Gametes In Love

For awhile now we’ve hit a groove to how G goes to bed.

At 8pm he gets walked up to his room, I turn on the night light, the white noise machine, we change his diaper, and swaddle him in. Then he and I sit down in the glider and he eats… until he falls asleep. After a few minutes I carefully and slowly move him to his crib doing the “Sleep, baby, sleep!” chant silently in my head. On a good night he doesn’t even stir when his head hits the mattress, and on bad nights he wakes up immediately, starts crying and we have to repeat the eat-sleep-move-chant steps over and over again until he stays down.

This has been working well for us for the last while, but it’s time for a change.

G’s onto me. He’s come to recognize what works for him and any change to this plan (like just putting him straight into the crib) just won’t do. Change produces whimpering, whimpering escalates to crying, and then we’re WAY far away from a calm and sleepy baby. That paired with a tired mommy equals boob in mouth and G ultimately getting his way.

The issue is that this isn’t really sustainable and I’m not doing any service to my child. He’s not learning how to fall asleep on his own, and in a few weeks when location awareness starts to kick in, I don’t want him freaking out over waking up in a way different than how he went to sleep.

So, my resolution, starting this week-end is to put him in his crib when he’s not fully asleep. Yes, this will surely wake him up again, and there will be crying, but we’ve gotta make it work.

I also want him to get used to napping in a crib during the day too. Right now he takes his nap in the swing, swaddled, with the blow-drier running next to him, with the occasional blanket over his head to block out anything interesting to look at. Yeah, it’s an elaborate setup, and that’s the problem — I fear I’ve turned him into a picky baby and our day care is going to hate me for it.

So yeah, we’ve got some serious retraining ahead of us. If you see me with dark circles under my eyes walking around like a zombie for awhile… this is why.

Post by S

It was a hazy dreamlike experience when I rolled over this morning and the clock displayed 5:00. What? 5AM? Did I miss G crying for his night time bottle feeding? No crying was coming through the baby monitor. I needed to use my fingers to count how long he had slept – 9pm to 5 am… 1, 2, 3… 8 HOURS!!! Is that possible?

Sure enough, I have the chart to prove it.

G was feeding like crazy yesterday so he certainly loaded up on calories. He had a bath (see the crying picture posted by A earlier today), clean diaper, bed time nursing session, then he went to sleep about 9 pm. He woke up briefly about 9:45 pm with crying, twisting, and legs flailing. This is his typical fit that often wakes him. After a few minutes of A holding him, we put him in the swing with the hair dryer on High – He was OUT in about 30 seconds. And there we left him – peacefully swinging with the dryer blowing. I turned the dryer off an hour later and off to bed we went.

Almost 9 hours later at 6am he was just barely stirring when I changed his diaper. He was wide awake for his night time bottle a few minutes later.

This is probably more of a milestone for me than it is for him, but I love it! I’m not sure when it will be repeated, but I’m thrilled!

I think I’ve been low jacked by my kid.

How do I know this?

Because G can be sound asleep in his crib when I’m in the nursery. As soon as I walk out of his room, make it as far as my bed and lie down, he wakes up.

Serves me right — I kept making all those jokes about getting him chipped (you chip pets, why not kids?), but I guess he got me on that one.

[Sigh]