Teething bites...

Pun absolutely intended, so groan away, oh ye of little humor.  That one was for my Xanth fans. :P

Teething bites.  For everyone.  JJ is normally a very happy baby, and even when teething pains strike, he's not usually too much of a grumpy puss during the day.  No... the trouble in this house is at NIGHT.  He fights going to sleep, he wants to nurse for half an hour after dozing off before he will permit me to actually lay him down, then he proceeds to wake up every forty-five minutes to nurse some more.  Then, around one or two in the morning, we get to the REALLY fun part.  That's when he usually decides that nursing is insufficient comfort and spends a good two hours being fully awake and wanting to play.

I usually end up either sobbing or screaming with frustration, because all I want to do at that point sleep.  Especially after John and I spent the day before moving things (large things) around in the garage and carrying boxes downstairs to free up space.  My legs are screaming and my ankles and hips aren't happy either.

In the end, nothing "gentle" persuades him to go back to sleep during these early AM party sessions.  He will lay quietly nursing for hours, with his eyes wide open and staring at me in the dim light that sneaks around the curtains.  When my nipples can't take it anymore, he is equally happy to crawl around on the bed, smacking whatever parts of me he can reach with gleeful abandon.  Hard.   By the time the second hour rolls around, he's already had fresh orajel applied and gotten a dose of baby Tylenol, so by this point I'm usually reduced to softly begging.

Which never works.

What does work (usually, and only towards the end of said second hour) is simply holding the little monkey in a nice cradling cuddle and refusing to let him move from that position.

Baby.  Loses.  His.  Damn.  Mind.

Seriously, you'd think I was dipping the kid in boiling acid or something.  Arching, shrieking (not screaming, SHRIEKING), thrashing, anything to wiggle loose and get me to let him keep playing.  And I have to keep it up for a solid sixty seconds until he stops fighting and is just crying, then it's back to the boob and he usually drops right off to sleep shortly thereafter.

At which point Mommy curls into a little ball and sobs quietly into her pillows because morning is only about 2 hours away.  Singing, nursing, rocking, fresh diaper, orajel, baby tylenol, scalp massage, foot/calf rubs, cuddling, binky, all the standard stuff calms him but nothing works to actually get him to go back to sleep, and I'm out of ideas.  I HATE doing that to him, listening to those enraged, betrayed howls rips my heart out, but it's the only thing that's working lately. 

It's after 8 now, and JJ is still sleeping, because when the alarm went off at 6:30 I just was not ready to face the day.  At all.  My body hurts, I'm  not the least bit hungry even though I know I really should eat, and all I want to do is mainline both of us some Nyquil so he'll sleep for a few more hours and I can greet the afternoon in a saner frame of mind.

But yeah...we have too much to get done today.

Aaaaaaaaand there he is, sleepy little monkey.

"Nighttime Parenting" ... more like "Parenting Olympics"

SO... Yesterday was interesting.  JJ took three (count 'em, THREE) forty-five minute catnaps.  He then refused a fourth entirely, despite it being a perfectly normal naptime for m... 'er... him...

ANYWAY... he stayed awake for three hours and fifteen minutes and finally passed out on my shoulder at quarter to six.

Of course, I looked at the clock with dread, trying to figure out if I should try to get him to stay asleep, or let him "recharge" and just be up half the night.

In the end I opted to make a go of convincing him that he really was tired enough to sleep through the night from six pm.

We had a bobble (with more sleep-nursing) around 6:30, and he was SO restless I just held him.  The next two hours had a lot of comfort nursing and 3/4 asleep trips to Mommy's shoulder for burps, but by nine he was back in the cosleeper.

I inhaled dinner, and good thing because he was reflux-fussing again at ten thirty.  After that one I just gave up on the Arm's Reach and kept him on me for the night.  Oh the gymnastics I tried in order to get that kid to stay asleep!  I suppose this is a preview of coming attractions, anytime he's teething or sick.

I doubt I got thirty minutes of continuous sleep all night.

My reward?

Thirteen hours and thirty minutes of baby sleep, inclusive of nursing/burping/eeeeeeeaaasing down to the mattress and praying he stays down this time.

And this morning...

Rested, active, happy baby boy.

So totally worth it.

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.

Sleep... or food... Choices...

Baby boy decided to wake up twice during the night.  Both times right as my subconscious was finally convinced he was done and was letting me go to sleep.  Little parasite has learned to consistently break out of his swaddle.  Don't know what I'm going to do when he can turn over and it's not safe to swaddle anymore.

Midnight-ish... and then again at quarter past two.

My back is screaming.

He's down for his first nap.

Which I am going to allow to be as long as he wants it to be, eff this "don't let him sleep too long" horse poop.

I now have to decide whether to go get food... because I'm so hungry I feel a little sick... or lay down and go back to sleep myself, because my eyes feel gritty and I know I'm going to be a raging grouchypants this afternoon if I don't get at least another hour.

I feel like holding out a wrist a la Ender... "so feed it to me through a needle".

Excuse me while I pass out.