mandalei

Ben and I spend a great deal of time with Jack teaching him to communicate in appropriate ways.  The first few months, we taught him to stick his tongue out, which became his primary form of communication for a good 4 weeks and cause many people to wonder at his talent.

Recently, though, Jack has developed a startling, gurgly sort of loud “arrrrrgggh”.  I have been trying to decipher what this means.  Hunger? Boredom?  Frustration?  He tends to do it when he’s engaged with some kind of toy.  Last night, though, it came to me.  He’s learned the next form of communication from us!  The “rawr” noise we make to him while we tickle him, make faces at him, and otherwise act like we’re going to eat him up has been translated into this weird grunting screaming thing.  I’ll have to see if I can get some video of it.  It startles the hell of you when you first hear it.

Why is it that I don’t feel the need to put makeup on and look  nice every day, but when it comes to going out to  hang with other moms in the neighborhood at a playdate, I get all dolled up?  In an understated way, of course.  I feel a little nervous, of the variety of going on a blind date or going to school for the first time.  Will they like me?  Will they like my boy?  Will I make friends?  Having just moved, making friends is kind of important, since I thikn the adults in the family are feeling pretty lonely.

In any case, I have two play dates to go to today–both happening at the same time, naturally.  The first is at my neighbor’s house, and I like her alot.  The moms are a little older than I am, though, and their kids are also a little older.  It’s pretty much the suburban lifestyle, with lots of Talbot’s coordinates and manicures and coifed hair.  The first time I went (and only time thus far, so maybe I need to give things more of a fair shake) I felt naked without my engagement and wedding rings on–like I needed them to be admitted to the club.

The second play date, the moms are more in my age range, and it’s definitely more urban lifestyle-like; many of them use cloth diapers, all have baby slings of several varieties, and can talk at length about politically charged topics, such approved car seats, like letting the kid cry at bed and nap times and what organic baby food is the best.

This is where my feelings about being inadequate and a semi-practicing “alpha” mom really come to the forefront.  Why do I care? Why don’t I just relax and love my boys and have a good time, without feeling like I am on a platform to be reviewed?  Granted, I am pretty sure I am the largest person there in terms of weight, which always makes me feel nervous, but gosh darn it, who cares besides me?  The thing is, I know that societally, lager people are seen as less successful and I am nothing if not a little competitive.  Sometimes I wish I had a compartment in my brain where I could just stuff thoughts in so I would stop thinking about things.

Excuse me, I need to go put on my lip gloss.

See the bottom of this post.  Carrying on in the grand tradition of my dad, diggying could be fun, but you could get laughing so hard it was sometimes possible to roll away and into something. Like the dining room table.  And give yourself two black eyes for the first week of kindergarten.

We started sleep training a la Ferber on Saturday night. We all have been having really rough times sleeping, and while I was hesitant to start anything too soon for him developmentally, something had to give; Jack’s eyes in the morning were red and had circles and bags on top of bags from poor sleep. We read Ferber’s book (lots of very interesting information on sleep and cycles and things to watch for), and we decided that we needed to change our bedime routine, cut out the fafa (pacifier) usage to get to sleep for naps and bedtime. Jack couldn’t really manage to keep it in his mouth, and we couldn’t handle getting up every 15 minutes for several hours in a row to pop it back in. The middle of the night feedings weren’t problematic, but they have been becomin more and more often and unpredictable–sometimes several times a night every 30-45 minutes but only lasting long enough to get him back to sleep (yes, I was Mommy Pacifier).

Ben and I really weren’t sure what we needed to do, but Ferber’s book (the only one immediately on the shelves at Barnes and Noble) made sense to us, and his approach, which has been maligned so much, really didn’t seem all that terrible once we started reading it. Granted, I had no comparison with the first edition so it could have been much harsher back then.

From this, we realized that Jack’s sleep associations were with being fed and rocked to sleep, then given a pacifier after that once he was in bed. We also realized that we were acting too late on his sleep cues, and he was actually overtired by the time we managed to put him down at night, so there was no way he could be put into his crib awake enough to settle himself down.

SO, Saturday seemed as good a night as any and seemed like the place to start. We decided to cut out the fafa cold turkey and make sure he had a lovey, in this case a hounddoggy made of minky fabric. We changed his bedtime routine, feeding him up before bath time with nursing and cereal, followed by a bath, a much smaller bottle (so he wouldn’t rev up his metabolism and also be uncomfortable from wet diapers), followed by two story books. We steeled ourselves for the regimen: soothe him with words and a pat or two and tell him we love him even though we wouldn’t pick him up, wait 3 minutes, soothe him with the same routine, wait 5 minutes, soothe him with the same and then wait 7 minutes, returning every 7 minutes thereafter.

To our surprise, Jack was asleep a few minutes into the first 7-minute period (at 7:00) He awoke at 7:45 feel asleep in the middle of the post-soothing 5-minute period. The next time he feel asleep after the 3 minute wait.

The hairy part came when he woke up just after midnight. Ferber specifically says it’s cruel to cut out cold turkey the feedings, and we had no intention of doing so. However, we had failed to take into account that Jack’s normal waking to feed at 1 would be different since he had gone to sleep at 7 instead of 8. We started the routine, and made it to the 7-minute periods and Jack was still crying. After about 40 minutes, we gave in and I fed him, feeling horrible that we had misinterpreted the waking up and the need to be fed and done exactly what Ferber had said not to by essentially cutting out the feeding cold turkey. Jack went to sleep after that, and I was preparing myself for what had now become standard routine for him, which was waking every 30-45 minutes until it was officially morning time.

But he didn’t. He slept until 5:15, woke up and ate, and went back to sleep until 6:45.

The next day, Sunday, I was waiting for the naps to continue with their normal awfulness, full of fussing (normal naps take between 10-30 minutes of soothing and returning to put the fafa back in his mouth, and have only lasted 30 minutes on average). We continued with the routine of the previous night, using no pacifier and allowing him to fuss for 3 minutes and so on before returning to soothe him. The first nap he took, he fussed for one minute. He put himself to sleep. Let me repeat that: HE PUT HIMSELF TO SLEEP. He has done that ever since.

Last night, we kept to the new routine. Jack went to sleep at 7:30. Did he wake up in 30? No. 45? No. Did he wake up at 3:15????? YES. He ate, a brief little nursing session, and went back to bed until we woke him at 6:15, to try and keep him on a daily schedule.

It may not work for everyone, but it worked for us. There is hope, and I feel alot more able to do things (and motivated to accomplish things) now that feel there is light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe tonight I, too, will sleep like a baby.

I’m a new mom. I’m lucky enough that I can stay at home this first year, if not longer, and see my baby boy grow older and learn and be excited about the diggy* monster for the first time. As a first-time stay at home mom, though, after being a full time wage earner and professional in my field, it’s been a hard slog. The kind of ambition and drive that I had to do the best work and be on the ball all the time and go-go-go-go-go doesn’t translate happily into my new life and how it’s oriented.

Take, for example, my desire to cloth diaper. It wasn’t enough to try it and be happy with the process I found that worked for me, I had to immerse myself in it, eat it, breathe it, grok it. Forum haunting? Check. Obsessive need to try things based on other mom’s experiences and raves? Check. Increasing concern about the “right” thing, the “perfect diaper” and being the best and on the ball? Check, check, and check.

The thing is, I wish I could say this is an isolated thing. I used t scoff at “alpha moms” and the networks and websites that aided and abetted that behavior, but I think know for a fact I am just a shade or two away from that. How far under the surface of the sea do you have to go before it goes from light to dark? There’s no hard line, just a gradual shading until the light is gone.

This tendency has been part of the reason I have been a tense, unhappy mess. Why isn’t Jack sleeping? Consult 5 books and numerous articles to know every detail or different methods, and then go insane trying to figure out what to do. Solids at four months? Same thing–the kiddo loves eating and gets excited every time he is strapped into his highschair and has his bib tucked around him, but yet I worry.

I know, I know! Worrying shows you’re a good mom, but there’s a time when that worry just saps your strength and lessens the joys of what you see every day. I don’t want to have the joy of being with my son and husband every day lessened. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to push to get th ehouse clean or unpacked (yeah, we’re the bright bulbs that moed 2 weeks post partume), but the other stuff? Well, to quote H. I. McDunnough, “Nathan Jr accepts me for what I am! And I think you better had, too! You know I’m okay, you’re okay! That there’s what it is!”

Yeah.

*”diggy” is derived from “tickle”. Think about it… what do you say when you’re tickling the wee one? “tickle tickle tickle!” OK, now say “Ticky, ticky, ticky” really fast… thus the Diggy Monster was born. Also known as Mr. Diggy.