I hope I never
Things I didn't ever think I would do/thought would never happen to me
1. Have trouble falling pregnant
2. Have trouble staying pregnant
3. Find pregnancy such a chore
4. Have trouble breastfeeding
5. Not be prepared for the extent of sleep deprivation that comes with a newborn
I thought doing one in two on-call as a surg reg would prepare me for anything. Wrongggggg. If you do one in two at least you get every second night off!
6. Yell at my baby
7. Not find time to excercise
I've always been kinda ...big... but a lot of that really is muscle- eg when I was at med school I used to run home- with a backpack full of textbooks- about 7km pretty much every night and I was still always about 65kg. Even when I got truly fat I've always excercised- running, swimming, sea kayaking, cycling... none of those things are particularly suited to doing with a baby, except running, perhaps, and now my feet and back are so ruined I cant.
8. Buy 'designer' baby clothes:
ok, we only have one Fred Bare and that was bought 40% off- it's a blue velour hoodie- cute as...
9. Buy a toy mobile phone for the baby.
I thought, how evil is that?! But when Patrick started making lunges for every item with buttons- remotes, my mobile, the laptop, the mouse, the eftpos thingy at the supermarket, I caved in and bought a toy mobile.
10. Buy 'plastic crap' toys
I had dreams of only buying beautiful wooden toys from plantation timber, unique and organic cotton and hemp dollies... Yeah, right. There is a reason plastic crap toys are so popular. They're good.
11. Use disposables
They're biodegradable, so they're not too evil...
12. Controlled crying/teaching to sleep
Call it what you will, I was so determined to not do this after hearing a program on Radio National about the evils of this. I now realise the 'evils' are lacking in good evidence, and that by being totally sleep deprived we were being far worse parents than letting the wee guy cry. Over the last, well, few months, Patrick has been having progressively less and less sleep, culminating in only sleeping for a hour at a time- actually about 40 minutes once you figure feeding and settling into it- every single night for the past week. We were at our wits' end. We had thought that maybe it was the travelling (and this certainly played a part) but he didn't settle once we got home- in fact he got worse so we have bowed to the inevitable. We staretd last night, starting with a reasonable time to go to sleep- 8pm (normally it's 10pm or later)- and settled in for the long haul. He took an hour and a half to go off to sleep, and it was terribly hard to not just pick him up and give him a cuddle. He then slept until 12am (a miracle in itself) and took about 20 minutes to settle- another suprise. He then slept until 5 and then took an hour to settle. The worst part of it is not hearing him cry so much as going in to find the poor wee guy sitting up in his cot, staring at his toes just sobbing... and the real tear-your-heart-out-and-nail-it-to-the-wall part is where you then have to walk out, as his wails become 'you've betrayed me'. Oh, so very hard. At 5am when I stroked his cheek or his hair he pushed my hands away. That was just plain awful. But this morning he is bright and fresh, happy as a clam. And so are we. I've also been able to express off a whole 400mL from last night to this morning, which is an unexpected benefit, especially as I left about 300mL of expressed milk in the fridge during the two weeks we were away- that was hard to throw out, let me tell you!
I'm hoping this sleep re-training will only take three or four days. Not because I'm impatient, but because the heart can only take so much! I suspect at the end we will ask ourselves why we didn't do it sooner...
Finally, a cute recent photo. I think he looks like a little boy here, not a 10-month old...
1. Have trouble falling pregnant
2. Have trouble staying pregnant
3. Find pregnancy such a chore
4. Have trouble breastfeeding
5. Not be prepared for the extent of sleep deprivation that comes with a newborn
I thought doing one in two on-call as a surg reg would prepare me for anything. Wrongggggg. If you do one in two at least you get every second night off!
6. Yell at my baby
7. Not find time to excercise
I've always been kinda ...big... but a lot of that really is muscle- eg when I was at med school I used to run home- with a backpack full of textbooks- about 7km pretty much every night and I was still always about 65kg. Even when I got truly fat I've always excercised- running, swimming, sea kayaking, cycling... none of those things are particularly suited to doing with a baby, except running, perhaps, and now my feet and back are so ruined I cant.
8. Buy 'designer' baby clothes:
ok, we only have one Fred Bare and that was bought 40% off- it's a blue velour hoodie- cute as...
9. Buy a toy mobile phone for the baby.
I thought, how evil is that?! But when Patrick started making lunges for every item with buttons- remotes, my mobile, the laptop, the mouse, the eftpos thingy at the supermarket, I caved in and bought a toy mobile.
10. Buy 'plastic crap' toys
I had dreams of only buying beautiful wooden toys from plantation timber, unique and organic cotton and hemp dollies... Yeah, right. There is a reason plastic crap toys are so popular. They're good.
11. Use disposables
They're biodegradable, so they're not too evil...
12. Controlled crying/teaching to sleep
Call it what you will, I was so determined to not do this after hearing a program on Radio National about the evils of this. I now realise the 'evils' are lacking in good evidence, and that by being totally sleep deprived we were being far worse parents than letting the wee guy cry. Over the last, well, few months, Patrick has been having progressively less and less sleep, culminating in only sleeping for a hour at a time- actually about 40 minutes once you figure feeding and settling into it- every single night for the past week. We were at our wits' end. We had thought that maybe it was the travelling (and this certainly played a part) but he didn't settle once we got home- in fact he got worse so we have bowed to the inevitable. We staretd last night, starting with a reasonable time to go to sleep- 8pm (normally it's 10pm or later)- and settled in for the long haul. He took an hour and a half to go off to sleep, and it was terribly hard to not just pick him up and give him a cuddle. He then slept until 12am (a miracle in itself) and took about 20 minutes to settle- another suprise. He then slept until 5 and then took an hour to settle. The worst part of it is not hearing him cry so much as going in to find the poor wee guy sitting up in his cot, staring at his toes just sobbing... and the real tear-your-heart-out-and-nail-it-to-the-wall part is where you then have to walk out, as his wails become 'you've betrayed me'. Oh, so very hard. At 5am when I stroked his cheek or his hair he pushed my hands away. That was just plain awful. But this morning he is bright and fresh, happy as a clam. And so are we. I've also been able to express off a whole 400mL from last night to this morning, which is an unexpected benefit, especially as I left about 300mL of expressed milk in the fridge during the two weeks we were away- that was hard to throw out, let me tell you!
I'm hoping this sleep re-training will only take three or four days. Not because I'm impatient, but because the heart can only take so much! I suspect at the end we will ask ourselves why we didn't do it sooner...
Finally, a cute recent photo. I think he looks like a little boy here, not a 10-month old...
posted by jen at 3:01 PM
1 Comments:
he does look very cute there - and definitely a mini-you!
the heart-breaking and ear-splitting difficulty with sleep training lasted a week for us and ever since life has been much sweeter. more rest all round, more confidence (we're more confident about how and when to let her cry, she's more confident that she can fall asleep on her own and not miss out on anything). hope it is equally revolutionary for you three.
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