Barren Mare

Stringing up the Christmas lights

The title of this post comes from E., who just now ordered me to "stop what I am doing immediately" and help him string up a set of lights over the window sill. Heh.

It's a last minute attempt to inject some festive cheer in an otherwise a slightly toned-down Christmas. There are some presents in the living room, but no tree. There are stockings but not all that much to fill them. Thanks to E., there is a ginormous organic turkey and some other nice food; however, the meal is scheduled for late afternoon which at the moment is prime baby meltdown time and I've cautioned everyone that the shoogling tasks will need to be divided equally amongst all the adults.  But the grinch in me predicts somehow it is still going to be yours truly sitting up in the nursery with my dinner half eaten, trying to calm her down, since after all I am the one with the milky boobs.

I don't know if it's the ongoing tribulations of the sleep regression or just the excitement of having different people around to coo over her every day, but Botany's naps (or lack thereof) have gone from bad to worse.  Now she will only nap for a short time in the pram on a walk, or fitfully in my lap, nursing, after working herself into a lather.  The lying down nap-nursing is totally failing now- all she wants to do is kickykickykicky and make this very annoying "eh-eh-eh" sound, while I long to doze off. It is most frustrating. I feel like a magician who has looked into the bag of tricks to discover the rabbit is missing.

The lack of decent nappage means that by mid to late afternoon, she is generally a screamy mess. This is not much fun for anyone. I'm not quite sure how to "'fix" it, either. Unlike the night time routine, leaving her to cry for just a wee bit in the cot only results in escalating meltdown- a furious, wailing, teary baby. My mother keeps trying techniques that work on another baby in the family- for example, standing next to the cot, laying hands on her tummy. Botany just lies there looking up at her, making the "eh-eh-eh" sound.  Eventually we just give up and then inevitably she is so overtired. I'm feeling fairly rundown with a looming chest cold and reverting back to constant daily crying of the first three months is not exactly filling me with the joys.

But I don't wish this post to sound completely negative and humbuggy. I'm sure tomorrow will bring happy moments, too. It's really just another reminder to myself that parenting, like Christmas, is in reality usually not a Hallmark card, and quite often comes as a mixed bag of highs and lows.

To all of you- and to families built in whatever way you can and in whatever shape and size- I wish a very happy, safe and peaceful holiday.

Four month sleep weirdness

While it's been fairly smooth sailing on the nightime sleep front around here, I'd been eyeing the calendar with increasing wariness the last couple weeks, as the timeframe for the dreaded four month sleep regression drew near.  Part of me hoped it wasn't going to happen to us, and the other part was slapping myself around the head to get real, since of course it was going to happen- if not now, at some point. 

And then, like a summer squall appearing out of nowhere, it is upon us- or at least I think so, because that is the only way I can explain the relative weirdness of Botany's nighttime sleeping the last couple of days. 

Sunday night looked like this:

• 11pm dreamfeed. Feed for half an hour, straight back down. I get to bed by midnight and to sleep by 12.30.         
• 2 am- Botany wakes up. Down the stairs to nursery. Feed for half an hour, back down but not sound asleep. Low grade grizzle on and off emits over the monitor for the next hour.
• 3 am- I finally get back to sleep when the dog wakes me up, scratching at the bedroom door. E. takes him out.
• 4.20 am- After five minutes of grizzle, I ascertain the baby is in fact, fully awake, and head down the stairs again. Whereupon she eats for another 45 MINUTES before going back down. I finally get back to bed at 5.15 am.
• 6.20 am- Awake! Awake! As usual, I bring her up the stairs to bed for an hour, in hopes she might sleep after nursing lying down with me. But not today!  Wiiiide awake. Looking all around, on and off the boob, yanking head away with nipple still attached. Let's get UP UP UP mummy and PLAY.

Naps sparse all day- a set of catnaps of about 30 minutes each. This is a great disappointment to me as I am hoping to catch a few zzs when she falls asleep. I prop my eyelids open with toothpicks and stagger through the hours until 5.30 pm, by which point she is SO tired that I get her ready for bed.  She is out for the count by 6pm.  The dog goes to stay with my parents for the night. Then, in contrast-

Last night:

• 11pm dreamfeed for half an hour. Straight back down. I collapse into bed and am catatonic by 11.30.
• 5AM. I sit bolt upright. I am leaking milk and my left side is painfully engorged. Holy crap. It's 5AM and she has not made a peep all night. Cue slightly panicked dash down the stairs to stick my head in the nursery door. Botany grunts and sighs, but does not rouse. I go back to bed and waste a precious hour of sleep wondering when she is going to wake up.
• 6.30am. Botany finally wakes up. Again, I bring her upstairs, whereupon she falls asleep on the boob until 8 am!!! 

While last night's sequence of events is infinitely preferable, I doubt it's going to become a regular occurence any time soon.  At the very least I hope we can avoid a wide penduluming between the no-sleep nights and the long peaceful stretches- because even though I try to be very go-with-the-flow, it's can be a little nervewracking going to bed every night not knowing if I'll be up three or four times or not at all.

Also, I really must do something about the burgeoning case of insomnia. I suddenly seem to be having increasing trouble falling asleep myself, even though I am extremely tired most nights.  I find myself lying there, watching the clock tick over, knowing I probably have to get up to feed the baby in a few hours or even less or maybe not at all- and totally unable to sleep. This is more than a little soul-destroying. Going to bed early myself and setting the alarm just so I can get up for the dreamfeed is an obvious solution- but given that I get absolutely zero opportunity during the daytime hours to get anything done around here, not to mention have any personal relaxation or "me-time", it's incredibly hard to switch off in that way. 

Anyway. There are halls to deck and I still haven't managed to do more than get the Christmas box out of the garage and string a few ornaments on the little silver decorative tree. It looks pretty weak all around; I give it a C- minus for effort, really.

Hopefully a call I won't have to make again any time soon

Way back when Botany was still about five weeks old, my postnatal group covered 'baby first aid'. At the start of the session, the nurse stood up and asked if any of us had been to the sick kids' hospital yet. No one raised their hands. She smiled knowingly and said, "Well, if you get through five years without a visit there, you'll be doing well. Post the number on the fridge in case you ever need it."  And everybody looked at each other with raised eyebrows, giggling nervously.

Early Saturday morning, E. departed for his business trip- slamming out of the door in a huff  after an argument with me about why he hadn't managed to let the dog out before it was time to leave. I was a little hysterical and a lot weepy- even more so as I stood in the freezing rain, watching his taxi drive off as the dog performed the poo dance- and still more so as I sprinted back into the house to pick up the baby, who was just waking up with her usual sets of squeaks.

I cried off and on for the better part of the morning, even after E. phoned from the airport to make up.  A week just feels like a long time to be completely on my own with the baby, I said. Even if I do 99% of the childcare most of the time. A whole week, with E. far away overseas, feels scary. Then he had to go as his flight was boarding.

I tried to buck up and put a brave face on things for Botany, seeing how she was in quite a happy mood and I didn't want to spoil it for her (or for me). We were stuck indoors all day with the rain rain rain so we played and danced and nursed and napped together and read stories. Then about 2pm I went to change her and disaster struck.

She had a little oobleck in the corner of her eye and I tried to wipe it away with the (clean! it was clean!) muslin cloth. And then she turned her head to the wall, face crumped up in an angry red grimace and she HOWLED. Howled and screamed and howled and clawed at her face and would NOT open her eyes. I grabbed her up, thinking oh my god what have I done, I have BLINDED the baby!  And she carried on wailing at the top of her lungs, inconsolable (despite rocking and nursing and cuddling) for about twenty minutes, with increasing intensity- while I, already a tad frayed from the morning, came unraveled.

Some key lessons were then learned. All of which of course seem like common sense in hindsight.

Lesson One: Figure out in advance who to call in an emergency. When I realised Botany was not going to stop crying in the near future, I realised I needed some back up, stat.  But then I sat there with the phone in my hand, baby shrieking and writhing, trying to process what to do and unable to hear myself think. In the end, I called one of our uber reliable friends- someone with a car and no children (since I reasoned that anyone with kids was apt to be busy and not able to drop everything to run to my rescue).

Unfortunately the friend in question was shopping on the absolute other side of town and it was going to take her at least half an hour to get there. And as the screaming continued, it dawned on me that a trip to the sick kids' hospital was a very real possibility.

Lesson Number Two: They weren't kidding about having the hospital phone number on the fridge. I had to look it up- it is actually a very easy number to remember and is now engraved on my brain but flailing around the kitchen looking for the phone book was not exactly helpful.

Lesson Three: Don't fuck around trying to explain the problem in great detail to the person who answers the main phone line- just ask to be put through to A&E.

Lesson Four: Hard as it may be, put the hysterical baby down someplace safe and go in the other room during the call. Because otherwise you won't be able to hear a thing and any vital advice and information you receive will be drowned out.

In this case, the advice from the nice lady in A & E was this: try bathing her eye in lukewarm water and then nurse her and if that doesn't calm her down, give her some Calp*l (baby ibuprofen) and see if she will go to sleep. If that doesn't work, bring her in to the hospital. I hung up, took a deep breath, and thought- for fucks sake! Why is the answer always "Give the baby Calp*l?!"  But, having nothing else at my disposal, I decided to try doing what the nice lady said.

Having attempted the nursing part first, Botany immediately latched on like a frantic barracuda and promptly fell asleep. She woke up when my friend arrived, opened both big beautiful eyes and gave the friend a wide gummy grin as if nothing had happened. I of course then felt like a complete goober for having overreacted, dragged friend away from shopping and making gibbering calls to the hospital.

"Listen," said the friend, bringing me a soothing cup of tea (even though at that point I would have prefered a triple whisky). "How many babies have you had? Just one? Yes. So you're learning. There will no doubt be other alarms in the future, but you're learning. It's OK."

And she's right. Even though I don't like the words "other" and "alarms" in the same sentence as "future". But at least now I am just a little of a good Girl Scout than I was a few days ago. I am a little more prepared.

I'm dreaming of Botany dreaming

I really love the idea of Christmas, but honestly- do we have to have it right now?  It seems to come at a somewhat inconvenient time.

Getting Botany to have her daily quota of proper, restorative naps has become an ongoing battle. Basically, she sucks at the whole nap thing, both in terms of frequency and duration. Why is it that I can put her down at night drowsy but awake and she will go to sleep, but during the day, there is not a hope in hell of her drifting off for a snooze?  There are basically only three ways I can get this baby to nap-sleep:

1. On my lap, after nursing. 
2. In the bed with me lying next to her, nursing.
3. Walking, with her in the pram.

None of which is very conducive to getting anything done during the day, including eating lunch, attending to personal hygiene, or dealing with the other myriad of small daily chores and duties, some of which can be left to fester on the To Do pile and others which really cannot (i.e. gas to be disconnected unless bill paid TODAY).

And regardless of method, the absolute maximum she will sleep is 45 minutes, but often less. Ka-ching! Eyes wide open, looking all around, alertalertalert!! She has zero tolerance for being wheeled around shops; I suspect the bright lights bother her a little. Nor is she wild about cafes or restaurants. Every week I attempt to go out for lunch with a couple of the other mothers in my group, and every week it is the same story. Their little darlings snooze in their prams like stunned monkeys as I try to cram a baked potato in my mouth with one hand while holding Botany on my lap with the other. 

The only silver lining in this napless cloud is that she (*furtive look over my shoulder with sign to ward off evil eye*) sleeps pretty well at night, going down with a minimum of fuss around 7pm and staying down (most nights) until the dreamfeeding at 11pm.  There's always a middle of the night feed as well anywhere between 2.30-4.30 am. I'd like to one day break the 5am barrier, but to be honest, I don't mind so much, since half the time I am awake anyway (needing to pee/find snack/pop my tricky hip/make lists in head of stuff to do).  And I feel all squishy and melty with maternal love when I see her nuzzled up against me in the dim nursery lights.

But back to the nap problem. The upshot is that it would appear that any Christmas shopping which cannot be done online in the evening is really not going to happen this year. That would be OK in theory, except that there are a couple of  items specifically requested by my nearest and dearest (clock-radio thingy, bicycle accoutrements), which I would really prefer to inspect in the flesh before plunking down my fast dwindling remaining maternity pay.  Also, as of tomorrow E. is off on a business trip abroad for a whole week, leaving me to hold the fort. I'll survive, but I am guessing it will be somewhat energy-sapping; meaning that when I finally do get a spare minute, I am going to want to lie on the sofa, floppy-limbed, watching crap telly and playing obscene Scrabulous with Anna H.* 

The consensus among the family is that we need to keep things really simple this year (and not go hog wild with presents for a four month old baby more interested in eating the wrapping paper). But neither do I want her first Christmas to go by without at least some acknowledgment that it's magical that she is here to share it with us. So at some point, I need to find a spare five minutes to get down into the garage, dig out the tree and the box of decorations (hopefully clearly marked "Chrimbo things") and make an effort to find my inner elf.  And dream of how nice to would be to find a couple months' worth of naps in our stockings on Christmas morning...   

* Your move, by the way.