Gametes In Love

A week ago, S2 did the most remarkable thing. He slept for a 10.5 hour stretch. He went down at 7 and got up at 5:30ish. Then the next night, he did it again!!! I was stoked. I knew this wasn’t going to be a full-time trend, but it was promising of things to come. Sleep to come.

In my rested mommy joy, I made a mistake. I made a mistake of telling a friend about S2’s feat. And sure enough; I jinxed myself. Since that time not only has he NOT repeated this miracle again, but has reverted to waking up 2-4 a night.

So, if (hopefully WHEN) he sleeps that way again, I will be keeping mum.

I had my second “labor” dream tonight. I should rather say nightmare because it was very unpleasant. With both of my labor dreams I ended up w/ another c-section. I don’t know if this is my subconscious speaking, but this last one was certainly not a c-section by choice. It was not good! I won’t go into the details (call it superstition), but let’s just say that this is not a birth option I’m considering. At least it had a happy ending and we took a healthy baby home.

A healthy BOY baby might I add. I had my first gender dream around this time with G. While it was a lot more confusing (winged pet lions for Halloween, really?) it was right on. Let’s see if this dream will be correct too… or if I’ll have some other dreams to change my opinion.

Anyway, back to sleep for me. Night, night!

Ha! Guess what I saw yesterday? My “screams-bloody-murder-while-on-my-belly” child sleeping on what? That’s right — his belly! If this isn’t belly sleeping then I don’t know what is!

You little stinker!

(Yeah, it’s late, but YouTube was having some issues yesterday.)

Here is how G goes down for a nap.

G is one of those lucky dudes that gets to wake up and then go down for a nap an hour later. (I wish I had that option!) As such, he’s normally zonking out within minutes of getting into day care, so his first nap is in his carseat.

We now replicate this on week-ends as well (faithfully) since it’s the only way we can guarantee a happy, well-napped baby.

A typical nap goes like this: play with toys, cry, then zonk out. Occasionally he’ll wake up, play for a bit and fall asleep again.

Please observe that when he’s out, the kid barely moves: occasionally he’ll wiggle a toe. This is why those motion monitors won’t work at our house. They’d be going off all the time.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zdHqOSYTHQ]

For those of you curious, we don’t have a video monitor at our house. Instead we have a $35 video-cam setup over his crib that streams to the web. It’s a good way for us to see what he’s doing from any computer in the house (even from our iPhones), and we share the URL with our parents so they can sneak occasional peaks at the little man when he’s in his room. S setup a time-lapse video capture on the web-cam the other week-end, so we can do little recordings of a day in G’s life. Cute, huh? I only wish the web-cam worked in the dark.

I’m afraid to rock the sleep boat, but… for the last week and a half G’s been back to his regular sleep schedule.

We did two things: 1) increased his reflux meds (per his pedi); and 2) stopped swaddling.

We had tried putting G down unswaddled previously and failed utterly each time. He’d wake himself up right away and cry. But since he was already waking up and was already crying, I thought “Well, can’t get much worse!” so we gave it a shot.

And he slept like he used to. All night long.

Now, he does get some assistance. You see, it turns out that G takes after his mommy and likes to cuddle with toys while sleeping (and no, I’m not embarrassed to admit I still do this). He sleeps best with Froggie or Munka (his Monkey) by his side. He cuddles his lovie at night and will only wake up and cry if he looses it and can’t reach it. He’s super cute about it. He’ll rub the lovie blankie on his face and cuddle with it all through the night.

At the same time, the fact that he likes to sleep with it covering his face FREAKS.ME.OUT. I’m just so paranoid about him suffocating, it just bugs me to see him do that. However, he clutches it so tight, I can’t pull it away. He get pissed off if I try take it away too. The good news, though, is that he’s proficient at pulling things away from his face (we play a peek-a-boo game) so I know if he wanted to he could easily move it away. None, the less, still a little scary.

So sleeping for the tall folk is back to being good again.

Knock on wood!

I feel like we’ve been publicly stripped of our Sleep Through The Night badge.

I was so proud of it too. As fussy as G was, the one thing we had to cling to and be happy about was our sleep. And now it’s gone 🙁

G is still waking up at night. Last night 5 times before midnight and once more at 1. It’s brutal!

It’s like being accepted into the VIP lounge only to be rejected re-entry after going to the restroom. You can see your way back, but can’t quite get past the bouncer. Just while the party was getting good too!

S and I are attacking the “sleep bouncer” by turning into sleep theorists (this should really be a profession, by the way). We spend our days hypothesizing over what the culprit that is stealing G’s (and by extension our) sleep and we test said hypothesis each evening. The Scientific Method is alive and kicking in our house, for sure.

I no longer think it’s a growth spurt. Yes, feeding G puts him back asleep, but tanking him up before bed-time doesn’t do squat. He’s also no more eager to eat during the day.

Tonight we’re trying him in his swing again to see if perhaps the motion will make a difference.

Next on the “what about” list is unswaddling and turning down the heater in his room in case he might be getting too hot.

One thing that is also a possibility, but I cringe to think about is Reflux. He’s already on Prevacid, and we had his dosage upped 2 months ago. Yet he’s spitting up and crying pretty hard afterwards.

I keep wanting to believe that this is just temporary and he’ll go back to his awesome sleep pattern. I in turn will get my non-puffy eyes back… as well as that lovely STTN badge. I wear it on my Mommy sash, you know!

G’s next check-up with the pediatrician is on Friday. You bet sleep will be a topic of discussion. I just hope Dr. M doesn’t laugh at me for wanting too much.

What I’m about to say might anger some parents.

For the last few months G has been sleeping through the night. I don’t mean a 5 or 6 hour stretch, I mean the whole night. Our bed-time routine started at 7pm and went something like this: diaper, swaddle, boob, boob, and he’s out. We were in and out in about 30 minutes. And he would sleep until I woke him up the next morning at about 6:30. On week-ends we’d let him sleep in until he woke up on his own, which was sometimes 7:30-8.

The kid could sleep.

Until about a week ago.

Now, going down is a big ordeal. Diaper, swaddle, boob, boob is still in effect. And although he’ll fall asleep nursing, the moment I would move him to his crib and his butt would touch the mattress he wakes up immediately crying… crying hard. It then takes us about 30 to calm him down and get him to really fall asleep.

And then he wakes up. At 11. Repeat put down process.

And then again at 2am.

What gives?

I’m becoming a little resentful of his day care teacher. Apparently he’s sleeping like a champ there, and I don’t think it’s fair. I want good baby sleep too 🙁 I see no reason for him to reverse cycle. He eats well and has food available to him during the day. Again… what gives?

It might be a growth spurt. At a week shy of 6 months he’s due for one right now. I HOPE it’s a growth spurt because I know those come and go. I can’t be teething due to lack of drool and he’s not trying to chew through things.

However, we’re strict on the “you sleep in your room” line. G wakes up, but he’s to go back down in his own bed. Luckily that is still working, although I’ll be first to admit that on a few 2am calls, I’ve had to force myself not to give in and bring him to bed with me.

I just want my sleep-loving kid back.

Signed, “One tired mommy”

Yesterday, S and I drove G to melt-down mode. It was entirely our fault, and yes we paid for it.

We went to the Tech Museum to check out the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit. It was fun, but since G is not a good napper while on the move, the poor little guy didn’t get more than 40 min of sleep the whole day. He is just so curious and wants to be social and the idea of napping, as much as he knows he needs it, doesn’t settle in.

So to makeup for yesterday, today G went into hybernation mode. He slept in to 8:30 (which for him is unheard of), 2 hours later he was asleep for a 2 hour nap, woke up, ate, played a little, then crashed out again. This happened a few times throughout the day. He even slept in his Pack N’ Play: the unit also known as the “insta-cry-machine”. To top it off, he requested an early bed-time and zonked out by 7:00pm. I’m glad he’s catching up, but I feel badly for causing it.

It appears now that in addition to our early dine out schedule, our week-end socializations will also be mapped around  nap-times. It’s moments like this that make me a little relieved we don’t have two children. Two kids with two separate nap-times? How does anyone get anything done?

On a complete tangent though: as part of the exhibit, we all saw a movie: an 40 min IMAX presentation of “Adrenaline Rush: the science of risk”. How appropriate is it that G’s first-ever movie turned out to be about skydiving, base jumping, and a test of da Vinci’s parachutte? G behaved himself remarkably well. Nap issues aside, I’m so proud of my little guy.

G’s morning routine is to wake up sometime between 6 and 7. Whereas this works for him, starting off a day with him that early produces one tired mommy.  So I’ve gotten into the habit, just in the past week, to get him out of his crib, change him and then bring him back into our room with me where we cuddle, I feed him and we fall back asleep. Typically I can milk out about another 2 hours of sleep with him this way.

Today I got lucky. 6:30 wakeup, quick diaper change, a 20 minute breakfast for him and he was out. As was I. He woke up one more time, one more snack, then out again… until 10! It was sweet!

… until I picked him up and my sheet under his bottom had a biiiiiiig wet spot over it. I know it wasn’t me, and his dad was long gone, so there leaves only one culprit — the G-man. Granted, he was in that diaper for 4 hours, but we haven’t had a leak that bad in a long time. I’m pretty happy right now we have a waterproof pad on our mattress.

So now I gotta think about what to do next (aside from the obvious change the sheets). Is our morning cuddle & nap routine done, or do I need to invest in some underpads for his visits?

Who am I kidding? Sleep is too good to pass up. I guess I’ll be sleeping on some crunchy sheets for awhile. Besides, how can I give this up:

Isn’t he an angel when he sleeps?

Ok, day 2 of new bedtime routine. It’s hard, but it’s working [knock on wood].

G’s on his second day of “no boob ’till z’s”, and being placed in his crib before his eyes are shut. Yesterday we started off with a fair amount of crying, but it was my fault for rushing it through (hey, I’ve always said that patience is not a virtue of mine). S’s rescued bed-time last night, so we’ve been trying his cuddle-and-bounce-to-calm approach before G gets in the crib.

So we’re 2 for 2. I hope it lasts, although I know not every night will be easy or successful. I just hope that the days that this works will outnumber the days that it doesn’t. I’m also hopeful that by mid-December evening bedtime will be more settled and I can start working on the day-time nap adjustment.

Did I mention this whole parenting thing is hard and tricky?