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.
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