Housekeeping

Ahem...  Right... So... Err... Gosh, it's been a while. I'm kind of out of practice at this.  Bear with me...

It occurred to me that this blog could really do with some sort of rounding off post(s).  Some sort of "in hindsight" kind of thing, addressing some of the issues I talked about back when I actually talked about anything.  So that's what this is.  A recap and review.  A bit of a catch up will follow in a later post.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear...

Reading back through these posts, the first thing that jumps out at me is, "Gosh, I worried about everything, didn't I?"  I suspect that barely constrained terror is the natural state for first time new parents (and maybe second, third, fourth or even more-th new parents), so it's not that I feel silly about it.  It's just noticeable how much it influenced my thoughts back then.

I can't really say when the worry faded.  I guess it was a gradual thing.  Slowly you begin to see that your child is doing well, that you haven't dropped them on their head (or at least not from any significant height - falling off the couch doesn't count) and that they are happy and healthy.  (At least, assuming nothing horrible has happened.  That it didn't is something I'm eternally grateful for.)  You become better at distinguishing between "there's something horribly wrong!" and "I want to touch the cat!" cries.  You begin to understand your child's routine and act upon it.  (He's getting grumpy + it's 12:30 = nap time.)  Play becomes fun for both parties, some of the time.  (Other times, man, you just don't want to have to fetch that ball from under the seat once more.)

Obviously there are still worries.  Is it safe to let him play with a hoover?  (Probably not, but it's much less hassle than not letting him do so!)  How do we get him to sleep past 5:30am?  (No idea.)  Is he big enough to play on the slide?  (Yes, sort of.)  But somehow, they are lesser worries.  The elephant of terror that came and squatted in my guts for the first 9 months of Alex's life has upped and buggered off.  Yes, it's stressful.  Yes, you worry.  But it's less oppressive.  Less all encompassing.  Thank god.

And Another Thing...

The other thing I notice a lot of in my old posts is sleep, or the lack thereof.   That's still an issue.  Alex's sleep has been somewhat erratic for quite a while now.  Basically he has been tending to wake up between 5am and 5:30am.  We've tried a bunch of things (which I'll cover in the catch up post), but nothing has really taken.  I guess that a lack of sleep is just a function of parenthood.  For anyone expecting, get your shut eye in now!  People are not exaggerating when they say you'll be more tired than you've ever been.  What are you doing even reading this?  Get to bed!  Now!

In Which the Author Witters at Length on a Variety of Subjects in Such a Fashion That it Cannot be Pithily Summerised in a Pop Culture Reference

OK, so apart from two silly posts about ducks and slang, it's been quiet around here of late.  There's a good reason for that.  It's called sleep deprivation.  (Having a child makes you understand how keeping someone awake can be a form of torture.  Child rearing should be governed by the Geneva Convention!)

You might remember me talking about this before.  Around Christmas time Alex's sleep patterns got very disturbed.  Nic and I tried a few things, some of which were more successful than others.  (Solids helped, the mobile helped, my getting up and trying to get him to sleep didn't help so much.)  Each thing that helped bought us a brief respite.  We'd go from three wake ups to two (or sometimes even one).  But Alex would gradually creep back into the habit of waking and demanding fed more and more often.  By two weeks ago he was waking five times a night.  (That's as much as when he was first born!)

Obviously this was incredibly tiring.  It was bad enough for me, (the loss of restfulness from just being awoken is remarkable), but was unbearable for Nic.  She was lucky to get six hours sleep in four broken blocks.  We were quickly approaching the living dead.  (Hell, the living dead were probably a lot more perky than us.)  Something had to be done, and it had to work.

The something we went for was controlled crying.  For those who don't know, this is leaving your child to cry at night, while checking in on them at regular intervals.  You don't pick them up.  You don't feed them.  You basically don't do anything that can be construed as rewarding crying.  You just sit there and listen to them suffer.  (I use "suffer" quite intentionally.  That's what it feels like you're doing.)

So on the 4th of April we moved Alex's cot out of our room and into the nursery.  In and of itself that was a big step.  We've always been able to hear him snuffling and huffing as he sleeps before.  Now all we would hear would be what the baby monitor transmitted to us.  (Any noise above a whisper, it transpires, including, but not limited to: dog's barking outside, Ringo meowing in the hall and whatever upstairs are watching on TV. ("Bring on the wall!"))  Still, it was going to be easier this way than trying to listen to him cry in our room.

I took the first shift.  We were following the Supernanny approach, which is: visit once when they cry, leave them for a minute.  Visit again, leave for two minutes.  Visit again, leave for five minutes.  Visit again, leave for ten minutes etc, until they stop crying of their own accord.  At ten PM Alex woke up.  I went and shushed him and then went back to the sitting room.  I was playing the Xbox in an effort to distract myself from the crying coming over the monitor.  (It worked pretty well.  The monitor distorts the sound sufficiently that it doesn't quite sound like Alex, avoiding the emotional gut punch you normally get with your baby crying.)  After about 45 minutes of crying, Alex went back to sleep.

The next wake up was at midnight.  This time it took him only 20 minutes to get back to sleep.  The 1:30AM wake up was only for five minutes.  The two Nicola dealt with in the remainder of the night were less than five minutes of crying.

The next night we put Alex down and crossed our fingers.  (Or rather Nicola did.  I was out at friends.)

He didn't wake up once.

In fact, so soundly asleep was he we had to go and check he wasn't dead!  (He wasn't, obviously.  But he had managed to turn 90 degrees in the cot and was now sleeping crushed up against the headboard totally uncovered.)  The next night, and the night after were the same.  Bliss!

We've now got to the stage where we expect a full night's sleep.  The last couple of nights he's woken up at 5:15AM or so.  This might be due to our timing of bed on Sunday (it was very early).  We're trying to break this habit before it gets started.  (He doesn't get picked up at 5:15AM, just like he didn't get picked up at 10PM.)

Nic and I are gradually catching up on lost sleep.  I wouldn't say we're quite there yet, but we're at least back in the land of the living.  Long may it continue!

Mobile Reception

Meet the newest recruit in our war on wakefulness.  I give you the Fisher-Price Precious Planet 2-in-1 Projection Mobile (tm)!  (No, that isn't Alex in the photo.  It's a promotional shot from the Fisher Price homepage. I was way too tired to bother taking a photo of a piece of plastic.)

Basically, it's a fancypants mobile.  Strap it to the cot, place baby underneath it and sleeping ensues.  At least in theory.  To aid sleep, it rotates under its own power (or at least under the power of four 'D' batteries, not included) while (and I quote) "animal friends from around the planet twirl and smile down at baby as music plays and a fascinating light show dances up above".

The "animal friends" are a curious assortment.  They are: Yellow Lion, Green Crocodile, White Polar Bear and Cyan Whale.  Yep, you read that right.  Cyan Whale.  I can only assume he's cyan so you don't mistake him for a 190 tonne Blue Whale.  They apparently represent different environments on Earth.  (Ocean, Savannah, Tropical and Arctic.  No love for the temperate regions it seems.)  The "fascinating light show" consists of slightly fuzzy pictures of the same four animals, plus a couple of friends.  (In wanton disregard to geographical accuracy the polar bear is snuggled up against a penguin.  The lion at least gets an appropriate giraffe and hippo combo.  (All baby toys must have a giraffe on them.  It's the law.))

The music comes in three varieties.  Classical, as rendered by one man and his electric keyboard.  (Assuming said man had lost nine of his fingers in an hideous Casio accident some years back but struggles on gamely with his one remaining finger.)  Nature sounds (a wee inducing collection of waves lapping the shore and gulls skwaking) and inter-uterine heartbeat and white noise.

The very best thing about it, though, is the remote control.  Clearly designed for parents who have not had much sleep, it has a single, massive button (marked with a red arrow, just in case you missed it) and little else.  If all you could manage was to mash the controller with your face you would still be able to operate it reliably.  Amusingly it is marketed as letting you "restart the mobile without disturbing baby".  Ha.  Restart the mobile without getting out of bed more like it.  If I need to turn the bloody thing on it's because baby has already disturbed himself!

Enough cynical whinging though, let's get down to the nitty gritty.  Does it work?

Yes.  Yes!  A thousand times yes!  God bless Fisher-Price!  All hail the mighty powers of Cyan Whale!  (All right, I might be over selling it a bit here.  It's not a magic bullet, but it really does help.  Alex particularly likes the nature sounds.  So far we've had two successful getting back to sleeps with the aid of the mobile, and it's very handy for getting him off to sleep in the first place.  Nicola's hairdryer may finally go back to only being for drying hair.)

So, fingers crossed, maybe we'll get a chance to catch up on some sleep soon.  Then perhaps I'll be able to work out how to operate that damn remote control...

(Photos in this post are from http://www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?st=10&e=product&pid=48400 and are used under fair use/fair dealing.  Please don't sue me!  We got our mobile from Amazon.co.uk and I'd heartily recommend any parent to get one!)

Happy Feet

You may have noticed a drop off in the blog rate over the last couple of weeks.  It's not that nothing has been happening, it's just that I've been way too tired to write anything.  Alex is still waking up over night.  A lot.  As much as he ever has, including when he was very little.  Every three or so hours he'll wake up, snuffle and thrash about, then cry.  Sometimes he goes back to sleep just being rocked.  Sometimes he doesn't.  My routine for getting him back to sleep goes like this:

1. Wake up to thrashing.
2. Hope he'll go back to sleep. (He never does.)
3. Ignore first few nyaps hoping he'll go back to sleep. (He never does here, either.)
4. Wonder if Nic will get up and deal with him.
5. Admit that it's probably my turn.
6. Get up.  Freeze.
7. Shush Alex in his cot, not picking him up so as not to encourage this sort of behaviour.
8. Pick him up.
9. Rock back and forth until (if) arms go floppy.
10. Lower to the inverted prawn position (tummy to tummy, Alex's back arched towards horizonal away from me).  Rock until (if) arms go floppy again.
11. Put sleeping child in cot.
12. Take wide awake child out of cot again.
13. Repeat steps 9-11.
14. Give up and wake Nicola to feed him.

Poor Nic gets awoken by his snuffles and cries even if I do manage to get him back to sleep (which is getting rarer and rarer).  If I don't, she's up for an hour or so, once the pre-feed, feed, settling time and getting back to sleep time are factored in.  It's not making for the most compos mentis parents at the moment.If anyone has any advice, we're at the stage of trying anything!

*               *                *

In other news, Alex has found his feet.  Strange to think that you have to learn to become aware of your own body.  He is very interested in them.  Any opportunity he gets he grabs them.  (This requires being on his back on a flat surface at the least.  Ideally, he likes to be naked, thus allowing full flexibility.)  He hasn't quite got them in his mouth yet (perhaps he takes after his paternal grandfather in terms of flexibility), but I suspect it's just a matter of time.  Last night they were even more interesting than the duck during bath time, and that's saying something!

Alex's bedtime is also getting earlier.  He's now noticeably snoozy and grumpy by 6:30pm.  This means bath time has been brought forwards to before Nic's and my dinnertime.  On the plus side, it means we get to eat a grown up, adult dinner at the same time as each other.  (Something of a novelty.)  On the down side, my god am I hungry by 7:30!  I've been spoilt by Nic having had my tea on the table when I got home.  Still, I'm sure we'll enjoy it, once we're not so tired we fall asleep in our lasagne.

Sleep Talking

12:40 AM. Alex snuffles himself awake. As per the system, I drag myself out of bed to try and get him back to sleep. Alex is not for playing ball. Eventually I pick him up to see if that helps. Apparently not. I give in (it's been 15 minutes now) and go to wake Nic so she can feed him.

"Sorry, love, but he's not going back to sleep."

"Okay. I'll just be... Zzzzzzzzzzzzz-snark-zzzzzzzzzzzzz."

Right, guess it's just you and me then, Alex.

P.S. He did actually drop off again pretty soon. He wanted to be rocked side to side with a bit of up and down in the mix. Demanding and specific. Just what you want in the middle of the night!

Sleepyhead

One of the side effects of our great Christmas marathon is that Alex's previously brilliant sleep pattern (one awakening per night) has got all shot to hell.  First, it was sleeping in funny places.  Then it was the cold.  Then being back home.  Then being away again (Aberdeen, this last weekend).  He's now far more disturbed over night than he used to be.  It's pretty demoralising.

It's also hard to know how to deal with it.  The difference between "I've awoken and am a touch confused and grumpy, but will settle on my own/with a quick shhhh" and "I am hungry and wet" is impossible to spot at 2am.

While Alex was sleeping well, our overnight system was that Nic would feed and change him to let me get a reasonable night's sleep for work the next day.  Because we're creatures of habit, and also because I'm a lazy git, we didn't change this routine when Alex started waking more.  Suffice to say the toll taken on Nicola was pretty high.

We've not got a new system in place.  By default, before 3am if Alex wakes, I go and try to get him back to sleep with the head-pin shush.  This is usually, but not always, successful.  (The last two nights he's woken at 12am and refused to go back to sleep.)  The first awakening after 3am, Nic does the feed and change routine.  So far, it's been pretty successful.  I'm far better than Nic at getting back to sleep, so it doesn't matter too much if he wakes me up three times in an hour and half.  (Like last night.)  Plus, we each have a half of the night where we don't need to respond unless called in by the other.  (This happens more to Nic than me, it must be admitted.)

Hopefully Alex will, over time, get back to only waking up once, then maybe not at all, during the night.  Of course, that might be a while away yet!

Three months old... And it goes a little something like this...

(With apologies to ljck @ superhero. from whom I have blatantly stolen the style and idea for this post.)

In the best traditions of You've Been Framed, this montage should have a tune.  For the full over-ripe, smuggled in from France, escaping off the side of the plate Camembert cheese factor, I'd suggest Sweestest Thing by everyone's favourite Irish stadium rockers, U2.  Just try and not actually listen to the lyrics...

Three Months Old...

Let me count you in Holmes

1...2...  1, 2, 3, 4!

Little Man

Homeward Bound

 

 

Trout and About

 

It's All Relative

 

 

 

 

 

 

Getting Bigger

 

 

Making Friends

 

 

And Influencing People

 

 

 

And In The End...

 

(Ah-ahhh-ah, the sweetest thing...)

P.S.

I can haz guest appearance?