Friday, August 29, 2008

Tooth three

Cooper is working hard on his third tooth. It is going to be his top right side. Two days ago it was a couple of white speckles on a red, irritated gum. Yesterday it was a white line on a red, irritated gum. Today it is the distinct bottom edge of a tooth, barely covered in what seems to be a single layer of microscopically thin clear gum tissue. The redness has gone down a lot and I'm pretty confident that if it doesn't break through that last layer tonight, it will tomorrow. As usual, Cooper is very slightly grumpy at times, and a bit drooly, but otherwise nonplussed about the whole thing.

Tooth three! Wheeeee!

Thursday, August 28, 2008

The sleep experiment results

It has been over a week and I'm pretty happy with the results of our sleep experiment. Let us review-

Night 1:
2 hours of upset baby. Then slept until 6am.

Night 2:
Slept all night, woke at 5:30am. Not too bad.

Night 3:
Roughly 2 hours of upset baby. Then slept until 7am.

Night 4:
20 minutes of upset baby. Then slept until 6:15am

Night 5:
40 minutes of upset baby. Then slept until 8am.

Night 6:
Slept all night, woke at 5am. Not too bad, but kinda early. Fell back asleep until 8am, mercifully.

Night 7:
30 minutes of upset baby, fell back asleep by himself, awake at 6:15am.

Night 8:
5 minutes of snuffling around at 4am. Some whining. Fell back asleep by himself, awake at 7am.

Night 9:
Slept all night, awake around 6:30am

Night 10:
Slept all night, awake around 6:30am

Clearly we are seeing a trend of distinct improvements. I am quite pleased with the results of this, especially the last few nights.

And while I wouldn't recommend this to everyone, it had worked well for us. Cooper seems to be a fairly quick learner and did indeed change his sleeping habits by the end of the 7 day period.

The full and real question will be answered with time- will he have a permanent change? Well, part of that has been answered with "yes." The "yes" is that if I stop nursing him at night, he can learn to put himself back to sleep. This was quite obvious after the first few nights were behind us, and the late night wakeups started to resolve themselves with some whining, quiet crying, and falling back asleep.

The second part is "will he stop waking up?" I think the answer to this is yes, as well. He sleeps more through the night than he ever did before. I think that by not feeding him, the bodily rhythm he had that woke him up was disrupted, and the new rhythm of not getting a reward (food, mommy snuggle time) for waking will take over completely.

I know he would have eventually done this without our help. But I'm glad we did it now. My business trips are coming up soon, and the knowledge that chances are Matt might have a kid that whines for a few minutes late at night, rather than one that screams for two hours, is very reassuring to me.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Sleeping, or not

Cooper is a great sleeper. Sometimes he even sleeps all the way through the night, from 9:45pm to 6am or so. But most of the time he wakes up once, and sometimes two or three times. And when he does wake up, he wants to nurse. Won't go back to sleep without nursing. Screams like we are killing him if he doesn't nurse. You get the picture.

While mostly that is fine, I realized recently that we are setting ourselves up for a big issue here. You see, I need to start going on business trips pretty soon. And while I'm away, not only will Cooper not be eating well (because he hates bottles and only just started on cereals) but potentially he won't sleep.

So Matt and I agreed to a one week, extremely unpleasant, experiment. We'd all go to sleep as usual. Then, when and if Cooper woke up in the middle of the night, I'll go downstairs and sleep on the futon (to keep me from having a nervous breakdown) while Matt tried to get Cooper to fall back asleep. The agreement was that Matt wouldn't wake me up under any circumstances- this was between the two boys exclusively. Only after 6am would I help out, nurse, whatever.

The first night of this was utter torture. From 3 to 5am, Cooper and Matt battled it out- Cooper would scream, thrash, cry while Matt channeled his inner zen and just kept walking and rocking the little guy. But at 5am he fell asleep, and he slept until 8am. He was his regular happy chatty self at 8am, so as far as we could tell- no harm done.

The second night was funny. Cooper crashed out early (8:30) and slept until 5:30am. I figured that was within the spirit of the agreement, if not the law, so I fed him.

Third night was torture again. Cooper woke up at 4am, the power went out on our block at 4:45 because of a thunderstorm with high winds, and sometime after that the kid stopped shrieking and fell asleep. At about 7am he woke up happy as ever.

Last night, the fourth night, was the most interesting. He fell asleep at about 9:45 and work up at 4am. I retreated downstairs. I heard some complaints, brief screeches of annoyance, and some quiet snuffling. And then- nothing. All of a sudden it was 6:15am.

Matt confirmed my suspicions when I crawled back into bed in dawn's early light. Matt hadn't picked Cooper up out the crib because in Matt's his words, "he never seemed to need it." Instead, Cooper whined a bit, got a little mad, and then just fell back asleep.

I am wary of declaring victory, but this represents a huge change. While Cooper is great at falling asleep for his naps by himself (i.e. without rocking, walking or nursing) and sometimes he'll fall asleep for the night by himself, he has never ever fallen back asleep during the middle of the night without nursing (or two hours of unpleasantry). I know he's fully capable of sleeping through the night, because he does it naturally every once in a while. I just want it to be a habit, not an occasional plus.

Most of what we've read before embarking on this experiment said that changing the sleep patterns of a baby that is between 3 months and 1 year old takes 4 to 7 nights in a row of being consistent. Matt and I are hoping that this fourth night, where the little guy woke up, fussed about, and then fell back asleep, is indeed the beginning of a better thing.

I'll write an update on day 7 with the final results. Hopefully we'll have more like last night!

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Did you get a medal?

At the fabulous wedding we attended this past weekend...

Woman 8 months pregnant with second child (I will call her Nancy), strikes up a conversation with me about labor and delivery. We are chatting very amiably and then-

Nancy: Wait- you did natural childbirth? the look on her face is one I usually reserve for comments more like "Wait, you like to eat human shit for breakfast?"

Me: Yup. I did.

Nancy: the look progresses to sheer pity, as if I just revealed I have an IQ of 50 and am wearing adult diapers Did they at least give you a medal or something?

Me: I asked for a gold star on my chart and the midwife said she'd see what she could do.

Nancy: I had one contraction- man that hurt like hell So I got an epidural, and 8 hours later they woke me up and told me to push. I pushed twice and hey! Baby time!

Me: That wasn't quite like my experience.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Like a train on the tracks

I see it comin'.

Comin' round the bend.

Cooper crawls backwards now. As of Saturday, when we put him down on a blanket, he gets up on all fours and edges backwards using his hands and knees. For a 5 month old baby, sometimes he moves pretty darn fast. Dangerously fast. I-need-to-buy-baby-gates-NOW fast.

But he can't go forwards.

YET.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Shots

I can't believe how many shots Cooper has been getting. Because of his post-shots rash last time, we are on a modified schedule of a few shots here, a few shots there.

So he's had 6 separate shots in the last month, instead of 3 shots. This is because a lot of vaccines are now combination shots, to minimize the number of "pricks" the baby gets. But Cooper has been getting them one per needle, and kind of one at a time.

6 is a lot. After this last set (Monday), which was three immunizations in one needle each, he got irritable and very mildly fevery the next day. It was not a very nice way to spend Tuesday.

And today, he's been kind of in a funky mood. He's happy and normal one minute, and then grumpy and demanding the next. And he hasn't wanted to eat on his regular schedule, which compounds the grumpiness. His noon nap didn't start until 3pm because he was too alternately fussy and giggly.

I've noticed that vaccines make him get nauseous, too. I think for the last three times he got shots, he vomited the next day at least once. He's such a non-spitter and non-vomiter that when he does, it is quite surprising. I got positively showered in hurl yesterday. I won't go into details, but lets just say that both of us got in the shower as quickly as possible.

I'm not looking forward to this whole vaccines thing for the next 6 years, or whatever it is. I understand why we do it, but it still stinks.

Monday, August 11, 2008

The rest of me

Cooper slept for 10 hours, uninterrupted, last night. Pretty cool.

I slept for 7 hours, and then I had to pee. Darn! I got two more in after the pee break, so that ain't half bad.

When I started the baby journey, I was happy with my body shape and clothing size. For much of the pregnancy, I could get by if I was wearing just one size up, especially if using a hair elastic to tie the waistband of pants loosely. Towards the end, only serious maternity wear and Matt's clothing worked- that was about the last two months, maybe three. Its foggy now.

What I've discovered as of last weekend (I had to go shopping, ewwww, for some breast-feeding friendly clothing appropriate for summer weddings) is that I'm back to my original size! My waist is kind of a funny shape from the odd stretch-mark ridden loose baby pouch (I like to think of myself as a kangaroo in recovery) but for the most part, I fit the pre-preg sizes. Of course, certain cuts of pants especially are not flattering because nobody wants my pasty-white loose belly skin blinding them in the sunlight, but hey, at least stuff fits. And looks good.

Most exciting is that I found a cute, lightweight dress on the clearance rack that is very breastfeeding friendly for exactly 50 cents more than my gift certificate. SCORE!

Friday, August 8, 2008

Jumping the gun

I confess.

We've jumped the gun (but not the shark).

Cooper LOVES to eat stuff. Loves it. He eats computer paper, lint, dog hair, and especially grass and leaves. I can't keep it out of his mouth- he's so quick with his stealth quasi-crawl and then he's really, really good at shoving things in his open maw. And he swallows the stuff (trust me, I know where it ends up) without choking or freaking out. We've been child proofing lately but some things (like dog hair) are a renewable resource around here and thus, unavoidable. I've covered the outlets and so forth, though- I promise!

So anyway, I decided to try out some pureed brown rice and mom-milk squish on him.

He loves it. After one or two confused looks and gags, all of a sudden he was wide eyed, open mouthed, and practically begging for more. He holds his own spoon while I use another spoon to feed him, and he proudly sits up in the high chair like a good little guy. Its pretty cute.

After the initial highly enthusiastic start, we've decided to feed him one ice-cube sized portion a day for a few weeks as a slow start. He really enjoys the process and gets all excited when he's in the high chair and Matt or I pull up with his little spoon and tiny baby bowl filled with squish.

I know it is a month earlier than the current suggested start of solids introduction, but my pediatrician did confirm my suspicion; the kid is way, way more developed in almost every way from the average infant. You can watch him sit, stand, crawl, talk, and use his vicious little teeth (did I mention he bit me hard enough to make bright red marks? on my hand? Yeah, I'm scared for my nipples). None of these things are really skills for a 5 month old, they are more like for a 7 or 8 month old baby. So she said, after I asked, yes it is safe to assume his digestion abilities are also several months ahead of schedule.

Incidentally, I did taste-test the rice and milk squish. It is pretty good. Sweet with a hint of savory. Quite bland, of course.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Tooth Two and Sippilicious

Tooth #2 is above the gum line. Cooper doesn't care.

I care! I no longer have a gums only baby. I have a baby with teeth!

The little man is learning some cup skills this week. Now that he sits up so nicely, I'm moving fast with the sippy cup, normal cup and general cup usage. He's been in love with the soft spout of the Born Free Trainer sippy for about two weeks, and now he drinks from it (sort of) while in his high chair. He loves the little plastic handles and can use them to get the spout into his mouth all by himself, which dare I say it is quite impressive for a not-quite 5 month old baby.

Normal cups are messier but I think he drinks more from them. Considering I have a 4 month backlog of frozen breastmilk, I am happy to splash cups of the stuff everywhere. Most of it ends up on his shirt. Bibs are useless. My only self-imposed rule is that I don't defrost bags that have 5 oz or more in them. It used to be 2 oz, but hey, the stuff is gonna go bad, and I figure a baby can't learn to drink from a cup without a lot of practice.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

The other side

The other tooth is now coming closer to the surface.

Tooth #1 is out and about, all ridged and tooth-looking. It is still so small that I can't possibly get a good photo of it, but it is certainly up.

Tooth #2 is starting to get near the gumline. It is just barely showing up as a slightly irritated white line. Rubbing the gum with my finger shows that it is soft gum there, not yet rough sharp tooth edge.

Cooper is totally unimpressed by the teething process. He's happy to chew on the same things he's always chewed on, and he seems to pretty much act like himself. I think he's just glad that yesterday he finally pooped- after eight days of holding it. Eww gross.

Oh yeah, and he never got chicken pox. That we noticed. But I think I'll have him assayed for immunity before he gets vaccinated, just in case it was so mild that the spots I attributed to heat irritation were actually super mild pox. Because there is no need to give him a shot he doesn't require.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

A thrilling weekend

This weekend has been FULL of baby excitement.

With Cooper's newfound sitting skills (unsupported! self sufficient for up to 10 seconds!) in mind, I practically ran out of the moving car to a nearby garage sale. There was the nicest looking, well maintained, unpainted high chair. All dark wood, really good shape, and cheap as hell.

I inspected it thoroughly for obvious issues and talked to the woman that had used it to feed her SIX yes SIX boys.

"No girls?"

"Nope. Girls, who needs 'em?"

Wow. So yeah, the thing is well built. I snapped that puppy up and brought it home. Then I read up on highchair safety and discovered that things have only very slightly changed since the 1970s, and thus a very easy and quick fix involving the sewing machine and a spare backpack buckle brought my newfound treasure up to current safety standards.

Sweeeeeeet.

Oh, and did I mention Cooper adores it? Eating meals with mom and dad is now so cool. He sits there chewing on his toys and tossing toys onto the floor as we "adults" eat real food and retrieve his dropped toys. Its great! He is learning what mealtime means, I think, and that is a good lesson.

Today at lunch Cooper was residing in his new perch, chewing on a toy while Matt and I enjoyed some fresh pasta and tomatoes. I happened to look at Cooper while he had his mouth wide open and thought, "What the heck?"

He has a tooth. It is just minutely, barely, hardly above the gum. Bottom middle right side.

Unbelievable.

Friday, August 1, 2008

Day 13 of Pox Watch 2008

Only one more day to go.

So far, no spots. No fever. No irritability. Yucky runny nose, attributable to many potential sources that may not be pox-related.

Cooper may come out of this pox-free! Whhheeeeeee...

On a totally unrelated topic, our neighbor's brother died yesterday. He was temporarily staying in a tent in the backyard of the house, between apartment rentals, I guess. Apparent drug overdose. How awful. To find your little brother (he was about 18-19, she looks to be roughly 25-30) dead in a tent on the lawn has got to be massively upsetting in several different ways. The Hell's Angels are having a convention here in town, so I suspect I know where this kid got enough drugs to kill him. It was pretty weird to watch this all from the front window of our house. Cooper likes to stare at brightly colored trucks so he was mesmorized by the fire truck, ambulance, police cruiser, etc that were parked in our front street area all morning. I confess I got out my high powered binoculars and did some serious spying.