So what did Phoebe do last night?

In a nutshell, she woke around 1am, making "wah" noises and Toby reswaddled her and settled her back in her cot, which was a bit of an effort as she really wasn't keen. Eventually she dropped off but woke again around 2.45am and this time I fed her. She seemed to be taking a lot of milk and then she went all dozy and milk drunk and so I swaddled her and put her back down. She slept until 7am.

I'm still no wiser as to why she's waking up but she definitely seemed hungry last night so perhaps it is a growth spurt. I am still trying to figure out what sort of mood she's in today but she seems quite tired. Toby has offered me the chance to go for a swim but, aside from the damp and dreary weather putting me off, I really don't think I can be bothered to think about Phoebe and what she might need to do when. It's quite exhausting and I feel like just going with the flow today. I really can't be bothered with getting her in and out of the car today and it seems like a good opportunity to do all the indoorsy things I've been meaning to do for days, such as soak some beans and a bit of online research.

And yet more about sleep

Yes, sleep indeed is something that parents obsess over. Sleep and routine, which are inextricably linked. As is food. Do not expect that this will be the last post on the subject.

After almost three weeks of sleeping through the night for periods of eight to eleven hours, Phoebe has behaved somewhat differently over the last two nights. 

On Friday night as we were going to bed around 11pm she awoke and decided she was hungry. We thought maybe she was cold as the temperature had dropped since we put her to bed at 8pm. So we fed her and tucked her up in her sleeping bag and there she remained until 6.45am.

Last night we put her to bed at 7.15pm, around 30-45 minutes earlier than usual because for once she'd actually had a decent afternoon nap for a couple of hours in her cot around 3pm, rather than me having to take her out in the pram around 4 or 5pm to get her to sleep. In fact she'd been napping fairly regularly throughout the day: about an hour every two or three. She surprised us by waking up at 8pm apparently hungry. We fed her and cuddled her for a while and then put her back down at 9pm. She then woke up again at 3.30am. 

I didn't know what had hit me. I am no longer in that automatic zombie mode of getting up, feeding the baby, changing the baby, swaddling the baby, placing the baby back in the cot, going to the toilet and eagerly crawling back into bed. Now I lie in bed listening, trying to wake up, trying to engage my brain, thinking "Why is she awake? What could she possibly want? Is she really hungry? Should I feed her? Should I try to get her back to sleep? Should I ignore her? If I let her get up now will she do the same tomorrow night? How will this influence tomorrow? What happened to her GODDAMN ROUTINE for crying out loud???" Then Toby gently taps me on the shoulder and whispers "Lins, Phoebe's awake," and it's all I can do to stop myself from yelling out "Yes, I know and just what do you want me to do about it?"

Anyway, I fed her and got her back into her cot in about ten minutes, only for her to wake again within three hours. After another feed, Toby changed her, swaddled her and attempted to get her back to sleep in her cot but she was having none of it and so she ended up in bed with us. Well, didn't she look as smug as a bug in a rug gazing lovingly first at Toby then at me like the cat that got the cream. And there we all slept for the next hour and a half.

There are a few possible factors at play here:

• She could be cold. We placed her in a sleeping bag to counteract this but...
• It's difficult to swaddle her when she's in a sleeping bag and she definitely sleeps better when well swaddled.
• It could be a growth spurt, but then she seems to be constantly having growth spurts as any time I can't explain her behaviour, be it excessive sleepiness, excessive wakefulness, frequent feeding, frequent crying etc. I attribute it to growth spurts. The current one has been going for about a week on and off, with different symptoms throughout.
• She could be in the early stages of teething and there are other signs pointing to this, such as her red cheeks (which could also be a sign of good health), her constant dribbing and sucking her fists (which she's been doing for about a month), her transition from sucking my finger to chewing on it (which may be a normal developmental and explorative progression) and her recent afternoon grizzlies (which may or may not be colic or overtiredness - see below).
• She could be hungry, due to not feeding well at bedtime feed, due to colic or overtiredness.
• She could be thirsty. The air has been particularly dry these past few days due to south-westerly winds. I awoke frequently on Friday night with an uncomfortably dry throat and nose, needing a drink. It makes sense that she might feel this way too.
• Perhaps the first awakening led to the next and so on, due to not changing her nappy between times. We don't usually change her nappy at night and didn't want to stimulate her but perhaps she was then woken due to having a wet nappy.
• As mentioned, her nap times were different throughout the day, but her cumulative sleep time didn't seem much different.

Honestly, being a parent, or at least the primary caregiver of a young baby, requires the precision and planning of a military strategist, the investigative skills of a detective and the innate ability to analyse cause and effect, not to mention patience and flexibility. You have to constantly reassess your plans based upon what your baby has done, or how your baby is behaving. If baby doesn't behave as you expected or hoped then you have to do a quick analysis of all the possible causes, alternative courses of action and potential outcomes, and what cascading effect these may all have. 

Consider this: you go for a swim whilst hubby looks after baby during baby's sleep cycle. Baby doesn't sleep. Baby falls asleep in sling (on hubby) whilst you and hubby finish off a coffee post-swim. Hubby then has to go back to work. Do you:

a) take sling from hubby and put it on you and hang around the park until baby awakes, bearing in mind that baby doesn't sleep for long in the sling?

b) take baby from sling, put in car and head back home as per original plan, thus risking waking baby during transition from sling to car seat or on arrival back home resulting in an even shorter nap than had baby been left in sling?

c) gently lay sling in pram and push around the park for as long as baby will sleep, hopefully 40 minutes?

If c) then do you then feed baby and go home, or go home and then feed baby? And so on and so forth. It's like planning your next move in chess.

Anyway, tonight we've ditched the sleeping bag, swaddled her tightly and tucked her in with some very secure blankets (it's all about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) people, and the prevention thereof; there are so many rules). We'll see if that makes a difference. Of course, it could have just been a one-off anyway.

Phoebe's also been experiencing the afternoon grizzlies. Since she's been sleeping through the night the hours from 4pm onwards are something of a juggling act. Trying to time her naps so that she doesn't get too much or too little sleep before bedtime, so that she isn't overtired and doesn't go to bed too early and so that she enjoys bathtime but so that we still get time to ourselves to have dinner and tidy up, is quite a challenge. 

But these grizzlies are more than just managing the witching hour. Twice now she has been inconsolable at really inconvenient times during the early afternoon, such as when out for coffee with friends, or today at a baby shower. I'm beginning to wonder if she has colic as I read yesterday that it starts around three months (right on time, she's such a textbook baby) and on the advice of a friend I gave her some Brauer's Colic Relief, a homeopathic remedy which seemed to calm her. However, I'm sure it's just a case of having too short a nap (usually because we're going out) and that leading to a whole host of other problems. It makes going out in the afternoons really difficult, which is a bummer as I have my citizenship ceremony during the afternoon in a couple of weeks. Hopefully this is just a phase and it will have passed by then, although if it is colic then the same source tells me that it'll last three months.

Firstly, she'll get tired very quickly throughout her next cycle. I don't necessarily feed her straight away because it's less than two hours since her last feed. So if she doesn't get back to sleep, which she generally won't if we're out and about and she's stimulated, then she becomes hungry and tired and she gets confused. I try to get her to sleep. She can't sleep and she screams and screams. Eventually she becomes due for her feed anyway, manages to communicate that she's hungry and I feed her. But she doesn't feed well because she's tired. She pulls on and off the breast, gets easily distracted and gives herself a windy pain. This leads to her being tired, in pain and still a bit hungry, only she can't really eat because she has a pain. So then she gets frustrated too and screams louder, making the pain worse and making it even harder for her to sleep. 

The only way out of this really is to walk her around for a while, change her position frequently to remove the wind, persist with feeding her, and remove all stimulation so that she can get to sleep. Today I spent an hour and a half trying to calm her and get her to sleep at a baby shower (I'd like to say it was a good party but I don't really know as I didn't feel I was really there) and eventually she fell asleep in the sling she was so exhausted. Even taking her into the bedroom didn't help as she was too hot and could still hear all the noise from the lounge. After trying to settle her for some time with her screaming, whilst my friend was trying to breastfeed her baby, she eventually told me she was hungry and I offered her the breast. After a couple of minutes of sucking she stopped. She laid her head back and looked right at me. She looked positively content. And then, the little minx smiled! I couldn't help but laugh at her - how could she go from being inconsolably upset one minute to being happy and smiley the next? I had to look away from her so as not to encourage such cheeky behaviour.

I'm done... I lost most of this post just after having finished it and before managing to publish it. I don't know why it didn't auto-save but my battery ran flat. I'm now tired and past my bedtime so if the post seems a bit disjointed and ends abruptly, it's because it's a rewrite and I've forgotten what I wanted to say.

More about sleep

Did I mention that Phoebe is definitely sleeping through these days?

For about two weeks now, since she was about 10 weeks old, she has slept around 9 or 10 hours a night, the minimum being 8 and the maximum being 11 ½!! It's bliss. The strange thing is I've been more tired since she started doing it. She feeds around 4.30pm then we go for a walk to give her a nap in the pram. When she wakes up around 6.30pm we have another feed, then it's bathtime and usually the three of us climb in the big bath together. It's the best time of day and is a chance for all of us to wind down. Toby loves coming home from work to have a bath with Phoebe. After her bath she'll have a top-up feed around 7.30pm and go to bed sometime between 8 and 8.30pm. Obviously, these are approximate times and they vary from day to day as we're not exactly a strict routine family. I still have to express before I go to bed around 10 or 11pm or, if I go to bed earlier, I often have to get up at 4am to express because my boobs are like watermelons. In firmness, not size, that is. God, imagine having boobs the size of watermelons. What a nightmare. Jordan nearly does, but not quite. That woman from EuroTrash who died of a heart attack... what was her name? Lola, or something? She had boobs not far off the size of watermelons and look what happened to her. They weren't natural of course.

Anyway, it appears I have veered from the subject of sleep to that of boobs - very easy to do when you're breastfeeding. It probably means I should skip the boob pumping and just head for an early bed tonight.

Whilst I am (back) on the subject of sleep though, I'll just finish off. Phoebe wakes up around 6am, feeds, plays the staring and laughing at me game for a while, has a nappy change and then goes back to bed for about 2 or 3 hours! This morning I had to actually get her out of her cot and take her to mums group in her pyjamas! She is the amazing sleeping baby. In the mornings that is. Afternoons are a different story but that's for another post. I'm off to bed before I lose the plot. Goodnight.

First Road Trip

Phoebe is three months old tomorrow and today she was really unsettled. She spent a lot of time crying and it was difficult to settle her at times. I think she was overtired and that led to a lot of problems but I also swear that she grew, taking up more room on the change table this afternoon than she did this morning. She'd get hungry but be too tired to feed properly. I'd offer her food and she'd think she didn't want it but then a few minutes later she would, then she seemed to get a pain. She seemed happiest when lying without her nappy on (even though her nappy rash is cleared up*), lying across my arm and being jiggled or walked around, but nothing seemed to keep her happy for long.

She was a bit iffy this morning but things really got bad when I took her from her cot and put her in the car twenty minutes into her lunchtime nap. It had been a bit of a mish to get her to sleep anyway and I thought she'd sleep in the car but she didn't really and it all went down hill from there. Amazingly, she was fine at Gymbaroo. She got quite into the activities on the equipment and did really well with her tummy time and once again loved the dancing. She'd had enough by the time we did the parachute at the end though and missed it for the second week in a row. The parachute is a huge fabric parachute with all different colours on it. Babies lie on mats and mums stand and swirl the parachute above them. She loved it for the first couple of weeks but has been too tired since then. She then fell asleep on my arm whilst I was packing up so I took the long drive home via the beach. I somehow managed to turn a fifteen minute drive into ¾ hour. The things you have to do when you're a mother.

Once home she still wasn't quite herself and after another feed and change I somehow managed to get the pram out of the car and ready to go with one hand. Quite an achievement. I couldn't quite manage to get my shoe laces tied though and had to put my poor screaming mite down for a few minutes. Once off to sleep in the pram she slept for two hours!!! Unheard of. The closest we've got to that before in recent weeks has been 1 ½ hours and that was only once. Meanwhile I trundled off to the chemist to get some Brauer Colic Relief, a homeopathic remedy my friend recommended. At her next feed she pulled off and seemed to be in pain so we gave her some drops and she's been fine ever since, except for the usual crack-up whilst dressing her for bed.

Her first road trip to Toowoomba to visit family went well. We left at her bedtime on Friday and she was all ready for bed, bathed, fed etc so she slept the whole way. Our attempt to seamlessly transfer her from car to cot didn't go so well though. As soon as the front wheels hit the In-Laws' driveway she woke up and started screaming and kept going until I fed her. I then showed her around the house and let her sit on Grandpa's lap for a while before attempting to put her to bed. She was fine and slept through until morning then. In hindsight it was a bit unfair to expect her to just go to sleep in someone else's cot in a house she'd never visited before. We took her cot sheet, wrap and blanket, and her cot book for familiarity and she adapted really well after the initial shock.

The drive home was less successful but we expected that as we were on the road during the witching hour around 5pm. We learnt that the art of successful travelling with baby involves lots of patience and some tolerance for screaming. We fed her twice on the way as she generally feeds a lot around that time. The second time we probably didn't give her enough activity time and when we got back in the car it was dark so she couldn't see any of the interesting things we'd provided for her to look at (mirror, dangly toys etc.). I think she screamed for about forty minutes, midway through which I insisted that Toby pull over so I could give her a cuddle. She calmed down until we put her back in the car but it made me feel better that I'd at least told her I was there.

Two funny things happened today. The first was this morning after her feed we were sitting in the bed staring at each other (we do that a lot) and I started making funny noises, which she seemed to find amusing. I was so tired that I yawned and did one of my audible yawns (I get that from my Dad). Poor Phoebe got such a fright that she burst into tears. I suppose it is a bit scary and it was probably a sign of the day we were about to have.

The second thing was that I found Zadie lying on Phoebe's activity mat (Monty did that the other day too, the little *&%$*s!). I couldn't really yell as I had Phoebe but I gave her enough of a wallop for her to understand that was not somewhere she should be and she scooted off. Well, when we got home today she was on the mat again. She thought she'd got off before I saw her but she kind of made it obvious that's where she was so I chased her around the house, trying to kick her out. Phoebe was due a feed and was in her weird mood anyway so she was screaming in my arms. Zadie ran to the laundry, me and screaming Phoebe following her at a somewhat slower pace (you try running after a cat with a screaming and hungry baby in your arms), only to find that the back door was shut and she couldn't get to her cat-flap. So she ran back out again, scooted past us as fast as she could and into the lounge via the kitchen. So I went into the lounge via the hallway and met her coming the other way. Ears flat and tail low she heard us before she saw us, panicked and turned back to the laundry only to remember on arrival that she couldn't get to the cat-flap and so ran back to the lounge. She seemed absolutely terrified of this howling two-headed monster following her around the house, tormenting her with its screams as punishment for daring to sit on its mat. The whole act was repeated a few times until I found it so funny that I stopped being angry and decided to settle on locking her in the laundry instead.

And to end I'd like to say that I had a wonderful first (Australian) Mother's Day on Sunday. I shared it with Toby's mum and we went to the Chocolate Cottage near where she lives for coffee and cake. Toby and I then chilled on the picnic rug with Phoebe before ordering tea and scones. It was such a lovely day and the next morning Phoebe surprised me with a home-made card, flowers and grown-up bath toys (i.e. a loofah and scrunchy thing). She's very advanced.



* Phoebe got nappy rash after we went out all day on the May Day holiday and forgot to change her nappy. Bad parents!

First laugh

I've been writing another post for days and as we're taking Phoebe away for the first time today (to visit her Australian family) I probably won't get it finished today either. But I just had to log on and say that two nights ago Phoebe laughed for the first time. It wasn't really a giggle or a chuckle but it was an extremely wide-mouthed smile accompanied by noise during bathtime in response to seeing Mammy tipping water over her head (how hilarious that adults start referring to themselves in the third person when they have a baby; and they also start calling their partners by the incredibly unsexy names of Mummy and Daddy).

I think she had also laughed at Gymbaroo earlier that day during the Hokey Cokey (referred to here as the Hokey Pokey, which I just can't get used to; it sounds a bit rude to me). She really wasn't in much of a mood for Gymbaroo and protested at all the tummy time exercises (which was most of them) but she absolutely loved the Hokey Cokey, particularly the bit where everyone walks into the centre of the ring. I could hear her shouting and making noises and judging by my friend's reaction she was clearly enjoying it so I'm assuming she was smiling. Smile + noise = laugh in my opinion.

So, just for the record: First laugh on 6th May aged 11½ weeks.

Can't wait for the giggles to commence now.

Baby talk

I witnessed Phoebe interacting with another baby for the first time at the Community Health Centre parenting workshop on Thursday.

We were having a talk about first aid by a lady who used to work for Queensland Ambulance. I'm glad I did a couple of first aid courses last year because this woman was exceptionally difficult to listen to. Not only did she have a lisp but she also had an annoying pitch of voice, a strong accent and a drawl with pauses in strange places. I found it very difficult to concentrate on what she was saying especially after a young mum called Kerry placed her baby girl, Zoe on the mat next to Phoebe. Zoe is a few weeks older than Phoebe, around 13 weeks old I think. Before long they were aware of each other and looking at one another. Then they started exchanging smiles and reaching out towards one another. They seemed absolutely fascinated. When one looked away from the other, her little friend would coo and gurgle in an attempt to get her attention drawn back to her. It was very cute.

Gymbaroo was a lot of fun on Wednesday. Phoebe and her two friends from my ante-natal class, Hugo and Julian were the youngest babies there. The class is directed at non-mobile babies so most of them are a few months older than Phoebe. When they start crawling they graduate to the mobile baby group. There were a lot of activities, which were kept short in order to maintain the babies' interest. I was concerned that it mightn't fit in with Phoebe's cycle but she did really well.

They have a lot of equipment you can use, mainly to promote body awareness but the bulk of the class is teacher-led with the babies lying on mats and mums kneeling next to them in a circle. They had tummy time, we sang songs and patted their little bodies in time to the music, we danced around in a circle singing and swinging the babies around and up and down, massaged them by rolling sticks up and down their bodies and waved various toys in front of them.

There is also a theme of a week to introduce them to the idea of symbols and get their eyes tracking from left to right in preparation for learning to read. We were given scrap books with a word written on one side (in this case, "red") which is flashed in front of the bub for one second (any longer than that and they break the word into pieces and stop seeing it as a cohesive whole); on the other side is a picture representing the word (i.e. a red square), which we hold up to the left of the baby's head and move it towards the right repeating the word. They suggest getting your partner to hold the baby's head whilst you do this to encourage their eyes rather than their head to move.

All of the activities are encouraged to be tried at home, so for example they suggest pointing out red things for the rest of the week then slowly introducing them to next week's theme (blue) and taking in a blue object to the class. I got a little over-excited and collected three blue toys for Phoebe's "treasure bag" as they call it. One really useful thing I learned was that during tummy time I should roll Phoebe from her back to her tummy, rather than picking her up, turning her over and putting her back down, and the same in reverse when she's had enough. This is so that she can get the idea of rolling from back to front and be able to do it herself.

We've had a few more "sleep-throughs" and most nights we have at least one 8 hour stretch now. Of course last night was the exception. We'd let her get a bit over-tired and had friends over for dinner so she ended up going to bed a bit earlier than usual. I decided to try another "dream feed" before I went to bed at 10pm but I admit I was sceptical as every time I've tried it in the past she's still woken up at the time I would expect her to without the extra feed, in this case 3am. Sure enough, she woke up for another feed at 3am and not only that but she woke again at 5am. I think I'll let the 8 hour sleeps get a bit more established before I try another dream feed.

Sleeping through

Phoebe "slept through" last night. At her age apparently all this means is a 6 hour stretch without waking. It isn't unknown for her to have long periods of sleep; in fact two nights ago she slept for 8 hours!! The difference last night was that it happened whilst I was also asleep and there seems to be a bit of a pattern emerging rather than just the odd good night here and there. When she isn't "sleeping through" she sleeps for about 5 hours early on then in 3 or 4 hour blocks.

However, this "sleeping through" came at a cost. Firstly, I went out with the ladies from a mums group I've been gate-crashing since before Phoebe was born. I fed her at 5pm then bathed her and got her ready for bed. I was going to give her a top up feed when she decided she'd rather sleep. Thankfully she woke up about 30 minutes before I had to leave so I fed her and settled her in her cot before heading out (late). I hadn't left any milk for Toby but was quite confident that she wouldn't want another feed until 10 or 11pm. I got home at about 9.40pm to find Toby wandering around the house with Phoebe in the sling. Apparently she'd woken for a feed an hour earlier. I got to bed at about 11pm and she didn't wake for a feed until 5.30am.

This morning I had my pilates session at the physiotherapist's centre. Phoebe had fallen asleep in her sling whilst I was tidying the house for the cleaner so I'd put her in her cot. She woke up about five minutes before we were due to leave. This did not make for an ideal pilates session. It is not easy to keep count of one's repetitions whilst also singing nursery rhymes. Nor is it easy, whilst on the reformer bed to rock a car baby restraint whilst doing leg circles and leg presses. I was all over the place. And it didn't entertain Phoebe for long. She was pacified temporarily by a feed but eventually the lady using the room after me (only I was still in there due to the feed) ended up giving her a cuddle and taking her on the vibration machine. That calmed her down but my workout ended up rubbish, rushed and with bits missed out, which isn't good as I didn't go last week when my family were here. She cried again when I put her back into the car seat, then stopped when I picked it up, then fell asleep in the car. She has since slept for most of the day. Bloody typical. In fact, I'm a little worried about her as she doesn't seem to want to wake up. We had a bit of a play earlier but basically she's just sleeping and feeding which is unlike her these days. Hope that doesn't mean she won't sleep tonight.