Natalie
From hopeful TTC, through infertility, IVF and the resulting pregnancy, this became a journal through grief and trying again after the loss of our first son, Devin, at 36 weeks. After multiple more IVF cycles we got pregnant with our second child, a little girl born healthy and alive in May of 2010. Our third child, a most unexpected surprise baby girl, was just born in June 2012!
I was going to write a post, but this is the second night in a row that Kate will not sleep. No time alone = no time to write. She’s not crying or screaming… she’s WIDE AWAKE. Even when I cajole and nurse her to sleep and tiptoe away, she fidgets and wakes up less than 30 minutes later. Last night that’s how it was all night long. All. Night. Long. Every 30 minutes, just as I was finally dozing off, she’s wake up again. And she was up and playing from 4 to 6am, just rolling around and making noise.
It is currently 12:45am. Kate is playing on the floor, happy as a clam. Well, she whines at me every once in a while, but it’s a “Come join me!” whine, not a “I’m so tired!” whine. I don’t have the fortitude for another night of waking every 30 minutes so I’m trying to let her tire herself out before we go to bed. I stuck her in her jumper and wrapped christmas presents while she whined at me. Me, being a bratty parent, said, “Oh, I’m sorry, are you bored? This is mama wrapping presents. YOU are supposed to be sleeping. Instead you are awake, watching me wrap presents. If it’s so boring maybe you should go to bed.”
No idea what’s up with this. She’s never done this, ever. There have been nights of crying, yes. And there have been nights of fidgeting and frequent wake-ups. But only when sick, not just “to play.” Blah.
Jeez louise, did someone swap out my child? She’s always been a GREAT sleeper. Never ever had a problem sleeping at night as long as I was in bed, though it was at times touchy getting her to sleep for a few hours while I was up – but she had been doing great with that, too. This week has just been one of those weeks, I guess. We thought maybe she was teething, but she doesn’t seem to be in pain or even unhappy. In fact, she’s a little too happy. I think that’s the problem: she is having so much fun rolling and sitting and playing and new toys and wheeeeee! No sleep for Kate! Yeah, until she melts down in this pathetic mess of Waahhhhh! Happy screeee! Waaaaahhhhhhh…
Thankfully last night she finally ran out of steam at 1am and fell asleep in my arms. This is the weird part: she’s been falling asleep laying on her back on my lap, nursing or sucking on a paci. My child? Falling asleep on her back? Wha? So I tip-toed carefully to bed and we both got some rest. 10am this morning I woke up, knowing I really needed to get up and Kate kept cracking her eyes open, looking at me while I said, “Kaatteeee, time to get uuupppp,” turning her head, and falling right back asleep. And then she cried a little when she did finally wake up. I think she would have kept on sleeping.
I’m not really sure where things got so out of whack, she had a very long-standing bedtime of around 9pm, and up for the day at 9am. It varied by a little bit day to day, of course, but I never set that schedule, she did. It worked. But this past week 9pm comes and goes and she is not tired. 11pm she sometimes goes to bed. And then wakes back up again, happy as a clam and ready to go. A couple of weeks ago I noticed she had started dropping her evening naps, but when she started napping at around 6pm again I didn’t think much about it… until now. I’m thinking maybe she was right, she needs to stop taking that evening nap so she’ll sleep at night. It might be rough for a few days trying to shift it all back over again.
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Why does it feel like I only post when she’s sleeping badly? Maybe because that’s the only time I feel frustrated.
Her attitude lately has been awesome. Other than the tired and whiny episodes, she is just so full of FUN. I installed Baby Smash on my laptop (thanks Virginia!!) and I quickly realized I could not let her keep bashing on my good laptop. So I did what only true geeks do… I reformatted my old, slow laptop, installed just a few things for her, and set it up on the floor for her. She LOVES IT. I have a video and some pictures I took, I’ll put them up here when I get around to editing them. I have never seen her so excited. When I open and turn on the laptop now she starts pumping her arms, shrieking, and leaning forward towards it. It’s great because I sit her on the floor with the keyboard, boppy pillow behind her just in case she falls over, and then I can go and make myself food or vacuum or edit pictures or whatever I need to do. And I don’t have to worry about her messing something up on my computer. The game locks the computer so you have to press certain keys to get out of it, the intention being that babies are not talented enough to do so, but apparently my child is uber talented because there have been multiple times where she’s managed to do strange, strange things to that computer. Next on my list is getting her a kids keyboard that doesn’t have function, alt, ctrl, and windows keys. Might be safer.
Her sitting has improved tenfold over the past two weeks. She went from “oh wait, I can do this” to near-mastery in that time span. She rarely falls over now, only when she’s distracted. She uses her arms to prop herself up to reach for things, which I was quite amazed at. She’s also leaning and pulling herself forward onto her knees, flopping down onto her belly. Yikes man. I think it won’t be long before she’s figured out how to crawl. She’s also trying to pull up onto me… she rolls onto my lap, then is yanking at my shirt and arms and legs to try to pull up. In fact she seems far more interested in pulling up and standing than she is being on her knees. She is not working on getting to her knees from laying on her belly. Perhaps we’ll have a walk-before-crawl-er.
I’m pretty sure all of that is why she’s not sleeping well. That’s a lot at once. It’s funny when I think back to how she used to hate being put down. Now there are days when I’m out for several hours and she’s demanding to be put down on the floor so she can roll around and sit up and work on all her new skills. I definitely have to make sure I give her that time every day or she gets fussy.
She’s also become a much more easy-going baby than she started out. She was a very needy newborn, and I always got the feeling that she was just pissed off being stuck in a body that she couldn’t control very well. Now that she’s figured out how to do the things that she wants, how to control parts of her environment and move herself around, well, it’s a whole different game! She’s still a cuddly baby, loves to give hugs and kisses and crawl all over me, she still likes the kozy carrier when I’m out, but now I can just plunk her on the floor with some toys and go wash dishes or get some food. It’s pretty darn awesome, I must say.
She is just a happy kid. She screeches happily, she plays happily, she interacts with people happily. She gets serious when trying to figure things out. She cries sometimes when she’s been left somewhere for too long and she’s had enough, if she’s stuck in the car after her patience runs out, or when she’s dirty, hungry, or hurt. It’s usually pretty obvious what the problem is and easily fixed, then she’s right back to happy again.
“Hey Den, remember how I said I had concerns about this high chair because the wipeable fabric only goes up shoulder-height and it’s cotton above that? And you said it was fine, that food would never go up that high anyways?”
Yeah. Ha ha ha. Den refused to admit that he had ever said such a foolish thing!
We have started solids. I did buy some gerber first foods, but I felt like some kind of traitor doing so. I do plan to follow more of a Baby Led Solids approach – that is, steaming veggies really well and mostly offering foods to her in a normal, mushy state – that is, not highly pureed.
We started with sweet potato. Giving her chunks didn’t work because it was so soft she just smashed it and didn’t get much in her mouth. She’s already capable of putting the spoon in her mouth (and is insistent on doing it herself!) so today I just put a bit on the spoon and handed it over for her to suck on and bang around. I think she may even have actually ate a tiny bit… before starting to spit it out, lol! It’s obvious she reaches her threshold pretty quickly, but she didn’t dislike it. Actually she was leaning forward and opening her mouth when I held out the spoon for her.
But, yes… very very messy! Why on earth did I give her a bath earlier today?
This morning I took a quick shower while Kate played naked on the floor in the bathroom, then I pulled her in to hose her down and give her a quick soaping down. She’s getting more and more hair all the time, and that just means that I need to wash it sometimes! I let her sit with me in the tub and play with the drain – that’s her favorite thing to do. She likes to poke her fingers into the little holes and touch it and try pulling on it. Then she splashes her hands in the water that puddles around the drain. I stood right behind her (so she couldn’t accidentally fall backwards and hit her head) and grabbed a towel to throw on my head. While I’m doing that she decides to reach up, grab the water spout, and try pulling to her feet using it. OMGWTF. She has NO balance yet, all she was going to accomplish was falling down and hitting her head or something. I quickly grabbed her, plunked her back down and said, “NUH-UH, sit that butt down in the tub!!” Sweet. I already have to constantly stop her from trying to lean forward to lay on her belly in a tub full of water – she doesn’t quite get the concept of water yet – now I have to deal with her trying to stand up. This is why I only ever wash her when I am actually physically IN the tub.
She is just super hyper lately. Now that she’s starting to work on pulling up she has to do it all the time, she’s no longer content to just be on her belly on the floor. Or sitting – she immediately leans forward to pull onto her knees, then flops down onto her belly, then flails around and grabs whatever clothing of mine she can reach and proceeds to stretch it completely out as she tries hauling herself up. Which, of course, she can’t do from her belly (she doesn’t have the strength yet), so she whines in frustration until I help her. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Once on her feet she wobbles around dangerously, grins like a maniac, and makes sounds that sound something like, Screee! Scree! Aahhh!! EEEEE!! To say she’s excited is a gross understatement. If I lift her up and bounce her she starts flapping her arms like she’s a bird about to take flight. She may actually believe that.
She is just SO full of energy. She isn’t fighting naps anymore, but as soon as her eyes crack open she starts windmilling, rolling, and trying to attack the world full force. I am happy if she takes 30 minute naps, and many are shorter than that.
I am constantly amazed at what a huge personality she has for such a little baby. I call her a firecracker – she’s full of spunk… full of joy and determination and energy.
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Den and I went to his work christmas party last night, it was the second time we have left Kate with a babysitter. Unlike last time we did not come home to a happy, easy-going baby. We got a phone call at around 10pm saying that Kate was screaming, she’d been changed, had eaten, would not sleep, and just wouldn’t stop crying. So we came home. Found her asleep on the babysitter’s shoulder, giving a little shuddering sigh every few minutes. Poor baby. Not sure what was wrong, I think she just was tired and wanted mom and dad. Soon as she woke up and saw us she smiled big and started shrieking and babbling and bouncing up and down… and proceeded to spend the next hour doing that.
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After a couple of very lackluster days of sweet potato tasting – she didn’t hate it, but certainly was not thrilled by it – today we’ve moved on to pears. She apparently likes pears! She was opening her mouth and leaning forward, grabbing the spoon and directing it straight into the waiting maw. It was pretty cute! We did some Gerber puree with the spoon, and I gave her a couple of little slices of pear to chew on as well. I guess I’m doing an in-between kind of experience… not full “baby led solids” because I am doing some purees, too… though I still feel weird about that. Right now we’re just trying different things, different textures, and I’m just going with it. I know the point isn’t to feed her actual meals… she’s not starving, not lacking in calories with the breastmilk.
I will mention that we did 6 full months of exclusively breastmilk. Some in a bottle, most from me, but we did no formula, no rice cereal, no solids before 6 months. Nothing but breastmilk. I’m just a little proud of myself for that, and thankful we had no problems!
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Kate just semi-roused crying, so I went in to nurse her. When she was done I gave her the paci, cuddled her a little bit, then scooted backwards about a foot. I held her hands and figured she would fall asleep that way. She was almost asleep but not quite. She rolled towards me onto her belly, and I thought, oh, maybe she’s settling herself into a better position! Then she rolled towards me again, landing with a snug thump with her back pressed up against my belly. She reached up to lay her hand on my cheek and fell immediately deeply asleep. It was really hard not to wake her up with my laughing! Unfortunately I had to move her because she was too close to Den. But man, that was sweet.
I am noticing more and more that there is a 2-way street of communication between Kate and I. I mean, there always was on some level, obviously, but now she’s responding to things that I say and movements that I make.
I haven’t been very good about using the signs that I intend to teach her, but I’ve been trying to be consistent about signing and saying “Milkies?” before I feed her. I do the sign three or so times, then nurse her. Now when I sign milk and ask if she wants milkies she stares at my hand intently, stares at my face, grins huge, and dives at my chest. LOL!
Once in a while I sing patty-cake for her and she always gets enthralled watching me clap my hands together. Today she stared at my hands for a while and then started moving her hands around, touching them together again and again in a very rudimentary version of a clap: fingers bent, hands waving in the air for a moment before mashing together a few times. It was awesome! I was all, “YAAYYY!! Wow, what a good girl! Yayyy!!!!” and she thought it was awesome, too. So we did that over and over, each time ending with her getting giddy. I need to get it on video, she is to freakin’ cute.
This past week I started practicing “gentle” when petting the kitties. They are extremely patient creatures, as little baby hands are not incredibly gentle to start with, but she absolutely needs to learn proper manners with pets for when she meets animals that are not so forgiving. Well, that plus I do think my cats would appreciate not having their fur yanked.
Along with this increased level of understanding comes with it the word “no.” I really have never used that word with her until this week, as she was simply a baby and didn’t understand one thing from another, I would just remove her from a situation or replace an object with a toy. But now I find I am starting to say no here and there in certain situations, along with explaining in baby terms. “No, we sit in the tub.” “Nuh-uh, that’s mommy’s, this one here is yours.” It’s not something I really thought about or decided, either, it just seemed to pop out of my mouth at a certain point, when it felt appropriate. Much to my surprize she very rarely throws any fits about things being taken away from her. With her spunk I really thought she’d be the kid screaming in anger, but she remains very calm most of the time. Determined, yes. She will stay alert, interested, and keep trying to do whatever it is, sometimes with grunts and growls of determination. But it’s very rare that she cries or whines when I move her or take something away. I am sure that will change!
Winter is here! Last week the temperature dropped and suddenly it felt COLD. Up until then I was still feeling like I didn’t really need my winter coat. Now give me my driving gloves! Brrrr. I need to buy a fleece bunting for Kate, as she keeps pulling her socks off in the car – and then drooling on them, so they’re nice and soaking wet. I want a single-layer fleece bunting so that it’s safe for the car seat (no puffy snowsuits or coats in the car seat!).
The other night I was driving home from somewhere later in the day, and night had already fallen – it hits so early now. Night is hard for me to take Kate anywhere because I can’t see her in the mirror without some form of ambient light. But this trip there was silence from the back seat. I turned up the music a little bit, smiled, and relaxed, thinking about how much appreciate a nice drive with a sleeping baby. It occurred to me then that somewhere in the last few months I have stopped worrying when she fell asleep in the car. When she was a newborn and I was driving it was always hard. Either she was crying, or she was peacefully sleeping and I, though relieved, was nervously looking in the mirror every few minutes to make sure I could see her breathing. I don’t even know when that nervousness went away. I guess I’ve driven around with her sleeping enough times that it’s become normal, expected.
During the day she now naps in our bedroom for an hour or two all by herself. I don’t find myself pressing my ear against the monitor speaker much anymore, and I don’t have to fight the urge to check on her (our door makes noise, checking on her always runs the risk of waking her up). Some days I want to just turn off the monitor, because every rustle that she makes has my nerves tingling, thinking she’s going to be awake any second – which doesn’t give me a very restful break.
Kate is obsessed with pulling up to her feet now. She’s trying to pull up on everything, but is really only successful grabbing our hands. She still falls a lot, so my job during the day is now to be The Spotter. I get to sit there for hours, sitting her up, holding her up, catching her when she falls, and being the monkey bars as she yanks on my clothing trying to do it herself. She used to sit and play with toys. Now she sits and plays with toys, then leans forward on her hands and knees, rocks back and forth, and slides onto her belly. She used to roll around. Now she tries to pull on objects, fails, and yells for help. I have to sit her back up and let her do it again. While I am fascinated by her growing abilities and totally proud of my child, I am also very bored. I watch a lot of TV. I know this is bad – especially given how terrible TV is right now.
I adore my child so far above and beyond what I knew I would. I look at other people out there and I wonder, do they feel that same way? I know many do… but not all. I feel sorry for mothers who don’t see their child as the ultimate gift.
Wrapping presents with a baby is fun. It involved a lot of, “That’s mommy’s. No, no, not for babies. Don’t eat that!” She adores boxes not just to play with but to use to stand up! At least it kept her away from the wrapping paper I was using. I looked away for two seconds and looked back to find her upper half in the box, butt in the air suspended on the side of the box, and legs kicking in the air. Was she crying? Struggling to get back out? No. She was trying to reach the present in the bottom of the box so she could nom it. Which she did.
Before bed we all go into the bedroom to quietly play on the bed for a little while. It does kind of make putting her down a little bit harder, because she thinks playing on the bed is much more fun than sleeping on it, but it’s such a fun, happy time of day that we still do it anyways. There is something about the bed that Kate loves more than the floor, and I think it’s because we’re on the same level as her. We all lay down and she rolls around playing with her toys and shrieking and giggling. Last night she was being silly as usual and we were laughing at her. She rolled from her belly to her back with a motion that could be described as melodramatic: one arm over her head, slowly rolling to her back as if she was fainting. Something about it just sent both Den and I into hysterics. Well Kate liked that reaction so for the next 10 minutes that’s all she did, rolling to her front and then, arm raised in the air, dramatically rolling to her back. Every time she did it we’d have a fresh fit of laughter and Kate would lay there and laugh, too, even though the look on her face clearly said she had no clue why her parents are so weird.
Three Is A Magic Number is one of Kate’s songs – not one that she likes, but one that is inextricably linked to her in my head. When she was a newborn, sleeping all night and day, I used my droid a lot. I’d lay in bed with her snuggled up to me and droid in hand, surfing the net to read and look up songs to listen to. One evening Den insisted we watch all the School House Rock we could find, and this was one of them. I loved it. It’s cute and catchy, and something about it just seemed so very apropos. I found myself softly singing to Kate, “A man and a woman had a little baby…” And we finally did.
(Of course every time I hear it I also think about how there’s supposed to be four right now, not three. It’s more of a fleeting sad thought, trumped by the happy.)
On the first day of Christmas the big mistake I made…. was buying glitter wrapping paper. (Glitter everywhere!)
On the second day of Christmas the big mistake I made…. shopping at the mall. (No parking spots.)
On the third day of Christmas the big mistake I made…. wrapping up price tags. (Had to perform surgery to unwrap them, take off the prices, and wrap them back up.)
On the fifth day of Christmas the big mistake I made… ordering last minute gifts. (Shipping $$!)
On the fourth day of Christmas the big mistake I made…. baby with no nap! (Pre-Christmas get-together, cranky, tired baby.)
On the sixth day of Christmas the big mistake I made…. Parking on the parkade. (No ramp, elevator 10 miles away… carried stroller up stairs.)
… To Be Continued
(Just give me time, there’s still a few days left…. I bet I make it to 12!)
On the seventh day of Christmas the big mistake I made… traveling with a 7 month old. (Want to crawl and walk, not sit on lap! No nap! No nap! No… WAAHHH TIRED!)
On the eighth day of Christmas the big mistake I made… assuming she would sleep fine. (Even cosleeping. We’re at my parents’ for Christmas. New bed. New sounds. New people. New room. The whole first day exhausted baby Would. Not. Sleep. Not even in my arms, nursing.)
On the ninth day of Christmas the big mistake I made… planning to actually get shit done. (Two words here people: Separation Anxiety. I cannot leave the room without her throwing a FIT. I have a grandma dying to babysit an uncooperative baby. This is new – I think it’s all the strangeness.)
Thankfully after that first day of travel it’s going much better! I felt so bad for her. The day before we left I was in the car all day running errands, so she was catching naps on the go. Then we were packing and she was picking up on our anxiety and wouldn’t fall asleep until we finally crashed. Then the alarm woke us all up at 4:30am so we could get up and catch our flight. From that point onwards she only napped when she was so exhausted she literally crashed in my arms, there was just too much going on. When evening came and I tried putting her down for a nap it wasn’t even in our own bed! You could really see the confusion on her face as she stared around the room. She didn’t want to nurse, she was beyond tired, she was clingy and whiny, she was so freakin exhausted. I had to wrap my arms tightly around her and rock her and sing to her and finally she dropped off for a little bit.
Getting a full night’s sleep in her help tremendously. She awoke frequently, but would fall right back asleep. I think she got a good 12 hours the first night. The week before we left left I was keeping her up later and later, not going to bed until 11 or 12 and then sleeping until 11 in the morning. That wasn’t exactly intentional, it was more because I had so much to do in the evenings I wasn’t going to fight with her, but I didn’t try to fix it before our vacation. So now that we are 3 hours different she’s going to bed at 8 and waking at 9am. Perfect. I never have any jet lag when I visit my parents because I do the same thing. Yesterday we didn’t go out anywhere and I made sure to keep to her naps and wouldn’t you know it she went down pretty easy – very easy, considering how it was the day before. She’s actually been dropping off to sleep better than at home. She’s learned to roll onto her belly to sleep, which is helping keep her asleep for a good hour.
Wouldn’t you know it, by yesterday evening she was her normal happy not-whiny self! I’m so relieved, and so proud of my little trooper. She thinks my parents are funny, my dad thinks she’s a pretty cool baby – he’s not a fan of kids in general, so to see him sitting and chatting and laughing with my little one is pretty damn awesome. And she loves my brother. My brother is a surly, tattooed, hasn’t-grown-up-yet 25 year old, and he lays on the floor with her, sets up blocks for her to knock down, and holds her hands as she walks around shrieking happily. I think he’s a little taken by her! My old dog really couldn’t care less. The only bummer is that my brother’s huge rottweiler – who loves people – is just way too hyper and HUGE to let him near her. He barks at her, which scares her, and to be honest we just don’t know him well enough to know how he’ll react with a baby. So he’s staying downside for our stay.
I’m always just overcome with a sense of peace when I’m here – “home.” Yes I have a home, a family… but visiting my parents and this house that I grew up in, it’s full of so much comfort and familiarity. There is no Christmas quite like Christmas here in Canada.