Baby wakers

I signed her up. We are now part of a study on babies and sleep. This week we will keep a log and she is wearing something that looks like a wrist watch on her ankle to keep track of her sleep. Her science Mamee likes this. Graphs, charts and data collection. Next week we will find out if we are group A, families that get help with babies and sleep, or the control group B families that learn about baby proofing their home. The sleep program is not a CIO, but they can’t tell me more yet in case I end up in the control group. We can always leave the study if the program doesn’t feel right for us. The goal of the study is to have a publicly funded program run by community health nurses to help families struggling with baby’s sleep. We am hoping for group A, but either way we will be helping future families with waking up babies get help. The Bee truly is a science baby. She was conceived through the miracle of IVF, we were in a pilot community birth program and the placenta was donated to infertility research.

Onto last night’s experiments. The main goal is to reduce the waking every one to two hours and nursing her back to sleep lifestyle. We added a bath to her nighttime routine and more quiet time in reduced lighting before bed. I also nursed her earlier and then tried to put her to bed awake. That is hard because when I nurse her anytime close to bedtime she falls asleep. The theory is to put her in the crib when she is sleepy and has a full belly, but she goes to sleep so fast that it is hard to catch that magic moment. We also shifted sleeping arrangements and I slept in another room, F slept in our bed with the Bee in her crib in our room. The plan was that F would comfort her when she woke and that I would nurse her if it had been three to four hours or more.

Get this, basically we are a bunch of baby wakers. The Bee still cried multiple times during the night but after a few minutes put herself back to sleep. Last night F didn’t pick her up. She watched her and sometimes she just put her hand on her in the crib and patted her. The longest she cried was 10 minutes. Most of the time it was under 5-7 min and she stopped. When F picked her up other nights it was at least 20 minutes of crying and a long road back to sleep again. We have been waking her up by picking her up and trying to sooth her. Dam it. We are over achieving first time parents disturbing a sleeping baby. Luckily F realizing that we don’t need to pick her up saved us from ending up on fail blog. Now we just need Montana to quit barking and waking her up.

We are using some ideas from the “No. Cry. Sleep Solution” Book. Overall I like the book except the title. Babies cry! Especially tired babies that are struggling with sleep. The title promises something that is unrealistic, but it has a good range of ideas that fit with us and are good additions to what we have been doing. I think keeping a log is going to help us the most. The nights quickly become a blur of sleeping, waking, not sleeping and nursing. By the time morning comes I have no idea how many times we were up and what happened.

*Update * I just put her to bed again tonight and watched her put herself to sleep. It involved chewing on a monkey and thrashing around while talking. How beautiful. I am hopeful that things are getting better.

sleep sleep and no sleep

Did the wind blow funny? Does she miss Cuba? Is she teething? Is the sky the wrong shade of blue? Is she just a forgetful baby who can’t remember how to sleep? Is she growing? All of sudden sleep has gone wonky. Really wonky.

I miss our old lifestyle. It really worked for me. She would wake up every three to four hours for a quick drink and then right back to sleep in her crib beside us. In Cuba she slept with us and nursed more often, but it was so hot I just let her nurse as much as she wanted. The first week back home we went back to our old lifestyle again except she was now sleeping with us and it was fine. Lately there have been a few nights of her waking every hour or two. The quickest way to put her back to sleep is to let her nurse, but that is too much nursing for me and it doesn’t help her figure out how to put herself back to sleep. Her waking up this much this messed up my sleep so last night, while she slept, I couldn’t. Ugh. That has happened to me before. I know once she gets better I will start to sleep better too after a couple of nights, but right now I am tired. As hard as the nights are when I look at her in the morning and she smiles at me it is ok again.

Now the get Miss Poopypants to sleep better experiments begin.

A sweet meal

Rice cereal mixed with mama's milk fed to her by her mamee. Yum! She liked it.

Travel dreams family dreams

This is hopefully the first of several delayed travel blog posts. Our first week back we seriously jumped into life in a crazy kind of a way. It felt like we blinked and the month in Cuba was over. Now I am feeling more settled into being back at home and am grabbing one of those quiet moments while the bee sleeps. Dishes can wait.

First things first…why travel with a baby? During all the infertility and pregnancy F and I dreamed of traveling with a baby. I figured there was some kind of window when it would be a good time and then after that we would hit some kind of toddler business when they want to put their own shoes on and it would be enough just to make it to the store. We love travel and wanted to take advantage of the easy baby travel time window. There is another part of traveling, which is part of the bigger picture for me, of creating a healthy family. I think about this a lot and what it means.

For me one of the top and most important things for creating a healthy family is having the most fun possible together. I thought traveling with the bee would be fun and I found it to be even more fun and easier than I imagined. It turned out she was designed for traveling. She is a nap on the go, breastfeeding girl that likes to be in moving vehicles (strollers, planes and buses). She is a pretty easy going baby and took all the changes really well. F and I love traveling and seeing the world and we got to do this with her. It was also very special bonding time for her and F. They had a whole month were they were together night and day. I didn’t realize how much bonding had happened until we got home and F went back to work. She wasn’t a happy bee for the first few days until her momee got home from work. This trip was such a great experience for all of us. I am waiting to see what our next travel adventures are. Looking ahead, I hope they include the Ecuador and the Galapagos islands and South East Asia. I think those will be when she is a little older. I am not sure what the best kind of travel will be with a toddler…any ideas?

How do you create a healthy family*?

*with family meaning what ever your family looks like kids or no kids

Cuba Diaper Contest Winner

We have a winner! First let me introduce the prize. This is Mc Turtlepants. Mc Turtlepants was made by an artist we met in Cuba. We loved his turtles as soon as we saw them. Their little heads and tails shake and when you pull the string on the top they walk. How much fun is that.

We brought 270 diapers to cuba. That would give us enough for 9 diapers a day. We figured that would cover us for sure. In the bigger cities I did sometimes see diapers in the stores. I noticed that Cuban families, that could afford it, are starting to use disposables. I am happy to be home using our cloth diapers that keep Miss Poopypants poopy pants under control. We had some supreme diaper blowouts in Cuba.

There were lots of close guesses, but A from Adding Baby has excellent diaper predicting skills. It might help that Owen, her little one, is 13 days older than Miss Poopypants. Her guess was 205 and what we actually used was 210, roughly 7 diapers a day. Now Mc Turtlepants will be starting on a traveling adventure through the mail to go and live with the Adding Baby family.

Back home

In a blink of an eye the month flew by and we are home again. Wow. What a great trip. I have some pictures and stories to share. The internet in Cuba was slow and expensive so mostly everything is in my head. Hopefully it stays for a while! Things can get a little loose up there.

Now we are jumping into life here full on. F started work this morning and the Bee and I started stroller fit boot camp. The Bee and I hadn’t even washed of the Havana dust this morning when we headed out to class. We made it about half way through the class before she called it quits and we spent the rest of the class nursing and hanging out in the park. It is an adjustment day for sure. I think half a class was perfect for me too. Bootcamp is really taking it up a notch. I love our home and am ready to enjoy the sunny spring days here.