30 Days of Blogging, Day 9

It’s cold again. It’s supposed to go down to  -20°C again tonight, and it’s icy and snowy outside. It’s the kind of weather for family cuddles. The kind of weather where I miss bed sharing with my baby. 

And when your baby has another nasty cough and cold and has to choose whether to breathe through her mouth and trigger more coughing, or breathe through her nose and not get enough air to her lungs, it’s really, really hard to withhold nighttime nursing. Nursing is the throat soothing cure-all that helps her sleep through anything. 

So about that night weaning we started… the night weaning has gone out the window during my shift. While my wife is on call for nighttime wakings (from bedtime till 1am), Avery goes back to sleep with nothing more than my wife poking her head through the doorway and saying “go back to sleep.” During my shift, I’ve started nursing her again. It’s how she sleeps well through being sick. It’s the only way to get her back to sleep during her bouts of middle-of-the-night insomnia (even during my wife’s shift). 

So weaning is a discussion topic for another day (or month, or year….).

On a related note, Avery LOVES peppermint tea. It’s just a dried mint leaf from our garden steeped in hot water. And when she’s sick, a little dollop of honey is a great throat soother. 

Daycare countdown: planning sleep strategies

Avery and I start the daycare transition in 7 days. I am equal parts anxious and heartbroken, and excited for her to make friends and gain new experiences. Our daycare provider, whom I will herein refer to as Gwen, asked me to give her a list of Avery’s favourite foods and foods she doesn’t like, as well as tips for making her happy or comforted. Guess I can’t put “me” on the comfort list. 

Although I didn’t plan to be, I have been a bit of an Attachment Parent. I nurse Avery to sleep, and she naps on me for most naps. She has never been laid down in her crib and gone to sleep of her own accord. We have tried, but it’s not in her skill toolbox yet. So this makes me feel anxious as we prepare to put her in daycare. Please excuse my ramblings as I work out my worries in this post. 

Let me back up a bit and give an update about night time sleep and nap transitions. 

Avery has been showing us lately that she can put herself back to sleep when she wakes through the night, but nighttime sleep has still been a bit of a roller-coaster. Some nights she wakes every 20 minutes and bed shares for the second half of the night, and other nights she goes 7 hours alone in her crib. Sleep development is not linear, but big picture I see definite improvements. As for naps, I think she is trying to transition to one nap a day. She will often be chipper and awake until 11am, and then sleep soundly for 2 or 3 hours. With one nap a day, bedtime is a BREEZE. However, some days she is tired and cranky at 8:30am, and on those days we stick to two naps, which makes bedtime tougher because she’s just not quite tired enough. It’s a complicated phase that requires flexibility and being really in tune with her sleep needs on a day-to-day basis. 

So how does this impact our daycare prep? Back when I was interviewing daycares, I was adamant that they offer us two naps a day. I figured that because most babies aren’t ready to go down to one nap until 15-18 months, that my high sleep needs baby definitely wouldn’t be ready for one. Our provider (Gwen) agreed to accommodate, because she will only have two kids in her care for now, and they will both be 12 months. It was really great to ease my mind back when we were searching for a daycare, but now I’m thinking that the nap schedule just won’t work for us. In order to squeeze two naps into the short day before Gwen’s after-school kids arrive (and babies get picked up), naps are scheduled for 10-11, and 1-2:30. There is no way Avery will go to sleep 2 hours after waking. Not a chance.  

So for the past couple of weeks I have been trying to transition Avery to a 10am nap, and I have also been working on getting her to sleep for her nap without nursing. The 10am nap time works well most of the time, but some days she refuses completely and has one afternoon nap instead. I can only hope that Gwen will work with Avery’s day-to-day needs by helping her get to sleep with rocking if she’s emotional from being tired, or by letting her play quietly while the other baby naps if she is just too awake to sleep. 

As for the afternoon nap being too early, we are accommodating this by having me pick her up at 1pm for the first few months, until both babies are ready for one nap. However, I’m sure she will go at least the first month being too stressed to sleep during the morning nap, and will need an earlier afternoon nap. The daycare transition will probably make her tired enough to put a hold on the nap transition. 

Now on to my concern about GETTING AVERY TO SLEEP. Like most daycare providers, Gwen plans to put the babies in cribs, turn off the light, and let them go to sleep. One does not simply let my baby fall asleep. One actively assists my baby in falling asleep. I have been successful in cutting out the nurse to nap (although I passionately believe in continuing to nurse to sleep at night), but I’ve had to replace it with another sleep crutch – walking in the stroller. On the days we have one nap instead of two, it’s remarkably easier to get her to sleep. A few minutes of rocking will get her out cold, and I can even put her down to carry out the rest of her nap alone. I guess all I can do to help her get to sleep at daycare is to ask Gwen to offer her a bit of rocking, to wait until she is truly tired and otherwise let her play quietly, and to cross my fingers and pray and send positive vibes to her throughout the day and really just let it be. I’ve heard that babies will adapt to new routines with new people, and Avery has shown lots of signs that she is adaptable (in new situations, at least, but not really with new people…). 

So there’s my plan for getting through the awkward adjustment phase of Avery’s sleep at daycare. I’m super nervous, but I think/hope that 6 months from now I will look back on this and laugh and say what was I so worried about? 

Why I hated my Mother’s Day gift and how I fixed it

So for mothers day I had a plan to gift my wife and myself with custom made mugs. I recruited a local artist to work with me on a custom design. One would say Mommy (for me) and one Mo (for my wife). The mugs would also include the date of our daughter’s birth, and the date of our first Mothers day. They were to have a simple, black and white, birds on a wire design. I started emailing back and forth with this artist back in November. I’m a planner.  

After months of seemingly reassuring emails, it was May and the mugs still hadn’t been made. The artist assured me I would have them on time and that she understood my instructions. I finally received them two days before we would be celebrating mothers day, and they were HORRIBLE. they were gaudy, looked like a 5 year old had drawn on them in pencil crayon, one was chipped, the raw clay had been stained before being fired, and my daughter’s birth date was wrong. My instructions for the layout, dates, and design had not been followed at all. When I confronted her, she got very offended and said that if I wanted to work with an artist, it was expected that I would like the artist’s aesthetic. Never mind that she charged a lot more for “custom” design. Never mind that she got the date wrong. She actually had the audacity to refuse to refund my money while asking for me to return the mugs! If I couldn’t appreciate them, she didn’t want me to have them. But I still had to pay full price. I refused to return what I had already paid for, obviously, and kept them. 

I ended up having a mug made at an awesome local pottery painting place that I gave my wife a week late. It has our baby’s hand print on one side and says Mo on the other. It worked out fine in the end. But I had these two ugly mugs that I didn’t want to look at but that cost me too much to get rid of. So I researched painting over already glazed ceramics with a new design. 

I ordered some ceramic paints on Amazon that can be cured in a regular old oven, and I found some step-by-step guides for drawing cacti (thought they would be cute) on Pinterest.  I needed this drawing guide. It would have been way cooler if I could’ve drawn up some cool, personal design, but that’s not in my skillset… Not in the least. 

After several coats of white to cover the nastiness, some lucky freehand drawing using the helpful guides, and a dash of colour, here’s the finished product. All it took to cure it was half an hour in a 350°F oven. No stripping of the old glazing or ink, no professional kiln. Totally DIY. And now I can love these mugs that used to remind me of the awful interaction I had and my almost busted mother’s day. 

Weekend Update in Pictures and Words

My weekend was extended into Monday because I had the stomach flu and my wife had to stay home to look after Avery while I laid in bed all day. So today is my back to reality day. Today is my Monday. 

On Friday when my wife got home from work we put up our new family sized tent in the backyard to check it out before we go camping on the 24th. Avery had a lot of fun. 

 That’s going to be the summary of every day this weekend – Avery had fun. It really doesn’t take much to make this baby happy these days. Of course, it also doesn’t take much to set her off into a whiney fit… She has a lot of emotions. 

On Saturday we went to a friend’s house an hour and a half away and Avery slept blissfully in the car both ways. What a change from her newborn days… She actually LIKES the car now. At our friend’s house Avery played in her first bouncy castle and at her first water table. She also loves playing with (or watching) other kids, and when our friend’s 2 year old kept beckoning for Avery to “come play!” my heart melted a bit and I longed for a second baby. 

Saturday night Avery was really fussy, and seemed really gassy. She was flinching and jerking like she was having jabbing pains, barfed a couple of times, and even while bed sharing all night with me she would wake crying and would whimper in her sleep. I thought it was because I had eaten a lot of dairy at our friend’s house (not an uncommon reaction to dairy), but in hindsight she may have had the stomach bug first… 

On Sunday it was HOT. 31°C (87°F), which is something we’re not used to here after a cold, dreary spring. I ran to the store first thing in the morning and bought Avery a cheap little kid pool, and although we spent most of the day indoors, we braved the heat for an afternoon splash. She LOVED it. Avery had a lot of fun. 

We’ve also been pretty lenient with Avery’s exploring, trying not to helicopter while still making sure she’s safe. We locked a couple of the kitchen cabinets, but we left some unlocked so she can play with pots and pans and measuring cups. Avery had a lot of fun. She’s naked because it was just so hot… 

Also on Sunday my wife built the entire outdoor run for the chicken coop. All that’s left before the big reveal is to add the steel roof to the run and to paint the trim. 

Sunday night I was awake all night with stomach cramps and vomiting. Avery was in bed with us because I couldn’t be getting up with her all night in that state, and she stays asleep all night in our bed. At least we had that working for us. 

By morning I had stopped barfing, but I still had stomach cramps and I was super weak and exhausted. My wife stayed home from work and looked after Avery. It went great as long as I wasn’t in the room with them… Avery did not like that I was laying huddled under a blanket ignoring her. I think she was worried when her Mo would pull her off of me because I couldn’t handle the climbing on my stomach. She didn’t understand why she couldn’t have her mommy. 

But today I feel pretty much completely better, and Avery is much happier being able to climb all over me again. 

Honestly though… I liked the break. Even though I felt like shit, I relished being able to lay in bed and not worry about Avery. And now I’m happier and refreshed going into the rest of the week. 

Have a great week, everyone! 

The Lullaby as a family heirloom

I’m talking about your every day, run of the mill, possibly out of tune (but it doesn’t matter) lullabies. They don’t have to be anything fancy, and they may be the same songs that many other families sang and cherished as their own. But there is something very meaningful and sentimental about these songs. I love the way a lullaby can be passed down from generation to generation like a family heirloom. 

I have very strong memories and a subconscious emotional reaction to the lullaby my mom sang me when I was a baby/young child, and I sing the same lullaby to my own baby now at every nap time and every bedtime. 

My dad sang to me too, but he sang a lot of different songs, and he played his guitar for me, and he played relaxing CDs for me. I have emotional reactions to some of the songs he used to sing as well, but they were something different than The Lullaby that my mom used. From a psychological perspective, a Lullaby is used (intentionally or unintentionally) to condition a sleep response. It is used repeatedly at sleep times to cue that it’s time to sleep, and eventually hearing that particular lullaby will make the child feel sleepy. I have to think that such a deeply conditioned song would stick around in one’s memory and continue to evoke an emotional response later in life. Interestingly, it may also trigger a sleep response in me – I yawn my way through it when I sing to my baby the lullaby my mom sang to me as a baby. 

Avery now reacts instantly to our lullaby. She relaxes, closes her eyes, and her arms stop flailing as she rests her hand on me while she nurses to sleep. 

In case anyone’s wondering, my family heirloom lullaby is All The Pretty Horses. Side note: old lullabies like that tend to have subtly disturbing lyrics. A quick Wikipedia search of this lullaby suggests that the song was originally sung by Africans slaves who couldn’t care for their babies because they had to care for their masters, and some versions make reference to buzzards pecking out their eyes. We don’t sing that verse…. 

What lullaby has a special place in your memory? Do you have a family heirloom lullaby?