Month: December 2018

The Blob Trimester: Baby’s Z’s 1st 3 months

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As my youngest (baby Z) is one week shy of 4 months, I find myself fondly reflecting on the fourth trimester haze. If you are not familiar with the term “fourth trimester”, it is common terminology for the first 3 postpartum months. Due to human anatomy and the limitations of the birth canal, human babies are born neurologically premature. Thus my rationale for (very affectionately) calling my newborn a blob.

Let’s put it this way: newborns would never survive in the wild. They can’t hold their heads up, they can’t make meaningful movements with their arms and legs, they can barely see, and they are easily surprised. They can only communicate via crying and they spend a great majority of their days sleeping, drinking milk, peeing and pooing. This is one reason why the fourth trimester is so challenging for new parents: you are suddenly in charge of keeping a small, defenseless human alive. No pressure!

Prety daunting, huh? Couple this with the fact that new parents are chronically sleep-deprived (newflash: babies don’t know the difference between day and night, so you may find yourself pulling a lot of all-nighters), moms are experiencing a hormonal hailstorm (why does everything make me cry? why am I suddenly so angry at my husband? why am I so worried about every damn thing?) and everything you previously knew about yourself has gone out the window (so long hobbies, singular focus on career, social life). Given all of the above, we might as well also call this time period the sob trimester.

Never fear, however. Between 3-4 months, everything gets easier. Yes, there are still challenges (hello 4 month sleep regression!), but your little blob has turned into a reciprocal mini-human who tracks your movements, produces wide-toothed smiles and even cackles with laughter, which makes the experience much more rewarding.

For the sake of preserving my own memories, here’s a recap of Baby Z’s first 3 months:

  • Birth: By far the best of three (third time’s the charm!). Baby X was induced and we barely made it to the hospital with Baby Y. For Baby Z, we went to the hospital as soon as contractions started and were told to walk around until they intensified. We did this for quite some time, even coming home to shower and re-pack, so by the time we returned to the hospital, it was go-time but not baby’s-about-to-fall-out time. I was able to get an epidural (thank you, modern medicine), labor peacefully and when it came time to push, he was out after basically 3 pushes with no tearing involved.
  • Sleep: We purchased a Snoo for this guy, but I wasn’t quite comfortable having him sleep in it from day one. The rocking seemed a bit intense for me and I capped it (there is a function where you can limit the motion) and have kept it as such to this day. In the beginning, he honestly mostly slept in bed with me (my husband would supervise so I didn’t roll on him) and we also lay him down in the Snoo (without turning it on) or put him in the Rock n Play (which he honestly never liked very much and also isn’t safe for unsupervised sleep). We hired a weekend night nanny for those first rough nights and she fell asleep holding the baby on the third night she worked for us! As my husband would say: WTF? YOU HAVE ONE JOB!!! That was pretty traumatic, but baby was okay and we gently told her we were no longer in need of a night nanny. I have to be honest: the sleep was pretty rough early on. He would spend a few hours up each night and I often had no idea what to do with him around 2-5am. My husband was also saving his paternity leave so I tried not to bother him since he had to work the next day. It was pretty intense. I tried to establish an early bedtime for him, but he went to sleep around 11p for a long time! Just recently (close to/when he hit 3 months), he started falling asleep around 9. Early on, he would be up cluster-feeding for quite a few hours (e.g. 8p-11p/12a) but more recently he would do a longer stretch, waking up either at 1a or 3a. So most nights he’ll wake up 1-2 times. The first nap was also the first to fall into place, as it usually does. It’s the one I can actually set him down “drowsy but awake” for! At the moment, we are traveling (good-bye Snoo!) and have him in a Pack n Play. I have to say that he’s not loving it. Last night, he was up every 2 hours, and spent the bulk of the night in bed with me. I’m not sure if this is a Snoo transition issue, a travel/change of environment issue, or the start of the 4 month sleep regression, but I don’t like it.
  • Temperament: When we first brought him home, we were a bit concerned he would be colicky like Baby X. Turns out he was just a normal newborn who wanted to be held, cuddled and carried pretty much all day. With every need attended to/preempted, he’s happy as a peach. He likes tummy time, mat time, play time (songs and the occasional book when he gets his own) and of course still loves when we tote him around all day. So far, he’s a happy, go-lucky baby who can also entertain himself independently (for now, this mostly involves staring at something in the distance).
  • Feeding: Baby Z latched pretty easily. I had one of the nurses remind me of the appropriate position when they are little blobs and can’t hold up their heads, but he quickly got the hang of it. I don’t have him on any particular schedule at the moment. He should technically be eating every 3-4 hours, but sometimes it’s less. Of all the baby things, nursing has always been fairly easy for me. Yes, it was always painful in the beginning. I enrolled in a lactation class prior to the birth of my first, worked with lactation consultants in the hospital the first two times, and also had private lactation consultant visits after the first two were born. These steps allowed me to feel more comfortable nursing. And yes, I worried ALL all of the time whether they were getting enough to eat, especially my first. Was he colicky because he was hungry? Were those tears of starvation? Did he want to nurse all of the time because he wasn’t getting enough milk? I also always pumped just enough and was worried each time about how pumping at work would turn out. Yet I was able to nurse the first two for 15 months and pumped until they were 11 months, using up my freezer stash for months 12 and 13. We’ll see what happens with this guy. I’m a bit worried because I had 187 oz and 300 oz of milk saved up for my first and second, respectively, when I went back to work, but currently have only 55 oz with only a few weeks to go (poor third child!). But I am telling myself that the freezer stash really only helped me to stop pumping a bit earlier, so it isn’t the end of the world that his is so limited. After all, every lactation consultant I’ve spoken with has said you only need enough milk for your first day back (and this is true).
  • Developmental milestones: Baby Z was quick to roll from tummy to back. I know I sound like a delusional mom saying this, but he was doing it month one and still does it to this day. He’s flailing his arms around and kicking his legs much more now. He sees well, follows you around with his eyes, smiles and laughs, has coo-ing conversations, and has started to grip things and bring them to his mouth. Actually, everything is starting to wind up in his mouth – his hands, the carrier strap, teething toys, etc. He can also reach out with his hands to swipe things hanging above him on his playmat or on one of his chairs. His neck is pretty strong and I will often place him forward-facing in the carrier (if it’s not naptime) because he likes to observe the world. He’s actually starting to show interest in food already, which seems early to me, but I’m looking forward to introducing solids.

I honestly can’t believe he’s almost 4 months and am definitely patting myself on the back for getting through those tough first few months. Work is just around the corner (a story for another day), but I feel very fortunate to have had this time with him.

 

Not a sleep whisperer

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I spend a good chunk of my day convincing little humans that sleep is a good idea. The other day, as I was prematurely patting myself on the back for getting all 3 kids to nap at the same time, my two oldest decided they were simply going to skip their naps. Of course, they were little (cute) monsters by the end of the day.

Right now, I’m struggling most with my middle child. He has recently started to extensively delay bedtime. He wants ten stories, ten songs, a million cuddles. Every time we acquiesce, he asks for more. After all of the above, he started asking for more lights on (we already have a nightlight). So we started with one, then two (after all, if he was truly afraid we didn’t want to be the mean parents who ignored this). This was enough for a bit but then the demands escalated. He wanted all the lights on but then also wanted us to hold him to sleep. The thing is, we’ve been down this path before. With both of our older children, we’ve always given in, and then regretted it some time later. Who doesn’t love the feel of their young child against them, all chubby cheeks and fat fingers, warm breath on your shoulder, kissing your cheek and saying “I love you, mommy”. I mean, what could be more precious? But it is hard to tack on an additional two hours for bedtime after a day packed with activities and attention doled singularly on the children. That extra times leaves us extra wiped, so we bring even less to our relationship, our home, and our work. And I am a firm believer in children needing to get a good night’s (or nap’s) sleep! When our kids put themselves to sleep, they fall asleep more quickly and wake up better rested.

This is on my hand because my middle child just cried himself to sleep for nap time. He only cried for five minutes or so, but it of course broke my mama heart. In truth, if I didn’t have a third child currently strapped to my chest for his own nap (we are visiting family and my oldest is sleeping in my room, where the crib is), I would probably just hold the kid to sleep. Again-who doesn’t love that feeling? So there’s the added guilt of attention being taken away from him by the baby. But we did try the “cuddle to sleep” method the last two days and he just ended up giggling, playing, and essentially doing everything BUT sleeping.

I reached out to our sleep consultant this week (honestly, at this point I should just have her on retainer) and she advised that if the gentle approaches weren’t working, to firmly return to business as usual. She advised either letting him cry or spending less and less time in the room with less and less physical or verbal interaction. The latter sounds like it would be torture to do, so we have settled to let him cry. Bedtime has improved dramatically (still delays, but not as many demands and we haven’t had tears for a few days). Naptime has proven to be more difficult, perhaps because there is less sleep inertia and it involves taking a break from playtime. I joked with our sleep consultant that I should print out a frame with “When in doubt, cry it out” for the nursery, because this seems to be what we resort to after a few days of failing at every other approach. Her philosophy, at least with our family/children, has always been: if baby/toddler/child is dry, fed, healthy, has gone to the bathroom and if you’ve addressed all of their fears, questions, and concerns, then there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to sleep by themselves.

I recognize this is a very Western philosophy. It is very foreign to my mom, who always had children in bed with her. In truth, our youngest (almost 4 months now) has spent more time in bed with me than I’d like to admit. This is mostly because I’m so exhausted when he wakes to feed that I accidentally fall asleep with him. I sleep alone (poor hubby has been banished to the guest room for this reason), with no extra pillows, blankets, or throws. I wear warm clothing so as not to cover myself and make sure the baby’s unswaddled and in the very center of the bed. It always fills me with great trepidation, despite all of these measures. For us, the main reason we haven’t intentionally shared a bed is fear. The second reason is that it’s been really important for my husband and I to have adult time after the kids go to sleep. We are not perfect in this regard, as I often allow housework or work work to bleed into our time, but it is theoretically more possible if there is no child in our room.

I’ll end on a positive note: my 4 year old has become a much better sleeper with time. He was our crazy colicky baby who refused to sleep on his back and had us up every twenty minutes as a newborn. We held him to sleep for naps until he was almost 3! But now this very same child will tell us he’s tired (before nap or at bedtime) and then go to sleep by himself. He sometimes needs a bit of encouragement when it comes to changing into PJs, but then he’ll happily settle in under the covers with his stuffed animal and put himself to sleep with no extra support. If you had told me this four years ago, I would have never believed it. It’s amazing how children change over time.

One of the greatest challenges of parenthood has, for me, been sleep. There are a good days and bad days, but definitely lots of sleepless nights, sleep regressions, and changes – potty training, separation anxiety, nightmares, travel, teething, etc., etc., etc., which seem to knock the schedule right off its track. But one day, these little humans will become (really) big boys, and then I will probably be nagging them for sleeping TOO much. Funny how things work. For now, I’ll try my hardest to revel in the baby snuggles and to try to focus less on the naptime/bedtime snuggles. However, I will never sleep when the baby’s sleeping, because when else would I get anything done!?