Candle-Lit Bath

I have started trying to get Virginia to go to bed earlier (because I got about one chapter into the No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and realized she doesn't have a problem going to sleep, she just doesn't get enough sleep) and so I've been thinking about how we spend our evenings.

I do not bathe Virginia every night, and on the nights I do, it is not the relaxing pre-bed activity some parents enjoy with their toddlers. She gets wild in the bath: splashing, doing twists, getting really worked up. Then, she doesn't want to get out. So by the time bath-time is over we are entering a spiral of her less-than-desirable behavior and my frustration feeding off of each other and the child is wide awake.

One of my coworkers told me that she sometimes lets her kids take a bath in the dark and she throws a glow-stick in the water. They could play for hours. This got me thinking. I don't need Virginia to stay in the bath longer, but this in-the-dark thing could be a good idea. After all, NCSS recommends setting the mood for bedtime by turning off lights.

So I tried lighting some candles in the bathroom and leaving the lights off. The first couple of times, I got in the bath with Virginia, because I was a little nervous about not being able to see her as well. But we have also tried it now with her in the bath on her own. She still plays, but she plays in a much more calm way that doesn't make her extra awake. And then, she agrees to get out of the bath when I ask her to.

Of course, the ultimate goal was for this to lead up to an easy bedtime on the nights that she does take baths, and I think she has gone to sleep better, too.

Regarding the earlier bedtime: We are still working on getting it even a little bit earlier since Virginia has to wake up so early during the week. It is hard on me spending less time with her in the evenings BUT she really is going to bed pretty well, she wakes up happier (which makes our mornings much better) and she is even getting better at naps on the weekends (which was originally why I picked up the book). So it is a challenge, but worth it - even when I have to be creative about baths.

Moving Forward

I feel like after my angsty post of yesterday I should share that I am trying to make the best of the time I have with Virginia. I am a Problem Solver and I know there is a way to do everything I need to do without crushing my child's soul.

The Mornings:
I was actually really stumped about this one. No matter how gently I talk to her and handle her in the morning, she doesn't want to get up. But she has to get up and get dressed and go to day care. Finally, Hubs and I decided he would help so that, if nothing else, her anger wouldn't all be directed at me. Somehow, she actually seems to be happier though (which, of course, is better than her just being mad at someone else). I'm not sure why it worked out this way, but I am glad that Hubs is on board with helping me resolve these issues and that his help is paying off.

Dinner:
The gates all needed to come down anyway because baby belly was making it hard for me to climb over them. This means Virginia now has access to the kitchen. There was one tense moment when she fished a cookie out of the trash can, but she hasn't gotten into anything that could kill her.
In addition to just letting her in the kitchen, I've decided to actively invite her to help me cook. This is complicated because our kitchen is very small and there is nowhere I can pull her up to the counter where she can't reach the stove, the sink, or something else hot or sharp (this is not an exaggeration). I have to watch her very closely and be creative about what she can do to help. But, she much prefers helping me cook to being stuck on the other side of the gate. It is something Momma and Virginia do together instead of a time Virginia has to entertain herself (or bemoan the fact that Momma won't let her watch Dora).

Laundry:
Virginia is actually a pretty good laundry helper when she is in a good mood. I hand her things to put in the dryer.

Nursing:
Nursing is maybe the only thing I can give her that no one else can. She is at a point now where I could wean her with almost no effort. And I have been tempted, since the pregnancy is currently giving me an aversion to nursing. But she still takes comfort in nursing once in a while and letting her hold on to that a little bit longer is the least I can do.

Exercise:
I don't have a great solution for this one yet. The yoga routine that I most benefit from while being pregnant is the one Virginia is least likely to want to "do with me." It is from a book, so I just play my own music and do my thing. She will start out sitting in my lap and breathing with me, but by the time we get to Cow and Cat she is being silly and running into my face or just spilling milk on the yoga mat.
I have a "Mommy and Me" for toddlers video that she likes pretty well, but it is not for pregnancy. And even when I modify or leave out exercises, it is becoming harder and harder for me to use this video.
Virginia likes going for walks and we do. Just no so much during the week, because it gets dark too early right now.
Sometimes I just try to get in a few squats and stretches while I'm playing with her. But, to be honest, I get the best exercise when Hubs agrees to watch Virginia for a little while. This means I have to rely on him and he doesn't always have the time to do this, but, like I said, we're still working on it.

Sleeping:
Virginia sleeps in a bed in her own room. One of us helps her get to sleep each night. Sometimes she sleeps the whole night in her room, sometimes she comes into our bed during the night. A month or two ago she went through a long stretch of nights where she stayed in her bed all night. Now she is back in our bed most nights. I am okay with this. I know that she can sleep in her own bed and when she doesn't there is a reason. Right now the reason could be that she is agitated about the same things I am agitated about. Or it could be that her two-year molars are coming in (I highly suspect this is happening, but it is hard to confirm). Whatever the reason, it will pass, and she will continue to progress towards sleeping more consistently through the night in her room again.

Showers/Baths:
This is actually a huge one for me. After Virginia was born I was in shock over never being alone. I mean, maybe it sounds obvious that new babies require a lot of attention and are kind of always attached to you, but vaguely being aware of this fact and actually living it are two very different things. When I could get in a shower after Hubs was home and have the bathroom to myself, soaking in that glorious warm water. That was my moment.
Even though Virginia is older now and I spend hours away from her at work, I still don't have much time to myself. I have spent months working on stories (for storytelling) in the shower (and at practically no other time).
Then, one night, Hubs was out and I needed to take a shower, so I asked Virginia to sit in the bouncy swing (that can hang in the doorway). She said "No. Shower with Momma." I had tried to take her in the shower a couple of times before with not good results, but this time I put her ducky tub in the bathtub with me, let her sit in that, and I just stood in the remaining space while showering. Even though the water that accumulated in her ducky tub didn't seem that warm to me, she was really happy.
We do this sometimes now and sometimes I also get in the bath with her. She really prefers it to bathing alone. She doesn't like to get out, and that is hard (especially if I am getting cold!), but I've been able to talk her through it and I think we end up ahead overall.
The thing is, I'm actually starting to not mind giving up my shower time. I don't know if I'm becoming more zen (one can always hope) or if I'm so distressed by having Virginia mad at me all the time that it is easier for me to do things that make her happy, or what. But, I'll take it. I really feel more at peace about having less "me" time.

I said it was hard being a working mom, but I'm thinking, not impossible. All of these things are a challenge, but they are helping and that is what really matters.

Sleepy John II

Of course right after I said that Virginia had been sleeping great she started waking up at night again. To be fair, her fang teeth are finally coming in - slowly and painfully - so I can't really blame her.

She came into our room last night and I snuggled her in the bed between me and John. She kept rotating herself horizontally so that her head was digging into my back between my shoulder blades and her feet were on John (her favorite sleeping position). So, periodically I was having to lift her up and put her back in a vertical alignment.

During one of these shifts John rolled over and said, "Hon, did you take care of the guar?"
Me: "What?"
John: "The guar"
Me: "Oh, you're not awake."
John: "Yes I am. What about the guar?"
Me: ???
John: "You're right. I wasn't awake. I am now. Sorry."

Big Girl Bed

After Virginia slept so agreeably on the floor in the Durham hotel I began to think she may just not like her crib.

Since we've been back she has been sleeping in the twin bed I grew up sleeping in. I put a rail on the side so she can't fall off in her sleep and I pushed my trunk up to the foot of the bed so she can climb up and down herself. Here is how this has worked out so far:

Virginia will climb into bed herself at the end of our bedtime routine. So, if she doesn't fall asleep nursing, she is, at least, willing to go to bed, which is very different from with the crib.

I'll lay down with her for a few minutes until she drifts off. This part was taking not a short amount of time until I rearranged her room and added an ipod stand. Now I play sleepy baby music while she is going to sleep and she relaxes and stays asleep much faster.

Not only has going to bed gotten easier, she actually STAYS ASLEEP! When we first moved to the bed she did still wake up during the middle of the night, but she has stopped doing this and we have had a couple weeks of full nights of sleep.

When she does wake up (at night or in the morning - which, let's face it, is still usually a little earlier than I would get up) she tends to cry for me to come get her, but just this morning she padded into our room without any fuss at 7:30am. I know some parents lock their kids in their room so they can't leave on their own, but I was quite pleased she figured this out. If she cries I'm going to put her in my bed anyway, she might as well save me the trip by coming to me! I think it helps that she has been sleeping better, too, so it's not like she is climbing in bed with me at midnight every night and not really sleeping in her bed. We'll see how things progress, since children never stay the same, but so far I'm very happy with the big girl bed and with Virginia being able to come to me when she needs me!

Sleep

Sleep is a big issue for people with small children. Virginia has been going through a sleep regression. She doesn't make it the whole night in her own bed most nights. But I am okay with this for two reasons:
1) She has a lot going on that could be disturbing her sleep. New teeth. New neurons firing in her brain from her massive language developments. Frequent day care sniffles. Etc.
2) Once I move her to my bed I get to go back to sleep. When I get to sleep I am a happy person.

I don't do cry-it-out, and I am not making a judgment on people who do, but it isn't for me. Early on when I discovered all the mommy blogs out there I remember reading one person's assertion that we have to teach our children that sleep is safe. This makes so much sense to me. How do babies know they are safe when they wake up alone in a dark room? They are evolutionarily programed to know they can't fend for themselves. Furthermore, as a grown woman, I still don't always feel safe when I wake up alone. I consistently had problems sleeping when I lived by myself in a studio apartment in Tuscaloosa. I know what that feels like. I know it's natural. I don't want to train Virginia to not cry. I want her to not cry because she knows she is safe.

And there are still some nights she spends the whole night in her crib. I know she wakes up, rearranges herself, and goes back to sleep on those nights. Those nights she doesn't cry because she doesn't need anything.

All this being said, her sleep regression has recently manifested as her not falling asleep while I am nursing her at night. She used to nurse to sleep most of the time, but now it is hit or miss. The problem is that John can't seem to get her to sleep at all, so I'm left wondering what to do with this awake baby who wants to get down and play.

When I turn out her light she knows she isn't leaving the room. The first couple of nights I did this there were tears. But as I held her in my arms she laid her head on my shoulder and slowly accepted that she needed to sleep. I hated to let her cry even then. But I felt that since I was holding her, she at least knew she wasn't alone. I have continued to take this approach and she has stopped crying. When the light goes out she really tries to fall asleep in my arms. Sometimes it takes a little while, but she is trying. And she always knows she is safe.

Those nights when she wasn't falling asleep and I felt like I had no strategies and John had no strategies were tough ones. But it seems like we are finally getting through it. And I have to admit that I have had some really sweet mornings waking up to a happy baby tapping me on the arm until I open my eyes, then saying, "Hi!"

Sleepy John

Sometimes when John is half asleep he says funny things. The other morning when I came out of the bathroom John (still in bed) rolled over and said, "Sorry I was no help last night and this morning."

Virginia has been waking up at night again off and on. But that night she hadn't woken up. So I said, "I didn't need help with anything."

"Good," said John, "Because I wouldn't have gotten up."

I don't think he meant that. He is pretty good about helping out.

That's when I realized he wasn't really awake.

Not Too Busy to Hambone

Life is still pretty crazy here in the new abode. Boxes piled high. A leaking air conditioner (now fixed). A new daycare availability (they may allow the cloth diapers!). Last minute details about my start of school schedule.

But let's not talk about that.

Recently, when Amanda was hanging out with me and Virginia, she asked if I knew all the words to "Hush Little Baby." I told her that I didn't, but I knew that they were in Pete Seeger's autobiography*, which I own and adore. So we looked up the song. He includes it in his autobiography because it is (apparently) a good song to hambone to. He also has some instructions on how to hambone.

I was intrigued.

Here is a beginner's hambone duet:

And then, because she has been boycotting naps, Virginia laid her head on my arm and drifted off to sleep.

Sweet dreams hambone baby!

*Like a true librarian, I don't know everything, just where to find it.

Baby Babble

Virginia and I had a kind of rough night (teething?) but fortunately she knows how to make me smile. :)

Sometimes when she is making a lot of baby noises and I am holding her I will wiggle my finger in her lips to make her sound extra funny.

She has recently started doing this herself. She moves her hand around on her mouth while "talking."

Very cute.

Nap Time

So I admit it, I'm not good at nap time.

When Virginia was a newborn she slept a lot. When she was tired she fell asleep pretty easily, sometimes with a little help from nursing. Somehow she got bigger and started sleeping less and started having more trouble falling asleep.

Recently she has started shrieking when she is unhappy but not quite crying-stage unhappy. It is a truly awful sound that turns my stomach inside out and requires all my mothering skills to endure. This prehistoric sound emerges when I've nursed her, I've changed her, I've played with her and she still seems to need something else. She is rubbing her eyes and looking at me like, "why can't you fix it?"

I can't fix it because she is so distractible. Unless she is really drowsy, like she is at night time, I can't seem to nurse her to sleep or rock her to sleep. She keeps looking around at what else is going on.

She devolved into sleepy dinosaur baby pretty quickly this morning and I thought I should probably try to get her to take a real nap to save my sanity. I put her on the bed in my office and lay down next to her. I turned out the lights and closed the blinds. I put her music on the lap top and turned on the fan (a possible distraction, but it is monotonous and possibly drowsy-making). It took about half an hour and more screeching (no crying), but finally she fell asleep.

And she's been asleep for almost an hour.

I could say, "I will do it this way from now on." But giving myself these types of rules can be crazy-making. Instead I will view this as another strategy I can employ. We'll take it day by day and do whatever works at the time.

Moar Giggles

An upshot of Virginia being tired is that she gets punchy and laughs easily.

Oh, and she is "slimy" because she is drooling. You never know what words are going to be funny to her.

Crazy Limbs

Two nights ago Virginia woke up crying, so I un-swaddled her and put her in bed with me. She nursed for an hour, neither falling asleep nor showing any sign of stopping. This hour was totally unrestful for me because I spent it trying to prevent Virginia from grabbing my collar bone (it doesn't hurt, but it weirds me out). Finally I got up and turned off the ceiling fan, thinking it was making her too cold.

Immediately Virginia was happier. She stopped nursing and stopped grasping at me. But then she lay there on her back moving her arms and legs around and cooing. Cute, but impossible to sleep through. I re-swaddled her and she calmed down and went back to sleep (still in bed with me).

Needless to say, we were both kind of tired and cranky yesterday, but I had high hopes that after a good night of sleep we would be on track to a better tomorrow.

Then the crazy limbs struck again.

Virginia woke up minutes after I put her in the crib last night. I couldn't face a whole night with her in the bed, so I picked her up and held her until she went back to sleep, then put her in the crib. Once again, minutes after I put her down, she woke up. John was still awake so I asked him to hold her and give me a chance to get a little sleep.

He managed to put her back to sleep and even sneak her into the crib. I'm not sure how long she slept there, but she woke me up around 3am. I un-swaddled her (digression: Virginia sleeps better on her own of she is swaddled, so that is how she always goes to bed. If she is in bed with me she usually sleeps fine either way. I feel a little better having her arms free in the bed in case she needs them so I usually take her out of the swaddle.) and put her in bed with me. Even before she started nursing her hands were scratching me and her pointy little toes were jabbing into my stomach. Not exactly the restful night I had hoped for. I re-swaddled her, let her nurse for a seemingly endless amount of time, and finally we both went back to sleep.

In six short months she has already changed so much. She has rapidly gone through many difficult and charming phases. This is just a phase. It will be over soon. Then something else will happen, but I'll deal with that then.

Sleeping

Although Virginia is overall a good sleeper (at night), helping her sleep has been very much on my mind pretty much since she was born. My midwife lent me a copy of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding and I dutifully read it during late night feedings in those early days. Thing is, this book strongly advocates co-sleeping and I was terrified of sleeping with Virginia in the bed. I was also terrified of not sleeping with her because I thought if I couldn't hear her breathing she might stop. (Being a new mom is scary. I'm pretty sure these feelings are normal.)

Anyway, several chapters in I realized the book was messing with my already frayed emotions by making me feel guilty for not doing something I both wanted and didn't want to do. I stopped reading it and returned it to the midwife without comment.

Virginia spent her second night in bed with me last night. I now know more about co-sleeping than I did when she was born and have created a sleeping environment for her I am comfortable with. And I do acknowledge that we get more sleep next to each other than apart when she is having trouble sleeping. However, Virginia fell asleep during her first feeding of the day this morning. This never happens and makes me suspect she was not as well rested as when she sleeps by herself.

I will continue to be there for her and do what I can so that she gets as much sleep as she can. I now feel that helping her to sleep on her own is a part of that. I plan to continue putting her to bed in her crib and moving her to my bed if she is really can't sleep there.

Peace

I know that I am entitled to no sympathy when I complain that my baby isn't sleeping through the night anymore. Many many new parents have five month olds who haven't slept through the night yet. Never the less, I got used to sleeping and coping with not sleeping now is hard. For what it's worth, I am getting less sleep than I did when Virginia was waking up to eat. Then at least she went back to sleep after I fed her and stayed asleep for a couple of hours. Now she is waking up in pain. I think it's her teeth. Feeding her solves the problem for about twenty minutes.

Last night I was having a particularly rough time and John offered to take her. He went into another room and held and shushed her. I could hear the shushing and at first thought, "I won't be able to sleep." I can be very sensitive to noises, especially when I am agitated. But then I thought about how it was a soothing noise. It was like the shushing wasn't just for Virginia, but also for me. I felt so calm and well cared for. I spend a whole lot of time caring for Virginia, it was amazing to have John take care of me.

After an hour he laid Virginia back in her crib and she started fussing within a matter of minutes. This time I was able to bring her into bed with me and calm her. She still cried out every time she woke up the rest of the night, but I was right there to make her feel better and we both got some sleep.