The Half Hour Napper

Finding time to blog has been nearly impossible lately.

Because we're still having some sleep issues.

The good:

Baby goes down for naps.

And I can kind of get him down at night without going to bed myself.

The bad:

NAPS ARE ONLY HALF AN HOUR.

I feel like I've tried everything to keep him asleep for longer but nothing is really working.  The best I've managed is after a half hour nap in the afternoon, he starts crying and I go up there nurse him for a bit and he goes back down...for another half an hour.

I can do this 2-3 times so that he's taking a 2 hour nap...but I'm still tending to him every half hour.

It's hard to get anything done when you only have a half hour window.

And bedtime?  Same thing.  He will go down at 7-7:30pm...for half an hour!  So, once again I'm up there every half hour nursing him back to sleep until I'm ready for bed about 9pm.

I'm frustrated.

We've tried:

Tummy sleeping

Swaddling

White Noise

Crib

Bed

Swing

Vibrating Cot

Nothing keeps him down by himself for more than half hour. 

Once I go to bed with him HE'S DOWN FOR 3 HOURS.

WHAT THE HELL, KID?

I'm sure this is all because we co-sleep and he sleeps better when mama is next to him.  And I'm still not ready to give up on the co-sleeping because for the most part it means I get more sleep at night, but I would love to be able to have this kid napping for longer and going to bed before me and without me.

Anyone else dealing with something similar?  Any suggestions?  How long do your babies nap??? 

Baby Jett Does London

A post in pictures.

These 2 were due 4 days apart and ended up with birthdays 3 days apart...and Jett discovered his hands in London...we think he's teething as his hands are ALWAYS in his mouth now.

Babies with their mamas!

It was bloody cold in London!

 To prove to Baby Jett that he was in fact in London when he was 3 months old =)

Baby Jett in his first pub. 

Having his first shandy ;-) 

First ride on the Tube.

And the best thing to come out of London...we've finally figured out how to get baby to sleep on his own.  He looks like he's passed out drunk doesn't he?

We're coming home today.  One more 10 hour flight and we will have successfully completed our first international trip with a baby!  Who says having children means you have to change how you live?

What Do You Mean Your Baby Sleeps Through the Night!?

I could also title this post Pros and Cons of Co-Sleeping.

The biggest con?

My baby at 14 weeks is nowhere near sleeping through the night.

P.S. Sleeping through the night is defined as 5 straight hours.  Yeah, I know!  We're not even talking 8 hours here people, just 5 hours!

My jaw drops to the floor when I read that some of your 2 and 3 month olds are sleeping 8 hours at night.  

THAT IS BEYOND AMAZING TO ME.

I'm lucky if I get 3 hours in a row these days...baby thinks he is ALWAYS hungry at night.

I know I'm not getting great long stretches of sleep because the baby is next to me and can smell my milk and sometimes just wants to SNACK every 2 hours...

But I'm not a zombie.

Because...

The biggest pro to co-sleeping is that me and baby stay laying in bed all night long.  Sidelying nursing is my savior as I don't get up at all unless it's to pee or we have a massive blowout that needs tending to.  This is HUGE to me and means the difference between a well rested mama and a sleep deprived crazy lady. 

In the midst of the fallout from the dairy allergy before we knew we had a dairy allergy an extra side effect was that sidelying wasn't working for us anymore because EVERY single time I would try to feed him in bed he would spitup HUGE amounts all over both of us and we'd end up having to change both our clothes.  This means that before we uncovered the dairy thing we were physically getting up and into a seated position EVERY 2 HOURS ALL NIGHT LONG.

It added to the hell that was my life a few weeks ago.

But now, even though baby doesn't sleep for long stretches, I still feel like I'm getting a pretty good amount of sleep.

Our nights look something like this:

I Moby the baby when he looks tired until bedtime, so he's usually sleeping from about 7-8pm onward.  Then between 9-10pm we go to bed (just me and baby usually, hubs comes to bed later) sleep great, amazing and wonderful AND STILL until 1-2am...and then it's feeding every 1.5-2 hours for snacks the rest of the night.  I hardly even wake up for these, just make sure the boob is out and that baby can get to it and back to sleep I go.  THEN THE GRUNTING AND KICKING AT 4:30am starts...oh yes...there's still grunting.  He continues the grunting and kicking and wiggling until he finally wakes up between 7-8am and the husband takes him downstairs for the morning baby shift and I sleep in for an extra hour.

I know I'm not getting great long stretches of sleep because the baby is next to me and can smell my milk...

But the fact that I barely have to wake up to feed him means I'm not a zombie during the day and don't even feel the need to nap most days.

For now this is working for us.  And while I long for a full night of sleep, the fact of the matter is that I've been sleeping like this for more than a year now as while pregnant I was up at least every 2-3 hours to pee.  The amount of wakefulness required to feed the baby while lying in bed is about the same amount required to get up and pee and it means it's very easy to fall back to sleep after the middle of the night feedings...mostly because I don't actually get up!

Ideally I would like to put baby in his crib at 7pm, go get him at 9-10pm whenever I go to bed, keep him in bed with me until he starts grunting at 4am and then put him back in his crib until he gets up at 7-8am.  But honestly I still can't figure out how to get the baby down without me laying next to him for any length of time. 

Sad but true...baby only sleeps alone for morning naps...the rest of the time he's on or next to me.

All our other sleeping issues aside the other huge pro to the co-sleeping and the frequent feeds continuing through the night is that I can expect my period and ovulation to stay away for longer.  I've heard many of you out there complaining about your periods making unexpected early appearances as soon as baby begins sleeping through the night...I shudder at the thought! 

The fact is that I NEED any ovulation that may happen to continue to be suppressed for as long as possible because otherwise WE HAVE TO START TTC AGAIN.  I have no idea how long I will ovulate if ovulation starts again on it's own and if we didn't TTC and then ovulation stopped again like last time I WOULD NEVER FORGIVE MYSELF FOR THE WASTED OPPORTUNITY.

Bottom line is I am in no position to be thinking about #2 and thus frequent nursing sessions all day AND all night help keep me suppressed which means we will continue to co-sleep for as long as I'm happy with the quality of sleep and the suppressed ovulation.

It's entirely possible that I am creating a terrible situation in which my baby will never learn to sleep in his crib but for now it works and I'm not messing with it.

I still have hope that one day baby will sleep longer than 4 hours but I'm learning that it's rare for a baby that co-sleeps to sleep through the night because of the aforementioned smell of milk.  Anyone out there co-sleeping AND have a baby that sleeps through the night?

It's So Much Cuter When It's Your Own Baby

Remember when I found my newborn photographer here?  Well...

It's so much cuter when it's your own baby!

I present the best of Jett's photo session at 5 days old.

All photos are property of Sarka Trager Photography.

Happy Halloween from the UK

I'm a day late, but we're in the UK and I spent yesterday in a jetlagged haze so...

Happy Halloween Everyone!

Colic and Dairy

After my last post in which I declared victory in the Great Sleeping War of 2012 my baby promptly pulled the rug out from under me once again.

Belly sleeping worked for exactly 2 days...2 days people!  For 2 days I felt like an awesome mother.

And then everything went from bad to worse.

I've been in hell...and thus not blogging.

When you're a new mom hell is a 5 letter word known as COLIC.

If you've never had a baby with colic you will not understand...if you have...you have my sympathy.

Baby Jett went from having a 2 hour fussy period in the evenings around 6 weeks to BEING FUSSY ANYTIME HE WAS AWAKE at 8 weeks.  We could sometimes get some smiles out of him in the first hour that he was awake in the morning but then it was FUSSY, SCREAMY, WHINY, MISERABLE BABY all damn day.  Nothing could soothe him.

He was also having a lot of trouble falling asleep and staying asleep during the day so I could hardly get a break from the crying.

He was miserable.  I was miserable.

I felt like I was losing my shit.  Rapidly falling into depression.

I would cry at the drop of a hat about anything at any time.  I didn't want to be around my baby and spent most of my time crying right alongside him.

For clarification at no point did I want to hurt my baby or myself but I REALLY wanted to give my baby to someone and have them bring him back to me when he was 6 months old and out of whatever fussy period he seemed to be stuck in.

I didn't care if I was going to one day look back on his newborn days and be sad that I missed them, he was making me hate my life.  Especially after fighting so hard for this I spent a lot of time trying to figure out WHY we fought so hard for this because in that moment...it wasn't worth it.  There was no joy, only tears.

It was bad, I was in a really bad place mentally.

And then the straw that broke my back.  My husband's travel schedule had him gone for 3 days one week and 4 days the next.  

I couldn't do this on my own...I wasn't going to make it.

Something had to change.

So I flew home for 2 weeks.  Grandma, Grandpa, Aunts, Cousins, lots of hands to hold my fussy baby and give me a break.

AND at the urging of my midwife and pediatrician we decided to cut out dairy and see if baby's demeanor changed because Baby also had green foamy poop, spitup ALL THE TIME and burping and spitting up seemed to hurt him.

The green foamy poops are also a sign of foremilk/hindmilk imbalance and when you have an oversupply like I do, it's common for baby to get too much foremilk.

Dairy allergies are actually quite UNCOMMON in babies so everyone was skeptical, myself included, but we all needed to eliminate the possibility of a dairy allergy so that it wasn't looming in the back of everyone's minds and we could focus on the milk issue and soothing baby in other ways.

But wouldn't you know it, 2 weeks on the nose from when I eliminated ALL dairy from my diet his poop changed, from green and foamy back to yellow and seedy.

And then 2 days later, 16 days after my diet change, MY BABY DID A COMPLETE 180.

I have a brand new baby.

He started smiling ALL THE TIME when he's awake.  He started laughing.  You can SET HIM DOWN without him screaming.  He hardly ever burps.  His spitup now comes in tiny amounts and doesn't appear to hurt him on the way up.  AND HE SLEEPS BETTER.

2% chance of a dairy allergy and my baby is one of them.  But holy hell I'll take the no dairy for me over that fussy screamy miserable little thing I called my son a few weeks ago.  I feel awful that my screamy baby was screaming because his belly hurt all the time from what I was eating.

He still has that evening fussy time when he's really hard to get down, but it's different.  He's not screaming at us until he falls asleep, now he still won't go to sleep but instead stays up smiling at us trying to convince us it's not bedtime.

So happy and no one is holding him!!!

Hangin with the cuz in Oregon.

I'm happy with the change in my baby and thus will continue to be dairy free as long as I need to, but do you guys realize how many things have dairy in them?  It's actually quite a challenge to eliminate ALL dairy from your diet.  Take a look at this crazy list of ingredients that are all other names for dairy:

source

Now go look in your cupboard at the ingredient list of anything that comes in a box, jar or package.  EVERYTHING seems to have a dairy ingredient because oddly enough it's a preservative.

And eating out?  Nightmare trying to find dishes with no dairy!  I've taken to telling waiters I have a dairy allergy so they go check with the chef.  It's ridiculous!

The only plus I can find...besides the happy baby of course...is that the things I can eat I can eat as much as I want because I am losing weight like there's no tomorrow.  Including pasta which has no dairy!  I am down about 5 lbs now from my PRE-pregnancy weight and about as small as I ever remember being.

We're talking high school weight here folks.  Lactation plus dairy-free equals one skinny bitch!

As nice as it is to quickly get my body back and be able to fit into all of my clothes, we're rapidly heading in the other direction in which all of my clothes are going to be too big.  I have to get a handle on the weight loss before it affects my milk supply!  I would love to be eating cupcakes and eclairs and other delicious pastries, because for some reason that's what I'm craving, but alas...those are dairy.

So, now that we've solved the fussy baby problem and I can set him down for short periods of time during the day we're on to trying to get baby to sleep somewhere besides in my arms at which point I might be able to really start blogging again...and baking dairy free desserts to soothe my new sweet tooth...wish me luck!

The Dirty Little Sleep Secret

Wow.  I blinked and 2 weeks flew by without me posting a damn thing.

So, here's what's been going on in Brennan household...

Sleeping has been shitty.

Baby Jett has been a BAD BAD sleeper lately. 

And when Jett's a bad sleeper we all suffer.

We were running into several different problems and they were all colliding making nighttime HELL and something I began to dread each and every day.

It all started with that awful night when I was by myself and he was little Screamy McScreamerson.  Ever since then every night he became a fussy little monster sometime around 7:00-8:00pm and without fail we had 2 hours (sometimes longer!) of terror baby before he would finally settle down to sleep.  This resulted in us and baby going to bed sometime between 9:00-midnight all together.  Some nights when things were very bad he would end up sleeping ON one of us because after 2+ hours of a fussy baby you just do whatever works to get him to sleep.  

We just accepted this as the way it was and tried to grin and bear it, hoping he would just grow out of it.

He WAS also at this point still giving me 3 hour stretches of sleep.   Only waking up briefly to nurse in the sidelying position and then back to sleep.

Then that changed and now he's on a EVERY 2 HOURS ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT nursing regime.  And the amazing sidelying position to nurse at night is no longer working as he ends up spitting up on me so that we both have to get up and get changed or he starts screaming half an hour after eating because he needs to burp.

And then shitty nights turned into shitty days as the only way I could get the baby to sleep and stay asleep was to sleep ON ME.  So not only was I getting no longer than 2 hour stretches of sleep at night but now all day long I had a baby chained to me and I felt like I couldn't get anything done.  I spent all day getting baby to sleep, trying to put baby down, baby wakes up screaming and repeat over and over again.  I WAS EXHAUSTED.

Something had to change.

After talking with my midwife about all of this we've decided on a few things.

The first thing we did is bedtime moved to 7pm.  No more waiting for him to wake up from his afternoon napping and then dealing with his meltdown for two hours.  If we can get him to bed BEFORE he melts down and becomes terror baby he sleeps through his witching hour.   If that means his afternoon nap immediately becomes bedtime, THAT'S GREAT.  Apparently Baby Jett was just overtired in the evening as this seems to work wonders with no more fussy baby in the evening.

We also are coming to the conclusion that Baby Jett may have a bit of reflux.  He cries when he burps or spits up like it hurts...and he spits up a lot.  And he despises being put down to sleep on his back.  So at the suggestion of my midwife I did something very taboo.

I PUT BABY TO SLEEP ON HIS BELLY.

And it was like magic.

I CAN NOW GET BABY TO SLEEP ANYWHERE.

Do you know what this means?!  

This means I can do laundry.  This means I can cook dinner.  This means I can EAT.  This means I can take more than 2 seconds to get dressed in the morning.  IT MEANS I CAN BLOG AGAIN.

It's freedom.

After making this wonderful discovery yesterday I discovered something else too.

Basically ALL PARENTS END UP DOING THIS AT SOME POINT.  And no one talks about it because you're not "supposed to" do it.  

Well I'm here to tell you that ESPECIALLY if you have a reflux baby putting them to sleep on their belly works wonders and I wish someone would have let me in on this dirty little secret weeks ago!

As to the nighttime...we're still struggling...and no one has any brilliant suggestions for me that I haven't tried.  Some nights he'll give me 3 hour stretches, other nights, like last night, he'll give me one 2 hour stretch and then up every hour after that. 

Big sigh.

I can only hope that Baby Jett grows out of this soon because otherwise come 4 months or 14 pounds Baby Jett is going to end up in his nursery...and there might be lots of crying involved...both his and mine.  But I can't keep on like this.

Everyone cross your fingers that we start making some progress in the nighttime sleep department and that it improves just like the daytime sleeping.

Is there some other dirty little nighttime secret that no one is sharing with me because it's something else we're not "supposed to" do just like the belly sleeping?