Day 1, a wrench in the works

Day 1, Nap 3
Charlotte sleeps for 2 hours and 10 minutes. Phew! I'm feeling pretty good about myself.

Day 1, Bedtime
Rebellion. After 2.5 hours and 4 trips upstairs, I finally realize she has a fever. Tylenol. Full swaddle. Tomorrow is a new day.

Updates

Day 1, Nap 1
The child falls asleep faster than anyone I know (and that includes me!). After a half hour, she starts talking.

Day 1, Nap 2
She is a good girl. At least, that's what I was thinking as I put her down. She slept for a half hour. When I went in to replace the binky, her arm waved in circles at me while she smiled and cooed. Then she went back to sleep. Now I can hear here, chit chatting to herself. Can she stay awake long enough to hit the grocery store?! Only time will tell...

It begins

We have a baby who is a wonderful sleeper. We (well, I) walk around assured of our excellent parenting because of her ability to sleep. She naps frequently and at length, she sleeps for 12-13 hours at night. She is fairly happy and very mellow all day long.

But lately, the feeling that we are the beneficiaries of an easy baby has been creeping in. Charlotte loves being wrapped up to sleep. I tell people how she goes to bed swaddled. While I cannot see directly into their heads, I can imagine what they are picturing: a tiny, sleeping babe, gently wrapped in a small blanket. When they see me swaddle Charlotte, surprise will often cross their face. “Oh,” they might say as they peep over to watch, “What is that you’re doing to her arms there?”

We used to swaddle Charlotte. We took the parenting class where we were taught the importance of a good tight swaddle. I had seen it work wonders with my nephew. So, we started swaddling Charlotte the day she was born. She loved it. When she would cry out, arms flailing, seemingly hysterical, we would quickly get a blanket around her. Once neutralized, her arms could no longer interrupt her sleep. She would almost immediately conk out, and I would pat myself on the back. As she has grown, those tiny, thin blankets would no longer hold her. The swaddle adapted.

I would say that what we do now is less a swaddle and more a hog tie. In order to put 8-month-old Charlotte to sleep, we lay out two blankets, one on top of the other. We lay her down, and the first blanket is used to straight-jacket her arms. The second blanket, bigger, is wrapped around the straight jacket. While she can, on occasion, break the swaddle, she’s pretty much neutralized in that thing.

But last night it became obvious that the swaddle needs to become a thing of the past. Twice, I went in to her room after hearing her talk at length over the baby monitor. “Coo!” she whispered excitedly. “Caw!” When I leaned over her crib, she was nearly unswaddled, the blankest gathered over her chest and neck. Her body was flipped around, having used her toes to push against the crib bars to spin around. When she saw me lean over, eyes bleary with sleep, she gurgled loudly and giggled.

I rapidly swaddled her and before I was to the door, she was back asleep.

And two things became painfully clear:
First, Charlotte sees swaddling as the cue to sleep. When unswaddled, it is time to play. And,
second, we will not be able to contain her in the hog tie much longer.

I was not the perfect parent I had believed.

So, today we begin. The swaddling must end, and it could be a tough one.
Stay tuned.

A little slow.

At her 4-month appointment with our pediatrician, Dr. B. walked into the room and exclaimed, “Oh my, Charlotte! You look like a developmentally delayed 6-month-old!”

Sure, I could have taken this as an insult. But since I was used to big babies due to the extra-large size of babies in my family, I looked on the plus side. “Does that mean I can sneak her in the gym daycare? They have a 6-month minimum.”

Off we went the following week. When I first dropped her off, I felt like a criminal being questioned by the police. “Why do you want to know her birthday?” “Are you going to call the emergency contact? If so, what kinds of questions will you ask him?” I quickly calculated a fake birthday, making her 6 months and one day old.

“Does she sit up?” Brittany asked.

“Um, not really.” I left quickly and ran upstairs to the treadmill.

Several weeks later, as I was dropping her off, another mother stood next to me, signing her daughter in.

“Ooooh, how old is your daughter?” the mom asked.

“Ah…” I hesitated. “Six months.” I answered.

“Oh.” She paused. “So’s mine.” She squinted in the direction of our girls and forced a smile. I followed her eyes. There on the floor was her 6-month-old daughter, sitting up and stacking blocks. Next to her was Charlotte, laying in the bouncy chair and drooling on herself.

“Don’t worry,” she continued. “Lucy has a big sister. I bet that’s why she’s so advanced.”

I spent the rest of my workout entertaining the notion of tracking Lucy’s mom down to set her straight. “She’s not *that* slow,” I would explain. “It’s just that I’m sneaking her into daycare early.” I decided that would just make me look like a jerk.

I decided to let Charlotte take the fall.

So, off we go, my developmentally delayed 6-month-old and I. Back to daycare for another day of lying about our age. Who knew it started so early?

We ferberized our baby.

Last summer Robert and I attended the wedding of one of his college buddies. Going to a stranger’s wedding, along with a bunch of other strangers, generally leads to a series of conversations that always go the same way:

“So, where are you from?”
“How do you know the bride and groom?”
“What do you do?”
“Oh, really! Accountant? That must be fascinating!”

At the time of this wedding, I was 5 months pregnant and just starting to show. Unbeknownst to me, pregnancy is a wonderful conversation starter. All the standard stranger-conversation starters are out. Instead, you spend time having what I have come to know as the standard pregnancy-conversation starters:

“Is it a boy or a girl?”
“What kind of birth are you going to have?”
“Have you thought about diapering?”
“What kind of baby carrier do you have?”

Each of these conversations starts out innocently enough, with the questioner honestly curious about our future child and parenting. It quickly seems to devolve to a description of questioner’s own childrearing practice:

“We didn’t find out about our baby’s gender until we felt with our own hands. He’s a boy!”
“We had little Lance in our bathtub. It helps the baby make a smoother transition to the harshness of the outside world.”
“Oh, we’ve tried them all: BumGenius, gDiapers, Tidee Didee, Fuzzi Bunz, Mother Ease. Let me tell you about them all…”
“We only use a d-ring sling. No clasps or buttons. Baby Sydney is always close to our hearts!”

Most of the time, I am very curious about other parental styles. I enjoy talking “mom talk” and love to hear what other people do. Most of the time, this is not because I care to borrow their parenting advice.

The exception is sleep.

I believe sleep is the single most important part of a baby’s life. Maybe this is because I know how important sleep is to me. Is, and always has been. I am still the butt of the family jokes as they tell about my self-imposed early bedtime as a child. “Won’t someone put me to bed?!” I would moan at 6:30. Now I can stay up later, but not by much. “The movie doesn’t start until 7:45? Naw, I hate to pay $10 for a 2-hour nap.”

I believe that my child’s ability to sleep well, and without complaint, could prove to be a huge stress-reliever in an otherwise complicated parental role.

I believe that I need my child to sleep well so that I can sleep well.

So, as these conversations begin to turn towards sleep-training strategies, I’m all ears.

“We practice attachment parenting. Ben doesn’t sleep unless he’s being held by us!”
“I got little Sam on a schedule at 6 weeks. Otherwise you’re just spoiling the baby.”
“We did the CIO early. We Ferberized our baby.”

“Ah,” I would answer, “Attachment. CIO. Ferberize. Check!”

When we returned to our room, I would break out the computer and Google each term. As it turns out, some of them are very common terms. And, “ferberizing” one’s baby is common practice. Translation: allowing your baby to cry it out… Sort of.

Ferberizing is, most simply, a way to allow a child to cry themselves to sleep. It involves timing the child for increasingly long periods of time, intervening in between said periods of crying. Many parents view this as a less-harsh way to teach a child to get to sleep on his/her own. So, I decided this kinder, gentler way of sleep-coaching would be right for our family. It came to a head when Charlotte was waking up more and more often soon after she was put down to bed.

Despite my fears, I found parenting to be a relatively easy transition for me. My daughter’s crying does not usually upset me, except on the rarest of occasions, and I am able to deal with her emotional breakdowns with little stress. But now, when she was endlessly spitting out her pacifier and waking each 15-30 minutes, I tired of running up and down the stairs for hours a night. I finally reached the point of frustration. Begin ferberization.

Armed with a stopwatch and my sleep book, I was ready for whatever Charlotte would throw at us. Robert was willing to follow along and go with whatever happened. Being so relaxed, I was sure I would handle this with good-natured aplomb and ease. I was sure I would be calling my mom the next day, “Yeah, we sleep-trained her last night. What an easy kid!” I was mentally patting myself on the back for my grace and patience in advance.

Charlotte began crying. Instead of racing up the stairs, I looked at the clock. 8:06. We were supposed to let her cry for 5 minutes before going to her crib. I spent the first minute continuing to praise myself for my ability to handle her emotion.

By 8:08, I was covering my ears.

By 8:09, I was on the verge of tears, begging Robert to let me go to her. We raced up the stairs and into her room to replace her binky. But, according to the book, we were not supposed to pick her up. I put her binky in her mouth. She screamed. She stared at us with wide eyes, accusing us of the worst atrocities a parent could inflict on their child.

Why have you forsaken me?! She wailed. What have I done to deserve this? Her furrowed brow spoke volumes.

The 2-minute timer beeped and we left her room, despite her continued shrieking. We trudged down the stairs, slightly less prepared to handle the next ten minute crying interval. After 5 minutes, I forced Robert to head back in. Charlotte had tears streaming down her face, and I had never seen her look at us (or, anything) with such intensity. She sobbed. I looked at Robert.

“Let’s not do this now.”

I picked her up, and the three of us snuggled until Charlotte fell asleep, when I put her back down into her crib.

***

Watching her face, staring at me and sobbing, just broke my previously unbreakable heart. The Ferber method, supposed to be easy on the parent, had been far too painful for me to handle.

The following night, we revised our strategy. Instead of stopwatches and interventions, we let her cry. She cried for 11 minutes before falling asleep. Without having to look into her beautiful, sad eyes, I cried zero times. A part of me felt shame—how could I tell people that I was too heartless to use the Ferber method? What would they think of me?

This year, we will be seeing many of the same strangers from last year’s wedding. When they ask me about Charlotte’s sleep routine, I plan to tell them. I intended ferberized my baby. But it turns out she ferberized me. And I’m better-rested for it.

What a cute little boy!

The other day, as Charlotte and I were grocery shopping in the local Fred Meyer, a woman at the checkout stand commented, “Ooooh, what’s his name?”  Did she really just say his?  “That is such a cute baby boy!” she continued.  “How old is he?”

 “She’s three months.”

“Oh.”  Her brow furrowed.  “I- I- er… Sorry.  It’s just that, she’s wearing blue shoes.”

I looked down.  My baby girl was dressed in a bright pink shirt and matching bright pink pants, with pink socks.  And, light blue shoes.

Growing up, I was often confused as a boy.  Judging by the photos (and painful memories) of my childhood, my mother clearly believed the perfect haircut was one in which the hair was cut straight along the edge of a bowl upturned on a child’s head.  The Bowl Cut appears in all our family photo albums, beginning with my sister, continuing with my brother, and ending with me.  This classic ‘do is what we might nowadays call a gender-neutral cut, and I attribute it to many of the uncomfortable moments in my childhood.   “Aw…” grown-ups would often say as they ruffled my hair, “What’s your name little boy?”

It didn’t help to have a boy’s name.  Rory only recently became more popular as girl’s name, thanks in large part to the cheeky and adorable Rory Gilmore of The Gilmore Girls.  (That being said, my cousin recently named his son Rory, throwing me right back into the angst of my younger years.)  In high school, college, and beyond, the most common response to my self-introduction has been, “I know a Rory!  It’s a boy, though.”  These people identified me as a female, despite having a boy’s name.  As a young child with a unisex bowl cut, there was no such identification.  “Rory?  Ah, that’s a strong Irish name for a little boy!”

I tend to be someone who, when presented with an uncomfortable or stressful situation, stammers and backs down quickly.  I often walk away from these situations and, several hours later, think of an ingenious response to that would surely have given me the situational win.

As it turns out, much of my adult life has been spent thinking of much-belated responses to those hair-ruffling, ego-killing adults.  I also spend time thinking of gender-neutral baby-praising comments to use on any baby I might meet.  Just like the old adage “Never ask a woman if she’s pregnant unless you see a baby coming out of her at that exact second,” I feel the need to never make mention a baby’s gender unless the baby is naked and proof of gender is present at that moment.  “Your baby is so adorable!”  “How old is your baby?”  “What is your baby’s name?”

The only exception I will make is a baby dressed head-to-toe in pink, which seems like an obvious statement by the parent that the child is a girl.

As I stood in Fred Meyer, staring at this woman (who clearly lacked the brain connection that covered judgment), all of those hypothetical responses came flooding to my head.  I thought of all the clever things I could say to her to defend my sweet little girl from being called a boy.  But as I looked at Charlotte and decided between comebacks, it all seemed to fade away.  And instead of letting the many years of anger come out, I looked up and smiled at the woman.  “It’s okay,” I said, “She’s not worried about it.”

And neither am I.

Thinking Out Loud

A few weeks ago I was in the car, three blocks from home, listening to my least favorite radio show on OPB. As far as I can tell, the title of said program captures all of my complaints in the three short words: Think Out Loud. People often call in and introduce their insightful comments with lines such as, “Well, I don’t have an experience in this area, but I think…” If I ever start a radio show, I plan to call it Think Before You Call. It’s unlikely I’ll get as many callers, but perhaps an hour of silence would be better than listening to yokels telling me what they think of the world.

In this case, I was only three blocks from home, so rather than turn the radio off in an angry huff, I figured I would tough it out until I made it home (how gracious am I?!). The topic of the day’s show was blogging and the guest was a local teenage blogger. Upon being asked why she blogs, she answered,

“I think of blogging as writing to the future you.”

Let me put the personal importance of this comment in perspective.

Almost as soon as I had a baby, I was asked if I planned to start a blog. Ha! I thought. Who on earth is self-centered enough to believe someone wants to read what they have to say about daily life? Don’t get me wrong—I know many people who blog and I even occasionally read what they have to say! However, the blogs I read tend to be riotously funny (think sleeptalkingman.blogspot.com) or they tend to be relating the trials of some process or event: the adoption process, or adventures living abroad. Julie and Julia was about an average gal, but I can’t imagine having the discipline to take on a project as fabulously difficult as cooking every day. And I can’t believe that sitting at home with a new baby is even in the realm of fascinating adventures. I quickly blew off the idea.

But as time passed, it came creeping back into my head. I admit, I can’t help but think of the fame that can come from documenting one’s thoughts and experiences. I mean, look at Anne Frank. OK, well, don’t look at Anne Frank… Instead, look at the Lifetime Television Network. Here is an entire network ready to broadcast the story of someone willing to speak up. But, I guess I’m not looking for movie-of-the-week fame, either… So, without a great life trauma on which to base a blog, I bailed again.

You can imagine my happiness when I realized that I could write a blog without expecting others to read along. I don’t have to do it to be famous. Or because I’m experiencing a trauma. Or even to be so fabulously witty or profound that people will feel compelled to follow along. I can write just to write—for the challenge, the practice, and the desire to document some small pieces of my life.

Consider it me, thinking out loud.