Intrepid Murmurings

Back After The Storm
We are back online! Yahoo! Last Thursday night we had a pretty big wind and rainstorm out in these parts, and large parts of Seattle and the surrounding areas lost power, due to TONS of trees down and things blown over. Here at our place we lost power for about 24 hours, and our cable TV/Internet only came back this evening. Since we host our own website, that meant the blog was down too. Sorry!
It was actually kind of fun for us, the storm adventure, since we had power restored quickly enough for it not to get really dull. Lonnie got to stay home with us, since his work is rather dependent on all the modern conveniences and such (as of today his work is still without power!) as well as working bridges across the waterways. We had our fireplace stoked and roaring most of the time, which was great since it has been chilly during the days and dropping into the thirties at night. Many of our friends and neighbors were not so well off, and were trying to find other places to spend the days and nights.
On Friday (my birthday! The big 3-0. Eeeks!), we did venture out for some warm beverages and breakfast, though that was more challenging than we first thought since half of our part of town was out of power. Lots of trees blocking various routes, lots of lights out, and it was hit or miss whether anyplace was open (and if it was, it was PACKED!). But, we found a refuge in a coffeeshop in the Junction and then later made tea at home on the camp stove, and dinner in the fireplace (baked potatoes, baked beans and sausages....delish!). Our loss due to to the storm consisted of some perishable fridge items....not so shabby. We were very pleased the neighbors dead tree is still standing and not halfway through our house.
Our power returned sometime during the night on Friday, which was good since we had a party to host on Saturday night! We went to WholePaycheckFoods to get the goodies (it was a wine & cheese party....yum!) and while we were there Emma got to hop on Santa's lap for a little pre-Christmas chat...

Sleep woe is me

After three days of no napping, I am starting to get crazy. My house is a mess, Emma is whiny, and I have a headache.

The problem is that she is rather particular about her napping conditions. She'd prefer to nap on me, or at least with me, consistently. Most of the time, she will only fall asleep by nursing or motion. We've had a few breakthrough days/weeks where I thought things were getting better, but in general, they are the same, and bad. She is a crappy napper.

The car works wonders, but for the past three days she has fallen asleep in it (both to and from an event/errand) only to wake up as soon as I take her out of the car (5-10 min into the nap). I am not going to be one of those people that drives around for hours so their kid can nap. To much money, to much pollution. To boring!

We (Emma and I) just had a meltdown because I have been trying to use my awesome wraps, which many people swear by for situations like ours, and they are not working as awesomely as I'd hoped. They come with a steep learning curve, but you'd think after 6.5 months plus an obsession with babywearing plus reading every website known to (wo)man about the topic plus even owning the book, I would have gotten it by now. Doh!

I just sent out an SOS to my local babywearing group, and maybe someone there will take pity on me and come over and help (I haven't been able to get to their meetings since it meets on a day we are busy). I think maybe someone actually helping me do it, not just watching someone else do it, will help. I hope!

If I do eventually get the hang of it, think of all that I could get done! With a baby on your back, you can do anything! Like clean the house! Get out the Christmas decorations! Bake cookies! Paint! Shop! The possibilities are endless...

Three in the bed and the little one said...

So, cosleeping.

I've written three half-posts about it and I keep deleting them thinking they sound preachy or boring or long. I have been reading a lot about it, because its a big part of our parenting these days. I mean, nighttime counts for a good 8-10 hours, you know? And most babies, well, at least our baby, do not go away for those hours. Not at all. Nada. She is always here, and always needing us for something.

I'm sure I've mentioned before that we do it. Yup. We didn't intend to, but it just happened by necessity early on, and now it works so well we don't think we'll stop. At least not yet. We do have a beautiful crib, one of our first baby purchases, and while I do like it quite a bit, and had visions of her sleeping in it from around now on and always for naps, that totally isn't happening. But what a nice place to put her when I need to shower or pee! It looks great in the room! And she will play in it for quite a while, sometimes...

So here is the down and dirty about our cosleeping. Ha, dirty cosleeping. That sounds not so good! In fact, thats why we as a culture stopped cosleeping (unlike most of the rest of the world)...the "experts" of the time thought that sleeping next to another person and breathing their air would cause illness. This is also why they made nurseries and incubators in hospitals and whisked healthy babies away from their parents into them. Much healthier than staying with dirty old mom!
So, back to the particulars:

• We started cosleeping the first week, when it was the only way to get her to stay asleep. She would sleep on us, as we slept on the couch, rocking chair, or bed. This is the not-so-safe way to cosleep (mainly the couch/chair thing) because proper safety precautions are not in place, and you are so exhausted you fall asleep without meaning to. I was always worrying about accidentally dropping her.
  
• Eventually, I started sleeping in the guest room with her, with pillow walls to make it feel safer. I kept blankets and pillows away from her, and once we got the hang of sidelying nursing, I really got a lot more sleep.
  
• We then moved into our bed upstairs all together, and soon got a guardrail on my side and a new, firmer, non-pillowtop mattress (soft beds are a no-no with young babies). We actually prefer the firmer mattress ourselves!
  
• No, I don't worry about rolling on her. It was something I was hyper-aware of in the beginning, along with keeping blankets away and other SIDS-y risks, but I realized that I am, like they say, always aware of where she is. The fact that I can't roll and flop over without care took a little getting used to, but now I am totally used to it.
  
• Since starting cosleeping, I have rarely felt tired or wiped out during the day . I wake up rested! I did not expect that to happen so soon, I always had the "foggy sleep deprived mother" image in my head and after the first two weeks that really didn't happen. Woo!
  
• We love it for a lot of reasons, but mainly it is because it truly simplifies our nights. Emma SUCKS at the "transfer" (from arms to bed) because she is a really light sleeper. You can get her to sleep (by nursing, bottle, or bouncing) and then as soon as you put her down in her bed (floppy arm stage or not) she wakes right up and smiles or screams, and then its another hour or so of trying to get her back to sleep. Rinse. Repeat.
  
• She also can not will not fall asleep if put in bed drowsy but awake. But nursing her down in our bed works every time!
  
• Lonnie also likes it because he gets to see more of her, and its great bonding time. It is nice to have our whole family close. He (lucky dog him) doesn't wake up much at all in the night when Emma does because she rarely cries, she just moves around or makes little sleepy sounds to let me know she's awake.
  
• She does, yes, wake up quite a bit. Maybe 5-6 times, sometimes less, sometimes more. No sleeping through the night here (though often a 4 hour chunk, which is nice)! Cosleeping breastfeeding babes are known to wake frequently...the all night diner is available and open for business! Yum! For us, though, this is something we actually need and want (at least early on, and even now to some degree) because of my low milk supply. Night feeding helps boost supply, and I think she gets a fair amount of calories at night. And, I sleep through much of it...I'm awake for maybe 5-10 minutes, max, most wakings. WAY better than waking up fully and sitting up/walking down the hall to feed, a couple times a night.
  
• I think there is really something to be said about the fact that cosleeping babies and moms sync up their sleep cycles, too. So when Emma wakes, she is waking me at a light point in my sleep cycle, so I am able to wake easily to help her latch on, then fall back to sleep without trouble. Even though I have fragmented sleep, I wake rested. Yahoo!
  
• I know a lot of people think you should teach your child to "self soothe" and sleep alone, perhaps by "crying it out", but that just does not feel right to us. We like to sleep near each other, are not surprised she likes it too. It feels like a natural thing, the right way to go for us. We like the idea that if you keep them close now, they will be more self-assured and independent later on. And no, we are not worried she will be in our bed forever. The people we've talked to who have cosleept say the transition, whenever it happened, went pretty smoothly.
  
• What about sex, you say? Is that any of your business? No, its not. But I will say that all the books I've read mention that having to get creative isn't such a bad thing....
  
• Lastly, I do have some concern about how things will go once she is more mobile, which is soon soon soon! This doesn't actually pertain to cosleeping at night when we are in the bed as much as when I leave her there for naps. The guard rail and pillow walls we construct to contain her will work for only so long. I am not sure we are willing to get rid of the bed frame and put the bed on the floor like so many cosleepers do. We may have to get her transitioned into the crib for naps, we'll see how that goes....

New Stuff
A month of no posting! For no good reason! A lot can happen in a month, here's a few things that did:
Emma turned 6 months old! She has so many new little mannerisms and funny, sweet things that she does — its great to see her personality coming out. When I look at pictures from when she was just born, those early days, she looks like herself, only so much smaller, red and fresh and little and sleepy (though at the time I would not agree with that last one). Now, she is just becoming more and more Emma, which in neat. She is becoming such a big girl!
She has finally started sitting up! We had actually stopped even trying to get her to do it, because we were so used to her crumpling up and folding in half when we tried, nose in her toes. So one day, I thought to give it a shot again, and kapowie, she had gotten it! Stomach muscles! Balance! She's still a bit tippy but getting better by the day. It is fun to sit her up and let her play with something from that view. I think she likes it.
What she likes even more is moving, which she has really improved upon lately. The last time I wrote, Emma had just started creeping on her tummy. We'd put her on a blanket, and she'd inch and oonch towards something with her face plowing into the floor. It was quite a process. Now, she really is starting to crawl, for reals, this time! Today she crawled halfway across the living room!
Thanksgiving was the first time we'd seen her really get up on all fours, and a few days after that she started rocking. Now, she kind of crawls like a frog, getting up, falling down on her stomach, pulling her knees in and pushing off with them again. She is starting to get the opposite arms and knee movement, so I think real honest to goodness crawling is next. Holy vacuum cleaner childproofing messy cluttered house! At least we had already decided on a table top Christmas tree this year...
In terms of eating, well, there seems to be none of the solid variety going down, despite our attempts. I was hoping she would take to it, since she seems to be needing more formula supplementation these days, and bottles are a drag (though I suppose carrying solid foods around are a drag, too). But, though she lunges, and stares with fascination at our foods, when something comes into her mouth she is so disgusted by it, and us, for being so stupid as to put that in there, her precious mouth, which is only for plastic, wood, paper, dog hair, and liquids, it seems.
She has learned to hold her own bottle, and also loves drinking out of a cup (with assistance, if you don't want it to be all over her shirt). She LOVES that! The only substantial amount of sweet potato puree I actually got her to consume was mixed into some formula and poured into a cup, which she grasped in her little paws and crammed into her mouth, again and again.
Well, there is more, but I am going to save it, and start on another post for tomorrow, to see if I might break these up a bit and get in the posting habit again. Check back!