Before Calvin, I thought I was good with babies. I mean... I have 45.5 nieces and nephews & I was an all-star babysitter since age 12, so of course this motherhood thing would come easily and naturally, right?
hahahaha
My over-confident self was humbled very quickly.
My baby needs me, and only me, every 2-3 hours to eat. While this bonding time has created some of my very favorite memories, it's also exhausting. When they say moms never get a vacation, they mean never. Unless you count our 1-hour getaways to Target. (And by 1 hour, I mean 60 minutes or less.) But then technically we're grocery shopping which is also a "mom duty," so does that really count?
Then there's those night wakenings. Babysitting doesn't prepare you for those. And despite how much Dad wants to help (he has trained himself to sleep through the crying) ...only mom can be the cure.
But even though the above is hard, we've recently encountered another difficult challenge. The three-letter word that drains me like no other...
N.A.P.
I wish someone would have warned me that my perfect-angel-sleep-anywhere-through-anything baby was going to disappear overnight. Not gradually. In the blink of an eye. One day I woke up and I didn't even recognize him anymore.
So like usual, I consulted my best friend, Google. He MUST know the solution to this. So we tried every trick in the book. Black-out window shades, white noise, swaddled, pacifier, nap-time routine, increase his wake time, decrease his wake time, be more rigid, be less rigid... let's just say that most of the time nothing worked, so by the 3rd failed nap of the day, I put him the swing. (Sometimes a lifesaver and sometimes even that failed too.)
Then there's those people who say you should get rid of ALL sleep associations (aka: everything that I was desperately using to get my baby to sleep...) So I tried that. As I expected, it resulted in endless crying. And then some people say, just let him cry it out. Which I also tried. He lasted about 5 (painful-I'm-the-worst-mother-in-the-world) minutes and then fell asleep. Looking back, maybe I should have just continued that strategy for a few days. According to some books, he would have learned quickly and helped him in the long run. But according to other books it would have ruined our relationship and he would have trust issues for life. I just couldn't do it. At 2 months, I felt he was too young. Especially since he was being swaddled and couldn't even suck his thumb for comfort. I also tried the modified "cry it out" mixed with the "shush-pat" but I got a hand cramp after 2 minutes and quickly realized I did not have the patience or the muscle strength for that. So the crying phase lasted about 2 naps and was quickly tossed.
My one saving grace was that he was a pretty decent night sleeper. He would go to sleep easily around 9 or 9:30pm and sleep until 4 or 5am, eat for about 10 minutes, and then go right back to sleep for another 2-3 hours, waking up for the day between 7-8am.
After a few weeks, we got to a point where he would nap for about 30 minutes and then wake up. My research helped me conclude that he was trying to transition to a different state of sleep and just didn't know how. So some days I could calm him back to sleep for a 1-2.5 hr nap and some days, I couldn't. But still... progress!
Then, one month later, things took a turn for the worse. Not only were naps not even lasting 15 minutes now, but my great night sleeper started waking up every 1-2 hours. Worse than his first night home from the hospital! I was so frustrated and confused. What were we doing differently? Maybe he was hot? Or cold? Or wait... we opened the windows, were the cars too noisy?
For days this continued. And I was on the verge of letting him "cry it out" again because I just couldn't figure it out! But that's when I heard about "The Wonder Weeks." Apparently, babies have little "mental grow spurts" when their brain is suddenly able to process the world differently. It's a scary time because all of the sudden the world they once knew is very different. It can greatly affect their temperament, eating and... SLEEP! It all made perfect sense! And I feel so guilty for being frustrated with him. I'm also sooo glad I didn't resort to crying it out because during these weeks are when he needs his mom the most. Everything in his world is changing so quickly and I'm the one thing that's constant and safe. I'm so glad I figured this out.
Anyway, this post is mostly just for me to ramble about our current life (because it makes me feel like I'm having an adult conversation instead of squealing in a high-pitched voice about milk, squirrels, puppies & wheels on the bus...)
hahahaha
My over-confident self was humbled very quickly.
My baby needs me, and only me, every 2-3 hours to eat. While this bonding time has created some of my very favorite memories, it's also exhausting. When they say moms never get a vacation, they mean never. Unless you count our 1-hour getaways to Target. (And by 1 hour, I mean 60 minutes or less.) But then technically we're grocery shopping which is also a "mom duty," so does that really count?
Then there's those night wakenings. Babysitting doesn't prepare you for those. And despite how much Dad wants to help (
But even though the above is hard, we've recently encountered another difficult challenge. The three-letter word that drains me like no other...
N.A.P.
I wish someone would have warned me that my perfect-angel-sleep-anywhere-through-anything baby was going to disappear overnight. Not gradually. In the blink of an eye. One day I woke up and I didn't even recognize him anymore.
So like usual, I consulted my best friend, Google. He MUST know the solution to this. So we tried every trick in the book. Black-out window shades, white noise, swaddled, pacifier, nap-time routine, increase his wake time, decrease his wake time, be more rigid, be less rigid... let's just say that most of the time nothing worked, so by the 3rd failed nap of the day, I put him the swing. (Sometimes a lifesaver and sometimes even that failed too.)
Then there's those people who say you should get rid of ALL sleep associations (aka: everything that I was desperately using to get my baby to sleep...) So I tried that. As I expected, it resulted in endless crying. And then some people say, just let him cry it out. Which I also tried. He lasted about 5 (painful-I'm-the-worst-mother-in-the-world) minutes and then fell asleep. Looking back, maybe I should have just continued that strategy for a few days. According to some books, he would have learned quickly and helped him in the long run. But according to other books it would have ruined our relationship and he would have trust issues for life. I just couldn't do it. At 2 months, I felt he was too young. Especially since he was being swaddled and couldn't even suck his thumb for comfort. I also tried the modified "cry it out" mixed with the "shush-pat" but I got a hand cramp after 2 minutes and quickly realized I did not have the patience or the muscle strength for that. So the crying phase lasted about 2 naps and was quickly tossed.
My one saving grace was that he was a pretty decent night sleeper. He would go to sleep easily around 9 or 9:30pm and sleep until 4 or 5am, eat for about 10 minutes, and then go right back to sleep for another 2-3 hours, waking up for the day between 7-8am.
After a few weeks, we got to a point where he would nap for about 30 minutes and then wake up. My research helped me conclude that he was trying to transition to a different state of sleep and just didn't know how. So some days I could calm him back to sleep for a 1-2.5 hr nap and some days, I couldn't. But still... progress!
Then, one month later, things took a turn for the worse. Not only were naps not even lasting 15 minutes now, but my great night sleeper started waking up every 1-2 hours. Worse than his first night home from the hospital! I was so frustrated and confused. What were we doing differently? Maybe he was hot? Or cold? Or wait... we opened the windows, were the cars too noisy?
For days this continued. And I was on the verge of letting him "cry it out" again because I just couldn't figure it out! But that's when I heard about "The Wonder Weeks." Apparently, babies have little "mental grow spurts" when their brain is suddenly able to process the world differently. It's a scary time because all of the sudden the world they once knew is very different. It can greatly affect their temperament, eating and... SLEEP! It all made perfect sense! And I feel so guilty for being frustrated with him. I'm also sooo glad I didn't resort to crying it out because during these weeks are when he needs his mom the most. Everything in his world is changing so quickly and I'm the one thing that's constant and safe. I'm so glad I figured this out.
Anyway, this post is mostly just for me to ramble about our current life (because it makes me feel like I'm having an adult conversation instead of squealing in a high-pitched voice about milk, squirrels, puppies & wheels on the bus...)
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