Thalia's fertility journey

So. Napping bootcamp then.

You asked what napping bootcamp entails? Well, it first entailed getting in a sleep nanny who was recommended by a colleague. She came in to do one nap with us, but stayed for two given that Junior simply refused to nap for the whole duration of the first one. She gave us various hints tips and tricks to try to get him down, most of which you've heard before, including darkening the room, swaddling him, having a regular schedule, offering a dummy as a nap cue but taking it away before he is completely asleep, picking him up if he gets distressed, patting until he's calm, then putting him down again, etc. She asked us to make sure that almost all his naps for the next week would be at home in a darkened room, and to make an exception only for the late afternoon nap if we had to.

Being me, we've adhered to the plan almost in every detail in an attempt to give it a good try. The only area where I've been a bit lax is in sticking precisely to time. Sometimes I'll go 15 minutes later if he's finally asleep rather than waking him. But other than that we've been very good. And the results have been...mixed. I thought we'd cracked it when on Monday it took only 15 minutes to get him down for his morning nap, and he went down with no fuss at all, just a little grumbling, for the lunchtime nap. But then Tuesday every nap took at least 25 minutes to kick in, and the breakfast one was really screamy as well. Yesterday the morning and lunchtime naps only took 10 minutes each, and the only crying was when I first put him down, he immediately calmed down when I put my hand on him and then just grumbled and then lay quietly while he waited for sleep. But yesterday afternoon he only slept for 10 minutes of the hour's nap time, and this morning took 20 minutes again, although not much of it was crying.

So I dunno. It's been a long week, and unlike the previous not-very-successful napping strategy of putting him in his pram and walking, I've barely left the house. I'm going to give it another 3 days or so and then start to try him in his pram as well as in his room as I'm not prepared to be housebound for the next three months. I like to think this will work eventually but so far I'm not totally convinced.

The thing with sleep

We are quite close, really, to being in good shape. If it wasn't for the family cold, that is. But that will pass. The main reason things are a bit chaotic, is that Junior doesn't nap. Or, more accurately, he doesn't nap unless

• He is in the mood
• He is the pram AND
• The pram is moving quite fast, preferably on slightly bumpy ground OR
• He is on the boob, where the boob will remain in his mouth for the entire nap period. Removing the boob leads to waking up, screamy baby

Note that rocking the pram to and from while, say, standing in a queue to buy a cup of coffee, or talking to someone, or sitting down in any way, is not adequate. Pram must be m.o.v.i.n.g Mummy. Moving such as to go from point A to point B, where points A and B are at least 10 metres apart. That fake moving is simply unacceptable. If he does wake, he usually will not go down again, and then I have him screaming all the way home. Which makes both him and me feel terrible, not to mention the odd looks I get from passers by.

The whole napping scenario makes getting anything done rather difficult, since I'm either feeding, walking him around, or snatching a minute or two with Pob. Everything else isn't happening. To whit the mess our basement is in, and the fact that I started weighing out ingredients for biscuits for Pob's birthday party 2 days ago but haven't got beyond flour and oats. It's a little frustrating. The two hour slot Pob used to give me in the middle of the day when she was this age was fantastic. I'd bung her in her pram with her dummy and start walking, and within 5 minutes she'd be out. I could meet friends for lunch, run errands, sit and read a book, and she'd reliably stay asleep for the whole 2 hour slot. Happy days.

The upside of this non-napping is that he does crash out in the evenings. He usually falls asleep sometime during the 5pm feed, I wake him to get him ready for bed and feed him again around 7pm. He's usually asleep by 1930 or so, and I can swaddle him and put him down and he usually stays down until just after midnight, then feeds and goes down again til about 5am. Which again is not as good as Pob was doing at this stage, but is also not bad.

So I'm trying to count my blessings, but it's still frustrating not to be able to get stuff done during the day, and not to be able to spend more time with Pob. I think napping bootcamp may be in order.

Leaving Junior behind

This morning we had an interview at a nursery school for Pob. They were completely inflexible about the time, which overlapped with a likely feeding time for Junior. So we decided the best option was to leave Junior with our nanny, expressed milk and a bottle, and to see how they got on.

The interview went well. Pob was quite charming which was a relief given she had been very screamy all morning. She played and chatted and asked for a biscuit when the children were having their snack. She asked about the fish and told the director that her torch wasn't working so it needed new batteries. I think we passed. Whether or not we get a place is another matter as they only have 12 spots. But we did our best, and if we don't get a spot there there is a lovely nursery a bit closer which has us top of their wait list, so I think we'll be fine.

Meanwhile, since the director had kept us waiting 30 minutes, Junior was starving so the nanny had no choice but to try him with the bottle. She said he kept grizzling and refusing at first, but eventually realised it wasn't so bad, and took about 100mls (3 oz and a bit).

It's a relief to know he will take a bottle, but I have to confess to also feeling a bit sad. I know this is not a rejection of me, but it's also only the second feed he's had without me since he was born (the first was one overnight feed when he had jaundice in the hospital and was fed in the nursery while I was pumping). It's a step away from the close - perhaps too exclusive? - relationship that we've had.

Anyway, I've now pumped 180mls so I guess the boobs were ready to feed him. I will focus on knowing it's good to know that we have the flexibility of the bottle if we need it.

Breastfeeding redux

Well, I've been somewhat avoiding this post as things are not fantastic, but not awful, and they also change daily and I wanted a sense of where we're heading before I wrote about it. But since feeding and the faffing around feeding are what takes up about 14 hours or more of my day, it seems odd to be avoiding writing about it.

So. Breast feeding. Where to begin.

In a nutshell, since about the end of week 2, Junior has been solely on breastmilk, in contrast to my experience with Pob. He is gaining weight like a champion and was just under 6 kilos (13lbs) when I weighed him this weekend. Unfortunately around 320mls (approx 10oz) or so of this breastmilk comes in the form of supplement. Currently we are still using the SNS to do this, partly because I've got in the habit of it, partly because the one time I got really fed up and tried a bottle, about a week ago, he wouldn't take it. I tried to taper off the SNS using the instructions at Kellymom, but it didn't work, there are just some feeds where he really needs a supplement, particularly in the early evening.

There are several current challenges with our feeding process:

1. He has started to notice the SNS and to spit it out if it offends him, even if he is hungry and the boobs are clearly not giving much, as at the 5pm feed.
2. He isn't clear when he's sucking for comfort and when he is genuinely hungry. When he is sucking for comfort he doesn't like the extra flow of milk from the SNS and so he wriggles to spit it out again.
3. He is a terrible sleeper, particularly during the day, finding it very hard to settle himself to sleep even when he's clearly knackered. One thing that usually works is sucking himself to sleep on the boob. Sadly a dummy is not a good substitute for the boob and he spits it out instantly. So I am tempted, particularly in the early evening, to leave him on the boob so that he will fall asleep. Then there is the issue of whether or not to add the SNS to get a bit more milk in in the hope he will sleep longer.
4. Since I can't always tell which of the above situations is true, some feeds can feel a bit like fights with me trying to get the extra milk into him, and him spitting out the tube. If he stops fussing when it's out then I know he's just trying to suck himself to sleep and mostly I let it go. If he fusses when it's out I assume he is still hungry and keep persevering with the tube, although sometimes what this means is that he's got a huge burp coming. He's not easy to burp and it's often accompanied by vomiting, so this can get a bit messy.
5. At the end of most feeds I pump, so that adds time onto the end and also makes me less relaxed about how long he feeds for as if I want to do anything between feeds, or want him to nap, I need to get on with it as he is still feeding every 3 hours or so during the day.

Most days this is ok, but I am starting to feel very housebound as the whole process is really too hard to do outside the house unless it's a matter of life and death. I also resent how much time it takes away from Pob. I rarely feed him in the same room as her since it's just too tempting for her to grab at the syringe, play with the bottle of milk I'm using, etc.. So it all feels a bit limiting.

Yet I find it impossible to stop.

There must be a halfway house where I pump less and therefore he gets probably some formula (although I have about 3 litres of breastmilk frozen right now so that wouldn't happen immediately). There is an option where I persevere with bottles to remove the faffing associated with the SNS. There is an option where I start skipping the breast feed completely at some feeds so as to be able to get out of the house more. None of them seem ideal, but at the same time I know if I get to the end of my maternity leave and haven't spent any quality time with Pob I will be very frustrated with myself. On the other hand, recent evidence says there are fewer problems with allergies if babies are breast fed through the introduction of solid food, which won't happen til 6 months.

He's 10 weeks old this Thursday. Currently I want to get him through the first two rounds of innoculations - one this week and one in four weeks time - and then start to tail off a bit. In the meantime I'm going to try to get him to take the occasional bottle so that I have a bit more flexibility. I wish this was easier for us. I wish my boobs worked properly. But they don't and so Junior and I will have to work out a compromise that works for both of us.

For Aurelia in particular, I'm fairly sure reflux is not the issue. I think he is a somewhat refluxy baby, but we treated it with Gaviscon for a few weeks and it didn't make any difference to his feeding pattern.

More Pob snippets

Pob: Where's baby Junior?
Thalia: Nanny has taken him for a walk
Pob: Around the block

Pob likes me to put face cream on her when she comes up to the bedroom. A few days ago she saw the hand cream and asked for that instead. After I'd put it on her nose and hands, she looked at them and said: "Normal cream please!" So we had to do it again with the 'normal' cream.

This afternoon H brought Junior up to the bedroom where I had taken a sneaky lunchtime nap (Junior is NOT a sleeper). He explained he'd left Pob two floors down in the playroom with her play dough. We spent a minute admiring Junior together when a little face came round the corner of the door: "I do it by self!" she exclaimed. Cue heart attack for Mummy and Daddy thinking about the very steep, slippery stairs she'd just climbed alone. I guess she had to do it sometime.

She feels the need to police how we look after Junior, and clearly thinks it's my job (see previous post). On arrival back from a trip to my mother's house last week, I went to get her out of the car. As I opened the car door, she exclaimed: "Get baby Junior out too!" It's sweet she's taking so much care of him in these situations, although if they are both in the playroom she pretty much ignores him.

There has been a real language explosion again and most of what she says is in sentences, with a few places where one word is clear so she's just sticking to it. Most of the sentences are missing a word or two, - e.g., "Breakpast time now" (not a typo, that's a pronunciation idiosyncracy). But more and more, she talks like a real person. "Where's Po gone?",  "Daddy's in the shower," "That's my shoe." I love watching this development, and boy is it easier to help her have a good day now she can (mostly) tell us what's on her mind.