Gametes In Love

I’ve found a cure for impatience and procrastination: having a baby.

Seriously!

I am not a patient person by any means, and if it can be done tomorrow, why leave the couch and TV remote control today?
(As you can tell my reading assignments in school didn’t get very far)

However, as I was standing over my sink at 5:40am this morning rinsing off my pumping supplies I came to the realization that G is curing me (slowly) of both of my vices. “How?” you may ask. Well, the thing with babies is that you work on their schedule. I’ve heard that it “should” be the other way around, but we haven’t really gotten G to agree. Anyway, when you work with your kid’s schedule you come to the sad conclusion that just because you wanted to do something later doesn’t mean that they’ll want to give you the time to complete that task at that time. So if you want something done, you do it as soon as a window opens up, even if that means right then and there. Hence the 5:40am rinse session.

The impatience is cured by the continuous crying. Come cry-o’clock (~5-9pm daily at our house) you get a steady state of G vocals, and unless you purchase a quick hit of patience and a shot of Zen you’re not making it through those four hours. I’ve become very good at meditating through G’s cries. I can hear him, don’t get me wrong, but with the exception of the occasional (and sadly unavoidable) shriek, I bear through it patiently waiting the sleep faerie.

So I don’t know how long these vice vaccines will last for, but I’ll see how long this new, “better” me will last.

Oh, PS. Just because I procrastinate less doesn’t mean I’m getting more done… it just means that my one or two accomplishments of the day happen sooner rather than later ;p

In our first two weeks of parenthood sleep deprivation hit us. G was having wailing fits throughout the night. We took turns with him in the Moby Wrap while sleeping in the glider. We swaddled. We shushed until we got light headed. After several nights in a row, I was ready to try anything that could help. We live in a gadget home, so you shouldn’t be surprised that we would try a gadget type solution.

I recalled seeing a product several months before that I laughed at (mostly due to price). It was a Lullabub Crib Rocker; a cool product that has four pedestals to support the legs of the crib and they stay in sync wirelessly. They move the crib to simulate the motion of a mother’s womb, mother’s heartbeat, drive in a car, and boat on water. It was the Drive in Car that I wanted since G fell asleep right away in the car. I had previously laughed at this product because it cost more than our crib! I thought why would you need a crib rocker when you should be rocking your baby yourself. How quickly I realized that rocking a wailing baby can push you to the edge – even with ear plugs.

A 4 AM one night $179 was a small price to pay for a night of sleep, so I made what will likely be the first of many Sleep Deprived Purchases. I then waited for the product to be shipped from Australia. 5 days later it arrived – pretty darn fast given the distance. I felt like a kid waiting for a gift – rushing out to meet mailman on the sidewalk.

The packaging was very nice and the installation was a breeze. It took longer to get all the parts out of the box than it did to set it up with the crib. I pulled the casters off the bottom of the crib, slid the Lullabub pedestals under the legs, plugged in the power cord, and turned it on. The movement is so subtle that I had to put my hand on the crib to make sure it was moving.

Pros

• Quick delivery
• Nice packaging
• Good quality
• Easy Setup
• Easy to Use
• Raises up the crib so you don’t have to bend over so far
• Allows for manual rocking of the crib with your hand motion
• Baby can soothe himself once he figures out his kicking moves the crib (maybe wishful thinking)

Cons

• Motions are very subtle – nothing like a drive in our car or sitting in the womb
• Only stays on for 30 minutes before you need to start it again
• Icons on remote aren’t obvious until you’ve used it a bit

Recommendations

In order for this product to knock it out of the park and deliver on its promise to “calm and relax your crying baby & help soothe unsettled babies” it should make some changes. 30 minutes of calming doesn’t go far for truly unsettled babies or even just crying babies. The times when we’ve had a good experience with G and the Lullabub it’s been after he was already calmed and almost asleep, but he seemed to wake up just after the 30 minute period stopped. I would go back to the nursery to start another cycle.

Our swing does the job but only AFTER he’s calmed – G stays sleeping peacefully in the swing (set on High) for hours at night. The motion of the car works best when he gets jiggled from the bumps in the road, rough pavement, or the rhythmic bump-bump of the seams on the highway. In his stroller he likes the bumping of a dirt path over the smoothness of a sidewalk. The subtle motions aren’t enough to calm him – he needs more!

So the Lullabub would work better for G if it had an option for a motion with more jiggles! I suggest the Lullabub folks get together with Dr. Karp and design a Happiest Baby on the Block setting. Dr. Karp certainly supports a more active motion for calming crying babies.

We’re keeping the Lullabub, and I expect it will prove more beneficial when G gets past this crying, fussy phase.

Should you buy one? It depends on what motions soothe your baby and how much you like gadgets. Now if they only made one for our King-sized bed! Or if they made a similar product that was intended as a base for your carseat — then you could put the crying baby in the car seat, put the car seat in, and watch your baby fall asleep to the motion of a car (but a car driving on a road with bumps, not floating across the ground).