First Week Of Daycare

Jack has spent a week at daycare. He's eaten his weight in food, dropped a bottle from his daily feed and is not taking much in the way of naps.

Home after a busy day of daycare.

The eating part I'm feeling pretty great about. He's nearly a year old. Moving away from formula is a good move. The sleep part worries me. I've been so militant about it, going well out of my way to ensure he sleeps enough. But it's hard on him being somewhere new and trying to sleep there.

This weekend he stumbled around like a drunk, exhausted even after naps. He slept in. And today he had a leaky eye, runny nose and I got a call that he started running a mild temperature. He'd napped only an hour all day. He barely wanted dinner, so I did his bath routine 45 minutes early. And he's been waking up every 30 to 90 minutes with a cough or cry. Poor pumpkin.

And poor me.

You know, what's hard about being a parent isn't necessarily the extra labour. It's often the unknown variables you deal with. It's the lack of a support system when you're living away from most of your family. It's wondering how you balance your work obligations with your baby's needs. It's all the mental and emotional space your baby takes up in your mind and your heart.

Like right now, what do I do? He's wetting one fewer diapers than normal. Is it because he's sick? I don't want to wake him, but is his temperature staying steady? Was it the right thing to put him to bed early, or does that have anything to do with his restless sleep? These little choices feel so large.

I'm liking being back at work, but when Jack isn't feeling well, I don't want him away from me. I think he'll get better faster in my care. And I don't want to take time off work my second week back. He went till nine months without so much as a sniffle, and he's had three colds since, which actually lines up nicely with the increase in trips to the Early Years Centres and daycare. Sigh.

I wouldn't go back, but that doesn't mean there isn't a part of me that wistfully recalls my simpler life, which I didn't even appreciate as being simple. I can admit I struggle with certain aspects of domesticity, and throwing another person's needs into the mix at times feels daunting.

With him feeling under the weather, I feel no sense of predictability about tomorrow. At least this whole night has not been spent with him crying. Some sleep is happening. Maybe the morning will be okay. Maybe.

God, I'm lucky he's an easy baby. Jack is not the baby I deserve, but he is the baby I need.

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.

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.