Not Sleeping

[netmouse]

There are various things lack of sleep does to a person. It drags on your energy and messes with your mind. Without solid REM sleep you have dificulty processing the events of the day. Without sleep period you have dificulty thinking, and other things that follow thinking, like, say, speaking, planning, focusing, tracking things. Throw in a neat medley of hormones and a baby to deal with and, well, fun!

(Actually, the baby is a lot of fun... But.)

Rosie is wanting to eat basically every two hours, around the clock... still. In my new mom's group most of the other babies are sleeping at least 5 hours in a row, many of them from 11 pm to 6 am. Rosie did sleep 5 hours in a row a couple times, two months ago, back when I was regularly pumping in the morning and Brian was giving her a bottle of that in the evening to supplement and let me sleep. Back before my incision went south. Before the push for Brian to finish writing his thesis. Back when I got four-hour blocks of sleep.

I miss that.

Rosie had her 4 month checkup Friday. Her growth is fine. She's 26 inches long, 13 lbs, 15 oz in weight, 17 inches in head circumference. Her pediatrician asked if she's laughing yet, which she isn't, although she's sort of giggled a couple times. And then we talked about sleep.

sigh.

He recommends we try to teach her to fall asleep on her own in her crib, move the crib out of our room, and otherwise practice "parental fading" when putting her down to sleep, including gradually reducing the amount of time she spends eating during the night (11 pm to 6 am) at each feeding. We moved her crib into her room Friday evening. For two nights she has slept in there, with us in our room across the apartment, with the door closed. She still wakes up every two hours, like clockwork. She's awake for 20-30 minutes, eating, then goes back to sleep. Usually she goes back to sleep easily but sometimes she seems to be hungrier than what I can feed her. Last night she wouldn't go back down after she got up and came and saw Christmas lights on the tree for the first time. Which could also be related to the fact that I stayed up during a block of time when I often sleep, which hurts my milk supply. I ended up having to wake Brian up so I could nap a bit and generate more milk. She stayed up, fussing, until I was able to feed her again, and then she went to sleep. (I tried giving her water but it didn't seem to help.)

If I can get more sleep, I'll produce more milk, and she sleeps better. It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem, but I'm hoping with Brian free more of the time we can make good headway on it.

Comments

[gilraen2.livejournal.com]

i am going to tell you something that is contrary to modern medical thought. other new (ish) mothers to whom i have proposed this looked at me as if i were suggesting they dance around the child with bones and feathers chanting satanic verses. i was a new mother in the 70s. and i got my baby care notions from my mother (who raised six in the 30s-50s) and my older sister who was an OB nurse. my radical suggestion? feed the baby!

yes, yes, i know that the current thought is that babies don't need any real food until they are at least six months old and that they cannot properly "process" food until then. balderdash. look around you, almost every person you see over the age of 30 began eating cereal at six to ten weeks old. it didn't hurt them, and it does help the baby sleep through the night. whether they process that cereal effectively or not, their little tummies will feel full, and they will sleep longer.

so i suggest a little bit of baby oatmeal mixed into a sloppy, goopey consistency with some formula or breast milk and fed to the baby about eight at night. old wives tale? you betcha. but i also betcha it works.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

Actually, current thought is that babies can start eating between 4 to 6 months, whenever they lose the tongue reflex that causes them to push food out of their mouth, so that they swallow it instead. Some studies indicate that babies so inclined are more likely to have problems with allergies and diabetes if they start eating earlier, however.

I know a former coworker of mine would be telling me to put rice cereal in some milk for her, and we might just try that soon, but I'm going to try pumping to supplement her with my own milk first. We have some in the freezer - we might kill our emergency backup to solve our chicken-and-egg problem, knowing she can have formula if an emergency actually arises...

Thanks, for the comment though!
How is baby oatmeal different than oatmeal? Just more ground up?

[cathshaffer.livejournal.com]

This is a pretty common recommendation, but there have been studies and it doesn't work. :-) Human milk is actually much more calorie dense than any carbohydrate-type food you could give a baby, such as rice cereal, so if you want them to be as full as possible, a huge feeding of mother's milk is the best way to go. Good signs to look for for starting solids are sitting up unassisted, the emergence of teeth, and the baby grabbing food off a mother's plate.