May 6, 2005

Ahhh… bad, bad sleep night. I know I must sound like a negative guy to all those parents with good sleepers (they are either born that way, or we’ve managed to do something horribly, terribly wrong with our son) or to those of you who are years removed from this experience and forget just how taxing it is. But last night, as I had surmised, sucked.

We are definitely to blame for most of this. Our doc told us to do whatever we could to get him to sleep, so we went to the quick fix of the swing for all things sleeping. He slept, sure. But now he won’t sleep if he’s not in it. At least not without a fight and even then not well.

Case and point, last night. Night one with food weaning and night one in the crib. He maged to string together a 3 hour sleep followed by food followed by a two hours of sleep. Before that he went to bed at 8ish and proceeded to make up every 15 minutes or so until he finally fell into the three hour sleep around 12:30. This started again after the 2 hours of sleep, when he awoke at 3:45. He woke up every 15-20 minutes or so until he was finally up at 7. I actually put him in his swing at 5, in hopes of eeking out a few more precious minutes of sleep, but to no avail. There is nothing worse than getting jarred awake by a screaming baby over and over and over when you’re dreaming of the beach. And I don’t even like the beach.

I was lucky enough to preside over the latter part, Jen the former. Both of us got no sleep.

And as a extra-added-bonus, we have super cranky Hayes this morning. He’s already eaten 12oz of food since 7, and is on his second nap. Boy this is fun. Boy will I be glad when this is over. Boy, am I negative!

And guess who just woke up crying? Gotta go. Thank goodness Jen is coming home to help!

May 5, 2005

Tonight we start The Sleep Challenge. If we were TLC (The Learning Channel, not the late 90’s hip-hop/pop trio) this would make pretty good TV. However, this is real life. And this is HBomb, so, well, it’s gonna suck. Jen and I have been in disagreement about getting H to sleep better. As any frequent reader knows, H doesn’t like to sleep. His mom and dad do. It’s a constant battle. Some nights he’s up 5+ times. Three nights since he was born he only awoke twice. Those nights were spectacular.

So this disagreement goes something like this: I think he should be able to cry it out for 10 minutes at night. Jen thinks he shouldn’t. Experts, as with all things baby, are all over the board. Find a reasonable solution and you’ll find a book by an expert with cold hard facts that agrees with you.

In our case the pediatrician is the end-all-be-all expert in question. So when we have diasgreements, she settles them. So the word from god, I mean the pediatricain, is to start The Sleep Challenge. We are starting him off on rice cereal in hopes that it fills him up, then are to put him to bed in his crib when he’s almost asleep and make him put himself to sleep. If he wines, we are to let him be. If he throws a fit, we need to comfort him but not offer food. The end game is to get him weened from the many feedings a night to two all the time, and finally to one.

The game starts now. We gave him the cereal which seemed quite disagreeable to him (or he was getting crying and laughing mixed up again. Yah, right.) and then he had 3oz of formula. Today he barely slept at all and ate a ton, so we have that in our favor. So Jen put him down (isn’t that the same thing you say about a horse that you have killed?) when he was still awake and he… fell asleep. So far so good… but for how long?

May 3, 2005

Front page news on Boston.com today: Nothing to watch in the morning? I’m going back to bed! about how the three network morning shows are almost exactly the same. Hhmm… wonder if this guy reads the blog, ‘cause in my Spring Cleaning New Design post on April 13. I wrote:

Retraction: When I wrote Good Morning America in all those post below, I meant the Today Show. In my defense, who does actually know which is which? They’re all parity shows, so it’s easy to mix it up. I bet their producers forget which show they work for too and show up on the wrong set all the time.

To quote Stong Bad, I am so awesome.

Since HBomb was born, Jen and I have wanted to hear him laugh. Not ‘cause we wanted to make sure it wasn’t a train-wreck type laugh, no that really wasn’t a worry. It’s just because… well… it’s a laugh. One of the biggest things that sets us apart from all other species, as far as I’m concerned.

And if you’ve been keeping track at home, you know that we heard him laugh last Saturday (April 30th) but since haven’t been able to hear audible gold. We tried everything, and could get him almost there… then he’d start crying. For a few weeks we thought he had crying and laughing as the same thing… maybe it still held true.

But today Jen was really stressed out at work. So I was on a mission. I was going to get HBomb to laugh. I tried tossing him in the air (mom, I really didn’t toss him in the air, I’m just telling my readers that, so…oh.. think that, ok?) which brings a smile to his face even if he’s been crying. Nothing. Then I tried tickling the ribs, the feet, under the arms. He reacted, but not by laughing.

Then I remembered the one place I was most ticklish as a kid. My neck. I remember trying to tickle my dad’s neck — he always told us he wasn’t ticklish — because I thought that would be his breaking point. Turns out that kids aren’t very good tickler, since my dad is ticklish, and so am I, but no kids has been able to get me to laugh about it.

Well, my neck tickling worked. It was H’s breaking point. So I called Jen and gave him a whirl. The classic baby full-out chuckle! Hooray. Did it brighten Jen’s day? Read the post title again.

May 1, 2005

I don’t think I’ve ever been more tired in my life.

Highlights of the weekend:
The wedding
The food (best-ever wedding food)
The bride and Hayes
The bride’s sister-in-law and Hayes
Seeing Jen’s family

Low-lights of the weekend:
The Drive (some babies are good car sleepers, H is not)
Hayes’ no-sleep policy
My no sleep period
The woman who commented on what a cute baby we had then preceeded to light a cigarette right over him. WTF?

Over all it was a beautiful wedding in a beautiful house. The food was fantastic, easily trumping that of the wedding last weekend at the ultra-expensive Cape Cod hotel. And it was nice seeing Jen’s family and some of the extended family, too. Unfortunately it threw H’s already precarious sleep pattern into a tailspin causing Jen and I to get no sleep last night, and then have to deal with a super cranky H today. He is crying bawling as I type. That and we neglected to refill his meds, so we’re going to have to scramble tomorrow morning to get some, cause the little bit he’ll have tonight is well under his normal dossage. We are sleep addled idiots.

Fortunately, we’ve got re-inforcements later this week in the form of Jen’s parents. Hopefully H’s sleep will have evened out by then so he’ll be a happier camper!