Knocked Up : sleep

A Room of His Own

knockedup — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:51:00 GMT

My boys both slept through the night last night, and the night before. Not a creature was stirring, except for the constantly hungry cat, from a little after ten to 5:30. I should be happy, right? Perhaps I've got a slumber hangover - you know, when you feel like crap because you've rested too much after your body has become accustomed to a frequently interrupted night of sleep - because I'm not. See, three month old Jonas slept both of these nights in his own room. It was the end to cosleeping.

Until two nights ago, Jonas snoozed in a bassinet at the foot of our bed, or in bed with us. Sometimes he snoozed. Other times he rolled around and squawked. Sean and I got used to whispering. I got used to tiptoeing about, trying to stay quiet, and then stumbling over a laundry basket/toy tractor/stray boot/cat because of Sleeping Baby Law No. 23 that goes something like, "The harder you try to minimize noise, the more the jackhammer will slam and the rooster will crow." It follows Sleeping Baby Law No. 22: Whenever you tell someone the baby slept through the night, he will fail to sleep through the night on the following evening, and right before Sleeping Baby Law No. 24: When you most want the baby to sleep, the baby will sleep the least. When you want to keep the baby awake, the baby will want to sleep. Then there's my current personal nemesis, Sleeping Baby Law No. 37: The minute you pour a glass of wine and relax, thinking the baby is finally, really, truly asleep, the baby will start crying again.

After a few nights of regression (Sleeping Baby Law No. 1: As soon as you think you've got the schedule figured out, it will change), I decided it was time for Jonas to go out on his own, his own in this case meaning a room down the hall. The night wakings were increasing, not decreasing, and I'd had enough. He moved to what we're callling the boys' room, the bedroom across the way from Axel's. Once Jonas is sleeping more regularly, we'll probably combine the boys in this room and return Axel's current bedroom to an office. It will be nice not to have tomato sauce splattered on my laptop, now squashed in a makeshift kitchen counter pile of clutter/office/work type space. But, I'm not going to risk having one boy wake up the other one during this precarious sleeping stage, if I can help it. Thus, the separate rooms for now.

That first night, our bedroom was quiet, even though we could talk loudly. I didn't cringe at each shake of the cat's collar, or hiss at him to be still so he wouldn't wakt the baby. I listened to the humidifers swoosh on the dual baby monitors, thinking I'd heard nonexistent squawks.

Sleeping through the night is a good thing, and the kid does seem to sleep better in his own room. It was time for him to sleep in his crib. We'll both rest better this way. But I missed hearing his little snuffles and staring at his chubby cheeks when our room is flooded by the neighbor's overactive motion sensor security light. Our bedroom felt empty, even though our cat was trying his best to crowd me out of the bed. I told Sean that the boys were growing up. He laughed because Jonas can't even roll over from his back to his belly. My overactive imagination was leaping from moving out of our bedroom to moving out of the house, fast-forwarding the next 18 years. Obviously he hasn't left yet.

He's just down the hall.

The Bedtime Routine

knockedup — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:16:00 GMT

Finally, after thirteen weeks, we've landed in a sort of a bedtime routine. There's a semi-predictable pattern. I can think one or two steps ahead, rather than just sprinting from one task to the next, juggling whatever baby/toddler/dog/food-related mini-emergency arises.

Here are the parameters: one parent, two children, one dog, and one cat. Yeah, basically, I'm on my own at bedtime. Sean's on shift and, thus, sleeping, or not sleeping, at a fire station ten miles away, and, when he's not on shift, he's now in this little thing called paramedic school, which demands his presence at least three nights a week. So, any bedtime strategies have to be doable by one parent, because we've only got two parents at home two, sometimes one, night a week.

(Note: while I have had my selfish woe-is-me moments, like when I've just been puked or pooped on by Jonas and Axel is yelling, "Dog dog dog dog dog," while waving his arms over his head in a booga-booga fashion and chasing the dog who is barking and who just finished eating the dinner that I foolishly put too close to the edge of the kitchen table, I recognize that we are very lucky. Sean has not been deployed overseas. Neither of us is struggling with a serious illness. I am not actually a single parent, even if I am alone with both kids most of the time that I'm not at work. It's just a bit of a rocky transition, from a 65/35 parenting split to something more like 80/20 or, as it will be in some weeks, 90/10.)

Anyway, here's what a typical evening is starting to look like at our house:

4:20 pm: Get home. Relieve nanny, who stays with the boys a couple days a week. Put bottles of expressed milk in the fridge. Wave goodbye to nanny.

4:30 pm: Strap Jonas into the Baby Bjorn. Play outside. See tractor. Wave to tractor. Chase Axel down the street after his long lost love, big yellow tractor. See bus. Wave to bus. Prevent Axel from running into the street to declare his love for the bus and all its passengers. See mail truck. Wave to mail truck. Follow mail truck down the street. Wath Axel cheer, "Mail mail mail mail mail!" Think how nice it must be for the mailman to have a fan club.

5:00 pm: Pick up the mail. Tell Axel it's time to come inside. Chase Axel. Let out best horror movie heroine scream as Axel approaches dog poop and kneels down, apparently considering scooping up said poop with his bare hand. Get everyone one foot from the doorstep, only to hear a battle cry of, "Cat cat cat cat," a la Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, as Axel chases cat off the porch (bobbling on the steps and inspring visions of a head injury), across the neighbor's lawn, and under a bush.

5:15 pm: Tell Axel again that it's time to come inside. No. Yes. No. Yes. Tractor? Yes. Inside. Pick him up. Go inside. Let Axel give Jonas one gentle kiss, a kiss that quickly morphs into a full-face slobber that stuns the easily shocked Jonas. Encourage Axel to play with set of wooden animals. Do not put on an Elmo video. Consider making something for dinner, like chicken pot pies from scratch! Wouldn't my mother in law be impressed! Realize that the fridge does not contain any of the ingredients for chicken pot pie, except for a few wilted carrots. Change someone's diaper. Change someone else's diaper. Notice spit up stain on shirt that was clean two minutes ago. What was I thinking about? Oh, right. Dinner.

5:23 pm: Floor is now covered in Legos, which Axel is happily pushing as far from the Lego box as possible while singing a little tune. This makes the dog bark. Jonas decides he is ravenous. Dinner is still a mystery, at least for the members of the house who want more than milk or Kibbles & Bits.

5:30 pm: Put on an Elmo video. A few minutes of Sesame Street can't hurt, right? Nurse Jonas, while Axel watches Elmo and Elmo's slightly creepy friend Mr. Noodle talk about pets and pulls all the cushions off of the living room furniture, replacing them with stuffed animals and blankets.

5:45 pm: Hear a crash in the front of the house. Pick up Jonas, who is still nursing, and walk to the front of the house, where Axel has climbed up on the double jogging stroller and pushed the mail off of the dresser just inside the front door. Remind him that jogging strollers are not jungle gyms. Comfort Jonas, who is offended that his meal has been interrupted by the walk across the house. More climbing - onto my bed, into Jonas' Pack and Play, on top of the coffee table - but, luckily, no crashing. Strategically deploy raisins.

6:00 pm: Feed pets. Pull out leftover frittata, random assortment of fruit, frozen chicken nuggets, and pretzels. Nuke it. All food groups are represented and an applicance has even been used to prepare the meal, so this is an adequate dinner. Tell Axel he must eat sitting at the table, while I snatch bites of chicken and fruit (standing up) and wash off breast pump parts. Put Jonas is bouncy chair. Sit for a few minutes, trying to engage Axel in conversation about his day, which revolves around the words truck, boom, paint, Daddy, baby, no no no, and cat.

6:07 pm: Axel climbs down from his chair, done with dinner. Clear plates. Go into basement, where Axel cooks an imaginary feast and eats a mound of imaginary food, which is apparently more satiating than real food. Keep Axel from tackling Jonas and dragging him across the floor to his lair, where he insists he wants to play with baby, except that "play" means "Test to make sure his ears are securely fixed to his head." More playing, more pooping, more nose wiping, more reminders not to chase the dog, more smiling and cooing at Jonas, more reading of books.

6:40 pm: Give Axel his dessert of graham crackers and milk. Change Jonas into a footed sleeper. Return to the kitchen in time to prevent Axel from feeding the dog a second graham cracker. Clean up toys. Cheer when Axel puts a single truck back in the toy box.

6:50 pm: Fill up bath. Try to find a happy place for Jonas. Fill up humidifiers (for white noise). Undress Axel, put him in the bath. Rock Jonas, sing to Jonas, or nurse Jonas while sitting on the toilet lid, next to the bathtub. Avoid the enthusiastic splashes coming from the wrecking of the S.S. Axel, which seems to have been submerged by rare teamwork from an octopus and a baby duck. Soap up one boy, sing to the other. Remove toddler from the tub. Hold him down and brush his teeth.

7:05 pm: Dress Axel in his pirate PJs, which results in lots of "Arrrggghs" all around, including from Jonas. Rescue Jonas from the bathmat. Rock Jonas. Try to keep Axel in his room. Read books that involve heavy machinery or cows. Read over wailing baby. Rock more. Two more books, a little water, and lights out.

7:25 pm: On to bedtime part two. Change Jonas, swaddle him up, nurse him while sorting through mail and singing snatches of lullabies.

8:00 pm: Put Jonas down in his bed, tiptoe out of the room, and finish eating dinner. Boys are sleeping!

8:05 pm: Jonas wails. Arrrgggh. More rocking, more singing, more snuffly little snuggles into my shoulder. Repeat, as necessary. Go into Axel's room, after a post bedtime poop, and ensure him that, yes, everyone he has ever met is sleeping, and thus he should sleep, too.

8:15 pm: Boys are sleeping! For real! Now comes laundry, kitchen clean up, dishes, packing things up for the morning, checking email, a few sit ups, the last ten minutes of Top Chef, showering, earnest thoughts about vaccuming and toilet cleaning that aren't followed through.

9:30 pm or beyond: Fall into bed, sometimes after another nursing session. Pledge to cook an actual meal for dinner again. Sometime. Eventually.

I think there's room for improvement.

Sleep, The Second Time Around

knockedup — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:50:00 GMT

When Axel was a baby, I was obsessed with sleep: who was sleeping (not my baby), who wasn't (me), how to get him to sleep (nursing, rocking, singing), and how to get him to stay that way (prayer and voodoo). When you don't sleep, it's all you can think about. Babies, I realized, are crazy. I even viewed all mothers who claimed their babies slept with some suspicion, especially those who slept through the night by four months - were they lying to me? Had they just forgotten, five or twenty-five years later? Had sleepy little aliens snatched away their human babies, replacing them with identical pod babies who snoozed for twelve hours straight?

Well, now I know the truth. They weren't lying. It's not aliens. There are real, live human babies who sleep more than two hours in a row. One of them lives with me.

I've been afraid to tell you this, for fear it might jinx it. I'm rubbing my luck rabbit's foot and knocking on wood and providing offerings of pink marabou-trimed slippers and expensive organic cotton mattresses to the sleep gods as I type this. But here it is: my youngest son actually sleeps.

Jonas consistently sleeps a six to eight hour stretch, and then he'll go back for another three or four hours. He sleeps until 7:00 or 7:30 in the morning. Even more amazing, I can put the child down while he's almost asleep, and sometimes he'll actually sink into slumber. His slept through from 9 pm - 6 am a handful of times.

I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. After my wakeful older son, I assumed that any child with my genes would be up three or more times a night and wouldn't sleep through the night until he was a year, or older.

I'm not quite sure why Jonas sleeps so well. He's living on mama's milk, just like Axel. He's about the same size. We turned Axel into a burrito with swaddling wraps every night, just like we do with Jonas. Both have loud humidifiers for white noise. Jonas sleeps in the top of the Pack N Play in our room, as Axel did. The one main difference? I can't always come running right when Jonas squeaks and cries, especially on all the nights that I'm alone with the two of them. So, Jonas has been given a few minutes here and there to put himself to sleep, not out of any master sleep plan but simply because I can't be two places at once and I don't yet have Go-Go Gadget arms. Oh, and I got an earlier start on the one thing that seems to have worked for Axel (who is now, at almost two, finally a sleep champion) - a more consistent bedtime routine, although calling it a "routine" is a bit of a stretch.

Mostly, though, it's luck. Jonas came wired to sleep a bit more at a younger age. For that, I am deeply, deeply thankful. It might not last, and there will be nights of frequent wakings from teething or illness or the boogieman. I'm savoring all the shut-eye while I can.

Kicking the Habit

knockedup — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:21:00 GMT

The bottle habit, that is. At Axel's 12 month check-up, his doctor told us now's a good time to get the boy off the bottle and on to the cup. Apparently, 12 - 15 months is a more flexible time in a child's life. There's no doubt Axel is physically a Gumby; he can touch his nose with his toes. His will and preferences, though, are less like a rubberband and more like Play-Do that's been left in an uncovered container for a few days. I guess this is only going to get worse, and soon he'll refuse to eat anything that isn't orange and insist on wearing a snorkeling mask as a hat.

During the day, it's all sippy cup, all the time. But he still has a bottle just before going to bed. Axel falls asleep on his own, after the bottle and speed-reading a few books by turning the pages faster than a speeding bullet. The extra calories of the post-bed milk do his body good, I think. He has another bottle when he wakes up at about 5 in the morning. After the 5 am bottle, he slips back off to dream of romping with a pack of friendly dogs in a room filled with empty cardboard boxes. He stays asleep until 6:30 or, from time to time, 7:00. This extra hour and a half is very, very precious to me. I do not want to disrupt the 90 minutes that let me sleep a little more or shower in peace.

Oh, and from time to time, there's also a 10 pm or a midnight or a 3 am nip.

I'm just not quite sure why I'd mess with a good thing and try to take away the bottle now. What's so bad about a bottle? I just doubt that having a bottle at 7:30 pm and one at 5:00 am mean that he's going to be screaming for one when he's three. Some mothers breastfeed their children past one and follow the child's lead to wean. It seems like I could wait to follow Axel's lead to get rid of the last few bottles.

So, tell me the truth. Is it now or never? Must we try to transition from the bottle 100% post-haste? Is it possible that a sippy cup of milk at 5 am would create the same 60 - 90 minutes of sleep? When did your kids get rid of the bottle for good?

Baby Rage

knockedup — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 22:05:00 GMT

Axel still gets mad when he's tired, and even more mad when someone tries to help him address the problem of exhaustion by encouraging him to sleep. He screams and cries and then, a few minutes later, a switch gets flipped and he's suddenly silent and asleep. There's no winding down - it's yell yell yell yell yell yell yell zzzzzzzz.

The other night, Sean was reading the great classic The Grouchy Ladybug to Axel. Axel likes to speed-read, so there's just enough time to repeat, "Wanna fight?" or identify the sparrow on the page before moving on to the next page. Once the ladybugs were happily eating aphids together, Sean offered Axel a bottle. Axel drank a little and sweetly, angellically, nuzzled into his father's chest. Then he decided he wanted a little more milk and did his adorable open bird-mouth request for a nipple. Sean offered him the bottle.

Axel (perhaps in homage to the grouchy ladybug) screamed at the bottle and pushed it away as violently as you can push something when you weigh less than a case of beer. This is the normal reaction to something that you've asked for - screaming and pushing. I like to do that after I order in restaurants - "Salmon? You think I ordered the salmon? Well you can take that perfectly cooked salmon and stuff it! And don't even think of offering me that molten chocolate cake for dessert!"

So, Sean put Axel down in his crib for a few minutes, because Axel had made it very clear that he didn't want anything that his parents could provide. Axel wailed. After a few minutes, Axel hadn't fallen asleep, so Sean went back in and found that Axel had, in his rage, taken off his pants. There he was, sitting up in his crib on top of his grandma-made sock monkey quilt, pantsless. After reporting to me that our son got so angry he took off his drawers, and trying to stifle his laughter, Sean went in and re-dressed Axel, offered him a little more milk, and Axel went off to dreamland.

In addition to angry pants and sock removal (maybe because his legs and feet get hot when he's mad? or because his pants are a symbol of the man holding him down and requiring that he wear clothes? Perhaps it's early rebellion against the dress code he'll encounter in middle school?), Axel has two other ways of showing his anger: an angry dinosaur shriek triggered when he can't have something sharp and pointy and likely to strangle him, and exertion farts. When he's particularly mad, he flings back his body, screams, and lets out some loud gas. This makes it hard to take his anger seriously. He's so mad that he toots. I know I shouldn't laugh, but it's hard to keep a straight face at a pantsless, farting kid who lets out high-pitched velociraptor sounds audible to dogs a few states over, all because I won't let him wrap a jump rope around his neck.

(Picture taken just before a scream at the horror of having to go out to breakfast.)

So, how about you? What funny things do your children do when angry?

Sleepless in Denver

knockedup — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:54:00 GMT

I know I should be thanking the magically delicious shooting stars and purple horseshoes that Axel's sleeping a solid ten hours each night. And I'm grateful. It's just that I'd consider animal sacrifice (just a little one, like a goldfish) if it would guarantee that he'd sleep in a little longer, until the sun is higher in the sky than the moon, even until 6:00 or 6:30 am.

Most mornings, I'm on solo baby duty. My man works 24 hour shifts which, with driving time and the fact that he gets in early and leaves late, mean that he's gone 26+ hours. So, if he's working, he leaves the house by 5:45. If he's coming home from work, he gets back at 7:45. Thus I'm trying to walk the dog and dress myself and dress the baby and feed the baby and possibly run a couple miles before work and make sure my sweater doesn't have boogers on it and get the bottles and diapers and my work crap in the car and a squirming baby in his car seat and, well, you get the picture. It's just a little bit chaotic. There's a lot of tripping over the cat and wearing of socks that don't match.

Almost every morning between 5 and 5:15, Axel makes his first peep, and I beg him (silently, from the other room) to just sleep in a little longer, so that I can sleep a little more and/or shower in peace. And every morning, Axel decides that 5:30 is the perfect time to get up and at 'em, and get the proverbial worm and all that. He's got important things to do. He can't just lounge around in bed all day. Hey, lazybones mama, he calls, get moving! There are enough worms to go around, I want to tell him, and you can still dig up a whole mess of them if you just give me fifteen more minutes.

Further complicating things: my old strategies no longer work. It seems I've got to pull a new baby distraction technique out of the hat every month. Now that Axel hates the exersaucer because baby, he was born to move, I can't stick him in there to bounce while I'm in the shower. This morning, I shut us both in the bathroom and hopped in the shower, and Axel discovered the toilet paper roll, a momentus occasion in any child's life, and ripped off sheets and then amused himself by trying to open the lid on the toilet. He ignored the colorful and strategically placed toys on the floor. The bathroom was a mess, my hair was wet, I had mascara on one set of my blonde eyelashes, and then a wave of ravenous hunger overtook Axel and forced him to do this weird bouncing from his butt to half standing thing that would be impressive if he wasn't also kind of being a butthead. An adorable butthead with a piece of (clean) toilet paper stuck to his upper lip.

I'm thinking maybe if I pulled an actual rabbit out my hat, especially a talking rabbit with bells on its toes, I'd be able to take a four minute shower and still have eight minutes to get dressed before Axel gets bored with the rabbit and tries to pull the phone book off the shelf and rip up all the listings of plumbers - which I let him to do because there seems to be seven competing phone book companies in our area, each of which delivers a new edition to us every month which we don't use because that's what the internet is for.

Let me pause here and say that all this morning chaos makes me even more impressed by single parents. Sure, I'm alone lots of days of the month, but not every day. Someone else is responsible for the compost bin and mowing the lawn (really, he does it, despite what it looks like in the picture above) and does half the grocery shopping (three cheers for my husband!). Just the thought of really doing it all alone overwhelms me. You guys are amazing. Big applause, all around.

I've tried shifting Axel's bedtime up a little and back a little. Still, his internal alarm goes off by 5:30. Regardless of whether he guzzles six ounces of milk or two before bed, he gets up before the sun. Dog barks have no influence on his sleeping or waking. He's just a morning baby. I'm mostly a morning person myself, but I'd like my morning to start at 5:45 and his to start at 6, so I have a few minutes to get some things done before the bright-eyed and diaper-tailed hyper-speed crawler joins me. Anything before 5:45 should still be dreamland for me and especially for a growing baby.

He did sleep until 6:30 on Monday. I got really, really excited, and then he woke up at 5:15 yesterday and at 5:20 today and dashed my hopefullness. He was coming down with a cold, and somehow I don't think that encouraging illness is the solution.

Unless any of you out there have some tried and true ways to get babies to sleep in, short of drugging them, I think I'm just going to have to get up earlier if I want to reduce the chaos. My alarm is going to be set for 5 am. No more late night TV for me, or drinks after happy hour, or crazy 10:00 pm dance parties in the living room. Not that I did any of those things before - I've been doing laundry and prepping things for daycare and doing dishes and catching up on work emails and trying to find a winter coat for Axel on Ebay. I'll just have to resign myself to sleeping less and drinking more lattes, and stop holding out hope that I'll be well-rested anytime in the next eighteen years.