Keep calm and carry on.

3 months ago today Tess was born!  I can’t believe it’s been 3 months.  Part of me can’t even picture my life before she was born because it seems like she’s always been a part of it, but in another way December 14 seems like yesterday…

Dec 14, 2012

I suppose to commemorate her “3 month birthday,” yesterday we had a first at the Jenkins residence. I had my first full-on, nuclear mama meltdown. I guess it was just a matter of time, but oh man… it was one for the record books.   

Me + Tess on a less crazy, happier day.

I plead innocence though.  It wasn’t my fault at all.  I blame this damn book I’ve been following, Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child.  OK maybe I’m partly to blame, because I’m a crazy, over-the-top Type A psycho and have a tendency to get totally consumed by things.  Right now I’m consumed by the “rules” set forth in this book.  I’m sure most people can read the book, get good advice, incorporate some changes and be fine.  I on the other hand have been completely militant and ridiculous about what this book suggests and its just not working for us.

Recommended... just don't be OCD about it like me!

 I had started reading this damn book when Tess was just a couple weeks old, a lot of what it has to offer is geared towards older babies and getting a good sleep schedule going, but one thing it did suggest even early on was to get daytime sleep and to start an early bedtime.  When I started putting Tess to bed at 7 was when she really started sleeping through the night – first it was 7 or 8 hours. Between the early bedtime and daytime sleep she was getting, she started sleeping up to 10 or 11 hours at night.  I thought the author of this book, Marc Weissbluth, was an absolute genius.  It's a little counter-intuitive – that the more sleep she got, the more sleep she would get, but it really is true. Sleep begets sleep.  Overtired babies get excitable and don’t want to sleep – true in theory and in practice!  Things were going great.

Waking up very happy after 12 hours sleep.

That is, up until a couple of weeks ago.  Tess would take some naps during the day, a morning nap in her bassinet, maybe a nap in the Baby Bjorn while I took a walk through the neighborhood, a lot of naps in her swing.  It was great – she loves her swing and could spend days in there, and I was able to get so much done around the house. House was always clean, laundry done, dinner cooked, blog updated, I was showered, Tess was happy – it was great.  I felt I had conquered motherhood! 

Our video monitor so we can keep an eye on her while she sleeps.

Then I went back and started reading more of the book a couple of weeks ago, and learned that this author does not believe in naps anywhere other than the crib or bassinet.  He thinks naps in a swing, while being held, etc don’t provide restful sleep.  Also, naps less than 1 hour are pointless.  And there should be a nap at around 9am, 11am, 1pm and maybe another at 3pm.  And the baby can’t be awake for more than 2 hours.  And there are two ways to put baby down for a nap, putting them in the crib while they are awake and letting them fall asleep on their own OR by soothing them to sleep and then putting them down.  Both are fine, but if you choose the latter you need to put them to sleep like that every single time without fail, and then eventually need to change over to the first method.  The list of rules goes on.

Don't bother me, I'm sleepin'!

So in typical Meag fashion I panicked because as well as things were going, I was apparently doing everything wrong.  Sometimes she would nap for 30 minutes.  She would often not nap in her crib.  I didn’t have regular naps occur at the same exact time every day.  She would sometimes be awake for longer than 2 hours.  I would sometimes put her down awake sometimes I would rock her to sleep. Holy crap, how have I been screwing this up so badly?

Baby Bjorn nap

As much as Tess sleeps at night, she does usually start waking up between 3 and 5am and I will have to put her pacifier in a few times. She will always fall back asleep after this, but I really wanted her to stay asleep all night so I wouldn’t have to keep getting up to give her a pacifier.  (Her relationship with her pacifier is a blog post for another day, because, damn. She loves that thing). But yea, I got greedy. Like a crack addict out for a fix, I had tasted the sweet nectar of a baby who sleeps and I wanted more!

Car seat nap

I thought if I started doing things more “by the book” Tess would not start waking up at 3 or 4 and would stay asleep the entire night.  As it turns out, Tess was not feeling the new rules. I was trying to force her to sleep in her crib and it would just result in her crying all day. OK, Weissbluth, I can see the swing or bjorn not being an ideal nap, but hey – at least that way she WOULD sleep.  This thing about trying to force naps in her crib was resulting in NO daytime sleep so life was a nightmare.  And I was picking her up to hold her a lot more after she would cry in her crib for a while, so she is already learning at 3 months that if she cries, mama picks her up!  How is this possible? So basically, I had a good thing going and should have kept doing what I was doing, but instead totally f’d everything up.

Bassinet nap.

And yesterday… it all caught up with me.  I put her down for a late morning nap in her crib and she was totally asleep. So I left her to take a shower.  I was in the shower thinking “damn, I am awesome at mothering!”  She was sound asleep in her crib and life was good.  So I took a nice long hot shower and was loving life, then I turned off the water and shit got real. Fast. I stepped out to hear Tess crying from her crib.  I only just started being comfortable with the idea of leaving her alone to shower so I panicked.  In my towel, hair dripping everywhere, I ran into her room.  She had spit up (what else is new?) and was all wet so I had to change her.  Again, still dripping in my towel I picked her up to change her.  She was very unhappy so she was just screaming, screaming.  Even once she was changed and dry and being held, still screaming, screaming. 

I was doing my best to soothe her, and finally she started to calm down.  She eventually fell back asleep in my arms and as I was getting ready to try to put her back down in her crib, Fenway – my dog – trots into the nursery and let out this high-pitched loud-as-hell BARK!  For no reason! There was nothing to bark about, maybe a squirrel buried an acorn outside, I don’t know - he just wanted to be a little shit.  So Tess trembles, wakes up and starts crying again.  And after so many days of Tess crying and not sleeping, I lost my shit.  I went to smack Fenway and he turned and ran. Which only made me more irate.  So I went after him, again, screaming like a banshee, still wet in my towel, holding screaming Tess.  He knows I'm pissed so he’s not slowing down.  I’m slip-sliding all over the house, towel now barely hanging on when I corner him in the kitchen, screaming baby still in tow. He then starts this game where when I go to chase him around one side of the kitchen island, he goes the other way – we go back and forth for a minute, at this point I’m speaking in tongues I'm so f’ing angry.  Finally I chased him into my bedroom. He jumped on the bed, I smacked his butt and he ran off.  I then look at the spot in the bed where he had jumped and I kid you not people, I see a big… yellow… wet patch. He fucking PEED!!! On my bed!!!! My uncontrollable outward rage quickly transformed into a cold fury.  At that point I was ready to open the front door and say, “Fine, you wanna run?  Go. Run. Have a nice life.”

Dogs recovering after a stressful day.

Twickers' inner monologue:

"I can't believe Mr. Golden Boy got the smack down and not me, for once."

At this point, Tess still screaming, I walk her into her room, put her down in her crib, closed the door, walked back to my room, closed my door, and began to sob uncontrollably. I couldn’t even face cleaning up the mess.  I just balled. I finally composed myself enough to call Andy, when he picked up I just said “Can you come home?” And started to ball again.  Through my sobs I was able to get out “Tess… crying… Fenway… peed… need… you…” or something like that.  Fortunately Andy came home right away to talk me off the ledge.  And to deal with the pee.  I was consumed with guilt – not only mommy guilt over the fact that I was doing everything wrong with Tess’ naps and all she could do was cry, but also dog-mom guilt over terrorizing my poor dog to the point where he friggin’ peed himself!  Anyone who knows me knows how in love with my dogs I am, and now here I am abusing them.  Twickers is used to getting in trouble, she’s naughty.  When she gets reprimanded, she gives me a dirty look and the finger basically. But Fenners is so obedient and well-behaved, he doesn’t know what to do with himself when he gets in trouble. Hopefully PETA isn’t reading this.  I’ll be convicted of cruelty to animals!  How did I lose control so badly? All I could think was “what the hell happened?” I was mom of the year 3 weeks ago, and now everything was a total mess. 

Me + Fens in matching PJs. BFFs.

I could just hear Tess telling Andy “today was crazy, mom was crying just like I do and I thought she was going to kill our dog!”  Poor kid. She’s 3 months old and is already going to need therapy.

"My mom is clinically insane. Help!"

While yesterday was a complete shit-show, it put a mirror up to my face and told me to chill the f out about naps.  Today she had her usual morning nap in her bassinet, I tried putting her down for a nap in her crib late morning and she wasn’t interested. So rather than fight her on it, I gave in and cuddled her for a bit longer.  A while later, I tried again and she fell right to sleep - no problem.  Right now she’s sleeping in her swing.  A little later I’m going to take her for a walk. And the dogs get locked up during naptime now. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and I can’t expect to completely change everything over night. Besides, she sleeps great! What is my problem? I need to just be grateful for the fact that I have a 3 month old that sleeps 12 hours a night.  Slowly I’ll start trying to get her to sleep in her crib more but for now, I’ll take what I can get. 

Happy well-rested baby.