Pregnancy and Motherhood Archive

Monday last week at Sophia’s doctor appointment he checked her ears and throat and all is well.  Friday and Saturday were actually her worse two days although she was a little grumpy on Sunday.  By Monday, all she had left of her cold was a runny nose.  The doctor said that we could always give her some baby Tylenol because she can get the same achy pains adults do with their colds. 

While we were in the office, we told the nurse about Sophia’s napping habits or lack thereof.  There have been times the child has stayed up for 12 to 14 hours straight, or only had a couple ten-minute naps during the day.  She might fall asleep when nursing but as soon as I set her down she’s wide-awake, and I’m not about to hold her ALL DAY LONG.  Car rides usually work but we didn’t invest in one of those detachable infant carriers so she wakes up when the ride is over and we actually have to go in the store or back in the house. 

I use a front pack when I go grocery shopping that she’ll sometimes fall asleep then too, but getting back into the car wakes her up again.  I know those detachable infant car seat carriers make things easier when at a restaurant and just going in and out of the car to run errand all over town without disturbing the baby, but then you have to carry the weight of the seat and the child and that gets HEAVY!  I’d rather carry a 15-pound baby against my body than a 15-pound baby with a 10-pound seat by hand.  Those seats can be expensive and aren’t used for very long anyway.  Sophia will be able to sit up on her own in about three months (probably less) so she’ll be able to sit in restaurant highchairs and shopping carts soon besides, her lack of napping is more of a problem on the days that I stay home. – I haven’t figured that one out either.

I would wear the front pack around the house but about the only chore I can do with it on is vacuum the house and we don’t have much carpet.  I’ve tried hauling laundry up and down the stairs with her in the front pack and I do ok, but I don’t think bending down to put clothes into the drier is good for my back, and folding laundry would require much longer arms.  The same goes for doing dishes and loading the dishwasher with her attached to my front.

So the doctor gave us a printout that was meant to help parents get their baby to bed at night, but he said we might be able to get some tips from it for napping.  Because that day Sophia had not slept at all during the day we took the opportunity to use the suggested techniques to switch her usual bedtime from 10pm to 8pm.  This special technique was basically – put the kid to bed and let her cry herself to sleep.  Oh GOD was it hard!

It said to develop a bedtime routine that starts about thirty minutes before bedtime and that the baby needs to associate the crib with falling sleep instead of falling asleep in my arms.  She also needs to learn to calm herself to sleep without me holding her, swaying, driving, using “white noise”, standing on my head, or juggling axes lest she later learns to wake up in the middle of the night without needing to be fed and require me to juggle the axes some more.

The routine I started was to change her diaper, put her in nightclothes, close the curtains, put some of her baby things away for the night, turn on the nightlight, and offer to nurse her even if she just ate thirty minutes ago.   I nursed her until she showed her usual sign of not being hungry which is to attach and detach A LOT and look up and smile at me.  The looking up and smiling at me is what made the next step so incredible difficult because she was being all cute and sweet and here I am about to do something that I know she’ll hate.  I put her in her crib still awake like the magic doctor sheet said to do.  I kissed her and told her goodnight.  She smiled and cooed.  Oh why do you have to make it so difficult?  I made the “goodnight” brief just like the magic doctor paper said and I left the room.  She quietly entertained herself for a few minutes and then the crying, screaming and crocodile tears began. According to our directions, we were to check on the baby every five to fifteen minutes and talk softly to her without any harshness in our voices.  Visits should be brief and boring.  We could give her kisses, hold her hands, etc.  But under no circumstances were we to pick her up (well ok maybe if there's a fire we can pick her up).  We were to only be in the room for a minute and you know that Kurt was very precise following each guideline to the letter.  I pointed out that our directions gave no time limit for the whole process.  I mean at what point each night do you just give in and start over the next night?  Because she eats about every two hours during the day we decided if she isn’t asleep in that time I could pick her up to feed and change her.  Every ten minutes we took turns to go check on her.  On my turns, Kurt came with me because he didn’t trust that I wouldn’t pick her up and only stay a minute.  The torture ended after an hour and a half when Sophia threw in the towel. 

I didn’t follow this technique with naps because to try it four times a day would just drive me insane and I think it would just be too much.  Despite me not changing anything during the day, Tuesday was a breeze.  She took three good naps (each lasting about an hour) and fell asleep within thirty minutes that night.  Wednesday she took three ok naps (each only lasting about 30 minutes) and took an hour and a half to fall asleep that night.  Thursday was a no nap day and it took an hour and a half to get her to sleep that night.  I blame Kurt for falling for the old, “I need a drink of water” routine.  On one of his turns to check on Sophia, he checked to see if she was hungry by letting her use his pinky as a pacifier.  He didn’t realize that’s all she was doing was using it to calm herself.  I tried to nurse her and knew right away that she wasn’t actually hungry but I sat with her anyway just as much for her comfort as my own.  Friday and Saturday night we only had to check on her once on each night.  Sunday night she actually prompted me to check the time when she started to fall asleep while nursing – it was 7:30!  Not only was she right on cue but that night she slept right through the night for NINE AND A HALF HOURS STRAIGHT!!  Monday night and tonight she fell right to sleep on her own.  Each night the screaming a wailing became more fussing than calling out to save her life which was nice, and with exception to Saturday she did pretty well with naps too.

Not made with real babies.

When Kurt was a baby, his mom made him a blanket from scraps of yarn. From the stories I’ve heard along with the fact that he still has this “blanket” in our closet I’d say that he has an unnatural attachment to it. It was crochet with red and blue flowers and there had apparently been another color made with an angora yarn which baby Kurt didn’t like - He chewed all of the angora flowers off and spit them out.

Toddler Kurt named his blanket “friend” and used it as his superhero cape. One time when young Kurtie was sick he had “friend” balled up next to him and Kurt’s mom came by to cover him up with another blanket. Young Kurtie protested, “No, you’ll cover his eyes”. Kurt’s mom looked down to see “friend” arranged in such a way that two previously flowered gaping holes were staring back at her.

Young Kurtie was also upset every time his mother decided “friend” needed a washing. Kurt would stand at the washer the whole time and then watch “friend” tumble in the drier. Kurt would then complain that “friend” had lost its smell and proceed to rub “friend” all over himself to get the smell back.

This year for Christmas, I unwrapped all of the presents for Sophia. A couple of her presents were specifically from Kurt and I was not privy to their contents. The first present I opened on Sophia’s behalf from him was a green and white striped onesie with blue lettering that read, “I (green heart shape) Mommy”. All together now, “aaawwwww, how sweet!” The second present was his old “friend”, which would have been a very nice sentiment if “friend” wasn’t a stringy thirty-five year old brown semi crochet mass of musty fermented Kurt spit with a few red and blue flowers left on it. EEEWW!! Get this hepatitis and e-coli ridden thing away from my baby!

Kurt’s mom had no idea that he had wrapped his old “friend” for Sophia let alone that he still had the musty old ball of yarn in his possession. When Kurt’s mom saw me open the gift of “friend” for Sophia, she dug through the Sophia gift pile for a specific box. I opened it when Sophia’s turn came around again. Inside I found three pictures of young Kurtie with his “friend”. “Friend” was originally a WHITE crochet blanket with burgundy red, dark blue, baby blue, white, bright pink, baby pink, lemon yellow, and pistachio green flowers and a baby blue cloth backing. Under the pictures and wrapped in tissue paper was a new “friend”. We dubbed it “Friend 2007”. We’ll see what kind of memories this one creates.

I’m never cutting baby nails again! I don’t care how much she scratches her face up with her own nails. I was cutting her nails while she was nursing but didn’t get them all, so I made another attempt when she was a little more fidgety. I should have known better. At first I though I cut her nail too short, but after her red-faced-screaming and crocodile tears subsided I saw that I had actually lopped off a tiny chunk of skin. Now I just feel like shit. I held her close, rocking back and forth, and almost produced my own crocodile tears. My poor baby is now sick with a snuffly nose and sporting an adult sided band-aid on her left thumb, which she promptly popped into her mouth.

I was sick during Christmas and now that I’m over it, Sophia caught my cold. Yesterday she was sneezing a lot. Now today she’s coughing, sneezing and her tiny voice sounds a little horse. Maybe her case it’s a pony. I called to make an appointment with the doctor. I’m sure he’ll just look at her and say, “Yep it’s a cold” and that’s it. But just in case she starts developing an ear infection or some other problem by Monday we’ll have the appointment in place.

Sophia got a rattle from her great grandma for Christmas and she wrapped her little fist around it and shook it, but it wasn’t until the last day of 2007 that Sophia learned she can reach out and manipulate objects with her hands. I bought a toy that was meant for her to start spending time on her tummy, but that still doesn’t happen very much. This toy also has tabs to fasten things above baby’s head to reach up and grab. One of the toys was an orange mirror that she seems to like. She grabbed it, pulled it toward herself and tilted it from side to side in order to see herself in it. I’m not sure if she knows that she’s the baby in the mirror yet, but she did like looking at the other baby. *wink*

Month three’s diaper of the month was just a small blowout, but because of the onesie it happened on I couldn’t pass up picking this one as the top Baby Squeesins Diaper of the Month. Because this is a holiday squeezins we joked about calling it the Yule Log, but Sophia isn’t on solids so nothing is well formed, maybe next year. These pictures were taken on December 6th.

Kurt and I went to visit a large daycare facility. I loved it. All employees have to go through a background check, and all are trained for the age group they work with. It’s a large facility that even has a special outdoor play area for infants only. Each infant has a space in the refrigerator for their food, so I’ll be able to have breast milk stored there for Sophia. Each infant gets their own crib and all the cribs look like they’re in good condition (none of them are metal cribs with witch paint like some of the ones at the other place). There are four infants per caregiver and the infants stay with the same two primary caregivers until they move to the toddler group. The lady giving us the tour said that the transition from the infant rooms to the toddler area is the toughest because they’re moving to an environment where everybody is mobile and it’s a little more noisy, but that sometimes more than one baby is moving from the same infant group to the toddler group, which makes it easier on them. That didn’t bother me at all, because at least everyone will be her same age and we weren’t being told to make our house noisier so that she’ll get used to it for daycare.

We were their during regular business hours and so we got to view the caregivers in their natural environment. We didn’t get to go into any of the rooms, but we could view the animals from the hall though the large windows. All four infant rooms were relatively quiet. one of the rooms had the lights out while three of the four infants slept. The sole awake infant was happily bouncing in a “stationary entertainer” (think baby walker minus the wheels). Everything looked relatively clean and the toddler room even had sinks for hand washing at toddler height. The lady giving us the tour said that the kids all eat at a table in a family style setting (all the kids within one room, not ALL the kids) and they learn to use utensils and pass plates down the table. The preschoolers learn preschool stuff like the alphabet. As we went down the hallway for the preschoolers, one group was playing in the hall. The halls serve as the indoor play areas, whereas the rooms are for crafts, learning, etc. Some of the kids played independently, others played together and three of the girls sat around one of the caregivers as she braided their hair. I didn’t see a single kid sulking in a corner.

Kurt will be close enough to go see the baby at lunch time if he wants. I’m so excited about this place, but apparently I’m not the only one that thinks it’s great despite the significantly higher cost. They have a waiting list. Sophia may not get in until she’s nine months old, and I have to go back to work three months prior to that. We put Sophia on the list just so we aren’t further down the list when the time comes. So I still need to find temporary daycare. *sigh* I honestly didn’t think that I would like the large daycare corporation type of place, but it felt so much more comfortable there than the home daycare I saw. I know the one home daycare I saw doesn’t represent them all. The place we visited today might not feel like family but one bonus is that the transition to school won’t be as dramatic.