Now Entering Parenthood...

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