Sleeping Like a Lucy...

Who knew this having a baby stuff would so get in the way of writing my blog about trying to have said baby. Ha! Actually its not Lucy, she takes naps, its my darn job, which I never seem to have a break from and if I do happen to have a break from it you can usually find me snuggling with my Lucy, my Rob or...cleaning my house. Glamorous, right?

Anyways, I've made myself a promise that when Lucy goes down for the night I'll come into our computer room and blog away. Maybe not so much a promise as a goal...a really lofty goal, but a goal nonetheless. I love to blog so I'm just going to have to make time to do it.

So onto this sleeping business. Little Lucy slept like a dream, and by dream I mean 8 hours a night, until she hit about 4 months. At 4 months she stopped sleeping through the night completely and started waking up 4-6 times per night. This made for a super raggedy mom and dad during the week so in desperation and sleep-deprivation I started to think about sleep training. Honestly, I abhor the phrase "sleep training". It makes me think of training a dog, and if you ever met my dogs you would see how successful we are at that. I just hate the idea of it.


This sounds super cheesy but how I dealt with Lucy's not sleeping was not to rely on books but the follow my own heart (how's that for a Lifetime moment? Cue the snappy music.). Every night we would get ready for bed, read our book (Wet Pet, Dry Pet, Your Pet, My Pet) snuggle for a couple minutes on the rocker and then down into the crib she went. The first night I let her cry for 5 minutes, then I came in and picked her up and let her go to sleep on our bed. The second night I let her cry for 10 minutes and then again picked her up and let her go to sleep on our bed. The third night I was intending on letting her go for 15, but she fell asleep after just a couple little grunts and didn't wake up until 6:00 am. Now it isn't always so smooth, but I usually fall back onto the 5, 10, 15 minute cry sessions and so far I haven't had to let her cry more than 15 minutes and I don't let her get hysterical. If it is just a sporadic cry that's fine, but screaming, hard-breathing kind of crying I don't let go on. This is just my personal take on sleeping, not that this would necessarily work for everyone else or that I'm guaranteeing the same kind of success, it is simply what I'm comfortable with and what works for my family. You find out what works for you (I feel like this should be the motherhood credo) and more power to you.

Also, we co-sleep. That's right, I said it, co-sleep. Gasp! The horror! What hippies! Before you get your panties in a twist it isn't technically full on co-sleeping, I guess I would call our version Co-Sleeping Lite and it was completely "ok'ed" by Lucy pediatrician (whom I ADORE) at her 6 months appointment. In fact I was wary to admit to her that we let Lucy sometimes sleep in the bed, thinking she would be horrified, but she was completely on board as soon as I (sheepishly) admitted that sometimes the only way I could function at work is if Lucy slept in the bed in the mornings. What is Co-Sleeping Lite you ask? Well, Lucy usually wakes up around 5:00-6:00 am, and as I would like to get as much sleep as possible I just bring her into bed until I have to get up for work or until I can no longer ignore the tiny hands grabbing at my nose and pulling my hair in the morning. Sometimes it is earlier that 5, sometimes it is later than 6 but Lucy's pediatrician said that it is the best of both worlds: Lucy learns how to fall asleep on her own in the evening, Rob and I have our time together at night and then she has the security of co-sleeping in the morning. It works great for us. Snarky Sidenote: If you feel the need to lecture me I'd like remind you this is my own personal blog and I'm sharing what works for us, if you don't like it feel free to move on. That being said, I would love to hear how you all out there deal with sleep challenges and what has worked for you, even if it is the farthest away from what we do, I'd love to hear it.

So I'm becoming quite granola aren't I? If you told me two years ago I would cloth diaper and co-sleep I would have laughed you out of the room. Just goes to show how things change. Also, to prove how granola I am...I also have now gotten rid of all my old cleaning supplies and switched to home-made cleaning products! Look for an upcoming post with details and recipes.

Hope all is well out there!

"Always kiss your children goodnight -- even if they're already asleep."

-H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Funny Story...

I know, I know, I haven't been around lately. I did finish my Blogolympics, but it just fizzled out, I didn't, as my track coach used to yell at me, "finish strong". I'm so sorry, I just ran out of steam, which seems to be the story of my life lately. I'm just so darn exhausted these days. Between working and Lucy I have absolutely no spare time. I feel like the thing that always gets put aside is my blog, which is a bummer because I love blogging and I have all of these topics that I'm just dying to share, like how breastfeeding has gone for me and about how hard it was going back to work...

Today I will share just how tired and worn down I am with a story. Here's some background on the past couple of weeks, Lucy has been extra fussy during the day and waking up a lot at night. I think that she's teething, poor thing. So I haven't been getting a whole lot of sleep. Basically my weekday schedule goes as follows:

• Get up at 6 (earlier if Lucy is hungry earlier), feed Lucy.
• 6:30 Jump in shower and attempt to look halfway presentable. By presentable I mean hoping there is little to no spit-up on my work clothes...or worse, poop (it has happened folks, truly). On a good day my hair is soaking wet but at least has gel in it, I have a bit of makeup on that I may or may not have had to apply with Lucy on my lap to prevent a screaming fit and possibly my armpits shaved (my legs...not so much).
• Get Lucy ready and leave by 7:15.
• 7:30 Drop Lucy off at my Mom's house and feed her again depending on whether she ate early or not, hoping breastmilk doesn't drip down my shirt...if it did then drive to work with the heat on full blast to dry it. Thank God for extra strength deodorant.
• Fight traffic (past the Nike World Campus which happens to only be ONE LANE, WTF?)and be at work by 8:00 and work until 5:00.
• Drive through hellish 5:00 traffic to my Mom's to pick up Lucy.
• Feed her at my Mom's house and attempt to get out in a timely manner, my Mom always wants to chat and I want to go home!
• Get home at 6:30-7:00ish.
• Rob makes dinner, lately I've been in charge of soothing fussy Lucy who cannot STAND anyone else to hold her at night.
• We go upstairs at 8:00 pm, yes, when it is still light out for goodness sake. Lucy goes to bed and Rob and I watch TV (aka turn on the TV and pass out until one of us rouses the other to get ready for bed...or, we wake up in our clothes from the night before, this doesn't happen often but I am ashamed to say it HAS happened once or twice, yuck!).

Sounds awesome right? Well this schedule has been wearing me out for the past couple weeks and over the last couple days I've been feeling like I'm starting to get sick. On Thursday I had a super sore throat, headache and a fever (swine flu?) and Lucy picked that night to wake up EVERY.SINGLE.HALF.AN.HOUR.ALL.NIGHT.LONG. I'm not kidding. Friday morning I felt so sick that I thought I might pass out in the shower but had to go to work because there was a important project that I needed to finish first thing in the morning. I'm terrible about calling in sick too, I just never do it unless I'm on the verge of death (aka morning sickness + migraines last year when I was pregnant, and even then I only did it ONCE).

So Friday evening I'm feeling pretty horrible. We go to bed early and Lucy actually goes to sleep pretty easily, yay! Lucy must have woken up in the middle of the night because I vaguely remember holding her in bed and suddenly realizing I need to go to the bathroom. I whisper to Rob that he needs to take her to I can go. No response. I ask again...SNORE. I get out of bed and walk around to his side of the bed and HISS:

"ROB. Wake up and hold the baby dammit. I have to go to the bathroom."

Rob opens his eyes and looks at me like a crazy person and says.

"Babe, you don't have the baby."

Oh crap. I look down at my arms...yup, he's right, no baby. She's fast asleep in her room and has been all night long. I was either a.) hallucinating from being sick and lack of sleep b.) dreamt that I was holding her and was half asleep when I walked over to his side of the bed c.) am losing my damn mind.

Oh man. Being a working mom is TOUGH, and I only have one baby...how the heck do people keep this up? Any crazy stories from you dear readers? Can you top that?

“No doubt exists that all women are crazy; it's only a question of degree.”

-W.C. Fields

Jinxed!...

What a night! I must have jinxed myself by bragging about Lucy's sleeping abilities because last night she screamed for an hour while fighting the sleep (all through 24 I might add) and then proceeded to wake up SIX TIMES in the middle of the night! W.T.H? She hasn't done this since she was a newborn. Crazy!

Then, this morning, she woke up perfectly happy....perfectly happy to explosive poop on me, while spitting up down my cleavage and then proceeding to put her tiny hand in the spit up and promptly stick said hand into my mouth before I could dodge it. What can I say? Apparently being up six times in the middle of the night doesn't exactly leave you with cat-like reflexes. I'm not lying, this totally happened. It was like a scene you'd see in a sitcom about having a baby. Lucy thought it was hilarious too!

That being said, I'm still having a blast, even in spite of poopy shirt and spit up in my mouth. I can honestly say I would take that over having to go to work any day!

Coming up on my blog this week: Comparisons of pre- and post- baby body (complete with pictures, and I have to warm you, I'm not going to suck it in), Q&A post (keep the questions coming if you have some), my crunchy mama transformation and of course more pics of the tiny pig!

"People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one."

-Leo J Burke

Farmer's Market Day...

I have an obsession with our local farmer's market, so the first market of the season is super exciting day for me and today was not only the first day of the market but Lucy's first market day too. Hurray! The weather today was absolutely beautiful, as we speak I think it is at least 75 degrees. We headed down to the market this morning and it was packed, full of fresh fruits and veggies, tons of plants, delicious smelling food vendors and of course a ton of people. It is such a fun, family-friendly atmosphere, I just love it. We had a total blast, though Lucy slept through almost all of it. I can't wait until she is old enough of run through the huge fountain that is right next to where the market is held. So fun!

We had yet another great sleeping night last night. Lucy sleeps through the night like a dream. I still need to work on our bedtime routine, but as of right now our routine is as follows:

• We head upstairs at around 8:30-9:00.
• Lucy gets changed and put into a onsie.
• We spread out one of her million of small blankets out on our bed (I'm OCD about her laying on clean things, and since our cats jump up on our bed I always put her on a blanket).
• We play for about 15 minutes.
• Lucy gets swaddled anywhere from 9:00-9:30. We LOVE the Swaddle ME and had three in newborn sizes and currently are using two that we have in the larger sizes, one fleece and one cotton. If you don't have any, buy some! Lifesavers!
• Once she's in the swaddle me with her paci in she usually doesn't fuss at all (although she fights the swaddle me tooth and nail when we go to put her in it). After she's in she'll snuggle up to me and fall asleep within minutes, but amazingly I don't have to rock her or hold her, she just likes to be close.
• Rob and I are then free to watch whatever we want on TV or chat while she sleeps.
• At around 10:30-11:00 pm I feed her once more. This is so funny because I never have to wake her up, she always sleep eats!
• She gets put into her crib after the feeding and usually sleeps until we wake her up to eat around 6:00-6:30 am (I'm STILL always engorged in the mornings, or I would let her sleep longer).
• Sometimes she is awake when I go in to get her in the morning, but she's never fussy. Usually we find her just smiling up at her bird mobile while attempting to free her arms from the swaddle me. Last week Rob went in to get her she had freed an arm AND a leg! Houdini baby!

Why do I feel the need to change this routine? I feel like I should put her in her crib right after I swaddle her, so she gets used to sleeping without us right there next to her. Right? But darn it, she always looks so damn sweet and peaceful and since I'm usually at work every day I pretty much want to be near her as much as possible, even if she is sleeping. How silly am I? On the other hand Rob and I do need some...er... private time so maybe tonight I will pop her straight in her crib. All I know is, she is amazing at this sleeping through the night thing, and we feel so lucky. Thanks Lucy-Goosey!

What's your baby's sleeping routine? Any tricks of the trade I'm totally missing out on?

"Father asked us what was God's noblest work. Anna said men, but I said babies. Men are often bad, but babies never are."
-Louisa May Alcott

Sleeping Like A Baby...

Thank you all for your suggestions about our cloth diapering problem. I'm going to try her with the Bum Genius 3.0s this next week. One thing I think might have been the problem is that she had some shots on Tuesday and the cloth diapers are rubbing pretty close to where she got her dTap injection, which is supposed to be the most tender. I'm going to give her a couple days to fully get over the shots and then try again. If at first you don't succeed...right?

Speaking of her immunizations, I was really nervous about them. I spoke with her doctor and she agreed that we would put Lucy on a rolling immunization schedule. Instead of all four of the initial immunizations at once she got two on Tuesday and will get the next two next month. I feel better about this because I feel like getting them all at once is hard on a tiny baby like Lucy, hell, it would be hard on a big baby like myself! She did really well, me...well, not so much. She was sitting on my lap all happy and then WHAM! the nurses counted to three and gave her a shot in each leg. She let out a scream that just about tore my heart out. She was fine within 5 minutes but it took my a couple hours to get over feeling guilty about putting my poor sweet Lucy through that!

So, I hate to jinx a good thing but lets get to the title of this post, "Sleeping like a Baby". Who, you may ask, is sleeping like a baby? Answer: We all are! Hurrah! Ever since our vacation in Florida Lucy has been sleeping 6-8 hours every night (apparently she just needed a vacation, it is hard work being a baby, right?). It is pure bliss! We pop her in her bassinet at around 9:00 pm, she sleeps while Rob and I watch whatever show happens to be on that night. I grab her at 10:30 or 11:00 pm and she'll sleep eat, seriously, she won't even wake up, and then I simply pop her back in the bassinet and then she sleeps usually until 5:30 or 6:30 am!

When I told the doctor about it, to make sure it was ok she was going that long without eating, she said that some babies simply get themselves on a nighttime sleeping schedule early in life and to enjoy it while we can (who knows when she'll decide that sleeping through the night is totally boring). It is wonderful, hopefully this continues on when I go back to work next month. We will see!

I'm still plugging away on my SUPER long "Things We Love/Hate" post, bear with me as apparently there are LOTS of things I love/hate. I will show you one thing I love and just cannot live without:



Best thing I've ever done!

"People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one. "

-Leo J. Burke

STTN...

So this isn't the final installment of my labor story yet, HOWEVER, I just had to announce (drumroll please) ....Miss Lucy SLEPT.THROUGH.THE.NIGHT last night! First time EVER. Usually she wakes up at 2 or 3 am and again at 5 or 6 am, but last nigh I got 7 , YES SEVEN, hours of fabulous, glorious, uninterrupted sleep. I had forgotten how amazing that felt! The Tiny Pig (our nickname for her, which will cause her no embarrassment whatsoever later in life) had her last feeding at 11:30 and woke up just after 7:00 am. It was incredible!

Just had to brag.

Labor story finale to come soon, but right now we're off to Babies'R'Us for a bunch of stuff we probably don't need and to a local Portland baby boutique for some cloth diapers (more to come on our late start to cloth diapering later)!

"Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit."

-Bill Cosby