Night #5

Last night was neither here nor there, really. Not bad, not great. One feeding during the night which I guess is the goal - but a lot of waking towards the morning, so really I was up from about 6 am, which isn't good for me. I may want to invest in some shades for behind my light curtains in the bedroom because it just gets too darned bright here in the morning, which makes it almost impossible to sleep once you've woken up.

Construction resumed today. My contractor also got the first check for the sewer line work which officially puts me in debt. He will start tomorrow or Wednesday - and not a moment too soon, since the house has now officially begun to stink (it's probably stunk for a long time, I just attributed it to the diaper pail). I am dreading having the water turned off for possibly days - that's going to SUCK big time. I will have to find friends who will let me shower at their house. But boy will it be a relief when it's done - can you believe I've been delaying that repair for nine years???

Today it doesn't look like much was accomplished upstairs, other than part of the floor being laid down. Once the drywall is in it will really start to look like something. I already enjoy going up there, though. It's really nice to go into a little hidey spot like that and look down on the back yard. I love having an upstairs! It fulfills my Cancerian need to hide and be private. Heck, maybe I'll make it my bedroom.

Victory - of sorts!

Just a quick post that last night went the way I wanted - nurse to sleep @ 10, B didn't wake until 5(!), had a nurse, then sleep until 9:30 or so. Yessss!!! I don't know if that was just a fluke or what - there's always a million factors affecting sleep (stuffy nose, feeding habits that day, naps that day, activities that day, how the evening was spent, teething, what the night before was like, etc etc), but for the first time since he was very young he actually slept a good six - seven hours at a stretch. If this keeps up I may even be able to transition him to the crib so I don't have to worry anymore about him falling off the bed (never has happened, but still is a potential hazard, the worry about which I'm sure interrupts my sleep as well).

For now I've got Cajun red beans & rice in the crock pot, yogurt yogurting in the yogurt maker, and life is good. Happy Sunday, everyone!

Night #3

Last night didn't go so great, mostly because the schedule was all messed up because I had a sitter from 8-12:30 and the baby apparently slept this entire time (see, I told you he sleeps better without me!). So when I took him to bed with me at about 1 AM I gave him a little feed figuring that would be the middle of the night feed and I wouldn't feed him again until we woke up. Well, he woke up a couple hours later and I was determined to let him cry rather than feeding him, using the argument that he couldn't possibly be hungry again that soon. But after an hour and a half of screaming I started to question my logic and broke down and fed him. Then we were up for the day at nine and I had gotten maybe five hours of broken-up sleep. Ugh.

Well, tonight's a whole new night and there won't be anything breaking our normal routines, so I'll just keep plodding away. Right now I have zero evidence that any of this will actually work - so far each night has been worse than the last. But I will say my nipples thank me. That's something.

In other news, men are icky. Two more weeks of construction and really the only major unpleasantness has been the state of my bathroom. Every day after the guys leave I scrub the whole room down - the bath mat is covered with dirty boot prints, the towels are filthy from men wiping their dirty hands, the sink is covered in muddy dried drops, and of course the toilet seat is up and there's dried pee and worse all over it. There are dirty hand prints all over the door jamb and someone has the weird habit of taking the toilet paper off the roll and leaving it on the back of the toilet. It's a nightmare. I wish I could ask them to please not use my bathroom - but do I really want to say that and then spend the next two weeks with pissed-off workers alone in my house, with all my stuff, when I'm not there? Not really. So I just grit my teeth and put up with the daily trashing of my otherwise lovely white bathroom. Two more weeks, two more weeks...

I asked the main contractor to have a look at my broken sewer pipe in the hopes that he can work up an estimate for me. He said there's a lake of spilled sewage under the house. I'm so glad I didn't put this off any longer - he'll start work on it as soon as the attic is done. It's going to be very expensive but it has to happen - it's a major health hazard. And then I'll probably never have to deal with sewer line issues again! So I'll just have to go into debt for a while.

B ate nothing but a squeezy bag of food at the Baby Kennel today - woo hoo! So I won't have to pump as much anymore. This makes me so happy.

Here's some pics of the attic space at this point - the skylight is in, framing is done, and half of the insulation. I am discovering the space is a lot smaller than I'd been picturing (the hole for the stairs takes up about half the room) and a lot more difficult to access. I don't see many other mothers being ok navigating that ladder with their baby in their arms (I'll have to put B in a carrier just to get us up there safely) and I don't see easily porting boxes up and down, either, so my fantasies of play dates and tons of storage may have been a bit premature. I may have to replace that ladder at some point with something more substantial. But we did come up with the idea of putting a door over the hole to make it baby-safe. Now it's just getting up there safely, ugh!

I **** you

This is a hard post to write because it's kind of embarrassing (I can talk freely about cervical fluids but not this, apparently). But I would like to out myself as one of those weirdos who can't say "I love you." And I mean not just in a relationship - to anyone, even my own son.

Like all my bad habits, I blame this on my mother. "I love you" was never said in our house, not ever, and physical contact was kept to a bare minimum. Only later in life did my sister and I hug our mother as a greeting; I remember almost no hugs or kisses as a child (I'm not saying they never happened, I just don't remember any). I know we're not alone in this - there are many New England WASP-y types who grew up in emotionally stunted, non-demonstrative families. I remember an Intervention episode some years ago where a young addict was desperate to have her mother say "I love you" and the mother just couldn't say the words, even during the intervention, even with everyone in the room yelling at her "just say it!!!" This is how deep this stuff goes.

I so don't want Bumpus to have to guess if I love him or not. You do have to say these things out loud - kids need to hear it; you can't assume they understand that if you cook for them or save up to buy them something cool or sacrifice something you want for them that they understand you do these things because you love them. No. Kids need to hear it. Early and often. And yet.

I have lately been making a point to look B in the eye and say "I love you, Bumpus." And there are times it catches in my throat like the scene in Cheers where Diane demands Sam tell her he loves her, and he chokes on the word, "Diane, I...luh luh luh luh luh....". It's kind of like that. But I've decided this is just something that's going to take practice, like telling him the story of how he came to be. So I'm determined to overcome probably hundreds of years of uptight weirdness in our family and make this happen. We are going to be the kind of family that hugs and says I love you, dammit. I'm going to do it, even if right now saying the word makes me feel like a hole is going to form in the ground and swallow me up. This, too, shall pass.

Night #2

Continued on with the "sleep training" last night. It went about the same - serious crying jag from 4:00-4:40 in the morning; a couple more throughout, but still woke to a happy, smiling baby at 9 AM who had only eaten once in the night yet didn't seem particularly hungry. If this is how it continues for a while, I'm cool with it. I'd be up all those times anyway, I'd just have sorer nipples, and this way at least there's hope that the sleep will improve soon.

This is so much better than just leaving him alone in his crib to scream while I'm in another part of the house. Now when he screams I am right there patting his back and kissing his head. When I feel guilty I can say to myself, "he knows you're right here, he knows he's safe, he's just used to soothing himself back to sleep with a nipple so now he has to learn a new method." There is a big part of me that feels like I fucked up - that I should have had him in a crib CIO ages ago, that he could have been sleeping straight through months ago and I could be so much better rested. And I wouldn't have to be playing catch-up now. But I did try before, twice, and it just didn't feel right. Now it feels right, because I know he's darned well old enough to be sleeping better than he is. I really just needed that evidence I got on New Year's that he sleeps better without me. I just didn't have the confidence to follow through before, but I do now. Also the method feels kinder to me.

One of the things I'm learning is it's ok to admit as a parent that you make mistakes. Because with your first baby you're always doing things for the first time. There are plenty of times I've tried taking him somewhere, keeping him out, tried a certain set up or food and had it just be a big mess. So many times in the last nine months I've said out loud, "ok, that was a bad idea."

So we'll see how this thing goes. As noted there's no harm in it - it doesn't change how badly I'm already sleeping, and B seems content (except when he's screaming his head off of course). If nothing changes in a couple of weeks I may need to step it up, but I'll keep on like this and see if anything gets better, if he sleeps longer without waking.

I missed out on the comedy show tickets for tomorrow night so I am treating myself to a movie and shopping during the day instead, using the Baby Kennel as sitter. And since it's during the day I'm going to try an experiment - instead of a bottle I'm going to send a squeezy bag of food. If I could be free from pumping for sitters it would be AMAZING. Can you tell I'm kind of over breastfeeding? Any old time it's time to stop, I'm ready. I really am.

Yesterday I broke down and bought a smaller size of jeans since all of my pants hang off me and I look like I'm dragging around a soggy diaper. I am convinced all of the weight will come flying back on once I cut back on breastfeeding, but until that happens I need some pants that fit, dammit. It's not even that I'm so skinny, it's that the pregnancy took away my usually rotund butt. I am flat as a pancake there now, which has never been the case, even when I was ten pounds thinner than I am now. Apparently this is a thing that happens, hence the ill-fitting pants. So I at least have one pair of jeans I can wear until things shift around again. I got cocky enough to try on a pair of bright orange super skinny jeans. On the theme of this blog post, I thought as I looked in the mirror, "ok, that was a bad idea."

Progress

Last night I decided to try a little experiment. My Mom Guru friend sent me a really interesting article about "sleep training" which takes a very gentle, gradual approach (and doesn't recommend anything but giving in to baby's wants until at least a year, but I ignored that). It occurred to me that maybe I just need to be very patient and sloooowly move B towards the kind of sleep I want us to get (ie, unbroken). So while I wait for the sleep experts to respond to my email, last night I did this:

Nursed to sleep at 11 PM when B lost interest in playing and started whining out of fatigue.

When he woke up an hour later to feed some more, I let him cry. It sucked. But as recommended by the article I patted his back, hugged him, let him know I was right there, but there weren't going to be any breassesses. He was very angry and frustrated, but after about twenty minutes he rolled into me and went to sleep. Victory!

At 4:30 he woke again and I gave him a good long feed.

At 6:00 he woke again and I let him cry; this time he only cried for a few minutes and again rolled into me and slept.

At 9:00 he woke and I fed him so he could take on the day, then we got up.

He does not appear to be traumatized by not getting what he wanted twice in the middle of the night. I have no idea if I'm doing the right thing or what tonight will bring, I just thought a) I need to slowly reduce the number of night feedings, and b) I can't reduce them all at once because I will end up with hard, painful boobies, and he may actually be legitimately hungry.

So tonight I will do the same - nurse to sleep, offer one feeding in the middle of the night but no more, and one as we wake up. And I'll just keep doing that and see how it goes. It would be so excellent to one day only be woken up once...!

In other news, the windows went in on the attic space yesterday. It is a big step! But the space still won't look like anything until they start putting in the subfloor and drywall. It's still almost impossible to picture. This morning though I did see light coming in through the new windows from under the staircase, and that was kind of exciting. We talked about making the hole in the floor baby safe. It's going to be a challenge.

Yesterday I met with my mommy meet up group. I have made some friendships there and I like how active the group is - two to three meet ups a month, and always interesting things, like museum trips or hikes or downtown exploring. Unfortunately the group leader is moving to Florida in a couple of months, so I asked yesterday what will become of the group and offered to take it on with others. She said that's what she'd hoped, that three or four of us would step up and host events occasionally. So hopefully we can continue!

I was looking at another empty weekend and decided to see a comedy show Saturday night. I have plenty of milk pumped and I'd love a night out not gig-related. So my bandleader friend, his wife and I will go see our favorite comic and have a nice time when I don't have to be on stage or in charge of something. I'm looking forward to that!

Magical Orbs

Since everyone's blog post titles tonight are about the new year, in my usual pain in the ass contrarian way I will title mine Magical Orbs, which of course refers to my breastasiz. Which featured hugely in last night's festivities.

I am pleased to note I got through a very complex New Year's gig and New Year's Day with a certain aplomb. Loaded up the car, drove 1 1/2 hours north to drop the baby with the friend's visiting mother who was also watching their three-year-old. It hit me too late that a three-year-old boy may not understand how to play safely with a baby...but thankfully the family texted me pictures and updates throughout the night to keep my mind at ease. Drove another hour north to the gig.

The gig was in a great old Santa Barbara ballroom where we used to play fairly often years ago - so it was very nostalgic, and familiar. Also lots of old friends, including several who ditched out on my party, so it was good to get a do-over on spending time with them and catching up. Since Bumpus and the three-year-old crashed out at 10:30, I had the freedom to do something I haven't been able to do in probably over a year - go out to eat after the gig and talk shop with my fellow dancers. I miss being able to do that so much it almost makes me cry. But that's the subject of another post (FOMO). I've never once had the freedom of a sitter who wasn't on the clock until last night. You gals with willing family member sitters are so lucky!

Anyway, I had a really nice time, except for my giant, angry boobs that by 4:00 am and twelve hours since the last feed were so engorged and painful that it was almost unbearable. When I got back to the apartment where B was being watched and I was spending the night, and found him asleep, I ripped off my shirt and dangled my left boob above B's face like a magical orb just to see what he'd do. Even in his sleep he sensed The Force was in the room with him, and immediately turned his head, reached up, and suckled. It was too much for him and he puked back much of it (sorry TMI). Still and all that night even waking him up from time to time to make him eat wasn't enough - I still woke up with hard boobs. It reminded me of when my milk first came in - and I started to worry about ending up with mastitis or something.

Today I spent a pleasant afternoon on State street in Santa Barbara with my single girlfriends trashing men (my favorite hobby) and walking around with once again angry full boobs. It's amazing how one long night not feeding the baby will jack your whole system up! When I got home tonight I just strapped on the pump for some relief, and pumped out about 7 oz, a personal record. I finally feel better.

I did have a bit of a revelation, though, one that raises unpleasant realities. I often wondered why B sleeps so much better with sitters or at the Baby Kennel. I had an inkling it's because my magical orbs are not there at the ready. And I think this may be true - last night, if he really did fall asleep at 10:30, he didn't wake until I woke him at 4:00 or so; and then didn't wake much after that either. Which means he slept a longer stretch without me than with me. Which confirms my suspicion that he's only waking a lot at night to snack or use my breasts as pacifiers - not that he's actually hungry. Which makes me wonder - should he sleep separately from me? If he did would we both sleep better? Is the allure of my milk-filled jugs too much for the little guy? How the hell do I get him to sleep without me at this point? Ugh!

And boy would I kill for an unbroken night's sleep! Can that be my New Year's resolution? Sleep longer than four hours just once? Sigh.

Here are some pics of me at the gig and the baby having fun with his babysitters. He rang in the New Year in his tuxedo onesie.