Next week will bring lots of change as we start to prepare to go back to work and train the nanny (Julia). It is hard to imagine leaving Logan in someone else’s care, but I’m glad I’ll be at home and can still see him and help (and watch, hehe). I am excited to get back to work in some ways though and see how all my projects are and hopefully be able to contribute to this year’s goals. I know Charles has missed some pretty crucial planning weeks so I know he is looking forward to finding out what is going on. However, I think we are both going to be awfully tired as well as missing Logan like crazy at the same time. I imagine it will take a month or two to figure out a rhythm.
Logan is getting chubbier (he’s so cute) and more expressive and interactive. He smiles now occasionally at things or us (not just falling asleep like the week before), but it seems like more of a reaction to new stimuli rather than anything in particular, although he really likes his stuffed tigger and that will always calm him down. He reaches out for things more too. He will crab at my shirt, mouth or glasses, and will hold on to stuffed animals. He seems more and more in control of what he ends up doing (although getting it done still can take a few tries).
We have pretty much abandoned both the rigid schedule and the cry-it-out plan at this point. We are keeping the pattern of eat, play, sleep (at night only eat, sleep). The order of events seems important to him and allows us to have some positive awake time and better naps and eating. We have developed a bed time routine. I do two laps around the weird wall in the middle of our house and we say goodnight in a soft voice to the living room, empty room, kitchen, and dining room, then into the bedroom where we say goodnight to all the family while rocking back and forth. Then I kiss him and put him down. He seems to like this routine. If he is thrashing right away, I will pick back up and do a few more laps, if he is quiet when I lay him down (even if his eyes are completely open), about 75% of the time it will take (when it doesn’t, over tiredness is generally to blame).
We try to be really careful to pay attention to his cues of sleepiness because if he gets even slightly over tired, his brain seems to not be able to let him sleep. One yawn means, “I’m ready to go to bed.” It is tempting to wait for the second yawn but in my experience, it is a colossal failure. If we get the timing right, he will go to bed in the crib and sleep beautifully. If we screw it up, we have the backup option of the bouncer, with pacifier and Tigger standing guard (literally we prop up tigger next to the bouncer). The vibrations and cupping part of the bouncer get him in a good position and staring at tigger, vibrating and sucking seem to calm his brain down enough to let him sleep. Sometimes he doesn’t need the pacifier (depends how distraught he is). Then he will fall pretty deeply asleep and we can move him to the crib (or at least this is the hope). Yesterday was the first day of moving him, so we are still ironing out the wrinkles, but it seems like 20 min of pretty good quiet (non spazzy) sleep in the bouncer and we can quickly throw him in the crib (this may be really wrong after a few more tries, who knows). We aren’t comfy with him sleeping without supervision in the bouncer so we want a way to get him somewhere else so we can sleep at the same time! I was trying to keep this moving process very quiet, but apparently 20 minutes is enough to absorb some noise because last night I accidently jarred him by stubbing my toe on the bouncer as I went to get him and stubbing my (poor) toe again on the crib as I was going to set him down. He slept through it all though! Today I tried to move him in the afternoon and it didn’t work, so we’ll see.
Overall, I am feeling better about being attentive to my baby. As much as I really respect my doula and her opinion, I don’t believe in the cry-it-out at this age. It doesn’t seem to me like Logan is really “learning” much at this age. For instance, every time I pick him up to feed him, he stops crying immediately, then starts again when I go to position myself on the couch and Logan realizes that it is going to take me a minute to be ready to feed. He then cries relentlessly until he is eating. If he was really old and mature enough to learn, he would know the food is coming, but he isn’t. This tells me that cry it out is pointless and maybe the only thing they learn is that crying won’t do anything because nobody cares, versus learning self-soothing. I never want him to think we don’t care! Logan is really good about putting himself to sleep, provided we don’t over tire him. This is something I want to preserve because it is a lot less work for us and ultimately he gets a longer quality sleep period!
We had a pretty frustrating week in terms of Logan’s tummy, bowel movements, and eating. We started noticing last Monday (I had to look that up; I didn’t realize it was so long) that he started having more episodes of inconsolable crying (Harvey Karp method works, but you have to do most of the S’s most of the time to keep him calm). Even if you calmed him, he would suddenly freak out and start crying again after a few seconds. The cry really seemed like a pain cry and we were confused. Then after a day or two we noticed it really coinciding with his need to poop or pass gas. If he did poop during this crying process, he would calm down after. We talked to the pediatrician and they said that the signal to poo can be overwhelming for babies, but it seemed to have gotten so much worse for him suddenly. Auntie Gina happened to mention broccoli being bad for breastfeeding (not even talking about this) and I suddenly had a light go off that we have been eating tons of broccoli for the last week. I thought the broccoli was a good thing, lots of healthy vitamins and nutrients for the baby, but apparently some people say their babies don’t do well when they eat it while breast feeding. So, I haven’t eaten it since Thursday night and Logan seems to be doing much better in the bathroom department. He is going more regularly again (he had skipped a bm per feeding every once in a while), he doesn’t struggle before he goes, and it all just seems to be simple again. However, suddenly now he seems to not like feeling dirty, which he didn’t used to mind before. It makes him more upset and so he won’t sleep, eat or play sometimes if dirty.
This weekend, Charles’ Mom and sister, Gina, came for a visit. Logan loved all the attention! It is hard at this point for him to be super entertaining when he eats and sleeps so much but they understood and we all had a great time. It was great for some of Charles’ family to meet him! Look for lots of pics on flickr soon!
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