain't nobody got time for that.

5. Let him cry himself to sleep.

This was the final straw. The first time I let him cry it out took somewhere between 20 to 30 minutes. The second time took about 15. I just let him do it again and it took 5. I feel we're really getting somewhere.

I bought the Zipadee-zip awhile ago, in hopes it would help the swaddle transition:

Fresh from the mail.

It helps, I think. He's still enclosed in something, although nothing that truly restricts movement. He's sleeping in it right now. I'd take a picture, but, you know. Sleep. It's happening. I'm taking zero chances with bothering him.

So there you have it. How to get baby to go without a swaddle when nothing is working? Dude, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you probably gotta go cold turkey, suffer through it and let your baby work it out for him or herself. And they will, because that's what babies do. They work things out. The hard part is letting them.

Sometimes you have to accept that your baby's cries don't mean, "I need you!" They sometimes mean, "I don't like this!" And that's okay.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll reap the benefits of all this agony. If it's anything like that last bout of sleep training I did, life should get a whole lot better around here.

Bad Mother Days

Every mother goes through one of those days. You know those days, the ones where you feel like you've failed in the general sense and you need the day to end so you can have a do-over. Every person has those days, but being at home with a baby generally means that those days have left you feeling like an ass parent and your baby doesn't love you anymore.

I mean, it wasn't even that bad, exactly. Jack was a little off schedule and that meant he was unpredictable. When would he be hungry? Tired? I'd have to watch and wait and see. His naps were 40 minutes, throwing him even more off and making his diaper changes less easy. See, I'd throw him in a new one before a nap and after, roughly 90- to 120- minute intervals.

But I wasn't going to do it at 40-minute intervals. And those short-ass naps left me frazzled. It's just not enough time to relax and actually do something or take a nap, yourself.

Kiddo takes three naps a day, usually. But his third nap ended shortly after 2:00. His bath is at 6:30. Asleep by 7:00. Five hours awake for him ruins all our lives. Do babies get super tired after being up a long time? Oh no. Well, yes. But no. They express this aching fatigue with freaking out indefinitely. Then they pass out, and wake throughout the night to freak out some more.

Anyone who tells you a baby doesn't need regular naps is ridiculous. Just an FYI. A strict schedule may not be necessary, or even possible, but you gotta make room in your life for your baby to sleep at sensible intervals, otherwise you're all doomed.

So what did I do? Well, I tried to stretch out the nap past 2:00. I tried for an hour to get him back to sleep. He was rubbing his eyes and crying. And crying. And crying. This means he was tired. But he did not sleep. I'd give him his soother, which he'd suck on gratefully for 5 seconds before he'd pull it out and howl. I'd hold his arms down, mimicking a swaddle, which sometimes works. But no, it made him bounce his body against the mattress and chortle.

So I took him back to the living room for another hour, determined to put him down for a fourth nap, to break up the five-hour stretch of impossible foolishness. He was cranky, so I put on the TV to distract him from how much he hated everything. Yeah, six-month-old and TV. Shut up, I don't care.

Then back to nap time. No dice. He was even more tired, but probably over tired by now, so what did I do when nothing was working again and time was running out for this nap to even happen and thus spare us all a nightmare?

I let him cry himself to sleep. I went in to calm him down a couple times, only to realize this would wake him up and renew the sobbing. So I laid down on my bed and listened to my normally sweet baby wail for 30 minutes total. Then silence for 35 minutes as he took a forced and likely unsatisfying nap.

He woke up in less than good humour, but not as cranky. His eyes were a little puffy and I felt like an asshole. I regretted nothing, but still.

And so around 6:00 I tried to feed him apple oatmeal mash. He took three bites and cried. Screw it.

It wasn't till I got him ready for his bath (Alone, when normally the Dude handles this. He had to stay late at work unexpectedly) that I realized I forgot his last diaper change. Not only was he unpredictable, but my normal routines were thrown off and he had soaked his clothes. Awesome. Mom of the year.

I think Jack prefers his dad to do the bath time routine. Not only is the Dude more energetic after a day spent not doing child care, but he's had time to miss him and is bubbly and fun. I was probably pretty perfunctory.

Jack normally falls asleep on the Dude as he's fed his final bottle before bed. He didn't do that for me, and he didn't fall right to sleep either like he usually does. By the time I collapsed on the couch I was so done.

My entire list of accomplishments for today include: Kept baby alive.

And tomorrow the Dude is seeing the David Bowie exhibition and won't be here for bath time. Christ kittens, I'm tired just thinking about it.

But I'll end this on a high note: A few days ago I took Jack to a store and showed him some toys and he lit up at one of them, and so I just had to get it.

And now Big Bird is his favourite.

Solids: Part 2

No heavy posts for me today. I've been feeling strange since writing my last entry, a little vulnerable, a bit melancholy. But also a little freer.

As a dear friend of mine likes to say, onwards and upwards.

So, I took a break from solids recently because last time I tried, Jack had a meltdown. And when I say meltdown, I mean he recoiled from the spoon and sobbed inconsolably while staring down at the bowl, rattling in his high chair and wailing. The time before that he cried and refused the spoon. So, a bit of an escalation here. I can take a hint.

I think it's been about a week and a half since I got him started and quit early, and today I got going again. He's a wee bit older, I used different spoons and I thinned out the rice cereal. He ate it happily, which is to say it dribbled all over the place and enough of it went into his mouth that I consider it a success.

He's teething right now, agonizingly slow. It's sort of off and on. He's been getting grumpy, rubbing his gums (Which are whiter than usual) and he has rosy cheeks from time to time. I kinda wish the teeth would just appear and get it over with already. And when I think there are soooo many to come and all this fuss over one dang tooth...

Rosy cheeks and a sad little face.
But look at these sweet jammies!

So between sprouting some chompers and eating for realsies, my boy has a lot going on.

Oh, and the soother business? Pfft. Caved. Folded. Gave in.

Spent some time trying to get him to sleep on his tummy, since he was rolling on to it anyway, but ultimately it was hell trying to get him to fall asleep like that. Doable, but shitty. So, I'm now doing a revised swaddle: one arm out, the arm he uses less frequently to pull out the soother.

And it's been working out much better. Thank Jebus.

Raising a baby is so much minutiae. It's all super important (To you) because it's going to make or break your day every day. But damn if you don't get dizzy wanting adult companionship.

They also mark the time in ways nothing has since being in school. I know exactly where the last five months have gone. Every day I see those five months looking at me with increasing intelligence.

But that's really a topic for another day.

The Baby Always Wins

You child will always find a way to thwart you. A couple days ago I wrote down Jack's routine on the kitchen chalkboard. It was a loose but accurate flow of his typical day, with hour-long windows for when certain things are likely to happen, say, a nap, which usually begins around 11:00 to 11:30. I was feeling very pleased with myself. It's not a schedule, but a helpful guide for myself, the Dude or anyone who might care for Jack in daylight hours.

Boom.

Well, despite waking me at 3:30, today he didn't start his day until almost 8:00, which pushed his morning nap to start at 9:30, which had him waking up at 10:45, so nap time wasn't till after noon. I have no idea what's going to happen now and no clue what to expect.

Never believe you know what a baby is going to do. Probably serves me right for trying to sort him out while he's teething anyway.

I have a big post coming up about a topic that's near to my heart, but I'm not ready to write it out yet. It's a long one and since I have no idea what time my son is going to wake up now, I don't know if I have time to give it the attention it deserves.

But soon.

Goodbye Soother, Hello Solids

I am in pacifier purgatory.

So, here's the deal. My baby sleeps through the night. That is, he usually sleeps through the night. Lately, he has not done so. He has been waking up for his soother.

So, he's five months old now and I still swaddle him and have been giving him the soother and that seemed to be all he needed in life. He'd conk out, look like an angel for 11 hours and life was pretty sweet for everybody.

But he's been busting out of the swaddle, pulling out his soother and then flipping onto his stomach, a position he hates and can't get out of, and then he cries. Nothing illustrates to me how little a baby is capable of thinking about the future than this. He's totally in the now.

"Hmm, my arms are pinned down. I think I'll try and move them. Oh, they're out! Well, what do we have here? There's something in my mouth and I think I can grab it. Oh, there we go! Hey, I was sucking on that! I can't put it back in! Where did it go? Now I'm really awake... Maybe I should babble. Blah blarhg blah! Groo brah blah! My other hand is pinned. I think I'll try and move it. Hey, it's out! I can roll over now. I'm going to roll over. I did it! Now I'm on my tummy. I hate this. I'm stuck. I don't like this. Why is this happening to me?! WAHHHH!"

Tonight I was done with it. Last night and the one before he was waking me for this nonsense. No more soother. It's time for Soother Shutdown.

The Dude and I took turns going down to Jack to calm him down when his cries got too intense. We'd make calming noises and put our hands on his chest and he'd simmer down. Then he'd start bouncing and blowing raspberries and we knew it was time to get out of there.

It wasn't until about 9:30 that he finally fell asleep for good. And when I say "for good," I mean as of right now. He was put down in bed at 6:30. I'm really hoping tomorrow will be better. I'm nervous, though. I can't very well give him a soother at nap time now. It may well be a very hard day.

But after the soother is out of our lives, I'm going to try and wean him off the swaddle, maybe just into a sleep sack.

The thing with babies, as I'm discovering more and more, is there is no one way to do things. You find something that works, with the understanding that it's temporary. Eventually you'll have to do some weaning, or, if you're lucky, the baby will just move on. Things are always changing.

Today was a big day, generally, though. He started solids. Yes, I fed him some rice cereal that looks awful and he thought it was awesome. His eyes lit up after the first bite, like I was feeding him a culinary revelation.

Now his poop is gonna get gross. But giving him solids is something new I can do with him, which is pleasing. It may seem strange if you don't have a baby to think that this would be a fun activity. But consider that you can do very little with your baby, whom you love dearly, and any new interaction that brings him pleasure is a way to feel closer to him.

It's hard to know how much to give him. When they tell you babies don't come with handbooks, it's not exactly true. When you give birth you are inundated with pamphlets and booklets about all the shit you should do and when, and none of them are consistent. They all say different things. Or they're too detailed to the point you feel like if you make other choices you're doing it wrong. Then online there's various guides. And your doctor tells you one thing and other moms tell you another, including what their doctors had to say.

So what do you do? Well, like everything else in caring for a baby, you fly by the seat of your pants and you take a guess. I've already wasted formula and cereal. But it's a process.

Prerequisite sloppy meal face.

Long Weekend Baby

Two weeks ago we went to the lake. Now this weekend we're going back. The Dude, poor soul, was not able to go, and it's one of his favourite places to be. So off we go again. I'm looking forward to it, but it is a ton of work. We used to just pack on suitcase and away we went. Now? Ugh.

This time I intend to downsize. Lugging around all that stuff is seriously awful. You sort of feel like a pack mule, or a manager of a baby rather than a mother.

I'm not bringing his play mat. It's a useful item, but a blanket on the ground will suffice, especially since there will be family there. I'm not bringing the kettle either. No one used it last time I was there, so I don't feel bad about commandeering it for the weekend. We shouldn't need the Pack n' Play because there's a crib in the basement that'll be free. I'll also bring fewer toys, which will lighten my knapsack.

I look forward to the day we can stop packing the baby tub and the bouncy chair. Those are items that aren't must-haves like diapers and formula, but make for a miserable trip without them. And then of course diapers being a thing of the past will improve life all around. Not bringing them on a trip will be extra pleasant. As it is, I'll be bringing the cloth diapers (Which also means I must take the special detergent). The cloth just save so much money. A little extra labour, but oh well. I'm used to it.

I've had a rather challenging week. Trying to get Jack's naps on track is an ongoing job. As he won't sleep when we're out and needs to sleep every two hours, this creates an issue for me if I want to leave the house. Also, the Dude has been coming home after Jack's in bed a couple times. I've had the sole job of caregiving all week, more or less. It's wearing me out. It will be nice to get out to the lake and have a change of pace, with the Dude there and extended family. People to talk to, different scenery, less baby care on my shoulders.

Good thing I have a great baby. Honestly, this child is a real delight. He's sweet and smiley, and once in bed at night he's a champion sleeper. I'm tired from the lack of help lately, but it could be a lot worse.

Look at that face <3

Sleep Training

I decided this was the right call for me: Ferberizing. I was never anti-sleep training. I threw out my beliefs about one-size-fits-all sleep solutions when my baby spent the first couple weeks of life in bed with me. I was never intending to co-sleep, but when you pit your will against a newborn baby, the baby always wins. He transitioned out relatively soon, but I have remained flexible about sleep methods ever since. No ideology here except for: do what works.

So, last night the Dude was out at the movies with his brothers. They went to see The Conjuring, which is, if you ask me, not a good recipe for ever sleeping again. I love horror movies, but they linger in my mind at night and ruin my life, so I don't typically watch them. And while he was out, I was at home with Jack and a new sleep pattern that neither of us really wanted to deal with.

I started his bath routine early. He was rubbing his eyes and I wasn't going to make the mistake of pushing his bed time back if he was tired. No second wind tonight. So I gave him his bath and he pooped in the tub. Baby poop is not like adult poop. It turned the water a gross colour and I had to get Jack out, clean the tub, refill the tub and rinse him off and dry him with a new towel. Fun!

He fell asleep well enough, except he woke up after 30 or 40 minutes. Previous nights we had rocked him, but this was not a hole I wanted to dig. While we have some support in the city, the Dude and I are more or less alone in this with few breaks (Especially me) and I was not about to add a new exhausting sleep routine to our lives.

So I let him cry. I'd go in after a few minutes and stroke his belly and give him some comfort. He'd quiet and I'd leave. The crying would resume, I'd wait a little longer before going back and I'd do the same thing.

I learned something about myself. I found this much easier to do if I was alone. If someone else is there, my resolve breaks, like I feel worried the other person will think I'm being cruel. I've tried to let him cry a little in the past and this emotion has launched me out of bed or off the couch faster, or I've asked the Dude to do something. But when I was alone, and had a game to distract me from how long each dragging minute was taking (Time moves at a snail's pace when your baby is crying), things worked out quite well. I'd say he fell asleep after less than 30 minutes.

And he stayed asleep. He woke up at 6:30 in the morning, refreshed and smiling. I put him down for a nap today and he fell right to sleep. He's now rolling around on the play mat in front of me. And by rolling, I mean trying to roll. He was successful once, several days ago, and hasn't been able to do it since. Which is also when the new sleep issues began.

He's so cute, just flopping his body from side to side, trying to roll successfully. Then he takes a break and grabs at some toys, regroups and tries again. Occasionally I hear a grunt of frustration. It's really something to see a little baby figure out how his body works.

Oh man, I just watched him roll onto his tummy, only his hand was trapped underneath him. He attempted to get some leverage by grabbing the mat. He's so close!

Four-Month Sleep Regression

I think Jack has begun what's known as the four-month sleep regression. Suddenly his naps are off and he fights falling asleep at night. Then he wakes up and hollers at varying intervals in the wee hours. I know this is temporary, but temporary can be as "fast" as two weeks. It can be much longer. It also makes it hard to leave the house because unless he's napped properly, it's anti-sleep to take him out as he doesn't rest much in the stroller. Ugh.

Now, he isn't four months yet; he's about a week and a half from that, but it's close enough. He does most things a little early, probably due to the extra time in utero if you ask me.

I feel like he's rubbing his eyes (A signal he's tired) all day long. He rolled over from back to front recently and hasn't done it since. And from that day his sleep has been off and bizarre. If I'm to understand the baby literature correctly, he's mulling over this new milestone in his head and his brain is undergoing changes, not allowing him to sleep properly.

So now my goal must be his sleep. Day time socializing has to be put on hold so that I can get us through this.

Admittedly, I have high hopes. My baby has never been overly cranky or high needs. He's generally a mellow and happy little guy who smiles at me in the morning and enjoys playing on his mat for up to an hour.

Then again, I could eat my words. We'll see.

Mellow Baby

I'm home from my vacation, the first I've taken with a baby. It's nice to be home, although a little strange too. I was getting used to waking up to people to talk to and things to do. Now I'm alone with Jack again and I have to figure out on my own how to spend the day.

It was wild how fast the days went. It seemed like no time would pass before Jack would need another nap and then his naps didn't feel super short. I think the key to enjoying maternity leave, at least for me, is other people being around during the day. Since I have no friends with babies, I must find strangers with babies to talk to via mom meet-ups. So far I've not made a new friend, only acquaintances. Today I'm planning to go to a farmer's market and see who I can meet.

Last night before bed I again remembered my birth experience. I don't go there most of the time because it hurts me and I cry. So I decided to finally write Patient Relations at the hospital and tell them what happened to me. I felt very mismanaged and I want an apology. I would also feel gratified if I learned it lead to any changes in how they approach women in their care. It was therapeutic. I think it helped me sleep.

Jack spent the first night in his crib. We don't have a proper room for his nursery, per se, but we do have an alcove-like space in the basement near our bedroom. It means we have to walk by him at night and I'm unsure how much noise carries from upstairs. So it's not ideal, but this is Toronto and a lot of first-time parents have their babies stay in the bedroom with them at night for quite some time due to space constraints.

It was alright. With him out of the room it was easier to ignore the grumbles and complaints that didn't need attention and still hear the cries that did. I think this will make it easier to improve his already good sleep, allowing him to self settle even more.

One thing that's really been making me happy lately is waking up in the morning. He gets a bottle around 7:00 and after that I take him into bed with me until about 9:00, 9:30. We snooze the early morning hours away and when I look over to him when we wake he has the hugest smile for me. He always wakes in such a lovely mood, and since he lets me sleep a bit longer I'm also in a great mood, compounded by that delightful smile on his face. It's nothing but sunshine.

On the way home last night we got stuck in traffic and made it home an hour and a half later than planned. I eventually had to feed our crying baby in the car and couldn't burp him. He also pooped, and I couldn't change him. I kept telling him I was sorry. He eventually quieted down about 30 minutes away from the house and then fell asleep about 10 minutes before we arrived home. Full of gas and soiled. This kid is a champ. Of course we had to wake him to change his diaper, and then bathe him to help him back to sleep (In a strange bed) and other than a wee cry he did it.

My baby is so mellow, like literally my dream child.

No Nap For You

Tomorrow I'm going to the lake with Jack. It'll be a week away from the Dude and I'm a little apprehensive about it. My Father-in-law is coming to get me late in the morning, less than 24 hours from now, and I still need to pack a suitcase and wash the cloth diapers. And here I am on the Internet.

Jack was off-schedule today. It's not a hard and fast thing that needs to be adhered to, but it's an excellent guideline as to what he should be doing, whether he needs to eat and his naps are predictable.

The Dude (Who'd kept me up all night with his flailing limbs), whose heart was in the right place, took him out of his bassinet early, then tried to put him down for a nap early, back in the bassinet with me beside him. This resulted in crying. He also didn't change the baby first, which is a must. So, back up they went to the living room for another hour. Of course I was wide awake from all the noise and had to lull myself back to sleep, which took an hour. At which point they were back down for Jack's nap.

I felt like I'd been hit by a truck. The Dude took the crying Jack back up, presumably to nap in the living room, which he does from time to time. I came up an hour later, having slept maybe 10 minutes, only to discover the baby was still awake, meaning he'd up been for four straight hours. Four hours may as well be forever.

It really is amazing the sort of things you learn by being home with a baby. Getting them to sleep reliably is the most important thing. Getting them fed and changed is easy enough, but sleep? No screwing around. It's gotta happen and there's a window of time it has to happen in otherwise you're all in for a world of suffering.

Keeping Jack up because he was overtired and not sleeping would never have occurred to me and I had to fight off some resentment of the Dude for making such a critical error. It's not like he's had the experience with him that I've had. I took Jack in hand and rocked his cranky ass to sleep. He fought the sleep, but the sleep won, as it always does eventually. However, the rest of the day has now been shot as we now must get him caught up so he'll sleep properly tonight. Getting a three-month-old baby to nap every hour is hard going.

So now I have this to-do list that's not been touched and I don't dare traipse into the bedroom to start. Jack's sleeping and, god willing, he'll go another half an hour. It's so amazing how entirely a baby can dictate your day with something as basic as sleep, and how quickly your day can fall apart over said sleep.

As for me, I wish I'd caught some Zs myself. It's kind of bitter trying to make a baby nap when you'd give your left ear for a nap, yourself.

Nature, thou foul beast

Yesterday was a comedy of errors. Well, not errors, exactly, but generalized nonsense. Nature is a menace.

I went to a mom meet-up group yesterday. Those things are lifelines for me. I get out of the house, meet women going through the same things I am, we tend to our babies without feeling apologetic to our companions and take it easy doing infant-friendly things. Yesterday it was a farmer's market. The women were nice, though I was the new one there, and being new is always a little hard. Well, not for everyone, but I do feel out of the loop whenever I meet new people.

It had rained in the morning and I thought the weather was done with that sort of thing, so I left the house in the muggy humidity without a rain cover for the stroller. I had a blanket to sit on for the market, so I didn't really have room for the cover. This was an error. More on that soon.

I was happy to get out, especially since the neighbours were replacing their share of the roof and hadn't thought to warn us. I'd woken up to bang-boom-thud. The disgusting thickness of the air seemed preferable. It wasn't a long walk to the market and on the way I passed a park with a wading pool. I was tempted to just run into it, stroller and all. It looked so inviting and I was already sweaty and heavy feeling. Note to self: go back later.

At the market I stayed for almost two hours and Jack behaved impeccably, as he usually does around others. He saves all his fussing and crying for home. But as I started to feed him, the sky darkened and the wind picked up. Ominous. I should have left immediately after he finished his bottle, but no. I lingered. Tactical error. By the time I left, the storm was imminent and within 7 minutes it was raining. I whipped out my umbrella and, shielding Jack and I as best I could, I hightailed it to a Starbucks. Depressingly, I was 5 minutes from my house and stuck so close yet so far away.

I figured the rain would let up eventually, so I grabbed a tall green tea latte and settled into a chair and tried to dry out the stroller a bit and tuck Jack in so he could nap. He fell asleep, I relaxed a bit and waited.

And I waited. And waited.

Taking pictures of my undesirable situation helped with the waiting.

I passed time on my cell phone, which I recently upgraded, periodically texting the Dude to ask if he was almost done work. I needed him to bring me the rain cover so I could get Jack home without thoroughly soaking him. Also, I worried for my pretty shoes.

Jack woke after a 40-minute snooze and slowly progressed into unhappy baby territory. I changed him, but had no more bottles to give. His bed time was fast approaching and he was getting hungry. Eventually the situation disolved into me dancing him around the coffee shop, continually plunking his soother back in his mouth to calm him while patrons looked on in varying degrees of sympathy and annoyance. I would have been out of there with my cranky baby in a heartbeat if I could have.

I got a call from the Dude saying that he and his boss were coming to get me in the car because there was flooding, both in Toronto generally and in our effing basement.

The Dude saw this on his way to get me.

I really couldn't handle that information. Home was to be my refuge from this madness, and now it was round two of my nightmare. I emailed my landlord with my baby crying in my ear a simple message: our basement is flooded. Call me.

When the Dude arrived I was immediately relieved. I couldn't have been happier to see him. We hauled ass out of there and took a winding way home to avoid flooded areas.

I had to leave Jack in his car seat upstairs while I ran down to assess the damage. There's a crack in the foundation and water had poured in through the stairs, which were wet and slippery and lightly coated in mud. I stepped onto the rug in the nursery and felt a sopping wet squish. I navigated the water to the bathroom, where it thankfully stopped spreading. The rug, no doubt, had absorbed massive amounts of leaking and spared us the agony of a total disaster.

When you have a baby whose bed time it is, a flood becomes a more complex situation. I had to feed him, first of all, while the Dude cleared out debris. Then he bathed Jack while I got out the ratty towels we had bought from Value Village for the home birth that wasn't. Turns out, not such a waste of money.

We had to plunk Jack in his bassinet, though, without the rest of his bedtime routine of allowing him to fall asleep beside us on the couch. I'd been fretting about when to make him learn to fall asleep alone, and turns out I'd reached that point out of necessity. And other than a few minutes of crying and one trip to calm him down, boom. Slept like a champ. I was almost conflicted about how I felt about the flooding after that since it forced sleep progress. I was still horrified, but less so.

Mopping up the rest of the water.

It could have been worse. Our landlord is coming by this week, the gutters should get fixed to dump water away from the house as opposed to directly beside it, and, hell, the floors got a much needed mopping.

So many times before when it so much as looked like rain, I just stayed in. Well, I took a chance and was rewarded with the life-enriching experience of basement flooding. Lesson learned.

Nature: 1, Me: 0.