May 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
For the Record
Amelia babbled to herself from about 3 am to 3:40, when the babbles turned to cries. I held out for another 10 minutes or so, then fed her. She woke for the day at 5:45.
Am I breaking down? It's hard to say. We had a plan for how long to let her cry (30 minutes) but not how long to let her babble, then cry. Who knows. If I'm only getting up once a night, I am okay with it for now.
Am I breaking down? It's hard to say. We had a plan for how long to let her cry (30 minutes) but not how long to let her babble, then cry. Who knows. If I'm only getting up once a night, I am okay with it for now.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Babies
The E Street Cinema in DC just started a weekly "Rattles and Reels" showing. At 11:00 on Wednesdays caregivers can bring their babies to see a movie in a child-friendly atmosphere. Yesterday they were showing Babies. It was wild.
I have never sees so many babies in one place in my life. I am talking about the real babies there to see the movie, not the film. Amelia and I got there kind of early and sat beside a small group of moms and babies on our blanket on the floor between two sets of seats. When we got there, there were maybe 10 or so moms and babies. This was about 10:45. Then more people came in a steady stream. Then more people. More people, clustering around the door. More and more and more.
It got to be a little chaotic. Many of the early birds, like me and Amelia, were sitting on the floor, but we were kind of in the way of people looking for seats. The people who were sitting in actual seats tended to choose first the seats at the end of the aisles (for reasons that, if you are a parent of young children, are obvious to you). So then you had people with babies climbing over other people with babies. And not to mention the baby transporting devices. Baby carriers everywhere, and the strollers! Amelia and I left the movie a little early, and there were strollers parked along the walls outside of the theater, double or triple parked, for a stretch of at least 50 feet.
Crying. There was a lot of crying. And shushing, coughing, sniffing, sucking, giggling, cooing, shrieking, babbling. But there was pretty much not a second of the movie in which there was no crying.
It was great, though. I did get a little stressed when so many people kept filing in. As a city movie theater, the E St showing rooms are not that big, and it started to feel a little overcrowded. But in the end everyone got pretty much settled and it was a good time. In my opinion, the movie itself was neither great not horrible. I was kind of distracted throughout (feeding Amelia, helping her practice crawling, doling out toys and banana puff halfs) so I couldn't do the cultural studies critique that I normally love to do while watching documentaries or reality TV of any kind. Plus I had read a review in the New Yorker that kind of ruined the movie for me. Mostly it was just fun to watch. The film really just focused on the babies. There was very little talking or focusing on the adults. There was hardly any attention given to pregnancy or childbirth, which I especially liked. Just babies: babies sleeping, staring, sitting, playing, crawling, jumping, learning, being. The whole experience led me to realize something about myself: I really like babies.
I really do. I like their little faces, the strangely wise eyes of newborns and the chubby little cheeks of older babies. I like how they are always striving to do something new, and how they are so attentive, and how they express whatever they are feeling at any given moment with no reservations whatsoever. I like their little hands and their soft, soft skin. I like talking to them. I often find them much easier to talk to than their parents. I just really like babies.
It's kind of a strange thing for a mother of a baby to realize. Obviously most parents love their own babies, and obviously I think Amelia takes the cake in any baby cakewalk, but it was funny to actively notice how much I enjoy the company of other babies.
It makes me pause again in thankfulness of Amelia. It suddenly seems like she is changing and growing so fast. You can't pick up the same baby twice. I would freeze time right now if I could...
I have never sees so many babies in one place in my life. I am talking about the real babies there to see the movie, not the film. Amelia and I got there kind of early and sat beside a small group of moms and babies on our blanket on the floor between two sets of seats. When we got there, there were maybe 10 or so moms and babies. This was about 10:45. Then more people came in a steady stream. Then more people. More people, clustering around the door. More and more and more.
It got to be a little chaotic. Many of the early birds, like me and Amelia, were sitting on the floor, but we were kind of in the way of people looking for seats. The people who were sitting in actual seats tended to choose first the seats at the end of the aisles (for reasons that, if you are a parent of young children, are obvious to you). So then you had people with babies climbing over other people with babies. And not to mention the baby transporting devices. Baby carriers everywhere, and the strollers! Amelia and I left the movie a little early, and there were strollers parked along the walls outside of the theater, double or triple parked, for a stretch of at least 50 feet.
Crying. There was a lot of crying. And shushing, coughing, sniffing, sucking, giggling, cooing, shrieking, babbling. But there was pretty much not a second of the movie in which there was no crying.
It was great, though. I did get a little stressed when so many people kept filing in. As a city movie theater, the E St showing rooms are not that big, and it started to feel a little overcrowded. But in the end everyone got pretty much settled and it was a good time. In my opinion, the movie itself was neither great not horrible. I was kind of distracted throughout (feeding Amelia, helping her practice crawling, doling out toys and banana puff halfs) so I couldn't do the cultural studies critique that I normally love to do while watching documentaries or reality TV of any kind. Plus I had read a review in the New Yorker that kind of ruined the movie for me. Mostly it was just fun to watch. The film really just focused on the babies. There was very little talking or focusing on the adults. There was hardly any attention given to pregnancy or childbirth, which I especially liked. Just babies: babies sleeping, staring, sitting, playing, crawling, jumping, learning, being. The whole experience led me to realize something about myself: I really like babies.
I really do. I like their little faces, the strangely wise eyes of newborns and the chubby little cheeks of older babies. I like how they are always striving to do something new, and how they are so attentive, and how they express whatever they are feeling at any given moment with no reservations whatsoever. I like their little hands and their soft, soft skin. I like talking to them. I often find them much easier to talk to than their parents. I just really like babies.
It's kind of a strange thing for a mother of a baby to realize. Obviously most parents love their own babies, and obviously I think Amelia takes the cake in any baby cakewalk, but it was funny to actively notice how much I enjoy the company of other babies.
It makes me pause again in thankfulness of Amelia. It suddenly seems like she is changing and growing so fast. You can't pick up the same baby twice. I would freeze time right now if I could...
For the record: night 7 (or is it 8 now?) did not a pattern make. Amelia woke up at 2:25am, and after letting her cry for 15 minutes I decided to go try to pick her up and comfort her without nursing her. As soon as I picked her up she began to wriggle herself into the breastfeeding position. So I put her into the crib and she SCREAMED. After quickly checking with Dean I went ahead and nursed. She went back to sleep quickly and woke again at 4:48, and seemed to almost wake herself up for the day, but I managed to put her back down. Sadly, she was up again at 5:53. Dean got up with her and I slept for another hour or so, but I still feel groggy and kind of headachy. My voice was all hoarse this morning, and Amelia's nose is runny again, so maybe this cold is just hanging on. Anyway she is down for a nap and I have exhausted my poem energy for the day.
I guess tomorrow night we will have a more specific plan again. After only 2 nights of sleep we were both unprepared for the night crying. I think I might try for a 30 minute limit tonight.
In the meantime since I have been trying this sleep/crying experiment I have written to the MOTHs and gotten about 50 emails from parents about their experience with crying it out. (MOTH="Moms on the Hill;" it's a Yahoo group of like 4000 parents who live in Capitol Hill. You can post questions, give away or search for baby items, and do all kinds of other things. We found our real estate agent--in Denver--through MOTH.) I want to compile all of their advice, as well as the advice I have gotten from my friends (thanks everyone!), into a crying it out tip sheet, and hope to do that soon.
I guess tomorrow night we will have a more specific plan again. After only 2 nights of sleep we were both unprepared for the night crying. I think I might try for a 30 minute limit tonight.
In the meantime since I have been trying this sleep/crying experiment I have written to the MOTHs and gotten about 50 emails from parents about their experience with crying it out. (MOTH="Moms on the Hill;" it's a Yahoo group of like 4000 parents who live in Capitol Hill. You can post questions, give away or search for baby items, and do all kinds of other things. We found our real estate agent--in Denver--through MOTH.) I want to compile all of their advice, as well as the advice I have gotten from my friends (thanks everyone!), into a crying it out tip sheet, and hope to do that soon.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
One time is random, twice could be an accident...
three times makes a pattern.
That's what my teacher Stan Plumly says, and although he is talking about patterns and form in poetry, I think it could also apply to sleeping through the night.
For the SECOND night IN A ROW Amelia has slept from 7-4:30, at which point I fed her, and she went back to sleep. I suppose I could try to avoid the 4:30 feeding but sleeping through till 4:30 seems super luxurious to me right now, and I don't mind feeding her then, because by then she has gone over 10 hours without eating. As you can see from the time of this post, I could not go back to sleep after she ate; I was lying there writing in my head and listening to another early bird, a real one, chirping outside. Rather than toss and turn and keep Dean awake, I got up to spend some QT with Suki, who is curled up beside me, and sip coffee in the pre-dawn twilight. (That seems oxymoronic, but I can't think of the word for the light before sunrise. ?)
My life is already remarkably better than it was one week ago. Although there are still signs of sleep deprived adults in the house (the container of grated cheese I found stashed in the Tupperware drawer (yuck), the running faucet I came downstairs to this morning (of HOT water--YIKES)), I feel much better, and since when have I been able to get up and write? So, I am hoping twice turns into the 3 times tomorrow, and 3 times melts into many.
Now--of course--as I write this, Amelia has begun to coo and call from her crib. I am going to give her a few minutes and see if she goes back to sleep. We put her down 15 minutes later than usual last night so it'll be interesting if she wakes up this early (the books say, although it's counterintuitive, that if a baby goes to bed too late she will wake up too early: "Sleep begets sleep").
As I wait her out, I'll note that I spent Amelia's entire nap writing poetry yesterday. A poem I started when I was pregnant with her has suddenly found its form and its pathway. I am finally not-pregnant enough to write about pregnancy with some reflection, and the form was inspired by my fling with the project that was triggered by Caroline's forty forts (thank you again, Caroline, a zillion times over. And to everyone else, if you haven't been reading about her forts, you should!)
-------------------
So now Amelia is awake and I am trying to finish this post while she sits on the floor and takes toys out of a bin. She is in an excellent stage in which she can sit up really well, without you having to be there to catch her from tipping sideways or forward, but she can't crawl away. If we put her down on a soft blanket surrounded with pillows (just in case she does tip over), with a bin of toys in front of her, she will sit there for like 20 minutes taking toys out of the bin, chatting with the toys. Right now she is alternately waving her toucan back and forth saying "gaagheebababa" and enthusiastically biting the toucan's beak. We have been able to get a lot of packing done this way. It is a stage in which I could easily pause for a while. Although we are trying to give her lots of tunny time so she can learn to crawl (she is now able to push up on hands and knees and rock back and forth), I kind of dread the crawling, because it will shatter this calm and peaceful world of sitting still.
Here she is:
Now I will join little A on the floor.
That's what my teacher Stan Plumly says, and although he is talking about patterns and form in poetry, I think it could also apply to sleeping through the night.
For the SECOND night IN A ROW Amelia has slept from 7-4:30, at which point I fed her, and she went back to sleep. I suppose I could try to avoid the 4:30 feeding but sleeping through till 4:30 seems super luxurious to me right now, and I don't mind feeding her then, because by then she has gone over 10 hours without eating. As you can see from the time of this post, I could not go back to sleep after she ate; I was lying there writing in my head and listening to another early bird, a real one, chirping outside. Rather than toss and turn and keep Dean awake, I got up to spend some QT with Suki, who is curled up beside me, and sip coffee in the pre-dawn twilight. (That seems oxymoronic, but I can't think of the word for the light before sunrise. ?)
My life is already remarkably better than it was one week ago. Although there are still signs of sleep deprived adults in the house (the container of grated cheese I found stashed in the Tupperware drawer (yuck), the running faucet I came downstairs to this morning (of HOT water--YIKES)), I feel much better, and since when have I been able to get up and write? So, I am hoping twice turns into the 3 times tomorrow, and 3 times melts into many.
Now--of course--as I write this, Amelia has begun to coo and call from her crib. I am going to give her a few minutes and see if she goes back to sleep. We put her down 15 minutes later than usual last night so it'll be interesting if she wakes up this early (the books say, although it's counterintuitive, that if a baby goes to bed too late she will wake up too early: "Sleep begets sleep").
As I wait her out, I'll note that I spent Amelia's entire nap writing poetry yesterday. A poem I started when I was pregnant with her has suddenly found its form and its pathway. I am finally not-pregnant enough to write about pregnancy with some reflection, and the form was inspired by my fling with the project that was triggered by Caroline's forty forts (thank you again, Caroline, a zillion times over. And to everyone else, if you haven't been reading about her forts, you should!)
-------------------
So now Amelia is awake and I am trying to finish this post while she sits on the floor and takes toys out of a bin. She is in an excellent stage in which she can sit up really well, without you having to be there to catch her from tipping sideways or forward, but she can't crawl away. If we put her down on a soft blanket surrounded with pillows (just in case she does tip over), with a bin of toys in front of her, she will sit there for like 20 minutes taking toys out of the bin, chatting with the toys. Right now she is alternately waving her toucan back and forth saying "gaagheebababa" and enthusiastically biting the toucan's beak. We have been able to get a lot of packing done this way. It is a stage in which I could easily pause for a while. Although we are trying to give her lots of tunny time so she can learn to crawl (she is now able to push up on hands and knees and rock back and forth), I kind of dread the crawling, because it will shatter this calm and peaceful world of sitting still.
Here she is:
Now I will join little A on the floor.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Applesauce Face
This is truly the Golden Age of Amelia. She is portable, agreeable, adorable, and so much fun. Here she is eating applesauce off of a tray like a dog.
For the Record
Night 6 of CIO: Amelia in bed at 7:00; not a sound from her till 4:30, at which point I nursed her, and she slept again till 6:15 or so.
I actually slept pretty well too (!), although Dean did not. He apparently wrote a petition for rehearing in his head, though, so I tried to convince him to take a day off soon, since he worked from home last night. Maybe tomorrow, when we SIGN THE PAPERS TO CLOSE ON OUR HOUSE. THAT WE WILL OWN.
I want a record because I know this will all turn to a blur soon.
I actually slept pretty well too (!), although Dean did not. He apparently wrote a petition for rehearing in his head, though, so I tried to convince him to take a day off soon, since he worked from home last night. Maybe tomorrow, when we SIGN THE PAPERS TO CLOSE ON OUR HOUSE. THAT WE WILL OWN.
I want a record because I know this will all turn to a blur soon.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Questions
Last night Amelia slept till 1:45, then cried. She only ended up crying for about 10 minutes but it was much, much harder for me to deal with last night than it was the previous nights. I was awake until after 3am delving into my deeper concerns about crying it out, which I had buried for the purpose of the experiment.
The CIO success story most parents tell sounds like this: "We let our baby cry it out for 3 nights. Each night the baby cried less and less, till on the 3rd night there was no more crying. And ever since the baby has slept from 7pm to 7am!"
So this does not seem realistic to me, or even possible. These babies NEVER cry at night again? This cannot be the case. And so my question is, what do you do after the initial "crying it out" period? Say Amelia sleeps well for the next 3 or 4 nights, then one night cries a whole lot? Obviously I will want to go comfort her, but if I end up nursing her back to sleep, is everything ruined? I guess I need a new, nursing-free plan for comforting... but last night, for example, I was thinking how Dean and I are both stuffy because of our colds. Amelia's cold seems all gone, but what if it isn't? What if her throat hurts and she just wants a drink? If she were older and were calling for a drink of water, I would certainly give her one, not make her thirstily cry herself back to seep. But then on the other hand, if she were older and were just calling for a glass of water to postpone sleeping... I would have to try to break that habit.
Sigh. Welcome to parenting, I guess.
It's just frustrating, because the one consistent piece of advice I've been given regarding baby sleep, no matter the method, is to "be consistent." But the one thing it seems that you can count on with babies is that nothing is ever really the same, even from day to day! So when you are adapting to change all the time, it's hard to be truly consistent.
It's easy, relatively speaking, to resolve to let a baby cry it out for the sake of learning how to sleep, especially when you are super exhausted and are hopeful about the possibility of more sleep in a matter of days. But it's a lot harder, I think, to figure out the right long term plan for balancing nighttime crying and nighttime comforting. If anyone has the magic answer, let me know.
The CIO success story most parents tell sounds like this: "We let our baby cry it out for 3 nights. Each night the baby cried less and less, till on the 3rd night there was no more crying. And ever since the baby has slept from 7pm to 7am!"
So this does not seem realistic to me, or even possible. These babies NEVER cry at night again? This cannot be the case. And so my question is, what do you do after the initial "crying it out" period? Say Amelia sleeps well for the next 3 or 4 nights, then one night cries a whole lot? Obviously I will want to go comfort her, but if I end up nursing her back to sleep, is everything ruined? I guess I need a new, nursing-free plan for comforting... but last night, for example, I was thinking how Dean and I are both stuffy because of our colds. Amelia's cold seems all gone, but what if it isn't? What if her throat hurts and she just wants a drink? If she were older and were calling for a drink of water, I would certainly give her one, not make her thirstily cry herself back to seep. But then on the other hand, if she were older and were just calling for a glass of water to postpone sleeping... I would have to try to break that habit.
Sigh. Welcome to parenting, I guess.
It's just frustrating, because the one consistent piece of advice I've been given regarding baby sleep, no matter the method, is to "be consistent." But the one thing it seems that you can count on with babies is that nothing is ever really the same, even from day to day! So when you are adapting to change all the time, it's hard to be truly consistent.
It's easy, relatively speaking, to resolve to let a baby cry it out for the sake of learning how to sleep, especially when you are super exhausted and are hopeful about the possibility of more sleep in a matter of days. But it's a lot harder, I think, to figure out the right long term plan for balancing nighttime crying and nighttime comforting. If anyone has the magic answer, let me know.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
ZZZ
6:53 pm last night: Amelia asleep in crib
11:00 pm: Not a peep from Amelia.
1:00 am: Not a peep from Amelia.
3:00 am: Not a peep from Amelia!
5:00 am: Amelia cries for the first time. I decide to feed her, and she eats, goes back to sleep, and snoozes for another hour and a half!
Victory! Unfortunately, Dean and I still didn't sleep all that well because we have caught Amelia's cold, and I think I am just wired to wake up every 2 or 3 hours now anyway. Now I guess I need to teach myself to sleep through the night. I just hope the trend with A's sleep lasts long enough for me to do it.
11:00 pm: Not a peep from Amelia.
1:00 am: Not a peep from Amelia.
3:00 am: Not a peep from Amelia!
5:00 am: Amelia cries for the first time. I decide to feed her, and she eats, goes back to sleep, and snoozes for another hour and a half!
Victory! Unfortunately, Dean and I still didn't sleep all that well because we have caught Amelia's cold, and I think I am just wired to wake up every 2 or 3 hours now anyway. Now I guess I need to teach myself to sleep through the night. I just hope the trend with A's sleep lasts long enough for me to do it.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
CIO
Everyone else in this house is sleeping, and I have been writing and sipping coffee. It's lovely.
On Monday and Tuesday I reached a breaking point with Amelia and the sleep thing. I was so, so tired. Bone tired, literally. Achy. Grouchy. I was standing in the market Tuesday, trying to buy lettuce and cheese, thinking it was the most difficult thing I had ever done. And it WAS kind of a hassle, because it was a tiny DC market whose aisles are too narrow for the stroller, and because I had forgotten the bike lock I had to park the stroller in a corner and carry the diaper bag, the groceries, and Amelia-who-lunges-at-all-she-sees, which was particularly difficult when it came time to pay. But in a dim corner of my brain, the thought occurred to me that this shouldn't be THIS hard, and that I should no longer be THIS tired.
So I turned to Dr. Wiessbluth.
I have done my share of complaining about Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. I tried his methods around 5 months and they simply did not work. But we had made some progress with Amelia's sleep--she has been pretty consistently going down for a 1-2 hour morning nap, and without nursing to sleep. She nurses, then I put her in the crib, "drowsy but awake," and she cries. I come downstairs, set the kitchen timer for 10 minutes, and usually within 7 minutes she is asleep. If she is still crying hard after 10 minutes, I go soothe her, and we try again.
This method had started working for her afternoon nap, too, although if she does go down in her crib in the afternoon, it's usually only for 30-40 minutes. And I had made some progress in soothing her to sleep without nursing her, by turning her on her side and rubbing her back, sometimes holding her hands. But she was still waking up about 4 times a night, and I was nursing and rocking her back to sleep each time. I was back in bed in less than 10 minutes, but I was never getting more than 3 hours of sleep at a time. And on top of it all, Amelia was waking up for the day at 5 or 5:30 am. Once she got up at 4:30. Thank goodness, Luli was here that day, and they were early birds together.
So Wednesday night, we started CIO. Crying It Out.
There are lots of variations on crying it out, but we decided to go with full extinction, in which the baby cries and you don't go to her. (Dr. W says to remember that you aren't doing "nothing," that you are "letting the baby learn to go back to sleep.") My experience is that when I go in to Amelia at night, she wants to nurse, and it just makes her madder if you pick her up and put her back down. There is a variation where you wait 5 minutes, then go soothe, for 2 nights, and then wait 7 minutes for 2 nights, and so on, but that requires more time and effort, and my experience is also that when I get up with A, I want to do whatever it takes to get her back to sleep ASAP, and I could see myself just giving up with that method in 3 or 4 nights due to exhaustion. So Dean and I talked it over, decided we were both up to the task of letting her cry, and that our limit of how long she would cry would be an hour.
Wednesday night she woke up at 9:47 pm. Dean and I were in bed but not asleep yet. It actually made it easier that she woke up so early because I KNEW she wasn't hungry at 9:47 pm. She cried loudly but not hysterically for 30 minutes, then went to sleep. Success! I had more trouble sleeping. I was imagining that she was quiet because she had tangled herself in her blanket and strangled to death. After 30 minutes more of this fun thinking, I crept in her bedroom and peeked in her crib. The blanket was kind of wrapped around her legs, but she was fine. She cried for another 30 minutes at 1:40, then woke up and cried at 5:20. I just got up with her then, as I didn't want to feed her and put her back down, and I had had enough of listening to her cry. Plus, since I am used to feeding her 4 times a night, there was milk everywhere.
On Thursday morning, I realized A had a little cold. Turns out the baby of the mother who seduced me with crying it out at a playgroup on Monday WAS contagious, after all. So I worried all day about what we would do Thursday night. If A was sick, I didn't want to just let her cry, but if she wasn't crying due to her cold, I didn't want to ruin everything from the first night. We decided that if she cried a lot more or a lot worse than the night before, we would check on her, but otherwise we would keep going. Thursday night, she slept till 3:30, then cried for an hour. Since that was our limit I went to her, nursed her, and put her back down. She slept till 7 am!
Last night, her sniffles were much better, so I wasn't as worried. She slept till 12:30 or so, cried intermittently for about 30 minutes, then slept till 5. She fussed a bit, so I got up and fed her about 5:30, and she went back to sleep! She babbled a mildly fussy babble till about 6, and now, at 7:28 am, she is STILL ASLEEP!
So, all in all I think we are successful so far. I am definitely already getting more rest, and Amelia is too. I still suspect the CIO method isn't as foolproof as it gets credit for being, and I don't expect that all of our sleep issues are solved forever, as nice as that would be, but this method seems to be a good one for us right now. We'll see how it goes over the next few weeks. We have a lot of traveling in our futures.
On Monday and Tuesday I reached a breaking point with Amelia and the sleep thing. I was so, so tired. Bone tired, literally. Achy. Grouchy. I was standing in the market Tuesday, trying to buy lettuce and cheese, thinking it was the most difficult thing I had ever done. And it WAS kind of a hassle, because it was a tiny DC market whose aisles are too narrow for the stroller, and because I had forgotten the bike lock I had to park the stroller in a corner and carry the diaper bag, the groceries, and Amelia-who-lunges-at-all-she-sees, which was particularly difficult when it came time to pay. But in a dim corner of my brain, the thought occurred to me that this shouldn't be THIS hard, and that I should no longer be THIS tired.
So I turned to Dr. Wiessbluth.
I have done my share of complaining about Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. I tried his methods around 5 months and they simply did not work. But we had made some progress with Amelia's sleep--she has been pretty consistently going down for a 1-2 hour morning nap, and without nursing to sleep. She nurses, then I put her in the crib, "drowsy but awake," and she cries. I come downstairs, set the kitchen timer for 10 minutes, and usually within 7 minutes she is asleep. If she is still crying hard after 10 minutes, I go soothe her, and we try again.
This method had started working for her afternoon nap, too, although if she does go down in her crib in the afternoon, it's usually only for 30-40 minutes. And I had made some progress in soothing her to sleep without nursing her, by turning her on her side and rubbing her back, sometimes holding her hands. But she was still waking up about 4 times a night, and I was nursing and rocking her back to sleep each time. I was back in bed in less than 10 minutes, but I was never getting more than 3 hours of sleep at a time. And on top of it all, Amelia was waking up for the day at 5 or 5:30 am. Once she got up at 4:30. Thank goodness, Luli was here that day, and they were early birds together.
So Wednesday night, we started CIO. Crying It Out.
There are lots of variations on crying it out, but we decided to go with full extinction, in which the baby cries and you don't go to her. (Dr. W says to remember that you aren't doing "nothing," that you are "letting the baby learn to go back to sleep.") My experience is that when I go in to Amelia at night, she wants to nurse, and it just makes her madder if you pick her up and put her back down. There is a variation where you wait 5 minutes, then go soothe, for 2 nights, and then wait 7 minutes for 2 nights, and so on, but that requires more time and effort, and my experience is also that when I get up with A, I want to do whatever it takes to get her back to sleep ASAP, and I could see myself just giving up with that method in 3 or 4 nights due to exhaustion. So Dean and I talked it over, decided we were both up to the task of letting her cry, and that our limit of how long she would cry would be an hour.
Wednesday night she woke up at 9:47 pm. Dean and I were in bed but not asleep yet. It actually made it easier that she woke up so early because I KNEW she wasn't hungry at 9:47 pm. She cried loudly but not hysterically for 30 minutes, then went to sleep. Success! I had more trouble sleeping. I was imagining that she was quiet because she had tangled herself in her blanket and strangled to death. After 30 minutes more of this fun thinking, I crept in her bedroom and peeked in her crib. The blanket was kind of wrapped around her legs, but she was fine. She cried for another 30 minutes at 1:40, then woke up and cried at 5:20. I just got up with her then, as I didn't want to feed her and put her back down, and I had had enough of listening to her cry. Plus, since I am used to feeding her 4 times a night, there was milk everywhere.
On Thursday morning, I realized A had a little cold. Turns out the baby of the mother who seduced me with crying it out at a playgroup on Monday WAS contagious, after all. So I worried all day about what we would do Thursday night. If A was sick, I didn't want to just let her cry, but if she wasn't crying due to her cold, I didn't want to ruin everything from the first night. We decided that if she cried a lot more or a lot worse than the night before, we would check on her, but otherwise we would keep going. Thursday night, she slept till 3:30, then cried for an hour. Since that was our limit I went to her, nursed her, and put her back down. She slept till 7 am!
Last night, her sniffles were much better, so I wasn't as worried. She slept till 12:30 or so, cried intermittently for about 30 minutes, then slept till 5. She fussed a bit, so I got up and fed her about 5:30, and she went back to sleep! She babbled a mildly fussy babble till about 6, and now, at 7:28 am, she is STILL ASLEEP!
So, all in all I think we are successful so far. I am definitely already getting more rest, and Amelia is too. I still suspect the CIO method isn't as foolproof as it gets credit for being, and I don't expect that all of our sleep issues are solved forever, as nice as that would be, but this method seems to be a good one for us right now. We'll see how it goes over the next few weeks. We have a lot of traveling in our futures.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Hungry Hippo
Amelia loves her new high chair and she suddenly LOVES eating solids. This weekend she had zucchini, red peppers, mushrooms, and tofu from fajitas Dean and I made, and the veggies were seasoned with cayenne pepper and cumin! She also sampled small pieces of cucumber, strawberries, broccoli, and pears. Her pincer grasp is coming along nicely.
If you look closely in the first picture, you can see her two little teeth.
If you look closely in the first picture, you can see her two little teeth.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
In Reverence of Mothers
I have been annoyed over the past two weeks by the saccharine nature of Mothers Day commercials, in which gooey-eyed women wearing aprons stroke greeting cards and clutch bouquets of expensive, bright-hued carnations. There is nothing wrong with cards and flowers—I love them both—but such depictions, not unlike the depiction of women during pregnancy, devalue motherhood. From childbirth and beyond, mothers are warrior goddesses. They are to be revered, not coddled. Motherhood is a not state of being in which women suddenly become wholly selfless and undyingly loving. Motherhood is instead a practice.
When I was younger I never gave a second thought to my assumption that my mother wanted nothing more than to shape her entire life around my needs. This “assumption” wasn’t even concrete enough to be something that I actually thought in real words; my mother was simply there, and she was there for me.
My mom used to tuck me into bed every night, and every night we would have the same routine. I would get into bed, and she would sing to me. She sang first “You Are My Sunshine,” a song whose second verse always made me achingly sad, and then she would sing a song she made up for me when I was a baby. Then we would talk a little and I would say prayers, and as she left the room she would say four things: “Good night. Sleep tight. I’ll check on you in a minute. I love you.” More often than not I would call her back to ask just one more thing, and she would patiently come back and answer, and then she would say the four things again. Sometimes, when I had called her back several times because I had a lot on my mind, came the moment of truth. I would wait, almost holding my breath, to see if my mother was going to sigh as she said the four things.
I didn’t know the word for sigh, but I knew that loud breath in and out could signal impatience, or tiredness, or in my own current grown-up words a wish for the baby to just go to sleep so you can have a few minutes of peace. If my mother sighed as she said the four things, I would worry that she was not happy, that she was tired of me asking her things at bedtime, and that she would not come back the next time I called from the dark. She almost never sighed. She always came back.
I started this post with the words “when I was younger” but the truth is that by “younger” I really mean about, oh, seven months and one week ago. Sometimes I feel like having a baby is like wandering through the wreckage after a severe storm. The most important thing is that you have the baby, safe and soft, in your arms, but the rest of your life is a mess. It’s not a total loss; many of your things are still there, but the wind has torn through the house, the rain has soaked things through, and you know it’s going to be a long time before it’s all put back in order.
I was my mother’s little storm. She almost never sighed, and she always came back.
So thank you mom, for loving me, for singing to me, for making me breakfast, for packing my lunches and putting little notes in them, for getting me out of school to go eat Chinese food with you, for letting me choose the radio station, for brushing the tangles out of my hair, for driving me miles out of the way so I could go good schools, for letting me host so many slumber parties, for waiting hours for me to get out of ballet lessons, for letting me date boys you hated. Thank you for reading the same stories over and over, for your cool hands when I was sick, for encouraging me to go away to explore the world. Thank you for always answering the phone when I call, for putting your life on hold to babysit my baby, and for being my mother as I become a mother. Thank you for all those times you chose not to sigh even though you were tired and probably looking forward to some time to yourself. Thank you for always coming back. For all this and a million other things, thank you.
And thank you to the other mother in my life, my mother-in-law. Thank you for putting your life and your art on hold to care for Amelia, for making the long drive to DC so many times, for all of the food and gifts and stories and laughter you bring each time you come. Thank you for being the keeper of my library of poems, for the beautiful comforter I am currently snuggling under as I write this, and not least of all, for being the mother of the man who is singing to our baby as I write it. Thank you for doing all the thousands of things you did, both noticed and unnoticed, that allowed him to become the person I love so much.
In conclusion, being the experienced, seasoned mother that I am today, I recommend that you include with the card or the flowers or the brunch or the spa gift certificate or— ahem—the nothing else that you remembered to send your mom today (oops)—a recognition of the practice of your mother’s mothering—the daily choices she has made and still makes to be your mother, the ways she has shaped her life to include your own. And maybe a thank you.
When I was younger I never gave a second thought to my assumption that my mother wanted nothing more than to shape her entire life around my needs. This “assumption” wasn’t even concrete enough to be something that I actually thought in real words; my mother was simply there, and she was there for me.
My mom used to tuck me into bed every night, and every night we would have the same routine. I would get into bed, and she would sing to me. She sang first “You Are My Sunshine,” a song whose second verse always made me achingly sad, and then she would sing a song she made up for me when I was a baby. Then we would talk a little and I would say prayers, and as she left the room she would say four things: “Good night. Sleep tight. I’ll check on you in a minute. I love you.” More often than not I would call her back to ask just one more thing, and she would patiently come back and answer, and then she would say the four things again. Sometimes, when I had called her back several times because I had a lot on my mind, came the moment of truth. I would wait, almost holding my breath, to see if my mother was going to sigh as she said the four things.
I didn’t know the word for sigh, but I knew that loud breath in and out could signal impatience, or tiredness, or in my own current grown-up words a wish for the baby to just go to sleep so you can have a few minutes of peace. If my mother sighed as she said the four things, I would worry that she was not happy, that she was tired of me asking her things at bedtime, and that she would not come back the next time I called from the dark. She almost never sighed. She always came back.
I started this post with the words “when I was younger” but the truth is that by “younger” I really mean about, oh, seven months and one week ago. Sometimes I feel like having a baby is like wandering through the wreckage after a severe storm. The most important thing is that you have the baby, safe and soft, in your arms, but the rest of your life is a mess. It’s not a total loss; many of your things are still there, but the wind has torn through the house, the rain has soaked things through, and you know it’s going to be a long time before it’s all put back in order.
I was my mother’s little storm. She almost never sighed, and she always came back.
So thank you mom, for loving me, for singing to me, for making me breakfast, for packing my lunches and putting little notes in them, for getting me out of school to go eat Chinese food with you, for letting me choose the radio station, for brushing the tangles out of my hair, for driving me miles out of the way so I could go good schools, for letting me host so many slumber parties, for waiting hours for me to get out of ballet lessons, for letting me date boys you hated. Thank you for reading the same stories over and over, for your cool hands when I was sick, for encouraging me to go away to explore the world. Thank you for always answering the phone when I call, for putting your life on hold to babysit my baby, and for being my mother as I become a mother. Thank you for all those times you chose not to sigh even though you were tired and probably looking forward to some time to yourself. Thank you for always coming back. For all this and a million other things, thank you.
And thank you to the other mother in my life, my mother-in-law. Thank you for putting your life and your art on hold to care for Amelia, for making the long drive to DC so many times, for all of the food and gifts and stories and laughter you bring each time you come. Thank you for being the keeper of my library of poems, for the beautiful comforter I am currently snuggling under as I write this, and not least of all, for being the mother of the man who is singing to our baby as I write it. Thank you for doing all the thousands of things you did, both noticed and unnoticed, that allowed him to become the person I love so much.
In conclusion, being the experienced, seasoned mother that I am today, I recommend that you include with the card or the flowers or the brunch or the spa gift certificate or— ahem—the nothing else that you remembered to send your mom today (oops)—a recognition of the practice of your mother’s mothering—the daily choices she has made and still makes to be your mother, the ways she has shaped her life to include your own. And maybe a thank you.
Friday, May 7, 2010
News
I shared this blog with someone new today and spent some time fondly rereading old posts. Oh, blog, how I've missed you. I kind of doubt anyone actually reads this blog anymore, since I never post on it, but I really haven't had time to breathe, much less write. I am hoping once we get settled in Denver things will be calmer.
Oh yeah--so we are moving to Denver. !!! We have know for about a month but as I typed that last sentence I realized I hadn't posted about it. Dean will be leaving the DC Public Defender to be a Federal Public Defender. I will be leaving UMD to be a Mother And Homemaker. I am very excited about this career change. Actually I will most likely look for a teaching job for next year, as in fall of 2011, but when Dean and I discussed this move I did not want to try to move AND look for a job AND wrap up this semester AND be a mother. I would feel scared to try to set up child care for A so soon after we moved anyway, and I didn't think I should try to talk our mothers into traveling to CO once a month. As much as I would love it if they wanted to... hint hint.
My feeling about the move are complex. I am very happy in many ways, including because of how happy Dean is. While he loves his current job, he is excited to try something new, and it is no secret that he loves The West, Colorado, and Mountains. We are both happy because we can actually afford to buy a house in Denver, and we have found a beautiful one, although I will save posting about it for later since things are not completely finalized yet. And I love Denver as a city. It has one zillion parks and those crazy, funny mountains as a backdrop. They make me giggle every time I see them because they just don't look real. Denver has a lot of the features we love about DC, such as fun things for kids to do. It is pretty walkable, especially where we will live (we hope), and there are so many great restaurants! So I am excited to move to such a neat new place. As an old friend of mine noted, it seems like what Dean and I do is move every couple of years, and we are ready to go.
But, it is also no secret that I had hoped to be able to raise Amelia closer to our families, particularly my mother. So moving so far away is also a Great Sadness. It is something I am trying to sit with for now. We do plan to visit often. My new job will be pretty flexible as far as travel. In fact we are going to NC less than two weeks after we move. And I am partly sad to leave DC as well, particularly the very few close friends I have here.
On the other hand, one of the duties of my new job will be visiting the previously mentioned one zillion parks, where I plan to stalk other mothers with babies until I find some to be my friends. And in fact we ARE moving closer to family: we will be only about two and a half hours from Dean's brother Jes, his partner Kim (turns out Kim is a great name for Luli's sons' partners) and their new baby-to-be Ezekial, who is Coming To Theaters Near Us in early August! So baby Dixie will get to be around her new cousin a lot, which is super exciting.
Overall, though, I feel good and hopeful about the move.
In any case, this is not what I sat down to write about.
Amelia has two teeth, the two bottom middle ones. Teething has been difficult, but nothing too terrible. She became much more interested in solids almost the exact day her first tooth came in. Since then, she has been practicing her pincer grasp, so I am going to TRY to post a video that shows off her new skill. It also features her Excited Yell and her Marge Simpson Grunt. Sorry for the shakiness; I was the Filmmaker and the Banana Puff Dispenser.
I'm enjoying the use of unconventional capitalization in this post.
And now, off to use the rest of A's nap to get dressed; it's 11:30 am and I still have on my pajamas.
Oh yeah--so we are moving to Denver. !!! We have know for about a month but as I typed that last sentence I realized I hadn't posted about it. Dean will be leaving the DC Public Defender to be a Federal Public Defender. I will be leaving UMD to be a Mother And Homemaker. I am very excited about this career change. Actually I will most likely look for a teaching job for next year, as in fall of 2011, but when Dean and I discussed this move I did not want to try to move AND look for a job AND wrap up this semester AND be a mother. I would feel scared to try to set up child care for A so soon after we moved anyway, and I didn't think I should try to talk our mothers into traveling to CO once a month. As much as I would love it if they wanted to... hint hint.
My feeling about the move are complex. I am very happy in many ways, including because of how happy Dean is. While he loves his current job, he is excited to try something new, and it is no secret that he loves The West, Colorado, and Mountains. We are both happy because we can actually afford to buy a house in Denver, and we have found a beautiful one, although I will save posting about it for later since things are not completely finalized yet. And I love Denver as a city. It has one zillion parks and those crazy, funny mountains as a backdrop. They make me giggle every time I see them because they just don't look real. Denver has a lot of the features we love about DC, such as fun things for kids to do. It is pretty walkable, especially where we will live (we hope), and there are so many great restaurants! So I am excited to move to such a neat new place. As an old friend of mine noted, it seems like what Dean and I do is move every couple of years, and we are ready to go.
But, it is also no secret that I had hoped to be able to raise Amelia closer to our families, particularly my mother. So moving so far away is also a Great Sadness. It is something I am trying to sit with for now. We do plan to visit often. My new job will be pretty flexible as far as travel. In fact we are going to NC less than two weeks after we move. And I am partly sad to leave DC as well, particularly the very few close friends I have here.
On the other hand, one of the duties of my new job will be visiting the previously mentioned one zillion parks, where I plan to stalk other mothers with babies until I find some to be my friends. And in fact we ARE moving closer to family: we will be only about two and a half hours from Dean's brother Jes, his partner Kim (turns out Kim is a great name for Luli's sons' partners) and their new baby-to-be Ezekial, who is Coming To Theaters Near Us in early August! So baby Dixie will get to be around her new cousin a lot, which is super exciting.
Overall, though, I feel good and hopeful about the move.
In any case, this is not what I sat down to write about.
Amelia has two teeth, the two bottom middle ones. Teething has been difficult, but nothing too terrible. She became much more interested in solids almost the exact day her first tooth came in. Since then, she has been practicing her pincer grasp, so I am going to TRY to post a video that shows off her new skill. It also features her Excited Yell and her Marge Simpson Grunt. Sorry for the shakiness; I was the Filmmaker and the Banana Puff Dispenser.
I'm enjoying the use of unconventional capitalization in this post.
And now, off to use the rest of A's nap to get dressed; it's 11:30 am and I still have on my pajamas.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Tally
Number of minutes I am giving myself to write this post: 5
Number of papers I have graded in the past 5 days: 37
Number of hours I have spent on airplanes in the past 2 weeks: 11
Number of take-offs I have had to endure: 5
Number of minutes baby A cried on said planes: surprisingly, probably only about 45-60
Number of teeth Amelia now has: 2!
Number of houses Dean and I have bought: 1!
Number of blog posts I have written in my head: many
Number of days left to teach: 3
How much I am looking forward to the end of the semester: very, VERY much
I promise updates as soon as I am not swamped with teaching, a teething baby, and uprooting life changes.
Number of papers I have graded in the past 5 days: 37
Number of hours I have spent on airplanes in the past 2 weeks: 11
Number of take-offs I have had to endure: 5
Number of minutes baby A cried on said planes: surprisingly, probably only about 45-60
Number of teeth Amelia now has: 2!
Number of houses Dean and I have bought: 1!
Number of blog posts I have written in my head: many
Number of days left to teach: 3
How much I am looking forward to the end of the semester: very, VERY much
I promise updates as soon as I am not swamped with teaching, a teething baby, and uprooting life changes.
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