Parent Extremis

In one of the many, many, many baby sleep books I read that left me doubting** not only myself but also the reliability and validity of the many baby-sleep theories out there I recall a passage saying that a baby will naturally regulate their daytime sleep pattern around the age of five months. And dammit, I think that was right.

Just last week, at the age of five and a half months I finally put Noah down for day-time naps that seemed to last a long time and occur at the same time each day. And he only cried for a few minutes and seemed grateful for the sleep.

In his early weeks I let him nurse and nap in my arms while I caught up on some very important Tivo’d television. But, as he got older and I needed to get some things done I needed him to nap in some sort of baby-holding-device other than myself.

It was only about a month ago that Noah’s wake-up time in the morning seemed to be consistent from day to day. So after waking up and nursing and hanging out in bed while I prayed for a brief nap from him, we get up and come downstairs and he plays while I eat breakfast. By the time I have eaten and cleaned up and checked some email and let the dog out he is cranky and whining for me. Add in a fast calming nursed-feeding and he’s back to sleep. Where he used to sleep on me, I now put him upstairs in his crib and he has slept for anywhere from twenty minutes to two hours.

I’m hoping our consistency develops into the two-hour nap days.

** I still think that many of the baby books out there today are theories based in scare tactics: DO THIS or else you are setting your child up for a lifetime of insomia. Please. Parents are just trying to survive, do we really need to add to our plethora of worries?

In a perfect world I would own three strollers. I would have a Maclaren Triumph umbrella stroller for scooting around the neighborhood and going out to ballgames, the Bugaboo Cameleon for the infant-bassinette piece and the utter mobility and resourcefulness, and a Britax Vigour Travel System BUT I live in the real world with a budget and a sense of self restraint and an understanding of what it means to be a materialistic whore.

I actually have one stroller. And it works just fine. We have the GoGo Babyz Urban Advantage Stroller. I was actually able to wedge my infant carrier into the seat area when Noah was younger and I used it like a travel system, albeit, without the safety and security of pieces that were meant to be used together. I was careful. I love this stroller because it is perfect for tooling around the neighborhood at good exercise-walking speeds. The big wheels do make for a more comfortable ride for the boy. When we go shopping, the under-basket is very sufficient for all my needs and it comes complete with THREE cup holders! Two for the pusher, I figure one for my water - you know for hydration purposes, and one for my Gin, for you know … medicinal purposes.

I have been searching for the perfect umbrella stroller for a few weeks now. I need something light-weight and compact, something easy to clean, easy to get the baby into and out of and with the highest weight limit, because, let’s be realistic, my little boy eats very well and I’d like to get use out of this stroller for a few years.

I had seen a few strollers for about fifty dollars and I was willing to take the plunge until I saw a review in a parenting magazine of the EvenFlo X-Sport Convenience Stroller, retailing for THIRTY DOLLARS. So I just bought that sumbitch right up and it is due on my doorstep in a few days. I’ll review it when I get it. But I’m very excited to have a stroller that I can flick open with one delicate little hand motion.

Okay, so as a parent there are these moments when you wonder what the hell has just happened to your sleep, routine, life, whatever … because something that you have come to depend on as routine and expected suddenly changes with no warning whatsoever. Frequently you read about this stuff before you have the baby but when it actually happens your brain seems to have spilled the information out into the dirty diaper pail during one of the five hundred middle-of-the-night diaper changes.

Noah’s sleep was shot all to bloody hell about a week ago and it left me frantically fumbling around like a sixteen year old in the dark after getting caught making out with a boy.

So I did what I do when things happen to me: I blogged about it.

And my fabulous readers who I love more than blogging itself left me a comment and told me to go read some stuff that Moxie wrote awhile back about babies and … (DUH DUH DUUUUHHHHHHHH) why their sleep gets all fucked up at certain times of their lives.

The concept is called sleep regression and it is detailed in a book called The Wonder Weeks where it goes into detail rather extensively but the short of it is that there are several periods of time during which neurological growth is so intense that baby’s sleep is interrupted, often intensely so. Those periods of growth include weeks 5, 8, 12, 19, 26, 37, 46, and 55 (that’s as far as they studied), according to the authors, Hetty Vanderijt and Frans Plooij.

KEY: MORE DRAMATIC MUZAK BECAUSE NOAH IS 19 WEEKS OLD RIGHT NOW.

So I assume this will fade, in time, and if not, and he never sleeps through the night again, I am taking a definite peace that in 18 years it won’t be my problem anymore.

So you know … at some point, it’ll get better.

I also totally attribute my lackadaisical bordering on psychotic calmness to the sleep deprivation that I am experiencing due to this little sleep regression thingy.

LINKS:

I feel the need to link to what Linda wrote today because something similar happened in my life this week too.

::

Being a parent is, well, just outright… gross, sometimes. I was at the park talking with two other moms the other day and for some reason we were very frankly discussing how to remove a booger from a baby’s nose. After a lengthy discussion one of the other moms apologized for the grossness and I said, “don’t worry, it’s not the most disgusting thing I have done today.”

And we all nodded in agreement.