The end of an age...

It happens with every baby.

They get bigger.

They make us open up the rise on their diaper covers.  Strangely, having to open up the waistband three notches didn't bother me a bit, but two days ago when I realized I needed to open the rise a notch, I got all sniffy and nostalgic and "my baby's not quite so itty bitty anymore!"

They start to sit up and roll over and fight like crazy to stay on their feet.

He was sitting up in my lap, flopped over, and wiggled until he was comfy. 

They start to be able to go longer between naps.  A few days ago we decided to give up the 90 minute wake period, since it absolutely WAS NOT working anymore.  The first day was insanity incarnate, the second... eh, moderate fussiness but he took longer naps, and today?  Well, today has been pretty darned easy so far.

Shhhhh, you're gonna jinx it.

Hush up, you.  The secret to my sanity thus far has been taking joy in small victories.  :P

So JJ seems to be settling into a two hour wake period.  It's still a matter of watching the clock very carefully and anticipating his tiredness by about 10-15 minutes, but he's fighting me less and less for each nap, and we've gotten 3 nights in a row of 12 hours of night-time sleep.  Even when semi-wakings for nursing are taken into account.

We've also been forced to abandon swaddling quite abruptly.  *sniff* *tear*  We're getting to that time anyway, since JJ is working so very hard at turning back to tummy, and he's had tummy to back for a good two weeks.  A few mornings back I was awakened very early by an extremely MAD baby, and turned over to find that his diaper had leaked, and his SwaddleMe and sheet were both completely soaked.

Well, since we only have one SwaddleMe, and he can easily wiggle out of a swaddled blanket these days (even the big ones, plus it's too hot now anyway), we just brought him into the bed for the rest of the night.  There wasn't much "night" left, and he slept for several more hours, giving me the chance to grab this bit of Ultimate Cuteness.

"Baby ni-night", as captioned by a friend's little boy when posted to Facebook.

The loss of the swaddle also contributed to the short naps, confused activities, and general crankiness of baby's last three days, as he has been swaddled for virtually every sleep period for the last three months and twenty-six days.  (That's right, I'm counting.  *eyetwitch*)

The first day, as I mentioned, was nightmarish.  The first nap lasted for a grand total of five minutes, ending when I attempted to put JJ into his cosleeper without any kind of wrapping.  Those eyes popped wide open again and that grin appeared.  You know, the one that tells you any prayer you had of baby actually taking a nap just went up in smoke. 

As we closed on two hours later, I decided to try the "nursing nap" that had given me some success in month two. Got us both settled on the bed and just let the kid nurse to sleep, already lying down, and I just stayed put and took the nap with him, still no swaddle. Thirty-seven minutes.

Next round, we tried the baby-wearing approach.  Too hot for the Moby, so I improvised a sling out of one of his swaddle blankets.

Yay for repurposing!

This netted us... wait for it...

Thirty-EIGHT minutes.

I can hear the snickers in the peanut gallery.  Oh, yes, I can.  I had sharp hearing to begin with, being a Mom has only made it keener.  *glares balefully in the direction of all who dare giggle.*

Nap number four, he actually made it into the cosleeper, still without any wrapping, but at that point I was happy just to have him out of my arms for the forty-four minutes that he slept.  Hey, progress is progress, folks.

Needless to say we had a VERY CRANKY BEAR when Daddy got home.  But despite that, he only made me do one round of "I don't WANT to sleep!", and one early-evening wake cycle, before giving us a total of eleven and a half hours of night sleep.  No, it wasn't continuous, but neither did he wake up all the way to eat.  Just fussed enough to get my attention, get nip in his mouth, and voila, happy baby.

Yesterday was significantly better, I think largely because in desperation I came up with what has been dubbed the TOS.

No, fellow Trek Nerds, I do not refer to some futuristic swaddling innovation in Captains' Gold.

It stands for Transitional Open Swaddle.

And yes, I'm aware that he looks like Charlton Heston

a la "The Ten Commandments"

 had an unfortunate encounter with a trussed turkey.

It works, that's all I'm gonna say.  Plenty of fussing still, but yesterday he took three relatively easy-down naps, went to bed at 6:40, only gave me one post-bedtime wakeup, and exclusive of nursing wakeups, slept for almost twelve hours.  We haven't had that (aside from the occasional miracle) in weeks.

Today has been better still.  Aside from the fact that I'm tired from being woken up to nurse 2-3 times a night (which I'm not used to, he didn't used to do that), he hasn't fought the naps hardly at all, and isn't making me wait until he's crying-tired to successfully get him down.

The other thing that has helped is we've gone back to mostly bedsharing.  Once he has that first wake cycle and is asleep again, I've just called it a night and snuggled down with him.  This cuts down on how much I have to wake up in order to get him fed, and once he's outgrown the need for any type of swaddling at all, will hopefully lead to his being able to nurse at will without needing to wake me up.

I hope.

And yes, I hear the chuckles, BTDT mommies, with your experiential cynicism.  :P

Please not to be hating on teh new momma's naiveté.

Thank you.

My friends all told me...

So, every pregnant woman has had this experience... your friends and family (and random total strangers) feel inexplicably compelled to regale you with a combination of warm fuzzies and horror stories until you're not sure whether to hide in a corner with a blankie or blow your nose with a pancake. This morning one of those little tidbits occurred to me, and I thought ... what a great post that would make! All the stuff my friends said, and whether or not it turned out to be true!


"You'll fall more in love than you ever have in your life."

Yeah, got it in one.  He drives me a little bit nuts with the meltdowns, but then he finally falls asleep and all I can do is stare at that perfect little face, and I go right back to day one.


"You're having heartburn?  Oh, he must have lots of hair!  But he'll rub it off in the crib and be bald for a while too!"

As you've seen, JJ was indeed born with a mop.  Still waiting on the baldness, thus far there is no indication of hair loss.  No Baby Rogaine on the horizon.  (Yes, I'm kidding.)

Four days.                          Almost four months.

"Childbirth is the most painful/beautiful/horrifying/magical thing you will ever experience."


Intense?  Yes.  Beautiful?  The reward was, the process, not hardly, things were far too chaotic.  Agonizing... no, not really.  The last 15 minutes scared the hell out of me, and that's what made it bad.  Now I know.   Magical?  That one I gotta give ya... five minutes after he was out, I was already saying, "Yeah, that was intense... but I could do it again."

"You'll be completely paranoid about germs and bugs and air and (insert potential life-threatening danger)."

Surprisingly not.  Yes, I throw the cats out of the bedroom when we're all asleep, or if the baby is napping and I'm not in there to watch.  Yes, I make sure his harness is snug in his car seat.  Yes, I have smiled sweetly at idiotic fellow motorists while cussing them in my soul.  No, I don't insist that people use hand sanitizer before they touch the baby, or worry that the extra gentle shampoo I buy for me will somehow turn toxic and burn his scalp because it doesn't say "Baby Shampoo" on the front.  Soap is soap.

"Cloth diapers?  You're crazy!  I know you, you hate doing laundry, you'll give up in a week and go back to disposables!!!"


I'll admit it, this one had me worried, but JJ's almost four months old and I'm adding to our stash of dipes every time I can scrape $20 to spare.  His butt hasn't seen a disposable diaper since he was three weeks old.  The laundry?  At first, John did it all.  And I confess, he still deals with the poopy ones.  But diaper laundry has turned out to be the easiest, least complicated, and most easily maintained laundry ever. And we have yet to make the acquaintance of the infamous blow-out.


"You'll sleep again... someday." (Maniacal chuckling and that "It's your turn" grin.)

Half & half.  We've hit the four month sleep regression with a vengeance, so NOW I've experienced the three to four wake ups a night to feed the baby.  I'm hurting, I tell ya, folks.  I am one sleep deprived momma.  Up until two weeks ago, I swear to you we hit the baby lottery on night sleep.  But last night and the night before, we got it down to one middle of the night wake up, and honestly he was never really awake, just fussed enough to get my attention, ate, and was back in the cosleeper in twenty minutes.  So it's (I hope) a growth spurt thing, and we can go back to sleeping through the night here soon.

Sweet Jesus, let it be so.

"You'll get used to noises while the baby is sleeping and stop chewing people out for breathing."

Not so much.  Four months next week, and I still flinch every time something hits the floor while JJ is napping.  Answering one's cell phone will get you shooed into the kitchen, and a belly laugh?  If looks could kill, my husband would be very very crispy several times over by now.  People who ruin half an hour's work and wake JJ right as he's almost asleep are considered to be volunteering to fix the situation.

"Breastfed babies tend to be smaller, so don't worry when he doesn't chunk up right away."

Thanks all for the warning.  Keeping this in mind helped me not completely panic when JJ didn't start really filling out until he was closing on two months old.  Y'all have seen the pictures, he was a very slender guy, and even though he's chubbed out nicely, I don't think he's ever going to be the roly poly sumo baby.

Two Weeks                      Two Months 

Three days ago... and yes, folks, that's the same type diaper in all three pictures.

"Any pacifier will do, sometimes they just want to suck."


The second part is absolutely true.  The first part is a load of bovine excrement.  The cheap binkies we got at first just to have a few were barely tolerated.  When he was about 10 weeks old, I bought a couple of Soothies, and he now flatly refuses to take any other pacifier.  As evidenced by his literally spitting one of the old ones at my nose and screaming at me today when I couldn't find the Soothie and tried an old Nuk in desperation.  Yeah, bad call, Mom.

And my absolute all time favorite:

"Don't worry, breast-milk poops don't stink."


Every single one of my friends who has ever breast-fed a baby has said this to me.

I have just one thing to say.

You are, every last one of you,

Dirty.  Rotten.  Liars.

Ya know...We made a pretty cute kid.

This morning, baby JJ woke up for his usual 7am breakfast, and was asleep again by 8:30 or so.  John and I, instead of jumping up and scurrying about our daily activities, just laid there and watched the baby sleep.

Because, seriously, it doesn't get much cuter than that.

As I watched him sleep, I marveled over the tiny sighs, the translucent skin over his eyelids, the sleepy wiggles.  I am in awe of how totally in love I am with this child.  I thought no one could ever capture my heart more thoroughly than his father did.

Boys and girls, I was wrong.

No matter how frustrated I get when he won't stop crying (and I get frustrated)...

No matter how overwhelmed I feel when he's obviously bored and my sleep-deprived brain can't think of any more silly songs or funny faces...

No matter how badly I DON'T want to go downstairs to the laundry room with that bag of diapers... because then I have to climb back up...

No matter how often I dissolve into tears at 11 pm because he WILL NOT GO TO SLEEP...

I love this kid.

When he smiles... I have to smile back, no matter how upset I was ten seconds ago.

When he whimpers in his sleep, I check to make sure he isn't lying with his pacifier under his neck again, because how uncomfy must that be!

When John steps on the creaky spot instead of going around... OH does he get glared at.

When I see another little scratch on his face, I reach for the baby nail clippers and feel like a cruddy parent for not checking his nails, like, YESTERDAY.

When he makes just the right combination of baby noises and says "haaiiiii!!" just after his Daddy says "Hi, JJ!"... yes, I stare like my child has suddenly sprouted antlers, but It.  Is.  So.  Cool!!

When he cries because his tummy hurts or he's tired or hungry or startled ... I bounce and rock and sing and change and feed and do whatever I can think of to quiet him, because those little tears squeeze my heart.

When he is fussing on his way up from a nap, and he stops crying the second he hears my voice... Oh, Dear God, that is the best feeling in the whole wide world.

Except maybe for the one when he falls asleep in my arms, full, clean, and content listening to my voice as I sing his favorite song or read from another book he won't understand for months.

Shhhh... the baby's sleeping... my little love...

My world is forever changed...

Nineteen days ago, John and I welcomed our son, John Junior, into the world.  Eighteen days ago we brought him home.  In the seventeen days since then, John has found a job, we've gotten familiar with the process of changing a cloth diaper, and discovered the joys of co-sleeping.  (No, seriously, I cannot for the life of me imagine how new moms get ANY sleep with baby in another room... but that's a whole separate post...)

I've also realized that nobody can possibly be as excited and obsessed with our perfect baby boy as we are (nor should they be), and rather than continuing to drive everybody on Facebook nuts with constant status updates every time JJ does something adorable, I decided to roll with the bug a friend put in my ear and start a mommy blog.  Took me a few days to find the time and the energy, but here we are!

As the title suggests, I am by no stretch of the imagination the Fount of Wisdom for All Things Baby.  I did a lot (and I mean a LOT) of babysitting growing up, which prepared me in some small measure, I'm sure, but the last (almost) three weeks have thrown into stark relief how little I actually know.  I fell into "Mommy-mode" with barely a pause, and much of it is instinctive... burping the baby came without a second thought, for example... but this is the easy time.  Yes, I'm tired because I'm suddenly running on six hours of sleep a night (and I count myself blessed to get that much, he's a WONDERFUL baby), and yes, I get frustrated when I can't figure out why he's screaming (which, thank God, has only happened once so far), but at this point his needs and what to do about them are extremely simple.  Full stomach + well-burped + clean diaper + Mommy = happy baby. Generally speaking, anyway.  It gets complicated later, and believe you me I am ENJOYING this simple time... despite my aching back and all mutterings to the contrary.

That picture up there?  He was just about 90 minutes old when that was taken, they had just brought him back from the nursery.  I have to say, I don't look half bad, which kind of surprises me, because I got maybe an hour of sleep the night before, and the delivery was pretty insane.  The picture makes me laugh because I look completely stunned, and I was.  I kept looking at him, trying to wrap my head around the idea that he was inside me, that John and I together had made this beautiful, tiny, precious little creature that was now clutching my finger and sleeping with his ear to my heart-beat.  I couldn't seem to grasp it, and spent the better part of my conscious moments that day alternately grinning, crying, and staring at him in total astonishment.

In the last couple of weeks, I find myself looking at the world and everything in it with a completely new frame of reference.  EVERYTHING is being passed through the "we have a baby" filter, with some interesting results.  Shows I liked (or at least was willing to tolerate) before now have me asking John to change the channel because I don't want the baby hearing that crap, even if he is too young to understand.  I find baby-talk addressed to adults more obnoxiously irritating than ever.  The zoo scene in Happy Feet made me suddenly burst into tears... and not because it was sad.  It's supposed to be this tragic, gut-wrenching scene detailing Mumble's slide into depression and madness, and all I could think was "I get to take JJ to the zoo!"

We get to take him to the zoo, and the aquarium.  We get to watch his face when he tastes chocolate for the first time.  We get to teach him how to ride a bike and climb a tree and make snow angels.  John will be showing him how to clean a fish, and I'll be teaching him to sing harmony the way my mother did... by singing "Come, Follow, Follow" and "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" in rounds with him at bedtime.  We get to tell him how flowers grow and why the sky is blue, and all about that big round white thing in the night sky and why it sometimes looks like a coin and other times like the clipped-off piece of a fingernail.


All the neat things we get to do with him thrill me.

All the scary things we have to protect him from terrify me.

And somewhere in the middle is this squishy little bean who wrapped his tiny hand around my finger and melted my heart into a pile of warm fuzzies.

Welcome to the world, son.  It's gonna be a crazy trip!