Don't say a word

Shhh, I have a secret.

Don't tell anyone or else it will be jinxed.

I've been having terrible luck here in recent weeks. Every time I make a grand announcement about some major milestone, my kids go and prove me wrong that very night.

Can-in-point: Sophia goes on the potty. Yes, I may have said she is doing very well, but the day after I wrote that post she decided she wasn't ready for potty training by flat out refusing to even sit on the potty. Last week I decided Pull Ups were too expensive and since she stopped even trying to go, we went back to diapers until she's ready. The princess potty is now just a stool for her to stand on while she washes her hands. Maybe she'll use it one day.

See what I mean?

OK. Are you ready for the secret?

Good.

Sophia has slept through the night every night for a full week. In her own bed. Alone!

Ahhhh! Hooray!

Shhh! Quiet, please, she might hear this and I'll never have a good night's sleep again.

Going with the flow

The screaming started at 3:45 a.m., technically the "morning" but not really the morning at all. I looked at the clock and shut my eyes. There is no way I'm getting out of bed at this ungodly hour.

The screaming escalates and I pull the covers up around my face. Just ignore the screaming and it will stop.

The screaming stops for a moment and that's when I hear it. Knock. Knock. Knock. It gets my attention and I listen harder. The screaming continues, MOMMY. MOMMY! Knock. Knock.
(Yes, that was a Mommy!)

I lumber out of bed and slowly open Sophia's bedroom door and there she is, standing there looking up at me. She's wide awake and in a surprisingly pleasant mood.
It's not wake up time, honey. Let's go back to sleep.

I go potty, Mommy.

OK, let's go to the potty.


It's now 4 a.m. Sophia and I stumble our way into the bathroom. I put the potty seat on the toilet as she pulls down her Pull Ups. I lift her up on the potty. I don't have much faith that she's actually going to do anything, so I tell her that I'm leaving the bathroom to get a new Pull Up because the one she was wearing was wet.

Walking out of the bathroom, I hear the unmistakable sound of peeing in the potty. I'm so excited that she's actually going. She hasn't gone on the potty at home in almost a week, although she's going at daycare. I'm thrilled that she woke up and climbed out of her crib because she had to go to the bathroom. (OK, I'm not so excited about the climbing out of her crib part) But it's FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING and I really don't want to be awake now.
I want to go back to sleep.

With a clean Pull Up in hand, I go back into the bathroom and quietly praise her for going on the potty. I give her a hug, tell her how proud I am of her, and she's thrilled.

I go potty, Mommy.

I know honey, I am so proud of you. But now it's time to go back to sleep.


Inside my head I'm freaking out about putting her back in her crib. What happens if she climbs out again, but this time she falls? So I guide one very proud, happy and wide awake little girl into my bedroom and tell her she can sleep in Mommy's bed, but she has to go to sleep because it's not morning yet.


There she lies, tossing and turning, adjusting pillows and pushing me to the very edge of the bed trying to get comfy. For 45 minutes.

Note sleeping husband. Why, oh why can I not sleep through crying babes like he can? WHY?

Just when I think I'm doomed to be awake for the rest of the day it happens: sweet, sweet silence. She's asleep, and I drift off to sleep and have one of the weirdest dreams I've had in a while.

I was in a car with a very pregnant woman with long brown hair, and we're sightseeing on a busy highway. We get out of the car and explore the side of the road. Then we visit a small home next to the road with a small boy sitting in the front yard.


At 6:30 on the dot, Ryan starts to cry. I need to get him before his crying wakes Sophia. I turn and look at my beautiful sleeping daughter. She's such a big girl I can hardly stand it.

She wakes shortly after Ryan and now the hole house is a awake (note now awake husband). I try to keep the potty momentum going and get her to sit on the potty again. No way. She reminds me that she already went on the potty.

I went potty, Mommy.

Apparently, she has a one-potty-a-day clause and refuses to go for the rest of the morning.
Tonight, I think, Daddy and Mommy will be converting Sophia's crib into a daybed (thank God for the convertible crib) and our little baby girl will be sleeping in a brand new big girl bed for the very first time.

Heaven help us.

A beautiful moment

Sophia wouldn't go down for a nap yesterday afternoon. She was exhausted and cranky. When I put her in the crib, she cried and cried and cried until we couldn't listen to the cry any longer. I went into her room and picked her up and she put her head on my shoulder, so I sat in the rocker and held her until she fell asleep. When I tried to lay her down, she woke up and started crying again. I tried three times to put her down before I gave up and figured I was going to have to hold her if she was going to sleep.

For an hour and a half I sat with Sophia sleeping soundly on my lap. She started with her head on my shoulder and then repositioned herself so that she was sleeping fetus style on my lap. I wrapped a blanket around the two of us and I also fell asleep.

My husband took Ryan with him and dropped my stepson off at soccer practice. When he came back, I had just woken up from my little nap. Sophia was still sleeping. I sat, holding my little girl, with a line of drool creeping down the inside of my arm. My legs were falling asleep and my back was stiff, but I held on to my daughter. I didn't mind the drool or the stiffness in my body because I enjoying the snuggle time.

Her head was right under my chin and I could smell her hair. I sat and listened to her breathe. She was so relaxed and I was in Mommy Heaven.

When she finally woke up, she was a little cranky, but her mood changed to pleasant pretty quick.

It is amazing how much love and trust children have in their parents and how a little thing like a nap can be so beautiful. Sometimes kids can be a little clingy and it can get annoying having to carry them around all the time. But it's moments like this remind me how wonderful it really is to hold your child.

***

Update, update: Ryan's tooth finally came in on Friday, and he's been sleeping through the night since. Hooray! He also started crawling. He's not going any place fast because he's still figuring out his coordination, but he is officially mobile. Watch out world, Ryan is on his way!

Back to reality

So, we've been back from our couples-only retreat for 2 days now, but we've only gone back to work today and I'm exhausted. I should be well-rested and ready to take on the world, but I'm not because Ryan's teeth are coming in and they are not being nice at all.

Actually, I can't blame it all on his teeth because I can't be certain that's the only reason he's been waking again during the night. He started teething really bad around the time we took his bumper pads off his crib. The first night without the pads Ryan woke up. He pushed himself into the corner of the crib and, I think, he got stuck and bumped his head. He's gotten up every night since then and I'm about to lose my mind.

Sunday night he woke up and he wouldn't fall back to sleep. Well, that's not entirely true because he fell asleep twice after we picked him up, but as soon as we put him down he screamed. This went on for an hour until we took him into our bed where he promptly fell asleep on my husband's chest. Last night he did the same thing, but this time there was no way he was coming into our bed. We let him cry until he woke up Sophia, at which time we got him, gave him a bottle and after two attempts, we finally got him to lay down without him screaming.

Why won't this kid consistently sleep through the night? He was sleeping through the night. He did so for weeks in a row. But just in the last week, he's started waking again (it started before we left for our mini-vacation).

Last night I rubbed his gums with Orajel and gave him some Motrin, but he still woke up. Maybe I should put back on the bumper pads?

I'm afraid he's going to get into the routine of waking up at night again and I don't know how to stop it. I can't let him scream himself to sleep (not because I don't want to, but because I can't have Sophia wake up too. If she gets up in the middle of the night, she tends to stay awake) so I'm out of ideas. The only way we can get him to fall back to sleep is by giving him a bottle and rocking him.

I'm desperate at this point. We've been tossing around the idea of letting Sophia sleep on the couch or someplace else so we can let Ryan cry it out at night, but I think that will only serve to mess up her sleeping schedule.

What is a mother to do? Any suggestions would be helpful. I will try anything and I promise I'll let you know if it worked or not.

Sleeping solutions are never easy

I had no idea what I was getting into when I wrote about Ryan getting stuck under the bumper pad. I wrote about my concerns before I really did any research. I have since done some, but not really enough to consider myself an expert by any means. But the most interesting article I read was an About.com article and I think it's convinced me that Ryan doesn't really need the bumper pads.

The article says that according to one study, it's impossible for an infant to hit his head hard enough while sleeping to cause any injury or bruising and that injury is unlikely if a child gets an arm or a leg through the bars of the crib.

Now I just have to get over the fact that they are so cute. I kept Sophia's on her bed until she was at least 18 months and even then, my husband and I had a long discussion about it first. When I talked to him about taking Ryan's bumper pads off, he was really hesitant so we kept them on. Ryan was fine last night, but I'm getting much closer to taking them off after my research. Maybe tonight will be the night.

This whole bumper pad discussion stems from a picture I posted of Ryan sleeping on his tummy. Since then, I've gotten some comments from parents who have struggled with whether or not and when they should put their baby on their belly. I think there are a lot of parents out there who are ashamed or embarrassed to admit they let their babies sleep on their belly. I was one of them, I'll admit it, but after talking to the pediatrician at Ryan's last appointment, I am way more confident. Plus, Ryan is an older and mobile infant, so I think there is less stigma for me.

I believe there is a real risk of SIDS, but at almost 7 months old, I think my son is pretty safe, and with his new found mobility there is little I can do about his sleeping position aside from sitting at his bedside and control his every movement throughout the night. Since I'd like to maintain some amount of sanity in my life, I'll skip the bedside watching.

I think it's a personal decision every parent must make on their own. I am not going to change your mind or try to convince you to think the way I think. It would be a waste of time. Being a parent means you will be forced to make hard decisions about your children for the rest of your life. Sometimes they are scary and sometimes they aren't, but I don't think they ever get easy.

I just don't know

It's kind of ironic that this morning someone commented about Ryan sleeping on his belly because I had planned to write about his sleeping today. So I'm glad the subject brought up.

Ryan is all over the crib when he sleeps. When I check on him, he could be on his back, on his belly, lying vertically on one end of the crib or on his side in the other end of the crib. Sometimes I wonder if he's not up all night just crawling around. I really wouldn't be surprised.

When Ryan woke up screaming at 2:15 a.m. and I found him on his back with his head in the corner of his crib under the bumper pad, I was a little freaked out, but not terribly surprised. He, however, was stuck and he was mad.

So here's my bumper pad dilemma: When he wakes in the morning, he is usually pulling down the pad and peaking and over the top. Apparently he can now get underneath them too, so they really aren't serving any real purpose. Or are they? Since he is such a mover and shaker during the night, I'm wondering if they are helping to keep his little head safe from bumps and bruises throughout the night. Would not having them actually hurt him more?

I don't know. I think I should take them off and see what happens, but maybe I should keep them on so he doesn't have to bang his head. Would a better mother have instantly ripped them off the crib?

Does all this make me a bad mother? I've asked this question a million times in a million different situations. I feel like I'm always second-guessing myself. When I'm in the process of making a decision I am confident, but right after the judgment is made I start doubting it. Last night, I was sure it was better to keep them on, but today I'm in a panic about it.

I think many of us moms struggle with every day decisions. We just don't know how to handle every single situation and we're constantly worried that we might make the wrong decision. So we read and comment and try to digest millions and millions of facts and studies about the health, safety and best interest of our most precious possessions. We stay up late at night and search the Internet for other moms going through what we're going through and still, at the end of the day, we have to make our own decisions based on what's best for our individual families. And we have to live with the outcome of those decisions.

Frankly, it can be terrifying. How do you separate fact, exaggerated fact and complete fiction? How do you know that what your baby wants isn't exactly what your baby needs? How can you pick between the lesser of two evils when it comes to the safety of your kids? (Oh, this is how I feel about the bumper pad dilemma - it could hurt him to keep or get rid of them.)

I just don't know.

At the end of the day, I have to trust my judgment. Having kids is a learning process. It didn't get easier when I had my second child, like I thought it would, but it did make me more confident in some of the decisions I previously made. It also opened up completely new decision-making situations. Like the bumper pads.

Sweet sleeper

Ryan has started taking a little cat nap in the morning after breakfast. It's helped by giving us all time to get dressed and ready for the day. This morning I went to his room to wake him so I could get Sophia off to daycare. Fridays are Mommy and Son Day because I have off from work, but Sophia still goes to daycare, so he only had to get up so I could take his sister to daycare. I felt even worse when I saw how at peace he was.

On to something new ...

I was tagged by Melinda Zook and I'm taking the challenge to share 7 Randmom Things About Me and the 4 Things. I was hesitant at first because it is a lot of information about me, but then I thought that I’m posting my kids all over the place and sharing all sorts of details about my family life that I might as well share a few details about who I really am.

7 Random Things About Me
1. I can easily waste and entire day not doing anything and that can get me in trouble.
2. There are nights I want to kill my cat. Seriously, I want to kill her. Usually it's at 3 a.m. when she's meowing so loud that she wakes me and I have to get up and feed her ... even though her food timer is right about to go off.
3. I have tattoos, I love them and will probably get more, but there are times when I wonder what it will be like to have them when I'm a grandmother.
4. I wish I could have had kids and not gain any weight.
5. I often wonder what I would do all day if I was a stay-at-home mom. Probably do volunteer work so I could get out of the house and not shop.
6. I love shoes. Seriously, I have an obsession and I’m passing it on to my daughter. See shopping comment in No. 5.
7. I finish putting on my makeup in the parking lot of daycare before I go to work.

The 4 Things
4 Jobs I’ve Had:
Newspaper editor
Photography assistant
Freelance photographer
Assistant summer camp director

4 Shows on my TiVo/DVR:
House
Scrubs
Project Runway
Ace of Cakes

4 Places I’ve Been:
England
Israel
Poland
Arizona

4 Favorite Foods:
Cheeseburgers
My brownies
Anything my husband makes
My mom’s lasagna

4 CD’s Recently Listened To:
Modest Mouse, Good New for People Who Love Bad News
Beastie Boys, Paul’s Boutique
Carbon/Silicon, Last Post
Lily Allen, Alright, Still

4 Things You Can Do to Make My Day:
Compliment me
Compliment my kids
Offer to babysit
Let me sleep in

Daddy's magic stardust

Last week I was sitting up with Ryan at about 2:30 a.m. giving him a bottle thinking about how unbelievable it was that he was still getting up to eat in the middle of the night. It seems that once he starts sleeping through the night he gets sick and starts waking again.

I had been putting Ryan to bed because Sophia and her Daddy have a little bedtime routine that doesn't really involve me. I had actually asked him to take over putting her to bed when I was pregnant with Ryan because, at the time, she was a bit of a challenge to get to sleep and the night often ended with Sophia trying to sit on top of my belly and after a while I just couldn't take it. Soon after Daddy took over bedtime, Sophia started going to bed like an angel.

Does Daddy have magic stardust or did Mommy just get her through the rough phase? You decide, but whatever it was, it worked.

So after Ryan was born I just kind of assumed the responsibility of putting Ryan to bed. Except for the occasional night here and there, Ryan pretty much never consistently slept through the night. Ever.

(I'd like to add here that Sophia has ALWAYS slept through the night. She started sleeping 12 hours – 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. – through the night at one month old, but around four or five months old she decided she didn't want a bedtime. Once she was finally asleep, she was out for the night, but getting her to fall asleep was the challenge. Ryan, on the other hand, has zero trouble going to bed at night, it's just after five or six hours he decides it's time to eat and starts crying, and if we let him cry it out for too long Sophia wakes up and when she gets up she does not go back to sleep. That means two babies screaming at 2 a.m. One who will fall back to sleep after two or three ounces and another who will be up until she falls asleep in the car on the way to daycare. Would YOU let Ryan cry for long? We don't.)

After six months of interrupted sleep, I was at my breaking point. I needed a full, uninterrupted night of sleep. So, I put my ego aside and begged my husband to sprinkle his magic stardust on Ryan and I would assume the responsibility of putting Sophia to bed. He wasn't thrilled about breaking up team "Daddy's Little Girl," but he understood my desperation and took one for the "Mommy and Daddy" team.

The first night my husband put Ryan to bed he slept through the night. Night two, he slept again. Night three, four, five and six, he was quiet all night long.

Saturday night, I asked Jon to put Sophia to bed and I would try to put Ryan to bed.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Yes, I'm up for the challenge," I answered.

I put Ryan to bed and he slept the entire night; however, he woke up with a runny nose.
Will he continue sleeping through the night or are we back to middle of the night feedings? It's the cliff hanger of my life and I'm sure to find out soon.

Nights and weekends

Last week I reported that Ryan had slept through the night. He slept pretty well almost every night last week, that is, until the weekend.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, Ryan was up at least once in the middle of the night. Friday night he woke at 11:45 p.m., Saturday night it was 1:30 a.m. and Sunday night it was 4 a.m. I don't know what we are doing different at home that makes it so hard for him to sleep at night.

Sophia is the same way with her afternoon nap. At school, she naps from 12:30 to 3 p.m. She sleeps on a mat with a blanket. They eat lunch around 11:30 a.m. and everyone lays down for naps at 12:30. According to the teachers, she is a great sleeper and often they have to wake her at the end of nap time. Over the weekend, we have lunch at 11:30 and nap at 12:30, but she will only sleep for 45 minutes. If I'm really, really lucky and she is really, really tired, she will sleep for an hour and a half, but that hardly ever happens. Oh, and I've tried to let her sleep on the floor instead of her crib at home; that didn't work AT ALL.

As far as Ryan is concerned, he takes two pretty good naps during the day and goes to bed with the same routine every day. Maybe he is sleeping too much during the day and that's why he wakes during the night? I really don't know. Maybe he just loves being home with Mommy and Daddy so much that he can't wait to wake up in the middle of the night to see us. Yeah, that's it.

I wonder if other parent's have this same problem, or if this is unique to my family?

Good morning!

I'm obsessed with sleep. I'm always talking about it and every night I can't wait to do it. And after last night, it looks like I may be able to stop obsessing.

We woke this morning, like every morning, to the cry of a baby, but this morning it was Sophia and this morning it was 7:30.

Last night, Ryan slept through the whole night. When we woke up and realized that neither of us got up with him, our first instinct was to make sure he was OK, but our survival instincts kicked in and we thought better than to go into his room and potentially wake him.

That lasted 15 minutes before the urge to make sure our son was still breathing became overwhelming. At 7:45 a.m., my husband tip-toed into Ryan's room and found our little boy awake and smiling. He must have slept well.

In my experience, that first full night of sleep is stressful in the morning. Instead of waking up feeling well-rested, I wake up and feel anxiety.

Sophia first slept through the night when she was one month old, and since then, with the occasional exception, she has always been a good sleeper. But even now, if we wake up before her, we have to channel all our willpower to not run into her room and check on her.

I don't want to jinx it, but I'm hoping that last night wasn't a fluke and that tonight, tomorrow night and every night after, Ryan and his big sister sleep soundly through the night. It will help everyone feel better, but it won't stop us from worrying about our kids -- I know that will never happen.

Sick day

It’s often said that busy moms don’t have time to be sick. I have said it myself. I’ve got to keep my sick days for when my kids are sick, I can’t use them when I’m actually sick.

In just the last month I’ve dragged myself into work with everything from laryngitis to a stomach virus, all of which I am sure my co-workers have loved being exposed to.

Since the beginning of the year I haven’t been completely healthy. I blame this on the lack of sleep making my body unable to heal itself because it’s too busy keeping me awake.

New moms tend not to sleep well for weeks, even months after the baby is born. Couple that with trying to heal from the trauma of child birth and playing the role of supermom, and many moms find that complete exhaustion sets in pretty quickly.

I am no different.

I haven’t sat still in months. I was carrying my daughter around the hospital within 24 hours of giving birth to my son. When we came home from the hospital, there was no time for me to sit in bed and recover; I had to hit the ground running, regardless of the doctor’s advice. My daughter was 14 months old and she needed her mommy and daddy and it didn’t matter to her that we just brought home a new baby.

So, here I sit, after nearly four months of running in high gear I have been forced to take a day off. After neglecting my own health for so long, my body has turned against me and a little cold has completely knocked me out. My husband brought the kids to daycare and left me at home with orders to get some sleep.

It’s going to be tough. Even as I sit here writing this, I’m thinking that I could still go into work. But that will not help me and I’ll probably just get sick again next week.

With my focus completely on my kids, it’s so easy to forget to take care of myself, and when I do, I feel guilty about it. The thing is that it’s so important that we, as parents, stay healthy so that we can be great parents and reliable employees.

So, today I will curl up with a cup of tea, take a very long nap and, hopefully, revitalize so I can make it the rest of the year without using another sick day for myself.

A delicate balancing act

I've been struggling for the last couple of days trying to figure out why Ryan will not sleep through the night. As soon as I think I have things figured out and he sleeps through one night, the very next night we're up two times.

We put the kids to bed between 7:30 and 8 p.m. every night with no distinction between weekdays and weekends. Sophia usually sleeps until about 7 or 7:30 the next morning, while Ryan, on the other hand, will get up at least once during the night, if not twice, which is not uncommon. Last night, for example, he woke up at 11:30 p.m. and then slept until 8 a.m., while the night before he was up at 1:30 a.m. and again at 4.

We've tried stuffing him with food, putting him to bed later, more sleep during the day, less sleep during the day, nothing makes a significant difference in his sleep habits. At this point I'll try anything to get him to sleep.

On top of this problem, when he wakes up, if we don't stop the crying immediately Sophia will wake up and she will not go back to sleep and we're up the rest of the night trying to get her back to sleep. This makes it impossible for us to just let him cry himself back to sleep.

When I go to bed at night, my blood is coursing with anxiety because at any moment, no matter how tired I am, I will have to jump out of bed and run into my son's room to shove a bottle in his mouth to stop the crying. Fortunately, the anxiety doesn't prevent me from falling asleep, exhaustion takes care of that.

My husband and I take turns waking with the baby. Since we both work, it's only fair that we both share the midnight responsibilities. I get first shift and he gets second. First shift guarantees that I get up at least once every night. He gets second because every morning, no matter how ridiculously early it is, he gets up with the kids and lets me sleep in, which I love him for, but it doesn't make up for a lack of continuous sleep.

I find myself slugging back caffeine all morning at work and slugging back energy drinks for the rest of the day just to stay awake. I could easily fall asleep at my desk.

At home, we frequently end up bickering about the stupidest things, like who didn't bring the mail in, or that I left a dirty glass on the counter, or he didn't replace the toilet paper roll. Fortunately, we know the arguments are stupid and can usually stop them before they get out of control. At work, though, it's harder. No one cares that I haven't had a good night's sleep in six months (although they are sympathetic); I have a job to do, on that I want to do to the best of my ability. I think I'm doing a pretty good job balancing lack of sleep and working, but a good night's sleep would sure go a long way.

No such thing as a good night's sleep

You know that blissful time right before you fall asleep? Every muscle is relaxed, your brain has settled and you're all warm and cozy. It's the time of the night that unless you are woken up during it, you probably don't even know it exits. This is the time my son decided to wake up at last night. It was about 12:15 a.m. and it happens just about every night.

Saturday, my husband and I were able to get away for a night out alone. We went to Atlantic City for his company's after Christmas Christmas party and it was the first night we were away from home without any kids for at least 18 months. A friend offered to watch both kids for a single night. Almost every person we know will only watch one at a time, so when she offered to watch both, we jumped at the chance.

After the party, we settled to sleep in our hotel room. I was so excited to sleep past 4 a.m. "Imagine," I said, "we will wake in the morning without the sound of a screaming baby. We'll be able to get at least eight hours of completely uninterrupted sleep."

No dice.

I woke up at least four times during the night. It was brief, I just opened my eyes, looked around and reminded myself I wasn't home and fell right back to sleep. My husband woke around 4 a.m. and did the same thing.

The alarm clock I set for 10 a.m. was in vain because by 8:30, we were both wide awake and disappointed we couldn't stay asleep any longer.

I guess my mother was right; we should plan not to get a good night's sleep until the kids are at least 18.