Sleeping Like a Baby

Scott and Sadie sleep

If there were one word to define how we're all feeling these days, it would be "tired."

Also, whoever came up with the phrase "sleeping like a baby" was smoking crack. Babies do not sleep. They nap, sort of. But Sadie's days of passed-out, comatose sleep are already behind her. The kinds of things she used to sleep through, like dog barks and people banging into things and the ringing phone, are now likely to wake her up.

And we cannot have that. We must keep the baby sleeping. Because when the baby sleeps, we...well, we don't sleep. But we at least are able to do things like eat lunch and clean up messes and fold laundry.

Seriously, I am so, so tired. I'm not throwing this out there because I think it's a particularly unique complaint -- but I'd like to record for posterity how tired I am right now so that if we decide to have another child, I can go back through these entries and remind Scott of how tired we once were.

The nature of this weariness is nothing I've ever experienced before. It's not that we get no sleep, ever. I hear horror stories of mothers whose babies wake up every hour or two throughout the night, or who scream until 2am. We're not those people -- in fact, Sadie's pretty easygoing as far as five-weekers go, and if this is the worst it's going to get then we really did get off easy.

So I'd say we both probably get between 5 and 7 hours of sleep every night. But it isn't quality sleep, and it isn't consistent sleep. And somehow, 7 hours spread out between two three-hour stretches over the course of the night and an hour nap in the afternoon leaves me as bleary-eyed and exhausted as if I hadn't slept at all.

Here's our current routine:

One of us takes Sadie into the bedroom around 10pm and gets her to sleep in her crib by 11. (There's no way to get her to sleep earlier than this -- she's developed the power to stay wide-eyed from 7pm right through the end of the 10 o'clock news. Any attempts to put her in her crib are met with EXTREME pissiness.)

We then join the other one in the bedroom, where it turns into a quest to fall asleep quickly so as to utilize sleep time as efficiently as possible. That, of course, inevitably results in not being able to fall asleep quickly.

On a good night, she'll go until 3am. Last night she went until 4am -- a marathon five-hour sleeping stretch that would normally have been cause for celebration...only, I'd woken up at 2:45am, and stayed awake for an hour expecting her to start fussing at any moment.

From 3-4 ish, she gets fed, burped, changed and bounced on the yoga ball to an endless succession of lullabies. This can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour -- or longer, if she happens to nurse than then, ten minutes later, VOMIT ALL OVER HER NICE CLEAN CLOTHES right after I've changed her, necessitating a second changing and also a change of clothes and ROYALLY PISSING HER OFF in the process because it's been cold here recently and the front bedroom is like fifty degrees at night and being naked on a changing table in a freezing cold room is not where a baby wants to be.

NOT THAT THAT HAPPENED LAST NIGHT OR ANYTHING.

So after this, there's perhaps time for one last stretch of sleep until daylight, which is when Scott gets up and heats up a bottle and Sadie screams the entire time, which echoes through the baby monitor that rests on the nightstand exactly six inches from my ear, and insures that all three of us are now entirely awake.

Oh, and? It bears mentioning that one Sadie's had her morning meal and we're both good and awake, she smiles at us, drifts right back off into dreamland and proceeds to nap for the rest of the morning.

It's a good thing she's so damn cute.

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My

Is there anything cuter in this world than a five week old baby in a pair of footie pajamas with little jungle animals printed on them? I challenge anyone to produce something more capable of inducing a universal round of "awwww."

Baby clothes are my topic for the rant of the week, for several reasons. We've reached a new and unexpected milestone within the last few days: Sadie, who has been putting on the pounds at a rate faster than her mother locked overnight in a Krispy Kreme store, has already grown too big for many of her newborn clothes. A few days ago, I attempted to snap a onesie over her diaper, and you could see the material strain at both ends.

This means it's time to graduate to the 3 month onesies, and this presents a problem: while Sadie owns a number of very cute little summery shirts and pants in the 3-month size, she has virtually no onesies, and this baby LIVES in onesies. They are the ultimate in lazy dresswear.

So I ventured out to the mall yesterday to buy her some onesies in her new-and-improved Big Girl size. Walking into Gymboree, you can tell immediately which is the boy's side and which is the girl's. One guess as to which side was overwhelmingly pink. No shocker there, right? But as I shopped, my disgust grew.

Everyone always says it's easier and more fun to shop for girls than for boys. Yet as I rifled through endless stacks of pink sweaters and pink-and-white striped socks and pink hats with bunny ears on them, I couldn't help but note that the boys' clothing was decorated in shades of blue, brown, green, yellow, red. They had pictures of puppies and bears, printed on bright patterns.

The only package of onesies I could find in Sadie's size had a fairy-tale princess theme. Each onesie had a different image evoking (or intended to evoke) a pretty, pretty princess. One had a crown. Another, a scepter. A third, a high-heeled shoe.

Yes, that's right. The boy onesies had pictures of puppies of them. The girl onesies have pictures of sparkly pumps.

By the time I got to my second stop, the department store, I didn't waste too much time in the girls' section. I was looking for some clothes for an upcoming winter trip to the Pacific Northwest, and I knew what I wanted: some absurdly cute, fleecy clothes to keep her warm.

As I'm wandering around the boys' section, I stumble upon the cutest freaking outfit ever: a fleecy pair of powder-blue pajamas with bear's ears on the hood. Apparently in the world of children's wear, this is called a pram. I guess I've been reading too much Dickens, because I thought "pram" was Brit-speak for "stroller," but here it means "item of puffy clothing designed to elicit shrieks of joy from grandmothers all over the world."

The minute I pick it up, I'm accosted by a woman who is the type of woman you can find at every department store in the world. If you've ever bought a bra at Macy's, you know exactly who I'm talking about: she's older, she has a strong Eastern European accent, and she would like to inform you exactly what you need to buy, so you can save yourself the trouble of coming up with an opinion of your own.

When I told the woman what I was looking for, she asked me if the clothes were for a boy or a girl. Girl, I answered.

"This is the boy's section," she informed me. I replied that yes, I knew it was, but it didn't really matter to me -- I was just looking for winter baby clothes. You wouldn't believe the look she gave me in response, but the intention of it was clear: yes, it DID matter. It mattered a great deal.

She eyed the blue pram I was holding. "We have that for girls. The girls clothes are over here," she said, marching over to the other side of the store. And hey, guess what? Everything was pink, pink, pink. Pink sweaters with red and pink matching pants, pink velour tracksuits, pink puffy coats and pink fleecy vests.

"This is good for winter!" the woman said enthusiastically, plucking a tiny white woolen sweater off the rack and placing it into my arms. The price on the tag was $44.99. She led me to the cash register, where I gave her the blue outfit and told her the white sweater was too expensive and I didn't need it.

"It's on sale. Only $29.99," she told me, and proceeded to ring up the sweater. "I don't need it," I repeated, and physically removed the sweater from the pile. She kind of shrugged her shoulders like, Okay, apparently it's not enough that your imposing your gender confusion upon your daughter -- you want her to freeze, too.

Do we dress our girls in pink because pink is what they like? Or do our girls like pink because, from the youngest possible age, we've swaddled them in nothing else? Why are mothers taught to believe that it matters whether we dress our month-old child in blue, pink, yellow or black? Why the disapproval if I want to put her in clothes with lions on them, or baseballs, or a rocket ship? Would it be more appropriate if that rocket ship was pink?

Learning the Rules

Big Smile

I've been meaning to post a more detailed update for the last week, and every time it seems like I'm thwarted by our temperamental little girl, who has mastered the ability to stay awake for up to five hours at a time. I think I've found a brilliant way to deal with this problem, but more on that in a second. Right now, Sadie is chilling in the swing and I am going to relish these few moments of freedom. Ahhhhh. That's good.

What amazes me the most about these past couple of days is what huge leaps and bounds Sadie seems to have made, and how different these leaps and bounds are from the ones she made the week before. Week three was a growth spurt -- an exhausting one for both of us. She wanted to eat ALL. THE. TIME. By the end of the week, she'd hit the ten-pound mark. Yes, that's nearly three full pounds in three weeks. Pretty amazing when you consider that babies gain, on average, an ounce a day.

So there was this growth spurt. And by the end of it, suddenly Sadie no longer fit into her newborn diapers, and all of her onesies were suspiciously tight. That was Sadie the body. But if you'd asked me what was different about Sadie the person, I wouldn't have much to tell you. She was still doing her daily cycle of feeding, crapping, crying and sleeping. Not much variety there. In the last week, though? I began to see some real changes.

I say "I" instead of "we" because Scott has been in Vancouver, and has therefore missed the last week (or, as I like to remind him, the latest quarter of his daughter's life. He doesn't appreciate my humor). Aside from a three-day stay from my sister (a total Godsend) and brief visits from grandparents, it's just been me and my little girl. That means that the changes, as they occur, are pretty much noticed by me alone.

And what are those changes? Well, for one, she's become alert. Before, she would exist in the midst of whatever was going on around her, without any particular connection or response to that activity. But now, she's much more aware of what's going on around her. She can follow you with her eyes, reach out to you when you hover over her. She listens to sounds and voices. When you pick her up after a crying session, she looks at you with an expression on her face that says, "Mom, what took you so long?"

With this newfound alertness comes the best change of all: smiles. It used to be she'd smile when she was pushing out a fart, or as she was cycling through her facial expressions as she slowly slid into sleep. (Did you know babies do this? I didn't.) Then one day, she began smiling in the mornings, her best time of day. She'd look into my face and smile. She'd listen to me making silly sounds and smile some more.

The only problem? Mornings have traditionally been her only good time of day. Because starting around 10am, she wakes up and doesn't seem to want to go back to sleep. Around early afternoon, at the point when she's been up 4-5 hours straight, she always gets fussy, and by early evening she's downright cranky.

It's been driving me crazy, trying to figure out this problem. How can I get her to sleep more? Why is it so hard to get her to nap? I was considering this problem shortly after my sister left the house to go back to Orange County, after I'd dissolved into panicked tears wondering how I'd get through the next four days alone. That's when I remembered a book a friend of ours loaned us, "The 90 Minute Sleep Program."

The book is written by a neurologist (and mother), and her theory is a very simple one: the human body naturally operates within 90 minute energy cycles. 45 minutes after a baby has awakened from sleep, she's at her peak level of alertness, and 90 minutes after, she's at her most low-energy and vulnerable to sleep. The book recommends soothing your baby to sleep 90 minutes after she's woken up, regardless of whether she's awakened from a 3-hour marathon nap, or a 30 minute catnap.

It sounded unlikely -- remember, Sadie's capable of staying up for five hour stretches, becoming more and more irritable by the hour. But I decided to give it a try. When she woke up from her nap Wednesday afternoon, I fed her, changed her, played with her, and 80 minutes later, began her favorite soothing activity of bouncing on the yoga ball. When I began, her eyes were wide open. And guess what? Ten minutes later, she was out like a light.

Since then, the process has worked like a charm. The only wild card element is how long she'll actually sleep once she's been gone down. Often, it's only 20 or 30 minutes at a time, and then I have to keep her awake for another 90 minutes once she's back up, which is exhausting for me. But this afternoon, I put her down at 2:45 and she slept until 5:45, giving me a chance to take a nap, and I was so grateful to the author of this book that I wanted to cry.

Again.

3 1/2 Week Check-In

Do you know what a three and a half week old baby does?

Not a lot.

The things she does do are pretty cute, to be sure. She now holds eye contact, and when she's in a good mood she goes through a variety of facial expressions that make her look more like a human and less like a little goblin.

We've taken to entertaining her with silly, high-pitched sounds, which, on a good day, get her to break into a little half-smile. The delighted cackling that this reaction elicits is hard to believe. I think it's just that such a large portion of our days are devoted to merely keeping her from fussing that when she swings over into good cheer, it's cause for celebration.

She's discovered her hands, and is now very interested in them rather than just using them to flail wildly and whack herself repeatedly in the face. Sucking on her fists, putting her fingers in her mouth and reaching outwards towards us are all new signs of progress.

These are all small things, though. For the most part she is still very much a newborn. She spends much of each day sleeping in her swing, or in somebody's arms. When she's not doing that, she's eating. She eats ALL THE TIME. Constantly. It's great to see but exhausting to keep up with.

We're very happy with this little girl, despite the new challenges she throws at us every day.

While the Cat's Away, the Mouse Will Post

And by "cat" I mean Sadie, and by "mouse" I mean myself, and by "away" I mean "asleep for two minutes, finally, after five freaking hours of fussing and refusing to be anywhere but in my arms without pitching a royal hissy."

This is her new phase. She wants to be in my arms, not anywhere else, and being put down in her swing or her bouncy seat or, god forbid, her bassinet, is grounds for tears, wailing and gnashing of teeth. Literally as I type this, I'm shooting her swing suspicious glances, waiting for her to realize she's stuck in there and not with me.

And hey, she just realized it! Later.

The City of Sadie

Tummy time with King

Welcome, weary traveler, to our humble abode in the heart of the bustling City of Studio! You are welcome here. We are a simple people who co-exist with our neighbors and our animals in peace, but there is one thing you should know before you lay down your pack and rest.

You see, our home is ruled by a vengeful god known as The Sadie, otherwise known as She Who Must Be Appeased.

The Sadie is a mysterious being. We know little about her, though we have devoted many hours to studying her to learn the ins and outs of her capricious ways. There is precious little knowledge we can impart to you, weary traveler, but what knowledge we do have is yours.

To begin with, The Sadie must be placated with regular gifts of food. Milk is best; however, in the case of emergency, the severed head of a spring-born baby calf will also suffice.

The Sadie does not enjoy being put down, as this places her on the same level as everyday humans and she wants you to know she is more special than that.

There are two exceptions to this rule: The Sadie will deign to sit in her vibrating bouncy seat while you shower, as she is pleased by the sound of running water -- FOR A FEW MINUTES ONLY. (The Sadie does not like you to push your luck.)  Also, The Sadie enjoys lying on the changing table while you rub her ass with wet wipes. She likes you to know your place.

A warning! The Sadie can also be worshipped at the sacred baths, but you must take caution. She may seem to enjoy the bath by closing her eyes and smiling the entire time. Do not let her seeming pleasure lull you into a sense of false complacency. The next time you attempt to bathe her, she will react with great fury and outrage as if you are poking her in her belly button with sharp sticks. There is no rhyme or reason to this. The mind of The Sadie is unknowable.

Much like the clouds gather over the distant mountaintop of Haleakala each afternoon, the end of the day brings thunderclouds to our home, known locally as the Sadie Shitstorm. Yes, there is actual shit involved. Also screaming. There is no shelter from the storm. It can only be waited out with the coming of evening and that special, sacred time of day known as Sadie's Bedtime. No one knows why the afternoon displeases our great goddess. It is part of her mystery.

Should The Sadie make her presence known to you in the middle of the night, weary traveler, do not fear. Wrap her in a blanket, sit down on our Big Blue Exercise Ball, and get ready to repeat the sacred chant. Here are the words, sung to the melody of Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue":

Sadie Sue
Sadie Sue
Pretty pretty pretty pretty Sadie Sue
Oh, Sadie
My Sadie Sue
Oh I love you, gal, yes I love you, Sadie Sue.

The chant MUST be repeated no less than fifty times, after which if The Sadie has seen fit to smile upon you, she may allow you to go back to sleep.

We wish you the best of luck, gentle stranger. Welcome to the strange, exciting world of The Sadie.

The Hard Part

Jungle Onesie

As of yesterday, Sadie is two weeks old. It really is hard to believe she's only been in our lives that long. Our old lives feel very, very far away.

Scott and I are struggling to adjust to life with this tiny, temperamental creature. On the whole he seems to be struggling a lot less than I am. A lot of things come naturally to him -- how to buckle her into her carseat and hoist it in and out of the car, how to tuck her into the crook of his arm and fall asleep with her on the couch, how to tell why she's crying and whether she needs something, or whether she's just being cranky and needs a few minutes to calm herself down.

Me, I'm still kind of this quivering bundle of hormones with limited usefulness. I cry so much now that it's kind of hilarious -- especially because I'm not crying because I'm unhappy. It's more like every single expression of feeling, whether positive or negative, immediately manifests itself as tears. I cry when I'm tired, when Sadie won't cooperate, when Scott comes home, when my mother calls. Poor Scott -- he probably never figured he'd be dealing with TWO wailing females once the baby finally arrived.

Luckily we have been very blessed by having family close by. We really do have the greatest families anyone could ask for. They babysit, they invite us over for brunch to get us out of the house, and they are generally awesome. It is because of them that I am not freaking more about the fact that Scott will be leaving for Vancouver in a week and gone for as long as TEN DAYS. AAAAAAAAAACK.

See what I mean about the hormones?

Enough about our fragile emotional states -- on to the more interesting stuff. And by "interesting," I of course mean, "Mildly interesting to anyone who's had a baby, and insufferably boring to everyone else."

Sadie is growing, like one of those pills you put in hot water that unfolds magically into a sponge shaped like a circus animal. Even the pediatrician was amazed. After originally losing about 10 oz after birth, she has regained it all back and then some, and is now over 8 lbs. She is also tall -- or rather, long. When she stretches her legs out and raises her arms, she looks like a noodle. Well, a noodle with a giant head.

Her hair and eyes are getting lighter. The most amazing things about her are her blonde eyebrows, and blonde highlights. How come I have to spend $200 to get highlights like that, and nature just gave them to her for free? As for her eyes, we're still playing the guessing game as to what color they will eventually be. They started out dark gray, but now seem to be turning bluer.

Her digestive system has come online with a vengeance, and she now happily burps and farts her way through every meal. Seriously, the pooping? Is out of control. Newborns are supposed to progressively poop less and pee more as they get older. Sadie obviously did not receive this memo. There is nothing she enjoys better than taking a loud, bubbly, giant crap. No, I take that back. If there's one thing she enjoys more than taking a giant crap, it's taking an initial giant crap, then waiting until we start changing her diaper, then taking a SECOND giant crap all over the the changing pad and the hands of whoever happens to be wiping her ass at the time.

No, wait. There's one thing she likes even more than that, and it's taking a giant crap while we're giving her a bath so that she goes from clean baby to a baby who is suddenly sitting a sinkful of poop water.

Babies are fun.

But late nights and stress and explosive poop aside, there is just so much awesomeness there too. Today, for the first time, she looked at me and burst into a big smile. Not a fart smile -- a REAL smile. And then Scott came over and leaned his head down at her and she looked at him, and she did it again -- a huge, sunny smile. It filled my whole heart with happiness. So what do you think I did? That's right -- I cried.

Taking a Breath

We've been home from the hospital for a week now, making Sadie officially a nine-day-old.

It really does feel like a lifetime ago that we were kid-less; it seems like she's always been with us. At the same time, she is a completely foreign being whose language we speak only minimally.

In many ways, she's a wonderfully easy baby. She loves to be held, tolerates having her diaper changed, and when she does cry, swaddling her up in a blanket and bouncing her gently in our arms quiets her instantly. Feeding times are a pleasure, occasional projectile spit-ups aside. Put her in her bouncy seat (with all-new Vibrating Motion!) and she's usually asleep in minutes, and will stay there for hours.

This is during the day.

Nighttime is a completely different experience, and is our punishment for the reward of having such a cheerful daytime newborn. She's up and down sometimes hourly; soothing her back to sleep can be an exhausting experience. When we get a 3 hour stretch of sleep out of her in the nighttime hours, it's cause for celebration.

We figured out pretty early that co-sleeping in the bedroom with us was nothing more than a way to ensure that neither of us got any sleep. Because she's still a couple of weeks away from being able to bottle-feed, I'm her only source of food and that means when she wakes up hungry, I'm the one who feeds her. We decided I should move into the nursery, and so that's what I've done.

What that means is that when she gets up, I get up, and when she whimpers or makes noise, I get up then, too, because I now exist in a constant state of mild anxiety wherein I'm always waiting for her to awaken and start fussing. It sounds like a rawer deal for me than it is, because she has her 5-6am meal, I wake up Scott and hand her off to him and then go into our bedroom for another couple hours of sleep.

I've gotten a lot better at getting her back to sleep when she does wake up. The routine has become: check the diaper for poop, have a feeding, then bounce on the yoga ball and sing softly until her eyes close. It works, but it's also an exhausting routine to cycle through three or more times a night, considering it can take as long as an hour from when she wakes up to when she finally gets back to sleep.

Everyone says this will pass and she will eventually start sleeping in longer stretches, so I'm focusing on that.

Next entry: the joys of bodily functions, and how bad it makes you feel the first time you get shampoo in your baby's eyes.