“Sleep when the baby sleeps” is the most full of crap piece
of advice ever. Sometimes I do it…especially
if there’s a blissful 8am nap. That’s
the best nap because everyone can just pretend it’s still night or that we’re
in our early 20’s and still slept past 7am.
Sometimes, though, I want to LIVE MY LIIIIIIIIIFE! You cannot take my FREEEEEDOOOOMMM,
Booberry! So basically there’s this
thing called “Four Month Sleep Regression” that should be called, “OH MEEE
GAWWWD WHY?! MY CHILD USED TO SLEEP SO
WELL AND NOW NEVER SLEEPS UNLESS I HOLD HER NEXT TO MY BOOOOOOOOOOOB.” It’s the worst. We (Booberry and I…the Doctor tries to stay
out of the way also known as does not help (but we love you)) are working on
some good sleep habits. There are infinite
books on the subject and I have two on hold at the library because I already
spend too much money buying baby crap on Amazon Prime (oh I have to go update
my subscribe and save brb).
“Good sleep habits” according to parenting experts (summarized
by the internet and a friend of mine who read all the books thus making it so
maybe I don’t have to) include:
-
Not nursing the baby to bed
-
Having the baby fall asleep on her own after
putting her down while drowsy but not asleep
-
Putting the baby to bed in her own bed as
opposed to the stroller or swing or car seat or other baby shortcut device
-
Don’t swaddle once they can roll
These are basically tips of everything I don’t do:
-
She only falls asleep directly after nursing
-
If I put her down she wakes up and starts
blowing raspberries at me
-
She only falls asleep out of my arms if she’s in
a baby shortcut device
-
She punches herself in the face and wakes up if I
don’t swaddle at least her right arm
So, basically, we just struggle until I put her in the swing
and it creaks from the effort of rocking my giant baby (the manual says 25 lb limit
but the internet said the swing craps out at around 16lbs. Guess my daughter’s weight??!) and then when
she’s deeply unconscious I can get her out of the swing and she stirs and then
falls back asleep as soon as she’s in the bed with a pacifier.
This is when I should sleep.
But sometimes I don’t wanna.
Because I want to hang out with the Doctor. Or blog.
Or clean (hahah yeah right…omg I need to change the laundry brb).
Here’s what just happened LIVE: I had to get hangers for the
laundry so I had to walk by the baby room.
The hardwoods are incessantly creaky so I had to tip toe around the
creaky bits like they were landmines.
Then I just sprinted the last stretch and got the hangers and then
repeated the process to get back down and once I got to the laundry room I realized
I forget the baby monitor so I went and got it and then took one article of
clothing out of the dryer and Booberry woke up and started in on her “cough cry”
which earned the nickname “Her Ladyship” as in “Ahem. I demand assistance in the most polite
way. Ahemmmm!” and now I’m hoping she
can put herself back to sleep because that’s what the sleep people say to do oh
NOPE there’s she goes into a real cry brb.
45 mins in her crib is her new record. I’ll take it.
I have officially and definitively defined (is that
redundant?) unconditional love.
Oh the laundry I forgot brb.
Ohhhhhh kaaaay back.
Unconditional love:
“If my daughter was a sociopath and murdered my husband I
would still love her. If my husband was
a sociopath and murdered my daughter, I would no longer love him.”
The Doctor agrees with my definition and is not at all
offended. This is why I love him…but
apparently there are limits to my love and he is okay with those
parameters.
What was this post about?
Oh yeah…not sleeping. The other night when I wasn’t sleeping and the
Doctor was keeping me up with his snoring, I wrote down some notes about thoughts
in my head at that moment. Sometimes when
I write things down at night they make little to no sense when I get up. Something I wrote down the other night is: “old
man little boy nuke.” And I had NO IDEA
wtf that was supposed to mean until I remembered that the snoring made me think
that my husband is an old man and that many other things he does makes me think
he’s a little boy and then I was wondering if those were the names of the
nuclear weapons but I looked it up and it’s “Fat Man and Little Boy” which does
not apply. But yeah, husbands can be
simultaneously old men and little boys.
I made a t-chart:
Old Man
|
Little Boy
|
Snores
|
Has zombie nightmares and wants to cuddle
|
Wears polo shirts
|
Wears star wars tshits under polo shirt
|
Mows the lawn
|
Sings jibberish loudly while mowing the lawn
|
Has a job
|
Bought video game controllers to take to work
|
Likes to drink whiskey (“like a man” he says)
|
Eats mostly pepperoni pizza from Little Caesars
|
Is awesome dad
|
Because he is a child at heart
|
I love T-charts.
The other note I put down is “hardly ever cries.” That refers to me. While preggo, as you may be aware from a
previous post, just about everything made me weep uncontrollably. One time I cried, hard, for three hours…I must
have had colic. I don’t remember now
what it was so clearly it wasn’t a life-changing tragedy. And now I was noticing that I couldn’t remember
the last time I cried from being upset. Sometimes
I cry because Booberry is being sweet and little and snuggly and that’s more of
a bittersweet cry. But, when I wrote the
note, I noticed how, once we got over the hump of newborn HORRIBLEness, my mood
has stabilized and I’m generally a pretty happy person. Isn’t that nice?!
Of course, two hours later, Booberry was still awake and
fussing and I broke down into exhausted weeping and the Doctor went and slept
in the guest room and I nursed Boo until she was unconscious and then put down
sound asleep. And then I went to sleep
for three hours until she woke up again.
But it’s the little victories…
it's those moments...
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