The pace of my day-to-day life has been slower since Patrick came along, but the wheels have come to a grinding halt the past couple of days. I seem to have caught some bug or other (it can’t possibly be the flu because I had both of my flu shots, dammit!) and that has necessitated as much rest as I can squeeze into the day. My time is spent feeding the baby, coaxing the baby to take a nap, dashing around feeding everyone else (even myself), letting the dog out and preparing baby bottles before flinging myself in the direction of the couch to nap for as long as possible before the baby wakes up and I start the whole (boring) cycle again. Dayquil and popsicles are my friends right now.
I had chills so bad last night that I layered on the clothes and bedding. T-shirt, sweatshirt, sweatpants, two pairs of wool socks, wool gloves (poor baby screams when I touch him with my cold, cold hands) and three quilts. I still had chills! Then I woke up for Patrick’s 3:30 AM feeding drenched in sweat and realized that at some point I had stripped off the gloves, socks and sweatshirt and thrown back all but the sheet and one quilt. Funny thing was I’d neatly stacked the socks and gloves on my bedside table. Who does that? But then, who gets undressed in their sleep? Me, it would seem.
Exhaustion has been a constant companion for the past several weeks, but illness on top of exhaustion makes for forgetful moments. I’ve lost track of when I last fed Patrick… which is okay, because he does an excellent job of reminding me to feed him, but it’s disconcerting. I checked the mail twice yesterday because I’d forgotten I had already gone out to check it once. (Did I check it today? I honestly can’t remember.) Things like that. Last night I started watching a show I’d recorded (Spectacle: Elvis Costello with Bruce Springsteen on the Sundance channel) and realized thirty minutes into it that I couldn’t remember anything I’d seen.
And so it goes.
I think I had more to write about, but I can’t remember what it was.
We’ve passed it, actually. Patrick turned six weeks old on Friday. I have heard that six weeks is the magic milestone where babies (and life with babies) get easier. Of course, some people say it’s eight weeks, others say it’s three months. At least one person told me six months, but that balances with the one person who told me two weeks. Still, six weeks seems to be the most frequently quoted age. I’m here to report… they’re right. Sort of.
After Patrick’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day last Tuesday, the week took a turn for the better. In fact, every day since Tuesday (knock on wood and whatever superstitions necessary) has been a pretty good day. By pretty good, I mean there have been no extended periods of fussiness or crying, no times when he couldn’t be consoled by holding, rocking bouncing, changing or feeding him. After last Tuesday’s all-day meltdown, this is a minor miracle not to be taken for granted.
The icing on the happy (or at least content) baby cake is that Friday night was the first night that I was able to put him to bed without a prolonged bout of fussing and crying. Previous to that, every night was a 2 to 4 hour chore of trying to get him down for the night. He’s been sleeping in his crib since day 1, but he naps downstairs in his rocker during the day. The transition was a bit of an ordeal, not matter what time I attempted to put him to bed. I thought maybe it was something about his room (too quiet, too warm) or his crib (too big, too flat), but he wasn’t having any problems sleeping once he was actually in there. I still don’t really know what the issue is, but I’ve found the fix-- or at least a fix that has worked for the past three nights (and I’m knocking on wood again). Last night was his best night ever in terms of going to bed easily and not needing to be soothed once he was there. Of course, today he’s waking up every hour or two and eating more than usual, so I assume it’s his six-week growth spurt. He’s fussier than usual, but nothing like last Tuesday. This is manageable and I don’t feel like I’m losing my mind.
So yes, the six-week mark was a turning point of sorts. But I don’t know if it’s because Patrick has gotten easier or because I’ve recovered from having him and gotten a little better at this parenting thing. He is certainly interacting more with me-- smiling occasionally, making prolonged eye contact, snuggling against me-- which helps. But he’s also crying and fussing less. Is that because he’s six weeks old or because I’ve figured out what to do to keep him content? I don’t know, but I’ll take it.
This is not to say that it has gotten easy. Hardly. I’m exhausted and averaging about 4 hours of sleep a night. Part of the problem is how long it takes me to fall asleep-- if he sleeps for 3 hours, I might sleep for 2. Last night, he never slept more than 2 and a half hours, so I never slept more than an hour before I was getting up with him again. Tired. So very tired.
I had a much needed break planned for Saturday, with a massage and a movie scheduled, but my plans were derailed by illness (my generous babysitter, not me). I didn’t realize how much I was looking forward to a break until it was taken away. Talk about inconsolable (me, not Patrick). Jay is nudging me to hire someone for part-time childcare. I keep thinking if only I had a few hours to myself I’d be able to forge ahead for another month, but I can’t even get that little break right now. So I’m contemplating the options. I’m pretty sure I can’t keep going like this until May or June when Jay gets home. The reality is that there are very few people I trust to watch my child and, for one reason or another, the few friends I do trust aren’t available. I’m not sure how I can hire a stranger to take care of him, but that may be what I need to do. I’ve been resistant-- partially because Patrick is so young and partially because it’s so expensive-- but I’m starting to think it might be the best thing for my mental health. Falling apart when a friend lets me down (even when it’s unavoidable) is not good mental health.
So here we are, at just past six weeks since Patrick was a born and a month since Jay returned to Dubai. It’s gotten a little easier and more manageable, to be sure. He’s an amazing little creature, which makes up for a lot, including the sleepless nights and the assorted aches and pains associated with carrying a chunky baby for hours every day. I’m even managing to think about writing, editing and book promotion, so that’s something. Maybe-- for right now-- it’s enough.
After a couple of non-baby posts, I’m regressing. Patrick had a horrible day yesterday. He cried, he fussed, he screamed, he wriggled and fought the air with his little balled up fists. I have absolutely no idea what the problem was and, as I discovered, I had absolutely no idea how to resolve it except to wait it out. Which I did, but just barely.
With the exception of one one-hour nap in the morning and two or three fifteen-minute catnaps in the afternoon and evening, he was awake from 11:30 AM to 10:30 PM. That is a long time for a little baby to be awake. That is also a long time for a tired mama to be rocking, holding, feeding, cuddling and talking to a little baby. I fed him when he was hungry, changed him when he was wet, held him when he seemed to want to be held, put him down when he seemed sleepy, burped him, bicycled his legs for gas, kept him warm (but not too warm), checked his temperature (no fever), swaddled him, gave him a pacifier, moved him from downstairs (too much light and noise, maybe?) to upstairs, dimmed the lights, sang to him, hummed to him, stayed quiet… and nothing worked for more than five minutes to keep him calm. Finally, for no real reason I can discern except sheer exhaustion, he fell asleep (swaddled) around 10:30 and slept until after 4 AM. Thank god and whichever saint watches over frazzled mothers. Seriously.
It’s not just the crying that sends me around the bend-- though it’s certainly the main problem since I have such a low tolerance for loud noise-- it’s the constant physical contact. I’m not used to having my personal space invaded with such frequency. Yes, I know this is my baby and any idea I have of personal space went out the window when he took up residence in my uterus, but… still. Don’t get me wrong, I love to hold him when he’s calm and sleepy and warm. It’s soothing to have his little head nestled against my shoulder, his fingers clasping mine. That’s wonderful. It’s when he’s fussing and crying, when the arms are flailing about and the legs are kicking and he’s struggling to lift his head and manages to clip me in the jaw that I feel like I’m on the receiving end of a violent attack. It doesn’t seem like it should hurt, but it does. I feel like my body is bruised after yesterday. Swaddling helps a little, but he still manages to wriggle and twist and push against me so hard I have to hang on tight. It’s physically exhausting. Thankfully, my incision isn’t as tender as it was a couple of weeks ago because those belly kicks hurt.
I had my own little meltdown around 9:30 last night, holding him and praying he would go to sleep so I could get some sleep myself. It wasn’t long before he was sleeping peacefully and looking like an angel, but of course I had no idea that was coming when I was melting down. In that moment, after ten hours of constant care of a fussy baby with barely a break to feed the pets and myself, it felt like it was never going to get better. Ever. Like I was trapped in that nursery, in that chair, with that crying baby forever. Horrible, helpless feeling, that.
But today is a new day and so far, so good. He slept last night, I slept last night, the pets and I have been fed well before noon (as opposed to the 4 PM and 9 PM of yesterday), the sun is shining and Patrick is taking his usual morning nap (and waking up, it sounds like). I feel like I can do anything right now. Maybe even write something that isn’t baby-related.
Pardon the bad picture, it was taken with my phone yesterday evening. I’m pretty sure it was Patrick’s first real smile and I wanted to capture it, especially since he hasn’t had much to smile about since. This will be a good reminder for those nights (tonight?) when he’s been fussing for hours and I’m at the end of my rope. Patrick has been smiling off and on for weeks, but it was those little random baby smiles that appear out of nowhere (sometimes when he’s sleeping) and disappear just as quickly. This time, he actually smiled in response to something I did and it lasted for a good minute or two. Until I tried to take a picture of him, of course.
It’s been a rough few days of little sleep (for me) and a lot of crying (for him, though I feel like I could cry). Monday and Tuesday were lovely, but it’s been downhill since then-- some bad nights with short periods of sleep and a lot of fussiness and crying and seemingly endless hunger and parts of the day that aren’t so great, either. He seems to have gas after he eats, but I’ve done every trick in the book to help him with that and still he cries. Another growth spurt? He’s gaining weight at a pretty good clip, but I just don’t know. He still wanted to eat last night even after he ate three times in less than 6 hours. He sucked on his fingers, but kept losing them in his flailing, so I gave him my finger and he sucked on it for nearly an hour before falling asleep. Maybe he needs a pacifier? I’m afraid to even say the scary word colic because if this goes on for weeks or months I will lose my mind. More than one person has told me that babies cry more in the 3 to 6 week period (or 4 to 8 week period, the anecdotes seem to vary), but no one said why. Just that it does get better. I’m a fix-it girl and I don’t know the fix for this except to wait it out, I guess.
Strangely enough, after fussing and crying for over 5 hours last night, he slept from 1:30 until almost 8:30. That’s almost seven hours after two nights of not sleeping longer than two hours and never having slept longer than four and a half. I didn’t sleep anywhere near that long, of course. It took me at least an hour to unwind (listening to a baby cry is stressful and I have a low tolerance for noise), then the dog woke me up at 6 and then I was freaked out that Patrick hadn’t woken up, so I had to check on him. He was fine, so I went back to bed and did get about another hour of sleep before he started making wake up noises (and I honestly think he would soothed himself back to sleep if I hadn’t gone in to get him). There’s a part of me that wonders if he did wake up in the middle of the night and I was just too exhausted to hear him and that makes me feel impossibly guilty. How would I know? He didn’t seem any more hungry than usual this morning. I figured he was just worn out from the past couple of bad nights.
When you have a baby, his bad days are your bad days, so I’m a bit of an incoherent zombie today. I did get a bunch of stuff done around the house yesterday because his late morning and afternoon naps were peaceful (if short). I was running on some magical reserve tank of energy that I don’t want to examine too closely for fear it will fail me when I need it. Despite the previous bad night’s sleep, I felt pretty good and positive about the day until around 6 PM when the cycle of fussing, feeding, crying, soothing, fussing started again. (Which was, coincidentally enough, about 20 minutes after the above picture was taken.) I guess that’s something, though. A few good hours in the midst of the chaos. And, despite how tired I feel now, I did actually get about five hours of sleep last night followed by another good hour, so that’s about twice as much as I’ve been averaging. I suspect it’s depression and not fatigue that’s making me feel tired today, since I don’t know how the rest of the day and night are going to go. I’ll rally, though. I always do.
I’m looking forward to that mysterious time frame known as “it will get better.” Hopefully sooner, rather than later. I was spoiled for those two weeks when Jay was home and I was getting a stretch of sleep every night. I even got used to the 2-3 hours between feedings of the past couple of weeks (punctuated by a couple of very bad nights). Can’t I have those back, at least? (Yes, I’m whining.)
I’m not complaining, truly. Okay, I am, but I don’t mean to. I’d love to write about something else and as soon as my brain isn’t foggy and I can think of something else, I will write about it. I know it could be worse (that dreaded colic-- I’ve heard anecdotes of it lasting nearly around the clock for weeks) and I’m grateful for these little stretches during the day where I do get a few things done and manage to feel somewhat human, if an incoherent human. And I have that little smile above to remind me that it isn’t all crying and fussing, even if it seems like it sometimes.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering about my blog post title, Alison has a post today titled “Buy the ticket. Take the ride.” It has nothing to do with babies and sleep, but it seems to fit my situation. I signed up for this and I even knew what I was in for (minus the absent spouse, the Cesarean section recovery and the inability to resolve every bout of crying), so I can’t complain now. Buy the ticket. Take the ride. Yeah.
It’s a hell of a ride, I’ll tell you that.
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