I've come up with many titles for this blog post including "the spurt," "I'm a complete and total moron," and "the routine I didn't know we had." Each are equally relevant, but I had to choose one ...
Work was insane last week. Dominic and I had a big deadline (the first for me since J was born), but we all survived thanks to grandma that came over to help out while Dominic and I worked late into the evening on Wednesday night. Over the last couple weeks, J's nap habits had been changing. I say this now in hindsight as I had no idea at the time. I never really felt like we had a routine so to speak -- I felt like I never knew when she was going to nap or for how long, etc. In reality, J did have a routine; eat, up for an hour or so, and down for a nap usually lasting anywhere from 1.5 to 3 hours. Repeat about 3 times a day and that's how our first 3 months have gone. Afternoon naps were typically shorter, and sometimes a little harder to achieve, but not too bad.
Anyways, back to this past week. Her naps got really bad last week. She was fussier when she was tired, wouldn't sleep for long at all (45 min was a good nap), would wake up grumpy, etc. J had always had a habit of waking up 15 minutes into her nap and wanting someone to come back in to hold her one last time before she drifted off ... but this had turned into 2,3,4 times which was really adding up. I'd work for hours for a 45 minute nap and she'd still wake up grumpy! I'd even just try to hold her so she'd get some sleep and that wasn't even working. I felt like I was doing everything I could possibly do to get her to sleep and was failing. And let me just say that feeling like a failure as a mom is the worst feeling in the whole wide world. We were both exhausted, and I didn't know what to do. I read and re-read my baby sleep books (Baby Whisperer, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child), but wasn't finding any answers.
By Friday, I was exhausted, frustrated, and didn't know what to do. She seemed to early for sleep training (my books say 4 months), but I figured if it would get the both of us some sleep it would be worth it. So, the plan was to soothe her to sleep, lay her down, and when she woke up 15 min later, let her cry for 5 min before going back in to soothe her again (and repeat) ... well, lets just say that 1.5 days later my sleep little experiment failed miserably. We got the opposite results of what we wanted - lots of crying and hardly any sleep. At this point, we were all - Charlie included - miserable.
Plan B was to forgo the sleep training and call the pediatrician on Monday morning. They have a nurse line specifically for first time moms with crazy questions :)
J and I crashed in the recliner Sunday night at 9pm and slept till 4:45am! The nurse we spoke with Monday morning was really nice. By nice I mean she didn't say "you're an idiot and shouldn't be raising a child" or anything like that. I don't know how it came up, but I told her that while J sometimes like to lay on her side in her crib, she had been arching her back when I tried to roll her to her side and pat her ... she said "Babies typically have a growth spurt around 3 months. It's sounds like she might just be hungry." Ahhh! A growth spurt ... she was hungry ... what a brilliant and horrible realization. I wasn't totally convinced right at first. I feel like I know J's cues pretty well and she hadn't been giving me her typical hunger signs, but we fed her and fed her and are still feeding her and peace and happiness has been restored to the Schulte household :)
Not that the nap transition is completely resolved, but I've accepted the fact that babies take 3 2-3 hour naps and J is NOT a baby anymore. She is a big girl. She has entirely too much life to live to be sleeping in her crib for 6+ hours a day! So, for now I'm going to stop trying to solve the sleep "problem" that likely never existed in the first place and start enjoying my little girl that gets bigger and more wonderful everyday.
Other lessons learned:
- Her naps are changing and so are the ways that she tells us things. She is cooing more and apparently telling me she's hungry differently than she did a month ago.
- When you attempt to do too much, something suffers.
- Just love her. This is my mom's advice for all parenting situations that I was reminded of by Katherine when I called her frantically for advice on Sunday. Of course I do love J just the way she is, but I've tried to keep this in the front of my mind and not let other things get in the way or distract me from just loving her. period.
- While I had my head buried in books, a little common sense about the situation might have done me some good. Hmmm ... maybe next time.
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