May 14, 2005

As I said in an earlier post, we were ordering the Amby Bed for Hayes. Well, it came at about 7:30 last night… UPS deliver almost past our bedtime in the city. So I quickly put it togther — it was a snap both litterally and figuratively and we tentatively placed H in it.

Some people said they had early problems getting their baby to like it. Not us, Hayes smiled as it slowly bounced and rocked. He then had a normal nights sleep in it. By normal, I mean he got up three times during the night… actually more like 2, since the first was shortly after he fell asleep and he ate a ton of food.

My intial thoughts are mostly good. It doesn’t creak or groan like the Fisher Price Ocean Wonders Aquarium Swing (the closest thing I have to compare it to) and overall seems well built. On the other hand, it has the aesthetics of a school gym tether ball pole, which is unfortunate, as good looking products are important to me. That aside (and admittedly, it’s trivial), it’s proving to be a good battery free and safer replacement to the Fisher Price Aqua Swing that has been his bed, since he refuses to sleep in his crib. I look forwarrd to reporting on it further down the road.

May 9, 2005

The weekend was ok. Friday night being the best of the bunch… it seems like he was really starting to make some headway. Then Saturday night he backslid into getting up more and last night was a disaster on par with the first night. Unfortunately, Jen took the brunt of last nights’s issues (HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!), as H got up right before our agreed upon H hand-off time of 3AM. By the time he woke up again at 5ish, I was well rested (as well as I could be anyway) and was able to get H back to sleep without feeding him after 30 minutes of hardcore screaming (I bet I’ll get some confused vistors from google with that wording choice).

So where are we today? Well, for one, we’ve got a call in to the pediatrician to up H’s meds again, as he the reflux warning signs are back and he seems uncomfortable after feedings. For two, we’ve decided to throw some money at the problem in hopes of getting this thing figured out and, based on a suggestion from reader AJ (Dude, what’s with the email address? There’s no spam here. BTW, thanks for the suggestion), are purchasing the Amby Bed.

Since AJ alerted us to its existence, we’ve done alot of research. I found a great write-up on Blogging Baby about it as well as other parents that swear by it. Either Amby’s got a group of fictional Amby-lovers out there talking it up, or this thing may be just what we’re looking for. Of course, now there’s this thing about metal shavings but… well… it sounds more like litigous America than a problem. Plus, we’ll be on the look-out for it just in case.

We’re hoping that this will really help him and that in conjunction with weaning him from night feedings, we may actually be on the road to getting a decent night’s sleep. Right now that seems like a dream… you know… like the ones we don’t get to have these days.

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?

April 30, 2005

For the second weekend in a row, we’ve got a wedding to go to. This one in New Jersey to which the boy has been invited. So , basically, we’re taking HBomb on his longest car trip ever, 2 times longer than his previous, and we’re taking him to his first large social event.

I think I’m more concerned about the car ride then the wedding. After all, we went out to dinner with H last night and he was perfect. No problems, just smiling at everyone who looked his way. And after a tough work and HBomb sleep week for Jen and I, that’s exactly what we needed.

No, it’s the car ride that I’m worried about. Unlike most babies, or either of his parents, for that matter, HBomb doesn’t like to sleep in the car. He prefers to look out the window, get bored and start crying for someone to pay attention to him. Also, there’s the fact that he needs to eat about every two hours and it’s a 4+ hour trip. Oh… and there’s the return trip tomorrow. Yes, I am worried about this.

In fact, H is already whining. Perhaps that means he’ll pass out when we hit the road in an hour or so. Let’s hope.