Sleep

I read in some book that pediatricians define "sleeping through the night" as sleeping for five hours... impressive for a newborn, perhaps, but not nearly acceptable to most healthy human beings. (They also said that many parents who say their babies sleep through the night don't realize that the babies wake up and put themselves back to sleep without waking the parents up.)

Midnight to 7:30 AM (and counting), though, that's something... not a bad accomplishment for a four-month-old!

How weekends work

Papa has been traveling a lot these last few months, and this weekend, after an entire week away, he was home and eager to spend time with me and the baby. By Sunday, I found I needed a little down time, so I was looking forward to a little gardening and sun while the baby napped in the afternoon. Papa kept trying to change our plan, always suggesting some activity that involved waking the baby up - going for a walk together, running errands together, etc. We bickered about it, and I thought more about the meaning of naptime while I was deadheading the roses and Papa was off doing errands.

When he came back, what I explained to him was this: he has a job which is basically Monday-Friday. On the weekends, he could catch up on work if he was behind, but typically it was his time to plan as he wished. This is why he gets annoyed at me for nagging him to mow the lawn on the weekends.

My job taking care of Mini-Me is 24/7, and my "weekends" are scattered about in 1-3 hour chunks while she naps. This is why I was so opposed to waking her up to run errands - not only was I doing housework during her naptime (ie working on the weekend) but I would be giving up the day's last chunk of time where I could decide for myself how I wanted to spend it.

Papa seemed nonplussed when I explained this to him, as if it wasn't new information for him, but it was a good metaphor for me to consider, and made me feel less guilty about goofing off playing computer games during naptime instead of folding laundry.

Perspectives

We all went to a housewarming party this weekend, hosted by the new neighbors across the street. One of the couple is a pediatric psychiatrist, so many of the guests were work colleagues - NICU nurses and so on. It was telling, because usually people who meet Mini-Me comment about how cute she is, how alert she is, or something like that. Almost universally, people at this party came up with comments like "Oh, she looks so healthy!" and "Her cheeks are so nice and rosy." Another case of what you see is based on where you're sitting...

Missing the Old Me, Part Three

About four years ago, I quit a stressful job and started a full-time life of self-employment. I also started going to kickboxing classes, climbing a few times a week, and developed a crush on a cute trainer who encouraged me to start hitting the grown-up weights. Eventually I went back to my roots as a martial artist, sparring with him a few times a week. I loved feeling sore and slightly battered, I loved knowing that I was lifting more weights than many of the guys I saw at the gym, and I was totally badass.

I gained 38 pounds during pregnancy. Twenty-five pounds magically melted away, between the birth itself and the first six weeks of postpartum. And I've been stuck at 156, twelve pounds heavier than I started and twenty-four pounds heavier than my best fighting weight.

Post-partum has humbled me. I remember going to a mother's group when Mini-Me was six weeks ago, wearing maternity jeans and noticing that another mother, with a ten-week-old infant, was wearing maternity jeans also. "Not me," I thought to myself, "I'm going to be in my old clothes quicker than that."

I let my frustration slip at Pilates class last week, when the instructor gave me that old line about "it takes nine months to gain the weight, give yourself nine months to lose it". "Not me," I retorted jokingly, "that's fine for everyone else."

I started recording workouts on the DVR, and today I got a few sets of dumbbells at Target and actually started working out. Mini-Me was amused for about 30 minutes while she sat in her swing watching me jump around the room like an idiot, but finally I put her down for a late-evening nap (bad idea) and did two more programs.

I did feel like an idiot. I'm sure I did look stupid. But I also did work up a sweat, and I did feel muscles burning. I'll keep it up for a week and see how I feel. The routine I did tonight is one episode of "Body Electric" and two episodes of "Denise Austin's Daily Workout", skipping commercials. It's dorky, but if it works (and no one sees me doing it) I don't care.

Travel tips

Lessons learned from this weekend's trip to Minneapolis:

* even if the baby feels warm enough, her face will probably get chapped outdoors when it is below freezing all the time

* if you suspect she will need a swing in order to sleep properly, deal with it ahead of time rather than slogging through 24 hours of fussing and bad sleep before hitting Craig's List to get a used swing

* pick a nursing spot before you go to bed and learn where all the light switches are so you're not stumbling down unfamiliar stairs with a squirmy baby in the dark

* lace-up boots are hard enough at the airport security line, but even more difficult when you're wearing the baby in a sling

* pre-boarding the airplane rocks!

Parenting goals 2008

Lately I've been hooked on a blog called To-Do List, and the most recent posting is someone's list of parenting aspirations for 2008:
http://todolistblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/parenting-aspirations-2008.html

Good sleeping

For three nights in a row now, Mini-Me has slept in a pattern I'm growing really fond of: five hours between 10 PM and 3 AM and another five hours between 4 AM and 9 AM. The hour in between is just the right amount of time for feeding her, changing her diaper, rocking her back to sleep, and pumping breastmilk before I go back to bed. Plus she's been taking a good nap in her swing every morning that runs from one to three hours. I feel like a brand new person.

Yesterday I ran into a father with a six-week-old baby in a bookstore. I asked him how it was going, and he shook his head. "Not well," he said. "We're dying from lack of sleep." I remember a turning point when my body suddenly started dealing well with the amount of sleep I was getting. It's not that we all get enough sleep, but it's astounding how little sleep we seem to need after a period of adjustment...

Teddy Bears' Picnic

Mini-Me has been really into cheery songs lately, which helps to cheer me up but makes me completely manic after a week of having "Teddy Bears' Picnic" stuck in my head.

If you go into the woods today, you're in for a big surprise.
If you go into the woods today, you better go in disguise.
'Cause every bear that ever there was
Is gathered there for certain because
Today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic.

If you go into the woods today, you'd better not go alone.
It's lovely out in the woods today, but you're better off safe at home.
'Cause every bear that ever there was
Is gather there together because
Today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic.

Picnic time for teddy bears!
The little teddy bears are having a lovely time today.
Watch them, catch them unawares
And see them picnic on their holiday.

See them gaily gad about!
They love to play and shout, they never have any cares.
At six o'clock their mommies and daddies come take them home to bed
Because they're tired little teddy bears.

Our other favorites: Accentuate the Positive and The Ballad of Casey McPhee.

Baby Math: percentiles

I overheard a comment in Mommy/Baby Pilates class this week that made the math teacher in me want to cry:

"Well, the pediatrician seemed worried - he said our baby is at the 50th percentile for weight. I don't know if we can get her up to 100%, but we're sure going to do our best!"

I was so proud of my husband, who is not-so-much a math geek but understood why this was both sad and funny when I told him about it.

Ok, so just to clarify about percents and percentiles:
percent describes a proportion compared to the number 100. If you took a test and got half the questions right, you would have 50%, whether it meant scoring 10/20, 4/8, or 125/250.

percentile describes a value compared to a normal distribution. If a baby is at 20th %ile in weight, it means that it is *normal* for 20 out of 100 babies to weigh the same or less at that age. A baby whose weight is at the 50th %ile is exactly at the population average for babies that age. And a mother who succeeds in fattening her child up the 100th %ile now has a kid who is heavier than *every* other baby that age!

Riddle me this:

How does a less-than-12 pound creature generate an entire load of laundry in under 45 minutes? Why, by spitting up all over herself, Mama, and her blankets... twice!

Mini-Me's first Christmas

We traveled across the country with Mini-Me, and it wasn't that bad. I recommend getting an aisle seat near the back - the plane will be emptier at the back, and there is better access to flight attendants and bathrooms. The changing table in the airplane beats any I've seen in a restaurant so far. (I'd like to start a review website, similar to Yelp.com, that focuses just on the baby-friendliness of restaurants. In general I've been positively surprised by the attitudes of waitstaff and negatively surprised by the condition/lack of changing space in the restrooms.)

Mini-Me was having a bad reflux day when we left for our red-eye flight, so she'd already spit up on one outfit and two bibs before we even got to the airport. She arrived at my parents' house at 6 AM, cheerful but soggy and sour-smelling. My mother plopped her right in the kitchen sink for the first of many baths that week. (My mother seemed a little obsessed with the baby being clean; my father confirms she was this neurotic with me and my sister too.) So the baby finished up the week very clean but a little chapped.

It was interesting watching Mini-Me train my parents over the course of the week. My father emerged as the more intuitive soother of the pair of them, and my mother took some cues from me and from him so that by the end of the week, they were both great with Mini-Me in awake mode and overtired mode. My mother was especially good at eliciting talking and cooing. Toward the end of the week, my husband and I left the baby with them and went out for dinner just the two of us, which hadn't happened since Mini-Me was born. We had fun, but I was distracted and anxious about how things were going at home, so we only stayed out a few hours. We were all grateful to be back home in our usual routine after a week away, but Mini-Me was a champ with all the schlepping around and in all the flight wasn't that much harder than pre-baby.