Parenting from Scratch

So it turns out I’m not always an effective communicator. This is a big problem when you are trying to raise a child with someone else.

Take last night, for example. I’d come to the conclusion that Sadie was ready to learn to fall asleep on her own. I’ve looked into some “sleep coaching” strategies, and I thought giving the Sleep Lady Shuffle a go would be a good plan (admittedly, this was my plan B until about 5:00 this evening). Sadie is night weaned for the most part, only nursing at bedtime and in the morning. Her receptive vocabulary is wide enough that she understands simple requests, like “put your head down.” And she’s had a small handful of instances where she has gone back to sleep on her own. At first. I wasn’t so sure about the Sleep Shuffle, but upon further consideration, I think that it is still in line with the parenting we’ve beenn providing Sadie. Yes, she would likely cry some. But, no, she would never cry alone. I would continue to be responsive to her throughout the night, just in a way that encourages her to learn to put and keep herself to sleep.

Okay, so last night. I talked to Trevor about what I was thinking. I explained the two scenarios. An added bonus was that the Sleep Shuffle was a one-man gig, so he was of the hook for a while (he’s definitely been pulling his weight in terms of nighttime parenting lately). I asked Trevor for his input, but he said he didn’t have any.

So we did Sadie’s bedtime routine, and Trevor left me to it. Sadie was doing better than I thought she would. She stood up a lot and fussed some, but she would lie back down when I would pat the mattress. She had just started to actually cry, and I was hugging on her to calm her down, when Trevor came in and insisted he take over. Effectively negating all of the time I had just spent in there with her. Turns out, Trevor did have some input. Frustration on my end. Trevor did get her to sleep quickly, but what she learned in the process was that Momma can’t do bedtime, and if she waits/fusses/cries long enough, Daddy will come take over. Not exactly what I was aiming for.

Lesson learned: be much more specific with Trevor with any plans involving changes to Sadie’s routine. Talk about a communication breakdown!

So here’s a cute picture of Sadie to counteract all the negativity of this post. Sadie had a lot of fun playing with her cousins on Sunday.

Wow. We are in the opposite of a sweet spot with Sadie right now. I think we’re entering the “testing the limits” phase. Not so easy. Sadie is starting to pitch mini-fits when she doesn’t get something she wants or when I have to take something away from her. I’m standing my ground, though, because I really only take/keep something from her if she truly shouldn’t have it. Yesterday, though, she started kind of hitting me when I was picking her up from daycare. I think maybe I need to put her down as soon as she starts that sort of thing up.

The other thing I’m dealing with right now is her biting me. I’m worried that my supply really has taken a dip, and I wonder if it might have been my tummy issues and getting dehydrated at the end of last week. Most of her bites come when she’s finished nursing, and I wonder if she’s biting me in part because she’s not getting as much as she wants. It was bad enough when she was biting to soothe her gums before she had her four front teeth. But now that she’s got both top and bottom teeth, it’s horribly painful when she bites me. I know some people would say I should flick her when she does it, but I just can’t. I try not to react in a startled way, because that usually just makes her laugh. Instead I just end the session, at least for a little while. But it’s not really making a difference. It’s starting to make me question my hesitancy about introducing cow’s milk in a couple of weeks (I’m hesitant about hesitating).

She sometimes also bites me on the arm or shoulder. I don’t know if it’s teething or playing or what. But it hurts like a mofo. She’s not biting Trevor, and she’s not biting her daycare friends, so I guess we should be glad for that. I don’t really like being her teether, though.

Has anybody else dealt with this? Any suggestions?

Tonight was to be Sadie’s first night sleeping in her own, newly rearranged and coolified bedroom. She went down pretty easily, according to Trevor, and it seemed all would be well in the world. Or at least in our home.

Oh, how wrong I was.

I’ve been checking in on my friends’ dogs while they’re away for the night. I did one last run after dinner, and was back home on the computer a couple of hours later when my friend called. Their duplex-neighbor-landlord had called them to say that one of the pups, Lucy, was barking incessantly. Okey dokey, so I head back over to pick Lucy up and take her to our house. We hadn’t made it out the door when the other pooch, Tonka, started in. Well, I decided I’d save myself a trip and just go ahead and bring him along, too. It seemed simple enough.

Getting Tonka and Lucy into our house without our dogs losing it wasn’t so bad. I figured Tonka could sleep in Willow’s crate, and Lucy could sleep in my (huge, mind you) closet where the crate is. I figured wrong. Barking, lots of barking. So I changed plans. Lucy could just sleep on the couch (which is all she wanted to begin with), Willow could sleep in her crate, Nari could sleep wherever, and Tonka could sleep in our bed with us. Because Sadie was sleeping in her room, right?

So I was in the bathroom getting ready to brush my teeth, when I heard Sadie wake up on the monitor. At first, it sounded like she was talking. But, then, wait a minute… Oh, no. She was throwing up.

Head with her to the bathtub. Grab the phone. Call my friend. Too much for one night. Dogs have to go. More throw up. More phone calls. Brother coming. Sadie’s playing with bath toys. Brother shows up, takes dogs. Shower with Sadie. New pjs. Nursing to sleep. Bad idea. More throw up. Back to the bath tub. New pjs. Finally, to sleep.

We’ll see how the rest of the night goes.

So, we’re considering moving Sadie’s crib into her bedroom. I really don’t like Trevor sleeping on the couch, and I think the nights are getting warm enough that it’ll be fine for Sadie to sleep in her room. There will still be a bed in there, in case she needs me to sleep with her. But otherwise, the plan is for her to start sleeping in her crib full-time. She did this last night, with the crib in our room, and it didn’t go any worse than usual. I know this isn’t going to magically fix her nighttime issues, but I do hope it won’t set us back. If it does, we are totally fine with trying something else out. We’re all about flexibility around here. Anybody know where to get affordable curtains that will block out the light coming in from a HUGE window?

This is the kind of fun you have the day after your baby sleeps SIX HOURS IN A ROW!

It’s what I would call a shabooyah kind of day. Trevor would call it a boomshakalaka moment.

How sad is it that we celebrate six hours of uninterrupted sleep for Sadie? Pretty sad. But it was so awesome! Granted, we were only asleep for the second three hours of it, and the rest of the night wasn’t quite as awesome, but it wasn’t too hard at all. Especially for Trevor. Who Slept Through The Night. On the couch.

No, I’ve not been making him sleep on the couch. He’s been choosing to do so. And I’ve actually been sleeping most of my nights in Sadie’s twin bed (that is, her bed for when she’s a Big Girl). We’ve been doing this musical beds thing for a couple of weeks now, I think. There was one night that I was ready to go to bed, and I lamented that Sadie would probably wake up just 20 minutes after I got in bed… just in time for me to be right about asleep (Sadie’s crib is in our bedroom). And Trevor was brilliant and suggested I try to sleep in the other room, and he would start out the night on the couch. Sadie slept an additional two hours after that. We haven’t quite figured out exactly what the best method is, but we have learned a few things along the way.

1. Co-sleeping is not for Trevor. He has been in a MUCH better, more willingly helpful mood when I have needed him to take over if Sadie is being particularly difficult in the middle of the night. Friday night he even took the initiative to get up with Sadie at the outset, rather than being the “pinch hitter,” as usual–I slept four hours in a row! Well, I actually woke up each time he got up with her, but the simple fact that I got to stay in bed was marvelous. Turns out, it’s having Sadie wrestling around in the bed for 30 minutes before I decide I can’t get her to sleep that had Trevor getting irritable.
2. Sadie definitely sleeps better–at least for the first part of the night–alone in the room. She and I usually end up back in bed together at some point, mostly because I get too sleepy to stay awake long enough to put her back in the crib.
3. I also think Sadie sleeps better with the pets out of the room. We’ve been keeping the door closed even when it’s both Sadie and me in the bedroom, and I think the absence of the animals’ miscellaneous noises has made a difference. If Willow could read, this would be where I’d drop the big hint about her head-shaking-ears-flapping noise that I could have SWORN was silent until after Sadie was born.

So! With these lessons learned, I think there are some more changes up ahead. Hopefully they won’t be too disruptive, but we can always change things back if they don’t work out. I’d really like Trevor and me going to sleep (and staying) in the same bed again. I don’t like that he’s on the couch. Sadie’s bedroom is still too cold at night, but I think once the nights get a little warmer, we’re going to move Sadie’s crib into her bedroom. That way Trevor and I have our bed back to ourselves. And the pets can be in our bedroom. And if Sadie does need a little co-sleeping, she and I can always finish the night in the bed in her bedroom (just don’t call the co-sleeping police on us).

So here’s to many more long stretches of sleep ahead! Geeze, I hope so.

I’m sorry if it seems like this blog has taken a turn for the dismal. I promise, there’ll be more cheery posts and pictures of Sadie in the near future. It’s just that I’m in a bit of a funk lately. Sadie’s sleep had gotten pretty nice–she was giving us a solid 4 (sometimes 5 or even 6) hour stretch and only waking up to nurse twice before morning (usually waking up a third time in between those two, but being easily settled without nursing). Then, we had a couple of really rough nights. I think it’s a gas issue, but I don’t really know how to tell for sure. The past few nights we’ve given her gripe water at her “bedtime” nursing, and it’s helped some. But she’s back to waking up three times a night–effectively every two hours–wanting to nurse. Part of me wonders if she’s waking up more because she’s in the bassinet, but it actually seems like she falls back to sleep more easily in the bassinet than she does in our bed, which is why I’ve been putting her in there after nursing her. Well, that, and I also sleep a bit better without her in bed (there, I said it).

Her naps during the day are getting out of whack, too. It seems like she has a hard time sleeping longer than 45 minutes at a time (we’re going on 58 minutes now, and I’m probably pushing my luck). Just last week, though, she could almost always be counted on to go down for two two-hour naps a day. I think this might have to do with change, too. She’s getting close to being too big for the bassinet, so I’ve been putting her down for naps in the crib during the day. That way, when she really can’t sleep in the bassinet at night, it won’t freak her out to be put down in the crib at night. Not sure if it’ll work, but it makes sense to me.

I really wanted co-sleeping to work out for us. I never would have thought that I’d be the problem. I figured it would be Trevor, because of being nervous with her there or something. I’m a much pickier sleeper than I knew, and I can’t seem to find a comfortable position to sleep in with Sadie in the bed. I think it might be different if we had a bigger bed, but our bedroom simply isn’t big enough for a bigger bed. When we do co-sleep, I seem to get such poor sleep that I get absurdly frustrated when she wakes up to nurse.

The other thing I’m struggling with is the nursing itself. I sooo wanted to looove breastfeeding. It’s not that I hate it, and I’m DEFINITELY sticking with it, it’s just that it’s STILL not the blissfully pleasant experience I expected it to be. Of course, I was mentally prepared for their to be rough times, but I figured things would get nicer as we got better at it. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Maybe we don’t have the latching thing down as well as I think we do. Maybe it’s because of her tongue-tie (though I took her to a doctor about it yesterday and was told it’s not bad enough to clip it presently). Maybe it’s the forceful let-down. All I know is that there is generally frustration on both ends of the deal, and that makes me so sad. As in lump in throat, tearing up right now. And it doesn’t help that she’s lately been nursing what seems like all the freaking time. Maybe my supply is decreasing (though I can’t imagine why it would), so she’s not getting enough at each feeding, so she has to feed more frequently. I don’t really know how to tell…

These are just the two things I’d really counted on being some of my favorite parts of mothering her. It’s so disappointing to have it be otherwise. To keep this post from being utterly dismal, some of my favorite parts are: how alert Sadie is, how engaged she is, how much she’s “talking” to us, how delighted she is at things, bath time, and carrying her in the sling.

In other news, I received my official letter stating that I am now a Licensed Master Social Worker. Pretty exciting stuff. And I’m doing my best to find a job. Do you know of any? In case I haven’t already told you this, I’m looking for a part-time job that will pay enough for me to stay home some with Sadie. I’d take a social work job, I’d take a writing gig, I’d really do just about anything. There are some jobs I’m applying for, but I’ve never ever gotten a job without having some sort of inside connection (even a summer job at American Eagle).

And here are some random pictures of our furry companions, to brighten my mood:

It actually looked like a kitty crime scene when I walked into Sadie's room.

Willow with her hilarious summer cut. She looks like a bat-lamb.

Nari after being Furminated. And she's STILL shedding a ton!