Digging Up The Daylilies

It's Nap Week here at Gan Hooli*. Like Shark Week but a whole lot less active. Over the last two weeks Danny has been limiting his naps to about an hour spent dozing on my lap, half-heartedly nursing. He was also going through a growth spurt and fending off a tummy bug followed by a cold. I cut the kid some slack. :)

Yesterday afternoon after work Danny and I went to the bookstore and picked up The No-Cry Nap Solution and The No Cry Sleep Solution*. I skimmed the nap book while nursing Danny down, and was thrilled when he napped for 2 hours in his crib after I implemented just one change! Of course, I had a bunch to do so I didn't have a chance to read much more of the nap book during nap time. And then it was time for La Leche League and then it was bedtime and Danny needed help calming down so I didn't get to read any of the sleep book.

Today Danny slept in until 8, napped for half an hour for Drew, and appeared at my office at 11. He was so excited to see everyone that he got really riled up. Kiddo did not nap until 12:30pm. We usually leave the office at 1, so this was a bit of a problem. Katelyn solved it for me by watching my sleeping child while I went to the Post Office. (Robin -- your boxes are finally on their way).

Danny woke up around 1:30. So that's a total of 1 1/2 hours of sleep since waking up. Not enough time for an 8 month old baby. He was still yawning so I wondered if he might fall asleep in the car (nope), or after I nursed him. He dozed off nursing but woke up on transfer, just like last week. I tried shushing him, patting his back, yawning at him, all that jazz but no dice. My baby was complaining and crawling all over the crib. I lay down with him. Nope. So I grabbed my mei tai and put Danny on my back, hoping to bore him to sleep. We started some laundry. did the dishes, put away coats, tidied the kitchen. Still awake and now protesting. I changed his diaper and was about to take him back to the couch to nurse down again and STOPPED.

Part of Nap Week is teaching me how to help Danny nap. One thing I keep reading is that sometimes babies get confused when they go to sleep one place and wake up somewhere else, and so they don't go back to sleep. Nursing Danny down in the living room is comfy for me, but it's sunny in there and then I have to move him to the crib if I want to get anything done, and Danny rarely sleeps through the transfer. I turned around and headed back into the bedroom. It's nice and dark in there. I lay down on the bed with Danny in the cosleeper and we nursed. For half an hour (Hey, wasn't this nap thing supposed to buy me time? Why does it take so long?). But eventually he fell asleep. I rolled away from him, careful not to squash the cat who had curled up right behind my bottom, and tucked my baby in for a nap. That was at 3:30. It's 4 o'clock now. I'm hoping that he's going to sleep until 5:30, but I'll settle for 4:30.

Tomorrow we'll try to do better. I'll try to be prepared, and to tell Drew what I know so that if Danny naps for him maybe Danny can get a decent morning nap. Hopefully by the end of the week or this time next week we'll have the hang of this!



*Gan Hooli = "Garden of Hooligans" in my own form of Hebrish.
* Both by Elizabeth Pantley, if anyone's dying to know. The NCSS is so much more of a sane sleep book than Ferber. Oh my lord. I can respect an author who says "Every child is different. Try these things, and find what works for you."

Next month we are going on a whirlwind tour of Britain, showing our progeny off to my extended family. We'll have long days, lots of car rides, and no access to a dryer or washing line. Danny will be 5 months old and has worn maybe 10 disposable diapers ever (free from the hospital). On our recent holiday in the Caribbean we were able to stick with cloth because we had clothesline access, hot sun, and a breeze. Our diapers dried in 2-5 hours. That's not going to happen in a hotel bathroom in England in October.

I bought a packet of g-diapers as emergency back-up but didn't actually use them. I'd like to use them in Britain but according to the website they aren't sold there. Does anyone know if there's something similar available? They're a disposable liner that goes in a reusable cover.

Short finding the UK-equivalent of g-diapers, what brands of disposable nappies do you like? Ideally something I can find at Boots or Waitrose/Tesco/Asda. We'll be staying in Chester and Aylesford.

Thanks!

I left my office on May 1st with crampy contractions. I walked back in this morning after 12 weeks away. How'd it go? Pretty well.

This morning's home routine went very well. Danny had a good substantial feeding at 6:15 and a nibble at 8:15. Over breakfast I pumped a whopping 7 oz (my left side is an amazing producer. I may need a dairy cow shirt.). I headed out the door at 8:35 pushing a stroller but no kid. I had my pump and the big diaper bag so Drew wouldn't have to schlep it later.
Everybody was really happy to see me. I dove back in right away and I think we may well be on track to do our first concentrated turnover of apartments on Friday. I took a pump break at 10:45 and got Danny a good 5 oz for tomorrow. In the meantime Drew tells me that Danny required a whole lot of attention; he got about 30 minutes of work done all morning. And apparently my body had the right idea, as he ate all the milk I left.
Drew brought Danny over to me at 11:45. Danny was a sweet sociable kid. He did get a little fussy around 1:30 when he was full and dry. Katelyn, my boss's daughter and my maternity replacement, took Danny on a short walk for subs. The kiddo conked out. :) He was good the rest of the afternoon until about 3:15. At that point we were out of diapers and Danny was once again overtired. So I started to wrap up my work; we got out of the office around 3:40. We walked to the post office and then home, making it home by just before 4:30. At that point we were both hot and tired. We changed our clothes and crashed in our favorite nursing glider. Drew grilled dinner so I didn't have much to do.

Tomorrow I plan to take more diapers, which should allow us to stay longer. I also need to work out how to get Danny in motion when he gets bored and overtired. I may just need to rock the stroller or wrap him and sway. I'm not sure how to make that work with my desk job, but we'll get there eventually.

I almost posted this to Facebook before deciding it's not for polite company.( A tale of baby poop )

It's been a rough afternoon at Chez Bernat. I was awake and ready to go when Danny woke up at 5:30. But not at 7:30 and barely so at 8:45 when I finally levered myself out of bed. Danny ate and napped nicely until after lunch. Then he started fussing and nothing was going to make this baby happy for long. Hungry? Half the time it's not what he wants. Burpy? Too worn out to burp.  Wet? Yes, and again and again and again. I think he's just hot and overtired.

The funniest time was after one of the handles on the Snappi broke so the diaper wasn't fastened well. I had just changed him and left him lying on the table while I tied the wrap to put him in. I heard a squawk as my baby boy peed on his own head!

Finally I grabbed the pacifier and held it for him so he wouldn't spit it out. This kid has never taken a pacifier before; the only one we have is from the hospital. Most of the time he sucks on our fingers because his own are not satisfying. Well after 2 minutes of sucking the baby was out like a light. When I was ready to sit down I popped it back out to see if he'd wake up and nurse. Nope. Baby's asleep. Good. Maybe he'll wake up happy!