Silent Night

So, we've been having some sleeping issues. By "we" I mean TLB, of course, but when he wakes up at 4 am yapping over the monitor, it's really hard for me to get back to sleep afterwards, so his issues are my issues. My first impulse was to point my finger at day care. "His Cuddle-Gram says his last nap was at 11:15 and it was only for twenty minutes!" I'd cry. But people kept telling me that it's just something that happens. Just when you get on a schedule, the baby will change the schedule. THEY say.

I like to think I'm smarter than the average bear. So you'd think when my husband, who is always first up to change TLB's diaper in the morning, starts telling me morning after morning "I didn't put his pajamas back on him because they were wet" a bell would go off? Right? Right?!

It took ME getting Alex out of bed and feeling the sogginess of his Sleep-sack to realize that maybe something wasn't right. So last night, after he chugged 10 ounces of formula like a frat boy at a kegger, I thought I'd try out those size 3 Baby Dry Pampers that Philip picked up at the store the other day.

My alarm went off at 5:15 am as usual. I was asleep when it happened. So was TLB. I woke him up to change his diaper and give him a bath at 6 am as usual, and holy cow! That diaper weighed a TON! But baby was dry and happy. And well-rested.

Another mystery solved.

Hopefully he'll sleep so hard again tonight that he won't roll onto his tummy. But just in case he does, he'll be wearing his new Snuza movement monitor. Now Mommy can sleep better, too.

Peace of Mind

Alex rolls over now. He's pretty good at it, in fact:



That is to say, he's good at rolling from back to tummy. He HAS rolled from tummy to back before, but he hasn't quite figured out that he could do it at will. So a lot of times he rolls to his tummy, then gets unhappy about it because he can't figure out how to get back.

Unless he is sleeping. He has become a stomach sleeper, just like his mom. Try as I might to put him to bed on his back, I will go into the nursery to check on him and find this:


As I've said before, SIDS terrifies me. While I realize that there is likely many more factors to it than just a mattress and a baby's face, it's still a frightening prospect. And since I cannot spend my entire life watching my baby sleep to make sure he keeps breathing, the feature FOX News did on the Snuza Halo Baby Movement Monitor definitely caught my attention.

My peace of mind is definitely worth $130 with free shipping. I'll just be spending my nights by Alex's crib until it arrives.

Day Care

Eventually, the day had to come. School pre-planning arrived, which meant day care for my little Monkey. Earlier in the summer, my mother and I spent a day shopping for day cares, and I found one that I liked reasonably well. The big selling point was that it was less than a mile away from school. It was also fairly new, so it was small and clean. Alex would be one of two babies.

My husband went with me the first morning. He said it was so he could meet the workers there, so they'd know him if he ever had to pick Alex up, but it was really for moral support. It wasn't that I was worried. I was just going to miss my baby, that's all. We'd been together ALL SUMMER.

Anyway... I was prepared! I had Alex's bag all packed with his diapers, formula, a bottle, a change of clothes, a burp cloth, a toy... everything I thought he'd need. It's a good thing I packed a change of clothes, because I forgot to pack a bib. I also wrote up Alex's "typical" schedule (naps, feedings, etc.). Not because I expected them to follow it, of course -- I'm not THAT much of a spaz-mom -- but because I'd noticed on the application there was a space for "Is there anything we should know about your child" and I thought my schedule might help them out if they were trying to figure out why he was fussy.

The owner of the center seemed appreciative of the list, but told me, "You'll probably notice that he'll be more tired in the evenings, because we try to keep the babies up doing brain activities." Keep them up?! Strange, I would have thought they'd want the babies to nap. I know I DO.

So it was at that moment I decided to look for another place. The mother of a couple of my students had given me a card for a woman who runs a day care out of her home. We were on the same page for napping, but she lost me when she said I would still be paying for the space if she took a vacation. She decides to go on vacation for a week, and I have to pay her AND find someone else to keep my child? I don't think so.

Anyway, to make a long story short, Alex's first week at day care was surprisingly smooth. The baby teacher is far more accommodating about nap time than I was led to believe, and she seems to do very well with Alex. I like getting his daily "Cuddle-gram" that tells me when he napped, ate, peed and pooped. I like seeing "Alex was [x] happy [ ] sad [ ] fussy [x] other __outside___" (I am assuming someone TOOK him outside, and that that's a good thing). He's going to stay there for now.

Plus, it literally takes me TWO MINUTES to drive there after school. That's less time I have to spend away from my boy.

My Baby's Brain (and other things)

Because that's really what all this sleep stuff is all about. I'm concerned about my baby's brain development. Especially because I don't eat fishy Omega-3-rich foods, and I'm terrible about remembering to take my vitamins. My little monkey needs every advantage I can give him, and sleep seems like the easy one.

"Cry It Out" has gone well, and now sleep is achieved with minimal to no crying. Monkey-boy is back to putting himself to sleep at night after I lay him down, and he sleeps for 11 to 13 hours. The trouble has been naps. He has only napped for 30 to 45 minutes at a time...

UNTIL YESTERDAY.

Yesterday I laid him down for his late-afternoon nap, which is normally pretty short. At 3 p.m. he laid down without fussing, and promptly fell asleep. HE WOKE UP AT 5 P.M.! A two-hour nap is unheard of, and the fact that he did it so close to bedtime alarmed me a little. But we started our evening routine shortly after he woke up, and he went right back to bed at 6:30 p.m. and slept all night.



I thought it was a fluke. This morning, his 9 a.m. nap was the same 45 minutes it usually is. When he went down shortly before noon, he was awake 35 minutes later. I was eating my lunch, so I just listened to him on the monitor. He tossed and grunted a little, but didn't cry. And then something magical happened. He went back to sleep.

He slept for two hours again. Two glorious hours. I was able to DO STUFF. Like, more than one thing. I didn't have to prioritize my chores and do the one that was most important. I could do several. It was wonderful.

But really, nap time isn't about me. Honest, it isn't. It's about my happy, well-rested little boy... and his brain.