In Which Elmo and Amy Sedaris Step in for a Sleeping Sitter

Jonah had a fever of over 103 on Tuesday evening, so he couldn't go to school on Wednesday. It was my turn to stay home and play nurse, although he seemed more or less fine and we had a lot of fun together. Thursday wasn't so bad, either, so we were fairly confident that he would be heading to school as usual today.

Wrong. I took his temperature this morning just to be sure--we've been having some difficulty getting a good reading--and it was 101.6. Not an emergency, but too high to go to school. Unfortunately for Matt, he had stayed up til almost 4 AM working, so he was a little concerned about it being his turn to do sick boy duty. Fortunately for Matt, Jonah is one of the best patients I know. Especially if he's allowed to watch as much TV as he wants. Which, when he is sick, he is. Also, I work from home on Fridays, so he had some backup.

Jonah fell asleep on the couch (never happens) and then he and Matt went to Shaw's. When they got home, they ate lunch and then it was naptime. Since he had taken the earlier snooze on the couch, Jonah was not terribly interested in a nap, so Matt laid down on the floor in Jonah's room.

About an hour later, Jonah came walking into the living room and asked to watch a DVD.

I obliged, and seconds later, he was enthralled.

I, on the other hand, found it incredibly amusing that Amy Sedaris was guest-starring on Sesame Street.

Then I went into Jonah's room to check on the real babysitter.

Nice, huh?

Got milestones?

We're tired. And it's not because of a lack of food.

(Ava's first cereal: Friday, June 19, 2009.)

It's because we're 5.5 months old, and we really, really want to crawl.

On a side note, I do see some similarities between Ava and Jonah at this age. But I think his eyes were already brown. Hers still have a lot of blue, but some brown in the middle. I wonder how they will turn out?

Jonah's first cereal, mid-March, 2007

Back in the s(w)addle again

My Miracle Blankets arrived yesterday. It's so ironic that this happened now. As longtime readers (hi Mom!) know, I recently stopped swaddling Ava. It's not that I don't have love for the swaddle. When I was in the hospital after she was born, one of the things I most looked forward to about going home was swaddling her with the technique I learned for Jonah (the Super Swaddle) in our own stretchy blankets. I don't remember exactly when we stopped swaddling Jonah, but I think he was at least 5 1/2 months old.

But Ava wriggled her way out of the swaddle with considerably more ease than he did. When it was clear that the Super Swaddle was no longer enough to contain Ava, I was at a crossroads. One path was to stop swaddling. The other was to try the Miracle Blanket. But I didn't want to shell out when I had no idea if it would work (and when she'd only be swaddled for a few more weeks or months anyway), so when we implemented the Great Baby Move of 2009, we stopped swaddling her, thinking we'd do all the sleep transitions at once.

Enter the Sling and Swaddle Journey, and I find myself in a pickle. Do I go back three weeks, and start swaddling her again? Or do I let these fabulous blankets languish in a closet?

I figure, as long as I have them, I might as well take them for a test drive. It's only sleep, after all!

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Silly Shakespeare Titles - Continued

I decided to throw everything I think about sleep out the window and make some BIG changes right at the time when Ava's sleep would be predicted to get even worse – the dreaded four-month-old sleep regression. Jonah hit this one hard. After a month of sleeping relatively well, when he hit four months old (at right: Jonah at 4.5 months), it all went (back) to crap, and remained crap for months and months, with small, teeny-tiny baby steps of improvement along the way.

With Ava, I figure it can't get much worse. So we're making changes. My new Plan has a goal: transition her to the crib in Jonah's room Memorial Day weekend, when my Mom will be here to help with childcare if no one gets any sleep due to the transition. (We can all take turns taking naps!) I think that if she's not right next to me, I'll be less inclined to feed her in the middle of the night to get her back to sleep, and if she's not getting fed, she'll be less likely to wake up subsequent nights. (That's my theory, anyway.) But to move her to Jonah's room, I wanted her sleep-trained, so I can dump her in the crib and him in the bed, and shut the door, and they'll both fall asleep on their own. But to sleep train her, I wanted her to be unswaddled, because I feel bad about sleep training her if she doesn't have her hands free to give her some comfort.

We're eight days into the Plan. We started last Wednesday by getting rid of her swaddle. I was going to do the one-arm-in method, but she got the one arm out several times the first night, so we've pretty much done it cold turkey. While at first she slept a tiny bit worse, she's now back to the two or three wake-ups she was doing while swaddled. We started sleep training last Friday, and it's going very well, especially if she's really tired and ready to go to sleep when we put her down. The past couple of nights, she's fallen asleep after only one or two visits to re-insert the pacifier. We have a week until Mom arrives and the big transition takes place, and in the meantime, I'm going to transfer some night-waking duties to Matt. Now we just have to get Jonah to agree to have her sleep in his room!

Of course, this week Jonah has been sick, so I'm even more tired than I was before, because now they're both waking up at night. I guess someday they'll move out, and then I can count on eight solid hours again....

To sleep, perchance, to dream.

Seems like all I want to do these days is talk about sleep. It's the most important topic of conversation in this family: who's getting it, who's not, and how much (if any). So indulge me as I continue the conversation (no one ever said that this blog would be devoid of narcissistic navel-gazing).

Back in March, I posted about how Ava could sleep. The girl got better and better, regularly sleeping for 6-8 hours a night. While we were away for Passover (and our first few days back), she slept through the night – down for the count around 8 or 9 PM, not up til 6:30 AM. Full stop. Contrast that with Jonah, who the night after we got home from Passover (when he was almost 6 months old), woke up six times (SIX!). And that with me starting a new job the next day. It was not a pretty first day of work.

But wait, there's more. The day after the day after we got back from Passover, my fabulous little sleeper became not so fabulous. She started regularly waking twice (or even three times) a night, every once in a while throwing a single 5 AM wake up into the mix. And strangely enough, it happened right when I went back to work. With Jonah, that transition coincided with improved sleep. Not so Ava. The inhabitants of our household spent most of April battling one illness or another. (Well, the human ones. The cat seemed unfazed.) I thought that when we all were finally well, she might settle back in. Wrong. Then she learned how to roll, and I thought, "Aha! She's been working on something developmental! Surely she'll go back to sleeping well now." Wrong, squared. In the meantime, I'm struggling to get enough sleep to recover from my hellish sore throat, snapping at everything that moves, and generally not appreciating the lack of zzz's.

So what did I do?

Oh wait…what was that?

Sounds like Jonah has prematurely awoken from his nap. Sigh.

To be continued…

Sleep when the baby sleeps

I'm starting to think the whole "sleep begets sleep*" thing is a load of crap. I totally bought into it with Jonah, but I could never really document that he slept better at night when he slept better during the day. His daytime naps were crappy until he was about seven months old, at which time he finally settled into a consistent twice-a-day nap routine (from his previous three or four 30-45 minute naps a day routine!). But his nighttime sleep didn't really change - or get any better. In fact, he didn't even sleep through the night (and I mean real sleep through the night, not the "five hours is sleeping through the night" definition) until he was 15 months old.

So let's talk about Ava. The girl can sleep, and I love her for it. When she was six weeks old, she slept for 6 or more hours, four nights in a row. I was giddy from all the sleep. She's been a good nighttime sleeper from the get-go, regularly doing four hour stretches even at a week or two old. And I've been preaching the "sleep begets sleep" gospel to anyone who will listen.

However, this weekend seems to discount that particular gospel. Her naps are less than consistent. Some days it's 30 minute catnaps all day, others she'll take a good afternoon nap (or a good morning nap), and still other days, she seems to sleep all day. On Saturday she took a three-hour nap in the afternoon. It was great, because not only did it give both Matt and me some downtime, but it mostly coincided with Jonah's nap. Saturday night, she was a bear to get to sleep (it took over an hour of walking around the house in the dark), and she woke up twice overnight, having trouble falling back asleep the second time (which was about 5:30 AM).

On Sunday, she was in the Baby Bjorn and the stroller for good chunks of the day, and did most of her napping in 20-30 minute stretches in them. She only had one nap in her bassinet. Sunday night, she fell asleep with no trouble at 8:15, woke up once around 9 and settled right away, and then proceeded to sleep until 5:45 AM. That's right, almost 9 hours in a row. I'm still recovering from the shock.

Today (I'm writing this on Monday, but not posting til Tuesday) is another story altogether. I had to wake her up twice from naps (once to go the doctor, and once when we arrived), and now she's napping again. All bets are off, since she had shots today, too. One thing this kid is not, and that is predictable!

*Dr. Marc Weissbluth