Heart on My Sleeve

The best description I've heard yet for what it feels like to have a kid I attribute to Teresa Strasser, although she attributes it to someone else, I can't remember who. She was trying to explain how much she worries all the time about the well-being of her baby, how she's just now realized that she will feel this way for the rest of her life, and said, "It's like now you wear your heart outside of your body."

This is true. I, who was always something of a worrywart to begin with (there's a reason Scott will never, ever own a motorcycle as long as I draw breath), now experience each day haunted by the specter of something bad happening to my daughter, and this desperate need to make sure she's safe all the time.

I'm not one of those moms who refuses to leave her child in the care of a non-family member, or who has to call home forty times when she goes to the market, or who checks in on her sleeping baby every ten minutes to make sure she's still breathing. And I think those women are...well, maybe not crazy, but burdening themselves in a way that cannot be enjoyable to deal with on a moment-to-moment basis.

That said, I can no longer stand the thought of my baby being in danger in any way. And, as I've discovered much to my own chagrin, I can no longer stand the thought of anyone else's baby being in danger in any way. In the space of about a year, I have somehow turned from the person who made dead baby jokes at the drop of a hat (Why did the baby cross the road? Because it was stapled to the chicken!) to someone who wants to mother the whole world. Seriously. I heard a girl crying for her mommy at Babies R Us today and came charging into the aisle, shopping cart and all, convinced that someone was trying to kidnap her. Turns out the perp in question? Her dad.

This week has been tougher than usual because Scott's been out of town, which makes me hypervigilant when it comes to taking care of Sadie. Since she was born I've started experiencing semi-regular night terrors, which is something I've rarely suffered before. I've read a lot about them, out of curiosity -- now I don't have to. Night terrors suck.

If you've never experienced sleep paralysis, it's basically a phenomenon in which your brain wakes before your body does. While you have the sensation of being awake, you can't move and you often experience odd and unpleasant sensations, such as a pressure on your chest (one theory says that people who claim to have experienced alien abductions are really just prone to especially vivid night terrors.)

With me, what happens is that I will think I'm awake. I feel myself lying in bed, and I can sense the room around me, although it's always pitch black. Then, in a frenzy, a stranger will burst into the bedroom and hurtle themselves toward me. I can never see their face, but I sense them and I can't move. Two nights ago, I awoke at five to feed the baby, then woke again to hear her crying a short while later. I vividly remember turning over to see that it was 6am on the nose, and thought, "Okay, I guess she's up for good this time." That's when her crying got louder. It came down the hall towards me. The bedroom door burst open. Someone was running into my room. Holding my baby. It was too dark to see anything but I could hear her, in the room with me, and him.

That's when I woke up for real, to dead silence.

So, yeah. It's kind of been screwing with my head, a little. But I actually didn't even write this post to talk about night terrors, I swear. I actually was going to share a funny anecdote about how I almost dropped Sadie on her head the other day. She was sitting in my arm as I was carrying her into the kitchen to make a bottle, holding a Pyrex cup full of water in my other hand to heat in the microwave. A moment later, she'd leaned back too far, past the tipping point and was rapidly falling backwards towards the kitchen floor. The look of alarm on her face was almost comical, but probably not as comical as my reaction, which was to drop the cup of water all over the kitchen counter, fall to my knees and stick my hand under her head to catch it while her legs were still tangled up between my arm and my body.

Of course she was fine, and I was fine, and the glass didn't even break, and I think the sound of it clanging on the counter scared her worse than the falling. Me? I'm still getting over it. How does anyone manage this? Wearing their heart on the outside like this? What happens when she gets old enough to go to school? Have sleepovers with her friends? Get behind a wheel of the car? Can I legally lock her in her bedroom until she turns 18? Mothers everywhere, I tip my cap to you for making it through theday without having 14 consecutive heart attacks.

Sadie on a Hike

Well, This Is New.

For the past several weeks Sadie has been working very intently on trying new sounds. Those efforts mostly consisted of her twisting her mouth into wacky expressions, smacking her lips together, and eventually resorting to the same old sounds she's been making for months now, which are all basically variations on "AAAAAAAAAAAAAH."

Oh, also, "PPPPPBBBBBBBBBBBTH."

Yesterday, though, it all came together for the first time, all that contorting and smacking and "ahh"-ing, and suddenly, BAM. This.

I apologize that the video below has barely any actual baby in it. I pretty much can't get near Sadie with the iPhone because she will immediately hurl herself at it in an effort to get it into her mouth, so I have to trick her into thinking it's not there. You'll see at the end, when I do finally try pointing it at her, the jig is up pretty quickly.

Sadie baby babble

We're So 3008...You're so 2000 and Late

Yesterday when I posted, I noticed that the Slurry Baby Blog is up to 3008 views. (It's 3016 as of this morning.)

That's really awesome. It means that not only are people coming here to get regular updates about our crazy kid, but also for the fun of it, and also, hopefully, for some useful information.

If nothing else, I would love it if just one new set of parents learned something useful from this website that will help make their own child-raising experience easier, whether it's an idea for how (or how not) to sleep train, or reassurance that they shouldn't worry just because their baby refuses to meet a milestone on the typical schedule, or what new insanity they can expect at the six month point.

And hey, if you've only checking in periodically to get updates on the vegetable garden (JAMIE), that's cool too.

Oh.

As you guys know if you've been keeping up to date with my incredibly boring sleep-related blog updates, Sadie was driving us both batty with the random 5am wake-ups, at which point she always wanted to eat before going back to sleep for another 90 minutes if we were lucky.

It was what finally encouraged me to start considering making the switch from breastfeeding to formula, something I wasn't especially inclined to do otherwise -- everyone kept telling us that formula fed babies sleep longer. To which I wanted to say, "But you guys don't understand. She always slept FINE up until six weeks ago. Hunger isn't the problem. The problem is...crap, I don't know what the problem is. Babies are weird."

Making this switch -- even considering making this switch -- has inspired a deep-seated guilt that I wasn't prepared for. Because why would I feel guilty? Fewer than 20% of American mothers are still breastfeeding their children past the age of six months, and here I've been going for seven and a half. The reasons for this guilt are many, and I won't go into them in too much detail -- not because I don't want to, but because I don't feel like I should have to, and the fact that I still do is all kinds of messed up. Let's just say that it can be difficult to be a modern American mother and speak the word "formula," if you aren't prepared to deal with a lot of raised eyebrows and tsking.

So anyway, we talked about it a lot and I cried a couple of times and ultimately I came up with this ABSURDLY complicated gameplan for weaning Sadie which involves not just slowly increasing the number of bottles she takes per day, but also decreasing the amount of breast milk in each bottle while upping the amount of formula, which by the way MUST BE ORGANIC and kind of smells like fish and the first time I sniffed it I thought, "Sadie is going to HATE this stuff and she will never forgive me for not letting her nurse until she was three years old like the crunchy mothers say I should do and OH MY GOD I AM A BAD MOM."

Okay. Well. This week, we implemented The Plan.

The Plan, I should mention, involved not just introducing formula into her diet, but also discouraging her 5am wake-ups by trying to allow her to cry herself back to sleep. We've been prepared for a very rough week, in other words.

Here's how it went:

Monday: Nursing, bottle, bottle, bottle, nursing, bed. She couldn't get enough of the bottles. By the end of the day she was like, "Oh, what? Boobs? No really, I couldn't drink another drop." And then she slept through the night without a peep.

Tuesday: Repeat of Monday.

Wednesday: Repeat of Tuesday, with the exception that I made the stupid error of skipping a feeding mid-day because she didn't seem hungry. Along came the 5am wake-up, finally, at which point it was like a big flashing light in my head said: YOU IDIOT, SHE'S BEEN HUNGRY THIS WHOLE TIME. THAT'S WHY SHE'S WAKING UP CRYING AT 5AM.

So, duh. There you have it. We've been beating ourselves up for making the switch to formula, convinced we were doing it for purely selfish reasons, only to discover that Sadie is fuller, happier and sleeping better all around. I kind of wish I'd done it sooner, except that I don't, because every time I think about the fact that I won't be sharing that special time with her anymore, those silent 5am feedings where she falls asleep in my arms in the rocking chair while the world sleeps, it makes me want to cry a little bit more.

Crap! Arugula.

I love my arugula plant. It is a thing of sheer beauty, a tiny, delicate seedling 40 days ago that has now become a behemoth of a plant, the tallest plant in the garden not counting the tomato vines. A few weeks back it began blossoming tiny white flowers on long, tall stalks, putting the plant now at close to 1 1/2 feet high. Truly impressive.

Then I went and researched when to harvest arugula, and turns out you're supposed to do it before it starts flowering. Once it flowers, turns out, it stops producing new leaves. And the remaining leaves turn more and more bitter. Once hot weather arrives, the arugula is pretty much done, which means my lovely arugula is already on its way out.

Looks like I'll be having plenty of arugula salads in the next week or so.

Ack. Sleep. Where?

I've been holding off about blogging again about Sadie's sleep ups and downs, because in the back of my mind I'm always thinking "tonight's the night she'll grow out of it. Tonight, she goes back to the baby she was six weeks ago. I know she's capable of sleeping 12 hours in a row -- she used to do it all the time. Damn it, where did that baby go?"

Well, I finally had to admit that it's not going to happen on its own. As we were warned by our doctor and pretty much everyone else, Sadie's sleep is no longer as peaceful as it once was. And as we muddle through the process of trying to change her now erratic nighttime patterns, our perspectives on how to respond to her constant wake-ups are changing too.

It all started right around the 6-month growth spurt, which I detailed a few weeks back. Sadie was waking up multiple times during the night, always ravenously hungry. When the growth spurt petered out, the habitual wake-ups continued, and it wasn't until I realized she wasn't actually hungry anymore that I was moved to do anything about it.

Thus followed a couple of very painful nights in which we practiced a modified version of the "cry-it-out" method of baby sleep training, which, depending on who you ask, is either a lifesaving invention or child abuse. Call it what you will, but Sadie responded well to it. After only a few nights of going in periodically to pat her reassuringly and replace her pacifier each time she woke up and cried, she figured out that tears weren't going to get her picked up and nursed, so she stopped crying.

Well...sort of. The wake-ups decreased, but they didn't cease entirely. And as of late, they've fallen into a distressing pattern: Wake-Up #1 comes right as we're getting into bed, around 10:30 or 11. Wake-Up #2 hits right around 5am. Wake-Up #3 is usually an hour and a half later, at which point she's up for the day and Mom is bleary-eyed yet again. Also, I'm not talking quick wake-ups; its no longer possible to make her fall instantaneously back to sleep just by putting her pacifier back in her mouth. When she's awake, she sometimes wants to be awake for awhile. And I admit, this is really my fault -- I'd gotten back into the habit of nursing her multiple times at night, just because it's the quickest way to get her to fall back asleep.

I mean look, we're not complaining over here. She's been an absolute dream of a baby, and we're lucky that we got to brag about her sleeping abilities for as long as we did. We definitely deserve a healthy helping of Sleepless BabyCake at this point. But that doesn't make the waking up any easier, and so last week we once again resigned ourselves to employing Cry-it-Out, aka CIO, aka The Ferber Method, aka The Fastest Way to Get Attachment Parents On Your Butt.

Here, in brief, is how the method works: when your baby wakes up and cries, you first wait a minute to see if she'll put herself back to sleep. (If she's anything like Sadie, she never does.) Then, you go in to check on her. Soothe her by replacing her pacifier or patting her chest lightly, but don't speak to her or pick her up. Leave the room, let her cry for three minutes, then go back in and repeat the same actions. This time, let her cry for five minutes, then ten, then every ten minutes until she gets tired enough to fall asleep on her own.  The idea is to help your baby understand that while you aren't going to pick them up, you're still close by.

First, we tackled the 11am wake-up. Night #1 was a resounding failure. The first time she cried, expecting me to pick her up, Scott went in there instead, and she was REALLY not happy to see him. Something in her panicked shrieks yanked me to my feet and down the hall, where I vaguely remember SHOVING my husband out of the way so I could grab the baby before she could be any more traumatized, despite the fact that I was half-asleep as this was going on.

Night #2 worked better. This time I was the first one in there, and although she was mad at me for not picking her up, I only had to go in one more time before she stopped crying and fell asleep. Night #3, she woke up again but quickly fell back to sleep once her paci was back in place. By the next night, she was sleeping soundly and since then it seems she's managed to drop the 11pm wake-up entirely.

So. Now. It's time to move on to the 5am wake-up. This one is going to be a toughie, and Scott and I both know it. In fact, we made a pact today that beginning next Monday, we will resign ourselves to getting no sleep between the hours of 5-6am for several days straight, because I know Sadie is not going to like having her 5am feeding phased out. Once again, this is my fault. I hate getting up early, and so when Sadie wakes up, the only thought going through my head is, "MUST GET HER BACK TO SLEEP IMMEDIATELY." So I nurse her, and she falls asleep in the rocking chair, and then she goes back into her crib and I back to my bed and we both sleep for another hour or two, and that's all well and good, except...

...we're going to start formula soon.

And I'll be damned if I'm going to get up every morning at 5am and warm up a bottle, feed it to her, then put her back to bed and try to get back to sleep myself. There's just no need for it. I know she can sleep in until 6:30 or 7, because she used to do it every single freaking morning. Sorry, kid, but both you know and I know that you don't really need that 5am meal.

Ooh, I'm dreading this so much. As much as Sadie balked at the 11pm Ferberizing, (and the Ferberizing that came before it) I can't imagine what her response is going to be to the news that the nice warm meal she's taken for granted so many dark mornings in a row will no longer be forthcoming. Something tells me the paci is not going to help with this one. All we can do is pray nobody calls CPS on us as we lie in bed, gritting our teeth and checking the clock to see if it's time to go back in and pat her again.

Cross your fingers for us. 

 

Daddy's Girl

Scott's been out of town for the past week, working. He only just returned yesterday. It's the longest trip he's taken since Sadie was born, and it was rough on both of us, but we know we have to get used to it because this is only the beginning of what will be a year full of business trips for him and double parent duty for me.

In preparation, we set up a webcam on the computer and Scott taught me how to use Skype. (Yeah, I realize I'm about the last internet-savvy person left on Earth who has never used Skype, but something about the idea of being on the phone while looking the other party in the eye has always made me feel weird. Like awkward phone pauses aren't awkward enough?) So every night he'd call and I'd dutifully hold the baby up to camera and Scott would go, "Sadie! Sadie! Sadie!" and Sadie would ignore him and kick the keyboard instead because anything that has buttons on it automatically becomes her favorite thing in the room.

I'm kidding. She actually only got interested in the keyboard after she was done grinning her head off at the sound of her dad's voice, even though I don't think she ever put it together that the image on the computer screen was him. And that was a running theme this whole week: hear Dad's voice, freak out with excitement. You'd be surprised how many ways Scott's voice has been recorded in this household. One night as I changed her diaper, the phone rang and the outgoing message began to play. The instant she heard him say "Hello..." her head whipped towards the door and she began to squirm and smile, looking for his face. I felt really bad until 5 seconds later when she forgot all about it and got interested in the stuffed dog on her changing table instead because she has the attention span of a hummingbird.

At some point when I wasn't paying attention, Scott became Sadie's favorite person in the whole world. Watching them together is so much fun. He walks into a room and her whole face lights up with joy. He approaches and she squeals with anticipation. He picks her up, flips her upside down so he can munch on her belly, and while I'm having silent heart attacks imagining her being dropped on her head, she's having the time of her life.

It all brings back memories of spending time with my dad when I was a kid and how, when he wanted to, he could become the funnest person who has ever lived. A simple day of hanging out on the beach, or walking around the campus at UCLA, or rolling down grassy hillsides across the street from the mall, always transformed into something special when it was just the two of us. He'd point out something interesting, or teach me an important fact (a tendency from his teaching days that he's never been able to shake, which later in life made me and my sister roll our eyes as we anticipated a "Dad lecture") or, more often, make a game out of whatever we were doing.

Ever since the day we learned we were having a daughter, I've hoped she would share times like this with her own dad, that they would become best friends. I just didn't realize it would happen so quickly. I'm not jealous -- not when I still get to be the person who comforts her the best, the only person she'll tolerate drying her off after a bath or putting her into and taking her out of a carseat 20 times as we run errands. She's still my girl. But now, she's daddy's girl, too.