afternoon naps make us happy!

Nathaniel woke up from a post-shower afternoon nap with the awesomest bedhead ever. Sadly, my real camera is missing, so I had to take pics with my computer's camera (not that high quality).

He's clapping in one of the pictures, hence the blurs where his hands are.

sweet moments

Today I asked Carl if he would put Nathaniel on the ground while I worked. My plan was to watch him as I typed.

Carl didn't return for a while, even though he had work to do, too. Finally I looked for him. He and Nathaniel were sitting just around the corner, playing ball together. It was so sweet I could hardly stand it. I had one of those moments where I just realized that Nathaniel won't be so little for very long, so I had better treasure it. I have a few of those moments I've tried to tattoo on my heart. I treasure them all.

Just now I was trying to get Nathaniel to go to sleep. Over the past few days, he's done this thing where he gets super tired--you can tell from the circles under his eyes and how he rubs his eyes with his hands--but he cries if I try to nurse him down to sleep. So it takes some effort now. We turn off all the lights, and I snuggle him and try to nurse him in the complete darkness.

Just now I was getting a little frustrated, because he was clearly very tired but he just wanted to be going! going! going! I looked at the time and said I would try to nurse him for 15 minutes and if he were still awake after that, I would give up and turn on the lights and finish everything up with him awake.

Lo and behold, four minutes later he was sound asleep. He is sleeping beside me this very moment. I need to remember that he is a total n00b to being alive here. He doesn't know how to handle his body. I have to help him learn things even as simple as going to sleep at proper times. I have to be patient with him.

Here, you should read this great essay from my friend Lanette on being a mom.

Over and out.

baby back to normal!

He slept normally last night!

He only got to lick a few Cheerios yesterday, and then during the night I let him roll around as he desired. Of course I made sure that when he was on his tummy his head was to the side. He slept awesomely.

Whew.

sleep issues, continued

I think I discovered the answer to his sleep issues. I'll test it out tonight and let you know.

All morning, he's slept super well, but only on his tummy. If I try to get him to sleep on his back or side, he stirs and starts grunting and being sad again. No tears, but just general restlessness.

Right now he's on his tummy, and has slept peacefully for the past hour. All last night when he was tossing and turning and getting upset with me, it was because I wouldn't let him sleep on his tummy. I kept him from his tummy for two reasons: 1) SIDS risk and 2) he loves scooting and I didn't want him scooting around in the night.

But it looks like he'd rather sleep than scoot, and also, I'm right next to him all night. (Yay bedsharing!) So I can hear him breathe all night long. If something happens with him, I notice. So maybe it might be okay to let him sleep that way.

baby has sleep issues

Nathaniel has been weird lately. Normally, he sleeps well during the night, and is happy all day. The past few days, he's been a grump--and last night, he didn't bother going to sleep until 5:30. And then he was up at 6:30 and now he just fell asleep again. It's like 8 am.

Just in time for me to load him in the car to take Carl to work! This will be superfun.

I gave him some Orajel at 6:30, and some baby motrin. I guess his new grumpiness and sleep issues are from teething, or starting solids? He loves to suck on bread crust and Cheerios and pretzels (he doesn't really eat them, he just licks them), but I wonder if that's making him crazy?

All I know is, when my baby doesn't sleep, I don't sleep. He spent the whole night just making weird grunting noises and thrashing around, until I gave up trying to placate him the whole time and he just cried instead. Poor kid.

I think the real secret may have been that he wanted to sleep on his tummy and I wouldn't let him. A benefit of co-sleeping is that I can keep him in the positions that are good for him to sleep in. But he just learned how to sleep on his side last week, and now sleeping on his back isn't good enough. And just now, he fell asleep on his tummy and it's the most restful I've seen him in days.

bedsharing thought

Nathaniel sleeps between me and Carl, in our king bed. He has a little hand towel he sleeps on in case he leaks somehow in the night, and also so he can have a finite territory to himself.

Every night before we sleep, we put him down in his spot and just marvel at how awesome he is.

The other night, Carl turned to me and just asked: "Why doesn't everybody sleep with their baby? It's worked out so well for us."

<3 <3 <3

So glad to be bedsharing with my baby, and with a husband who is glad about it too!

Baby D and the Eye Infection

Ever since he was born, Baby D has had eye problems. Mostly just green gooeys, which I figured were normal. Over time, the gooeys dried up and stopped being a problem--in the right eye. Three days ago, though, his left eye got way worse.

When I saw "way worse," I mean that he had so many gooeys that unless I was washing them off his eyes every hour or so, he couldn't open his eye because his lashes were glued to his cheek. Also in the mornings he would wake up with just a giant encrusted line of green goop, dried, on his lashline. Poor kid.

But this morning it seems to have cleared up. Here is what I did:

1. Prayed

2. Dripped breastmilk into his eye every time we breastfed, and also used it on tissues and cotton balls to clean out the goopies

3. Massaged his tear duct every time we nursed (I tried to at other times, but he wouldn't hold still--but given a choice between nursing and having his tear duct rubbed or not nursing and not getting it rubbed, he picked nursing)

I will say that we only started the tear duct massage yesterday morning after some Google research, but it seems to have worked.

Yesterday I took him over to my mom's house so she could see him, and while he was sitting in his little chair his eyes got all goopy. So I used a tissue to wipe all the goo away. He didn't cry or anything, and he didn't really move that much. My mom noted this and said, "He trusts you."

That kind of melted my heart a little bit. She's right. This baby does trust me. Every time he gets goo in his nose I grab the nose bulb and suction it out. He hates it but he'll just look in my eyes and hold still while I do it, despite. I'm so glad he knows, at the tender age of, what? eleven weeks, that I only do things he hates because they're good for him.

That level of trust has come from a bunch of things: our breastfeeding relationship in which I feed him with my own body every time he shows signs of hunger (I try to catch it before he has to cry). Our bedsharing that means we basically cuddle all night long and he never has to be cold or lonely or scared or hungry in the night. Our showers together. How promptly I try to change his diaper (he hates being wet there so much!). How I carry him all the time, either in my arms or in a sling or wrap, so he never has to be lonely or bored.

And really, all those things have made my life infinitely easier. He rarely cries, because he never really needs to. It makes things way less stressful around here. I'm so glad I stumbled across natural parenting. It has been a real blessing.

why i love cosleeping

I mentioned in my last post how so many people freak out when they find out about our bedsharing.

I urge you to read this article and if you don't have time for that one, this article. To sum them both up a little bit, examine the following quotations from the first article:

Mother–infant co-sleeping represents the most biologically appropriate sleeping arrangement for humans and is both ancient and ubiquitous simply because breast feeding is not possible, nor as easily managed, without it.

***

Most USA and other western infants die from SIDS or from fatal accidents during solitary sleep outside the supervision of a committed adult. Moreover, the overwhelming number of suspected accidental overlays or fatal accidents occur not within breast feeding–bedsharing communities but in urban poverty, where multiple independent SIDS risk ‘factors’ converge and bottle feeding rather than breastfeeding predominates.

***

Surely, the fact that in Japan safe bedsharing and futon co-sleeping is increasing as SIDS rates decline to unprecedented levels should raise some doubts about any singular or predictable positive association between bedsharing and SIDS rates. Moreover, data on recent Asian immigrants in the USA lead to an interesting observation: the longer different Asian immigrant sub-groups live in the USA and presumably begin to adopt American life styles, including placing their infants in cribs for night-time sleep rather than co-sleeping, the more the SIDS rates of these ethnic groups begin to rise to match the higher rates of SIDS among whites.

****

Almost all SIDS deaths associated with parental bedsharing occurred in conjunction with a history of parental drug use and occurred in association with the prone [on the tummy instead of on the back] sleep position or sleep surfaces such as a couch or waterbed.

Anyway. Basically I feel that, having done the research, bedsharing is really the way to go, at least for my family. We don't do drugs. We don't smoke. Our mattress is firm. We breastfeed.

I love our sleeping arrangements. I never have to worry about how Nathaniel is doing because I can just look at him in the night if I wake up. If he's hungry, I can read the signs before he even wakes up and I can nurse on my side. He sleeps while he eats and I doze until he's done. I can monitor his temperature easily, and turn up or down the ceiling fan if he seems uncomfortable--not to mention that when he is so close to me, our biology means that his body attunes to mine for temperature regulation and breathing. My breaths cue his; my temperature influences his.

When he has gas in the night, as he has every night this past week, I can help bicycle his legs, or rub his tummy, or supervise a quick nighttime tummy time to get out all the gas so he can get back to sleep.

Don't knock it til you rock it--or at least do the research. Seriously, check out that first article. It is a scholarly article through the University of Notre Dame entitled "Why babies should never sleep alone: A review of the co-sleeping controversy in relation to SIDS, bedsharing and breast feeding" (the second article I linked discusses this first scholarly article). Essentially, bedsharing can be very safe--as long as you follow the precautions. But there are too many variables to recommend bedsharing for everyone.


Overall, we personally both sleep better because of it. I honestly believe that Nathaniel gets the best, most, and safest sleep within a foot of my person. I'm sure he believes that too. Bedsharing isn't for everyone, and I'm not trying to say that it should be. My parents definitely didn't bedshare and I turned out all right (right? or maybe this means you SHOULD bedshare! :^P). But I'm so glad I stumbled across the blogs of women who were brave enough to admit that they cosleep like this. When our culture is so set against it, reading the accounts of other women who bedshare really opened up my mind to it and I'm so glad I did.

So this is me sharing my account of my bedsharing choices. I imagine I would be far more stressed and tired if my baby were in a separate room in a separate bed, and his only chance of waking me up to feed him, or comfort him if he were lonely or scared of the dark or fussy from gas, was to scream for me. For me personally, this is the way to go--and I never would have known it except for a few brave bedsharing bloggers. This is me joining their ranks.