Sleep, Oh How I Miss You
It seems like I didn’t realize just how much my body missed sleeping until I got a few longer stretches of it. After an evening where Simon was overstimulated (the kid is gonna have to get used to it!!) by adoring grandparents, uncles and an aunt… he was inconsolable and hyper-awake for two straight hours. After which he passed out for a six hours stretch, fed, and then had a four and a half hour stretch. I woke up not rejuvenated, but feeling as though I finally got a taste of something I needed SO very very much more of…

And so we have begun sharing nighttime feedings. I am not back to work yet, but it doesn’t matter. My body is telling me I have hit a limit and I need to do something to increase my sleep, or else I am going to (and already have on occasion) become an illogical emotional wreck. Sleep = sanity.

Only problem with sharing the nights is that Simon still is not on a “schedule”. He can take one to four naps. His bedtime is anywhere from 6:30 to 9:00 pm. And every night is a new adventure, as far as how often and when he might wake up to eat. Is my baby supposed to be on a schedule by now? Should I be doing more to help him get on a schedule?

Wait, I Thought I Said I Wouldn’t Do That!!
How quickly do you forget the things you tell yourself before you have a child…

1. I will never feel bad or inadequate or self-conscious for having a crying baby in public, let alone in front of friends and family
2. I will never compare Simon’s development to other kids and wonder if I am doing something wrong
3. I will avoid Google-diagnosing my child at the first sign of something weird. I will take the advice of others with a grain of salt and trust my gut

All good advice. All harder to follow than you think as a self-conscious new mom.

It doesn’t help that Baby Center keeps sending me e-mails of week by week milestones and sample “baby schedules”. In almost every single one, a glowing mom goes on about how her two month old baby is sleeping through the night and chowing down on 4-5 ounces of formula. How am I not supposed to wonder if formula = the secret to sleep? Or start thinking that maybe I’ve not built Simon’s stomach up enough, since he only takes around 2 ounces of breast milk in a sitting… and still wants to feed every 2 hours?

You can drive yourself crazy and search engines are a never-ending tool to allow you to affirm and negate whatever viewpoint you are investigating. Supplementing with formula… will make baby and mommy happy or will instantly cause your milk to run dry. Adding rice cereal to breast milk… secret key to sleeping through the night or leading cause of childhood food allergies. Take your pick!!

Which is why I am so grateful for a dose of realism from…

An Amazing Circle of Support
On Sunday, Jocelyn and her sister-in-law Anne came over with their adorable children… Toren (9 months), Emmett (11 months), and Gwen (3 years). It was just the type of mild chaos we needed. A house full of a variety of children getting into things, playing, laughing, crying, feeding, etc.  I also have great friends at work who all have little ones of their own, and their anecdotes are always a constant source of amusement and enlightenment.

That has been the stuff keeping me the most sane… hearing other women I respect remind me that it’s okay to… feel slightly excited to return to work and have someone else take over a little bit of the burden of taking care of Simon. It’s okay to want to buy a swing, so that I can have somewhere to put Simon down, somewhere that makes him happy and possibly even fall asleep. It’s okay to enjoy this portable stage… the magical car seat that creates a calm and “take me anywhere, even to that nice wine bar” baby.

There is just too much to feel guilty about when you read all those attachment parenting or self-confident baby books that want you to feel like ANYTHING that makes life a little easier, ANYTHING that cuts corners a bit, ANYTHING that acknowledges your own needs is BAD BAD BAD. But, I am realizing more and more everyday that… Happy mommy and happy daddy makes happy baby!!

Simon goes into day care in a little over a week. And yes, I am a bit excited. I love our time together right now, but I will be a better mom if I can get my adult world interactions out during the day and have more focus and dedication with him on the weekends or at night. I will feel more complete and balanced. And I can’t convince myself that makes me a bad person or a bad mommy.

Too Many Good Photos To Count
We got a whole amazing series of photos when Lon and Roxy where in town that are up on Flickr… here are some of the highlights below.

Here Comes Company
This week we got to spend time with Lon and Roxy, who were visiting from California. We decided it would be a good idea to have them stay with us in our house, as it would be the easiest way for them to spend the most time with their new nephew Simon. Hopefully after the week is up, they still agree that was a good idea :)

With Tom also taking the week off, it was a pretty full house. All in all I think Simon has behaved generally well, but his sleep schedule (naps and nighttime) is all over the board. He hasn’t gone down for naps easily and doesn’t stay asleep long… so by the time we are ready to watch something together, either the crying starts up again or I am ready to go down for the night. Simon also thought this would be a good week to start waking up at 6 AM. And on one particularly bad night, he woke me up every hour or so.

I’m hoping it’s been a good experience for Lon and Roxy that was both realistic but not too exhausting to watch… their nephew is pretty damn cute, so I’m hoping that scores him some major points while his social skills still leave something to be desired.  Although he did shoot Roxy and me a nice big smile yesterday while we were watching TV… so big that his pacifier fell right out of his mouth.

Time Goes By Fast, Time Goes By Slow
I’m back for my first OBGYN visit today, which means that Simon is already six weeks old… which also means that I’m possibly only two (and a half) weeks away from returning to work. So from that standpoint it feels as if time is going by relatively fast. Am I really ready to re-enter the normal world? It seems like I blinked and now maternity leave is almost over.

That is the FAST, but then there is the SLOW… Simon is just barely beginning to smile this week. It’s usually when he’s on his belly and looking up at Mommy or Daddy. He will make little noises (“owww”, “ahhh”, even an occasional “HI!!”) with a little bit of a grin on his face. It’s faint, but forming. Also, despite one amazingly long stretch (well over 5 hours) of sleep Simon received last Friday, for the most part the nights still consist of 3-4 feedings spaced roughly 2-3 hours apart.

I’d like to believe we are getting over this hump… to a place where we have a baby that smiles, laughs, babbles and more than occasionally sleeps for even 4 hours at a time. I know when we look back this will all be in the blink of an eye, but right now it feels like it is taking forever.

At least Simon has been happier in the past week. Chalk it up to a growth spurt, or extra gas, or lack of good sleep last week… but we went from one week of a constantly fussy baby… if he wasn’t asleep or on a boob, then he was crying or at least one minute away from crying. Now we have a normally fussy but generally happy baby who can sit for half an hour in his bouncer slowly dozing off, or can play with Mommy for fifteen minutes on the floor making adorable sounds.

Maybe it has something to do with this…

All Hail “The Schedule”
I’m feeling like Simon is still not ready to have an actual schedule (maybe some babies are by this point), but I have started following some general guidelines from the Healthy Sleep Habits book… and it really has seemed to make Simon happier and this make me happier as well.  Mostly it feels like common sense and being more open and aware of what cues your baby is trying to give you.

So as much as I hate it, I’ve begun trying to wake up around 7 or 7:30, which may have to go even earlier when I go back to work. I’m not sure if this is what Simon wants yet, since it is usually really hard to put him back to bed after his 5-ish or 6-ish feeding (varies from night to night). So, he might want to wake up even earlier… yikes!!

Next I try and soothe him to sleep the minute he starts to give me drowsy signs through out the day (yawn, droopy eyelid, off in a daze). I turn the lights down, swaddle, pacifier, and usually within half an hour he is sleepy enough to put up in his crib for a nap. On good days, he is pretty close to a three nap routine (at 1-2 hours a pop)… on not so good days, he’ll only go down for twenty minutes and scattered all through out the day.

What I’m starting to notice is that good days usually mean good nights, and interruptions (like him sleeping in his car seat while out) tend to throw the system out of whack… but not always. As much as I enjoy the routine (and the “better” nights), I’m also not the type of person to be a hermit or to refuse house guests. So, I’m hoping it all balances out in the end… enough normal days to get him comfortable and happy, but not so much that he’s unaccustomed to being out in the world beyond our house or around his loving extended family.

Milestones This Week

• Can I get a smile? I don’t know whether to put it in the baby book yet or not, but he’s been shooting me brief but adorable little smiles, especially while “talking”. Next week I’ll have to try and capture some on camera and let people decide if they count or not. He also has begun sticking his tongue out a lot at me :)
• First house guests
• Maiden voyage of the stroller
• First use of formula used during a particularly bad night where I wanted sleep but didn’t want to tap into my breast milk “reserves”… and Tom has been practically begging for more ways to help me out

Simon is now five weeks old! The past month has been amazing, and very exhausting. I took off the first 2 weeks after his birth to focus on this new little person that I helped bring into the world, and it went by in the blink of an eye. During this brief but unforgettable time, I changed a ton of diapers, washed many poop covered onesies, gave Simon his first bath, and even took him out for a few short excursions.

Going back to work after that second week was difficult… I felt like I was going to miss out on the small little milestones he might reach, and I just really missed being away from him. This wasn’t an easy transition for Marta either, as now she was left alone to take care of him. To make things even more difficult, he was beginning to become harder to keep happy for long periods of time. It’s frustrating, to say the least, when your wife calls you at work, trying to hold back tears as she explains to you how tough her day is going, and you can’t be there to help her.

But no matter how hard he can be at times, it’s impossible to let it bother me. Instead I like to focus on how he has grown over 2 pounds since he was born, how much more he is able to look me in the eyes, how he seems to use his hands to adjust his pacifier, and how he is just starting to use his vocal chords to make sounds other than crying. It’s true what all the other parents say… the littlest advancement your child makes can be ridiculously exciting.

We have been focusing a lot on his vision and trying to get him to really focus on things. Marta got online and downloaded a bunch of simple, high contrast “images for babies to stare at”, which we then put on our big screen TV as a slideshow for Simon’s viewing pleasure. While it did resemble a scene from A Clockwork Orange, there was no denying that it was definitely grabbing his attention.

Our support system has been incredible. Loretta has babysit for us at least once every single weekend since Simon was born, allowing mom & dad to enjoy each other’s company in ways that we very often used to do before we became a family of three… going to the movies, eating dinner out at great restaurants, etc. My mom has been over several times as well, each time offering up her amazing house cleaning skills, and even taking care of our dinner (we still have several servings of her Motza ball soup stored in the freezer for those days when cooking seems impossible).

Marta’s dad Tom has stopped by on many of his trips home from Chicago, each time making a quick grocery stop or picking up take out for us to eat. Our wonderful neighbors across the street Wayne & Carol Greve, were kind enough to plow our entire driveway after Tuesday’s big snowfall, and Paul & Jill next door have offered to watch him anytime we “just need a break”. All of this is immensely helpful and we are extremely thankful to have these folks in our lives.

We’re looking forward to Lon & Roxy’s visit next week, and can’t wait to introduce them to their new little nephew. I wouldn’t be surprised if their visit results in us making some funny and/or ridiculous movie starring our little stinker!

We have passed the one month mark, and I’m going to let Daddy blog about Simon this week. But, I wanted to capture a few important milestones…

• First trip to someone else’s house - Leslie’s for her superbowl party, wherein Simon mostly slept while Leslie’s cute little dog Charlie begged to regain our attention.
• First almost “sleep through the night” - It was from 9:00 pm to 2:30 am, so I don’t think it counts, but last night Simon got his first 5 and a half hour non-stop sleep. I even had to move him from his bouncer to his crib in the middle of it, but that did not wake him!!
• First sounds (first word?) - Just like the “What To Expect” book said… Simon has begun his voice career with lots of vowel sounds. There is “oh” and “ah” and my favorite “owww” (as in “oww, I hurt my finger”). There is also an occasional “I” which with his breathing gurgling sounds exactly like “HI!!”, which is very freaky when heard over the baby monitor.

All in all this week began very rough with some long exhausting days of fussiness. The pediatrician (besides remarking how healthy Simon gained 2 pounds in 2 weeks!!) thought it was excess gas. After reading that Health Sleep Habits book, I’m wondering if it wasn’t overtiredness. Either way… some consistent napping and many gas drops later… the week ended with a much happier and fun to be around little newborn. Who knows why, but I’m not questioning it.

Hopes for next week… a first smile just in time for Aunt Roxy and Uncle Lon’s visit.

As we approach the one month line: erratic feedings, co-sleeping nightmares, the dreaded “C” word, and more things to freak out new parents…

Just when I was supposed to be watching for Simon’s feedings to get further apart, there they go getting closer together. I’m declaring it a “growth spurt”, because he sure feels heavier and longer and I can’t think of any other reason why he would all the sudden need to eat nearly every hour.

But then again, it’s been pretty erratic… forget looking forward to a normal sleeping schedule if your baby’s eating schedule is all over the map. It’s begun Tom questioning whether or not my milk production is up to snuff, which I shouldn’t take personally but in this crazy hormonal place that I am… I kinda do.

That’s the burden of breastfeeding. You are solely responsible for sustaining this young person’s life (yet again, pregnancy repeat), only now he is in the world to demand it from you on a regular (or not so regular) basis. Is he getting enough, is he getting too much? Did I wait long enough from that glass of wine? Do I need to watch my diet? Do I have to cut out dairy? Did my milk cause him to have gas pains?

And there it is… the dreaded “C” word: Colic. I know Simon doesn’t have anything close to colic, but last night I do think he was having horrible gas pains. The poor little guy would whimper strangely as he barely slept, and if I bounced his legs up and down… a series of loud and not so pleasant smelling farts would come out. I can’t for the life of me think of something I ate that would have all the sudden caused it, so I just have to wait and hope it doesn’t become a regular occurrence.

With the ridiculous warning labels on everything you buy, the crazy warnings about SIDS, and the looming fear of colic… it’s no wonder new parents are all a little bit nutty!!

Forget the fear and focus on the fun…
I decided to not really care so much about all this fear-mongering. I could walk around thinking about all the stuff I’m not supposed to do as a parent, but instead I’m trying to find the things that Simon and I can do together.

Our week this week has consisted of reading books, dancing around to music, exercising, looking at interesting patterns on the big screen TV, playing dress up and taking photos, and napping together. Simon is still too young to fully enjoy much of this, but it gives me time to practice being a parent. With so little awake alert time during the day, I feel like I need to force myself to use it.

But I also don’t try and be in his face all the time. Sometimes I marvel at how interested and content he seems staring up at the ceiling lights or squirming in his bouncer. I try to reassure myself it’s okay I take this time to myself, after all, he certainly lets me know when he needs to be held or feed.

I can’t say I’m not going a little stir crazy… questioning what I do and don’t do, all by myself in a house all day talking to the cats and a squirmy erratic adorable newborn. Sometimes I feel put together and enthralled with the smallest of moments. And other times I just need to cry a bit to let out the tension.

Milestones This Week
In general Simon seems more alert and visually interested in things. He spends a lot of time staring at ceiling lights or my face. He loves to be picked up so that he looks over my shoulder as I walk around the house. He is very physically active, still rolling over, but hasn’t progressed much in the way of making cute baby sounds.

• Can I get an “ooooo”? It was faint each time, but I watched Simon do it on more than one occasion. When he was staring very intently at my face, I made an exaggerated “oooo” to see if he would imitate (something babies start to do into their second month). He looked very frustrated, but managed to give me a faint breathy “oooo” back.
• No more umbilical cord!! I was just beginning to think it was never going to come off. Much to my surprise I felt a lump in the back of Simon’s onesie, and out rolled his dried up umbilical cord. Simon now has a belly button!!

Favorite Picture This Week
After some pretty rough nights, I often bring Simon into our bed to cuddle him back to sleep. All my exhaustion and frustration goes away as soon as I wake up to see this little angel yawning and stretching beside me.