Becoming a Mother Afterall

Oh dear Lord I am tired.

My 12-hour a night sleeper is still sleeping 12 hours, but wakes up every few hours to scream and tell me in baby language how much it sucks that her teeth are coming in, that she can now get up on her knees in the crib and see the floor (and much worse, the door, which is closed and Mommy and Daddy aren't coming in it, so she screams more) and she screams just to scream.

Yesterday there was one tooth in the morning. At bedtime there was two. Who knew a tooth could move that fast??

We are officially on vacation, my husband until January 2nd and me until January 16th. Why is it that I am always more tired on vacation than when I am working? Is my daughter going to sleep again regularly anytime soon or should I get back to napping at the same time as her because that is all I am going to get?

Final question for my dear friends . . . her "teacher" suggested I bring her in a few times while on vacation because she wants her to stay in the daycare routine, etc. Plus she really loves being able to play with the other kids. Most of the kids are on vacation, so in her room it would just be her and the two boys she loves. But I feel guilty even considering this!! Would it be wrong of me to take her next week for two days for a few hours?

Um.

Ainsley has slept for 12 hours each night for the past 3 nights. She is snoozing by 7 pm and wakes up around 6:45.

Can someone tell me what the hell I am doing right to make this happen? Please? So she KEEPS doing it because I LOVE BEING WELL-RESTED. What a nice change from 8 weeks of morning sickness, then horrifying sciatica, then shoulder and back pain, then baby-pressing-on-the-bladder for the last 12 weeks of pregnancy, then no sleep from the amazing-super-eating-baby shortly after birth, then the not sleeping because you think she has stopped breathing . . . . (well, that sort of still rears its ugly head and I have to check on her periodically in the middle of the night . . )

PS. Competition is not over. Keep placing your bets. I just had to brag about the wonder-sleeper. (because, you know, things change here quickly. Tonight she will probably be up for some grubbin' around 1 am. )

Let's knock very loudly on wood, but it appears for the time being that being "out" of the swaddle was what my little boo-ba needed to sleep better. For the past two nights she has been ready to go down at 7:30-8:00, falls quickly asleep on her side, moves to her belly somewhere in the middle of the night, and then wakes up at precisely 4:45 (on the dot, might I add) to get some early breakfast. Then she is back fast asleep until 6:15, although this morning she slept until 7:00 am. I am in heaven. Pure sleeping bliss. Now if I can just figure out how to relax a little more about her sleeping on her belly . . . I think she is fine. My husband checks her periodically before we go to sleep to make sure she can breath.

Anyway, not only is her sleep better, but the entire bedtime and nap process is so much easier now that we don't have to fight the swaddle. I put her in a sleep sack and she is good to go.

Other big change in the past three days: why in the hell is she having 5-7 bowel movements a day, unlike her 1-2 before?? Yikes!

Here is the recap of night #2 of the unswaddling.

8:00 - Ainsley has her bath, drinks 7 ounces, and falls asleep. I put her in the crib and she sleeps relatively soundlessly for a while.

10:00 - I head to bed. Husband calls, he is coming home early from work (YEAH!) so he arrives shortly thereafter, we talk, and then both fall asleep at 11:00.

12:45 - Here we go again. WTF? 12:45?? She is screaming, crying, and oh yes! Sniffling, like she has a cold, then hacking. F-ing daycare. I have been taking her and playing with her there, not leaving, everyday to get her used to it. Great idea, Mom. I wake up husband and we head into her room, hunt down the humidifier from a box somewhere, fill in and plug it in, and then try to soothe. She sees her Dad and then becomes frantic, pumping her legs, laughing, wanting him. He rocks her, gives her a bottle, where she drinks EIGHT OUNCES, and then passes out.

6-7:00 - Ainsley plays in her crib and fades in and out of sleep. I go and get her at 7 am, which was much better than having to get up at 3 am.

Lets see how tonight goes. I am still exhausted.

Well, maybe I spoke too soon. Here is how night one went:

8:00 - Ainsley finishes 6 ounces and this usually makes her sleepy. However, this evening, she is WIDE AWAKE.
8:05 - I lay her down in her crib, awake, unswaddled, on her side.
8:05 - 8:25 - Ainsley plays in her crib, talks to her hands, etc.
8:25 - Ainsley starts crying
8:30 - She begins screaming because she has rolled on her belly and can't get back on her back. I went in and rolled her back over, which seemed to calm her momentarily.
8:35 - Yep, back on her belly. Screaming. Bloody. Murder.
8:45 - I go BACK IN and roll her over, she stops crying and falls asleep. (YES!)

*I go to bed, but can't sleep and toss and turn. Husband comes home at 10:30 from job #2. We talk. I finally fall asleep about 12:30.

1:45 - Ainsley is up. Again. She fusses for a minute a falls back asleep.
2:40 - Ainsley is up. Again. This time the screaming begins. Again.
2:55 - I go in and try to sooth her without picking her up, rub her belly. She calms down. I leave. She freaks.out.
3:15 - I go back in and sooth, rub, etc. She stops momentarily, then is back at it.
3:30 - I am starting to lose it. I go in and take her out and rock her. She seems hungry. (not sure?) I give her a bottle, but she only drinks 2 ounces and then gets sleepy. I put her back in crib.
3:30 - 4:00 - She fusses around, never gets as upset as before, but fights sleep some. Then she finally falls asleep.

*By this time, I am exhausted, crying, frustrated, don't know what to do, if I did something wrong, so I lay there and finally fall asleep at 4:45 or so.

Ainsley gets up for the day at 6 am. I drag ass to her room and try to be a good Mom, but I feel like I am the worst. I feel down again and I don't know why - if it is the exhaustation, the impending daycare, or because on Thursday and Fridays, Mike works both jobs and I basically don't seem him at all and have NO ADULT CONVERSATION with anyone.

Help.

Seven more days until school is over. My class of 34 is hot, tired, and ready to spend whatever summer is left not in school. I don't blame them. The air conditioning in our 40+ year old school is on the fritz. I want it to be over as fast as they do. I miss being with Ainsley during the day. And while it makes things so much easier knowing she is with her Dad, I am a little jealous that I am not at home with her. Seeing her face when I come home is the greatest feeling in the world.

Other than ending the year with the fourth/soon-to-be fifth graders, I am just plain exhausted. I think Ainsley is teething. Last night she got up twice, which hasn't happened in a long time. She is wiggling out of her swaddle in the middle of the night and then scoots around her crib until she either wedges her head against the side or smashes her face on the wood and ends up screaming. But everyone told me to remove the freaking bumper from the crib so she doesn't suffocate?!? And now she is rolling over pretty well with little assistance on the floor, so I am mortified that she will roll over in her swaddle and then suffocate that way. So, sleep is, to say the least, not solid.

Does anyone have suggestions on what to do about the whole swaddling thing and rolling over thing? If I put her down unswaddled, she wakes up in 15 minutes and then won't sleep.

The little one eats organic oatmeal now, too. She is a piglet and chows down well.

With all of my complaining lately, I often wonder if anyone else is still reading. I called up my friend Kathy last night, who has a 2-year old and a 5 month old, and we talked about lack of sleep and the small annoyances that come with this part of mothering a little one.

And then I read Lumi's last post.*

Let's just say it helped put things into perspective for me quite a bit. I should zip my trap. I still have another 12 weeks or so before I even have to return to work and get to enjoy all of this extra time with the piglet, even if it is at 3am. And then there are people who work the entire day away from their little ones and learn to cherish those late-night feedings because . . that is what they have. Me? I have been harping on it too much lately I think. My blog was much more interesting when I was in the throws of a tantrum because I wasn't pregnant. (well, at least I had more people commenting.)

Ainsley has slept from 9pm-5am for two nights now. It won't last long, I am sure. Next time I look up, she won't want to have anything to do with me in the middle of the night anyway.

I do love her more than life itself. Loving someone that much means you have to love the things that make you adjust your lifestyle somwhat, like these middle of the night feedings. Consider my trap zipped.

*Lumi, I balled my eyes out when I read that. You are eloquent.

What the hell is it with people that totally ignore the fact that you have a stroller and cut you off as you are walking so that you nearly fall over? Or the person who is too lazy to use the damn stairs instead of take up extra room in the elevator at the mall when you have a big-ass stroller?? Huh?

I am still in a bit of a funk from my earlier . . funk(s). I am trying to be super-Mom here and get Ainsley adjusted to her crib and all that. What fun it is around here! Even though my husband is off work for the summer from teaching, he works a second job on Thursday and Friday evenings at a restaurant he has worked at for many years. Thursdays and Fridays just plain suck around here. I get down when he leaves. We share a car, so sometimes my cabin fever gets pretty intense, but like I said before, it is not like I can take Ainsley on a walk because it is, oh, 110 degrees in the shade.

So yesterday, she kept waking up in her crib after I put her down for a nap. I went back in there three times, trying to space it out, soothed her without taking her out of the crib, gave her a bottle for about 2 minutes while she laid down, and then left again. It ended up eventually working and she took about a 2-hour nap. I was excited. But then I had to repeat the whole soothing thing at bedtime for about an hour and a half. Finally about 11:30 she fell asleep. I turned the video monitor off, but left the sound on. (which, by the way, is there a freaking monitor that does have all this extra noise???) She was up again at 4:30, but last night was hubby's night to get up, so I got him all set up with her and was able to sleep until about 7am when he came back to bed and I took over.

Today I feel like I got hit by a truck and I am starting to wonder if I need to get my thyroid checked or something. I feel pregnancy-tired. (*not pregnant, don't worry) I guess I should take my vitamins again like a good girl.

Well, if you are up to date on my last post, Ainsley slept in her crib until 4am, which is basically the same schedule she sleeps when she sleeps in her bassinet.

Before you jump for joy and get all excited, let me break it down for you:

Ainsley's sleep: 6.5 hours
Mom's sleep: 1 hour

Yep, you got that right. Not only is the video monitor so bright I felt like I was sleeping under stadium lighting, but I kept checking her every 5.4 seconds. This is not healthy! Today I have been crying all day, I am sure from the lack of sleep, but also because my husband thinks we should just continue letting her sleep in our room and screw putting her into her crib yet and is not at all worried about how difficult it is going to be to de-swaddle her in the future. (Hmm, maybe this is because he actually sleeps.) Me? I feel like the worst mother in the world because I can't get her figured out. I feel like I have enabled her with the swaddling, but in reality, I was just doing what felt right and what essentially made her sleep longer in the beginning. I feel like I am never going to be able to watch a movie again because she is such a light-sleeper (like her mother). I feel like I made her that way with the tiptoeing around because she sleeps in our room. I just feel like I suck at this.

My husband also thinks she has been fussier lately, which makes me feel badly because I feel like I should know why she is fussy, but I don't. I only do what I think is best, which is keep up to date on all the current infomation, talk to others, etc. But in the end, it overwhelms me. When I talk to someone at work and they tell me their baby slept through the night at 5 weeks and still does at 2 years old, I want to hit them in the face. This leads me to believe that I need to go back to church, to quelch the anger I sometimes have. However, I can't go to church with my fussy baby!

Someone please, please tell me that I am not alone in this. Or that you haven't become an alcoholic in the process of raising your child or something. I just feel super-down today and have already gone through two boxes of Kleenex and two grande iced black and white mochas from Starbucks.

Oh yeah. Ainsley just woke up from her 6 minute nap. Pass the kleenex.

We have been talking about getting Ainsley into her crib for weeks now. But both of us are mortified that we won't hear her or the monitor won't work or, you know, a meteor will crash through the roof into her crib. Normal, right?

In all actuality, I have just decided that I was never going to sleep like I used to ever again. Even with her in the bassinet next to the bed, she makes noises, so I wake up and make sure she didn't aspirate on her spitup or stop breathing. Yes, I still do that, although not as much as in those first few weeks. I wish I could be as careless as it seems Mike is. I can't be mad at him, I am just the lightest sleeper known to man.

Ainsley's regular schedule has been okay: at 10 weeks, she is still going to sleep around 9-10 pm and waking up to feed anywhere between 3-5 am. We would really prefer 5am, of course, but she only does that here and there now. Last night she was up at 3am, and went back down at 3:45, and was up at 4:45, back down at 6am, until about 7am, when she won't sleep anymore no matter what. We have good nap days and bad nap days, too. We like for her to take a nap about 9 am, when she is usually her grouchiest, and then again sometime in the late afternoon, if possible. Today . . . nada. She napped twenty minutes here and ten minutes there, but would not sleep for her Mom.

Did I mention that she will not sleep anywhere, anytime unless she is swaddled? We are currently using the miracle blanket, since she outgrew the hospital receiving blankets and would escape the swaddle. But if we try to put her down unwrapped, she hits herself in the head and wakes herself up, screaming. I am also a little nervous about having to de-swaddle her in the upcoming months, not to mention what happens when I have to go back to work and someone else will be responsible for getting her to sleep during the day.

So, I just completed the night routine of bath, music, rubdown, bottle, sleep. But I decided to put her into her crib tonight, just to see. I prayed the entire time I laid her down because I would really like to get some sleep tonight and hopefully she won't know she is in her crib and not in her bassinet and wake up early. We also have two monitors, the Bebe sounds monitor and the video one. I decided to give this a shot and hooked up the video one and am off to bed.

Pray it works and we can complete this new milestone! I would love to have more solid sleep, but am also a little worried now that having the video right next to me will make it harder for me to sleep . . .