Gifts for Mommy & Daddy

Have you ever been so proud of someone you could just cartwheel right out the door?

Some people know how much we've been struggling lately with MJ and her sleep issues. She was doing so well in Ohio since we started Babywise: two hour naps, 10-12 hour sleeps through the night . . . how could we ask for more?

Then we moved.

Suddenly she wasn't napping at all, and had started this odd pattern of waking at 2, 4, and 6am, just to have her pacifier replaced (which had never been an issue before). Over time, her naps became more and more regulated, and she began napping longer and longer, until this past week, when she began reliably taking two 3-hour naps per day. Usually I wouldn't let her sleep that long during the day, but since she wasn't sleeping at all at night, I wanted to let her catch up a little so she wouldn't be so miserable.

Then came Wednesday night.

She went down happily at 9pm, and slept until 2:30am. Then woke again at 3am. And again at 3:30am. And again at 4am. Finally, she stayed asleep, but kept making these weird humming noises that drove me out of the bedroom and onto the couch. The monitor wasn't picking those up, so I ultimately drifted off around 4:15am.

Until 4:30, when Dad was up for work and decided that my sleeping on the couch must mean that something horrible had happened, and woke me up to ask if the baby was okay. Really?

Uuuuuuuggggghhh.

I mumbled something probably incomprehensible, and tried to fall back asleep, until then Mom was up and stomped through the house to reach the kitchen, where I swear she picked up a spoon in both hands and began spinning as fast as she could to bang as many objects as possible.

Double uuuuggghhh.

I stumbled back up to bed and managed to sleep on and off with the baby until around 9.

I think I slept a grand total of 15 minutes. Poor MJ didn't get much more.

So yesterday I decided to get tough with the naps. Even if she seemed like she was going to sleep longer, I woke her up after two hours. I also upped her formula intake, because she still seemed hungry after her usual six ounces.

She took three 2-hour naps and all of her feedings were 7oz.

Last night, she slept ten straight hours.

I, however, woke up every hour, wondering why I wasn't hearing someone demanding her pacifier be popped back into her mouth, so unfortunately was unable to take advantage of this gift of sleep. Tomorrow is another day.

In other news, cloth diapering is going GREAT. I absolutely love it. I just wish I had more of them! Six isn't enough, even though I wash every day (really, I need like ONE more), and I wish I had more covers so that when they sometimes get slightly damp (after a marathon nap, for instance), I had others ready to go. Surprisingly, even after her ten-hour snooze last night, the cover wasn't wet. Shrug.

Also, when I went back to disposables the other day because I ran out of cloth, she almost instantly got a diaper rash. I don't know if it's the chemicals in the disposables or the absorbant gel or what, but as soon as we switched back to cloth, it disappeared (with a little help from the creamy Desitin in the blue box - best stuff EVER). Maybe circumstantial, maybe cloth is just amazing. I'm going with amazing.

So, what have I learned? Babywise is the baby sleep bible, and should be followed exactly for a happy baby and happy mommy. If your baby seems hungry after a full feeding, you should probably feed her a little more. Cloth diapers are the best things ever, and I can't wait to buy more. What else is there to know?