Author: The Notorious M.O.M.

We’ve all heard how important it is to recognize and take advantage of “windows of opportunity.” This could not be more true when it comes to getting Finn down for a nap. I have found, through incredibly painful (and loud) trial and error, that one does NOT want to miss the nap window. This window is very distinct and is not open very far, so you’ve got to be alert and slip him through that narrow opening as fast as you can!
I was at my wit’s end last week, trying to get him to nap without going through major histrionics prior to the final surrender to sleep. I’m not kidding–sometimes up to 40 minutes of shooshing, swaddling, rocking, cajoling, crying (both Finn and me), squalling, etc. And then the payoff might only be a 30 minute nap. Frustrating, to say the least.
This was obviously not working for either of us–Finn wasn’t getting good naps, I was getting more exasperated each time I needed to put him down. I reread a bunch of my baby sleep books and rededicated myself to figuring out when the “nap window” opens–i.e. he is sleepy and receptive to relaxing, but not overtired and hard to settle. I also decided to change my soothing strategy–less stimulation during playtime (fewer rattles and jingly things in his face), no rocking or walking around (which is killing my back, since he’s almost 16 lbs! Plus, rocking and walking are additional stimuli).
My new approach: scoop him up on the first big yawn (the second or third is WAY too late), swaddle him, turn on the lullaby CD, dim the room, sit down and start shooshing/patting his bottom. Yes, he still squawks, but only a few short ones before he settles right down and closes his eyes. From start to finish, it takes 10-15 minutes, and then I pop him in the crib. This is exponentially less time than ever before. I almost can’t believe it’s actually working! It feels really good to have turned a corner on naptime! (I have actually done a couple of victory laps around the living room after getting him down.) [She’s not kidding about that! –J.]

Whew. Well this time the vaccinations went much more smoothly. Finn had a full tummy, a preemptive dose of infant Tylenol, and a quick nap before he got the shots. He was remarkably calm, and only cried for a grand total of 5 seconds during and immediately after the shots. As soon as I got him onto my lap, he chilled out completely. Thank God that nurse was so fast with the syringes!
We had another weigh-in as well, just to make sure he’s getting enough to eat. I have been feeding him a bit less each meal in hopes of stemming the fountains of spit-up that accompany every feeding. He’s doing great, of course, as my ever-larger biceps can attest…he is up to 15 lbs 12 oz! The Tiny Giant roars ahead, stomping all smaller, wimpier babies in his path!

It’s 9:02 p.m. and Finn knows EXACTLY where I am. He KNOWS. Even though he’s “asleep” he knows that he’s not in my arms, nor in John’s arrms, which is where he’d most definitely prefer to be. He knows that I am nearby but not nearby enough to make him sleep like the dead.
I have noticed a lot of interesting and also frustrating elements of Finn’s sleep patterns. There’s the 10-Minute Rule, which is the rule that guarantees 10 minutes (almost to the exact second) after you transfer Finn from your arms to the crib or bassinett, he will WAKE UP like a bolt of lightening and start complaining–regardless of how soundly he was sleeping while you were holding him. Honestly, he will be absolutely stone cold motionless in your arms the entire time he’s there, and 10 minutes after you move him, once his little brain catches on, the jig is most definitely up. I’ll let you know what’s happening at 9:12 p.m., exactly 10 minutes after I put him back in his bassinett after he woke up (which was 10 minutes after John put him down for the night).
The 10-Minute Rule is the reason there is so much attempted sleep subterfuge with babies. It seems like we spend a lot of time tricking them into falling asleep, staying asleep, and not letting them catch on that they’ve been transferred to an actual bed. The rocking, shushing, swaddling, swaying, pacifying, ever-so-gentle depositing of said baby into the crib so as not to wake him, it’s all just so much trickery to keep them asleep. And the majority of the time none of it works at all. He wakes up, you start all over again, and hope that the next time it sticks so you can go to sleep. I would be really interested to tally up the number of hours moms and dads spend rocking their kids into submission!
I’m sure these traits are all remnants of primitive man…it was probably pretty critical for little humanoids to be hyper-aware of where they were and whether there was any danger or weirdness afoot, particularly while sleeping. Now how that translates into a 10 minute delay I have no idea. The saber-toothed tiger hovering near the mouth of your cave would certainly have devoured you in less than 10 minutes, right?
Well, it’s 9:13 p.m. and althougth Finn’s making tons of awake-ish noises, I don’t think he’s actually awake. So i’ve outsmarted him for at least 11 minutes this time.

I’ve hesitated to share this information for fear of jinxing our progress, but it seems to be sticking so here goes…Finn has graduated to sleeping up to 7 hours at a stretch at night! This is a particularly glorious development for Mom, because it means I actually feel like I’m getting decent sleep. For the past week or so, Finn has been lengthening out his first stretch of night sleeping, and once he goes down around 8 or 9 p.m., he sleeps until about 2 or 3 a.m. Hooray! Then he’ll nurse and go back to sleep until 6 or 7 a.m.
So we’re down to 1 middle-of-the-night feeding and keeping our fingers crossed that he keeps working towards an even longer stretch of uninterrupted sleep. I’m crediting not only Finn’s development, but the continued swaddling and the installation of light-blocking shades in his bedroom and our bedroom (where he currently sleeps in his co-sleeper, a.k.a. the bed’s sidecar).

It may not surprise you to find out that John and I have created lots of baby-related slang lately. Here are a few of the most-used:

• diaper burrito: the hermetically sealed plastic sack of diapers from the Diaper Genie II
• baby burrito: a tightly swaddled Finn
• cochecito: stroller (thanks to Adolfo and Romina from Argentina for this one!)
• cachetes guapos: literally “handsome cheeks” in Spanish, also from Adolfo & Romina
• Dipe/di-a-per: diaper. John likes to over-articluate, & I like to shorten words
• a trip to the lecheria: nursing
• snoozando: sleeping Finn (-ando being the equivalent of “ing” in Spanish)

When I found out I was pregnant, I knew that I really wanted to breastfeed Finn–there are so many health benefits, it’s far less expensive and easier to tote around than formula, and it’s great for mom/baby bonding. There was really no question in my mind. I found it very interesting that when we went to the breastfeeding class at the hospital, they spent a lot of time selling breastfeeding to us based on its health benefits (smarter kids, better immunity, less colic, etc.). They also (rightfully) discussed the facts about getting started breastfeeding. It’s not like falling off a log, to put it mildly. It takes work, and patience, trial and error, ice packs, and lanolin until you finally get it right. I appreciate all the breastfeeding moms I know being very honest with me about that–it helped set my expectations.
And now that I’ve been at it for a couple of months, what I find the most interesting is what the classes and the other moms didn’t mention at all, and that is that breastfeeding is also a very emotionally intense and sometimes fraught experience. I had no idea how many different emotions would be wrapped around nursing my child! When he’s super fussy, yelling and pumping his fists in front of my breasts instead of just calmly nursing, it hurts my feelings and makes me wonder what I’m doing wrong (answer: nothing! he probably has to burp!). When he’s nursing every 90 minutes or 2 hours, you feel like an indentured servant to your child, because you’re the only one that can nourish him. And of course you want him to thrive and be happy and healthy, but sometimes the sheer monotony of sitting still while he nurses for 30 min to 45 min at a time can really drive you up the wall. (I had to impose a boycott of NPR for awhile since that’s what I listen to while I nurse. We switched to the jazz station!).
It’s definitely a yeoman’s job–you just have to stick with it, work through it, and try not to take things so personally when it’s not going so well. And in my case, thanks to Captain Reflux, you have to get used to wearing a lot of spit-up breastmilk that you wish he was able to keep down!

Before having Finn on the scene, I was completely clueless about how much time and effort taking care of an infant entails. I wondered why moms at the grocery store or out and about looked so bedraggled and why they dressed like schlumps…Well, now I know why. When your baby eats every 2 hours, and it takes him 30 minutes to eat, then another 30-60 of playtime/getting sleepy before he finally goes down for a nap that might only last 30 minutes, you don’t have ANY time to do anything like take a shower or comb your hair. And if your baby’s like Finn, and takes spitting up to the heavyweight level, all of your clothes are going to be covered, to varying degrees, with spit up anyway, so why would you put on anything decent?

It kind of reminds me of when I moved to Seattle. Grunge fashion started making sense once I’d spent a couple months slogging through endless days of drizzle, ruining my shoes and destroying pant-hems with water and grime. Why not just buy all your clothes at goodwill and never bother to wash them?

I do, however, manage to shower, usually once John gets home and I have him to back me up. And thank God for lipstick: it’s the easiest and most effective way to pull myself together before I go out, in an attempt not to look completely worn out. I think the lipstick must distract people from the dark rings around my eyes.

A lot of our parent-friends told us about Harvey Karp M.D., author of “The Happiest Baby On The Block”. It’s a book about how to help calm and soothe your newborn, and the techniques in the book are also designed to help your baby sleep longer and more soundly. We have Dr. Karp’s instructional video as well as his book. I have 6 words for Harvey:
Dr. Karp, you are a GENIUS.
We are using most of the tools and techniques to calm Finn down when he spirals into a meltdown, and to keep him asleep during the night. Swaddling and “shooshing” are the techniques we use the most, and man do they work like a charm. The swinging and sucking (pacifier) layered on top are almost 100% guaranteed to result in Finn becoming absolutely placid and most importantly, asleep when he’s fighting it. Swaddling alone has resulted in Finn sleeping an extra 30 min to an hour between night feedings, and has also added some time to his naps. The shooshing and swinging help get him in the mood before I lay him in the crib. Honestly, we would be up a creek without Dr. Karp’s insights.
Just today I have avoided or shortened a couple of near-meltdowns prior to naptime, making the Nack household a happier and calmer place. Let’s hope we can keep it up!

Finn and I went to the New Moms Support Group at the hospital today, just to hang out with some other moms and babies, and to get out of the house. There were a TON of folks attending, probably 20 moms and their babies, ranging from 3 weeks to 7 months old. It’s a nice place to meet and chat with other moms, and I walked away with a few good tidbits of information that I wouldn’t have otherwise known:
1. Finn is a tiny colossus! Compared to most of the other babies, even the ones that are 4 and 5 months old, he is much bigger and more robust. He could take on any of those head-controlling, sitting-up wimps any day! I honestly had no idea he was so big for his age. The other 7-week old baby in attendance was tiny in comparison! His size is deceiving–maybe that’s why John and I keep expecting him to start reciting Shakespeare, practice his stand-up comedy routines, and start driving the car any day 🙂 [Seriously, last night I dreamt that he helped me assemble a crib! –J.]
2. The Miracle Blanket–my new answer to the problem of Finn being too big for the receiving blankets I’ve been trying to use to swaddle him. He keeps busting loose because the blanket is just too small to properly bundle him up and stay tight. A few of the other moms use the Miracle Blanket and swear by it, and one even had an extra that she just dropped off for me to try, so we’ll give it a shot. Basically it has extra little flaps to help keep baby’s arms straight down by his sides, and is extra long so you can wrap it around his body 2 times instead of 3/4 time like the receiving blanket.
3. It is (unfortunately for me!) totally normal for Finn to be eating every 2 hours at this stage. Babies need to eat 8-12 times a day depending on size/age, so he’s totally average. The good news is that he goes longer at night between feeds, and lets me sleep for 3 hours or so at a time.

Otherwise known as the Six Degrees of Aggravation: relaxed (or not-so-much) states of Finn, in high/low order of magnitude:
1. Beet-red faced howling, fists and legs pumping furiously
2. Periodic squalls, fists clenched, body stiff as plywood, fighting sleep
3. Smallish fussy whimpers, fairly relaxed body except for those fists (still fighting sleep)
4. Awake, aware, calm, possibly smiling and cooing (a.k.a. “nice to be around”)
5. Drowsy and relaxed (mom’s almost tricked me into falling asleep!)
6. Limp as a wet lasagna noodle, hands open, snoring
[Dad puts us at about a 3.6 right this minute. 🙂 –J.]

All experienced parents tell you that all the trials and tribulations of the first several weeks are worth it, and practically disappear from your memory as soon as your baby gives you his first real smile.
I don’t know if my memory banks will be wiped completely clean, but I will say, now that Finn’s started smiling, it really does light me up inside and out. He is just so darn adorable when he decides to break open a big wide smile that goes all the way up to the corners of his eyes, and reveals that little dimple on his left cheek. He’s just recently started to purposefully smile–totally distinguishable from “practice” smiling or sleep grins. What’s weird is that he’ll even smile while he’s spitting up (?!). (Sometimes, that is.)
Long live the baby smile! We love knowing that our boy is happy.

Finn makes a lot of noise when he sleeps. I mean a LOT. And there’s a definite cycle of sounds that he goes through when he is in REM sleep (vs. the deep, limp-noodle slumber). He goes through a series of grunts, throat-clearings, squeaks, sighs, squawks, and other vocalizations. I liken him to Aqua Man–who had the power to communicate with fish…
But while Aqua Man used only his telepathic brain to communicate with anything aquatic, I think Finn is more specifically communicating with pods of migrating whales. We haven’t yet narrowed down his specific whale song, but I think it’s either gray or humpback whales. We are kind of waiting to see which breed shows up at our doorstep at 3am, asking to chat with Finn. We’ll let you know who comes a-callin’.

Unfortunately, for the past 2 days, Finn has had inexplicable evening bouts of outrage (oh, and a midday bout today). Of course this happens right when we’re trying to put him to bed around 7 or 8 p.m. He goes from zero to screaming his head off in a split second. John and I run through the possibilities–dirty diaper? hungry? gassy? reflux bothering him? should we keep him upright? lie him down to nurse? He doesn’t seem to want any of it and just keeps howling no matter what is offered. It’s frustrating for all three of us. I end up feeling inadequate, John ends up feeling bad for both Finn and me, and I think we all feel like the howling will never end.
It’s John who really shines through on these trying evenings. He demonstrates such calm, patience, and empathy when he takes Finn in his arms, swaddles him, and “shushes” him until he finally, unexpectedly calms down and falls asleep. Then John carefully takes him upstairs and gently deposits him in his bassinet, allowing me to take a hot shower and shake off some of the tension. We don’t know, of course, if Finn will stay asleep or wake up and start freaking any second, but at least for a few minutes we have peace thanks to Dad.

John and I love nickhames. For each other, for our friends, family members, for inanimate objects, you name it. We have already come up with a slew of them for Finn, but the one I find myself using most of the time is Captain Squirrelulon. I think it sounds like a character from one of the Star Trek shows…”This is Captain Squirrelulon of the Starship Enterprise." [The "Rank + ‘-ulon’ suffix" thing goes back to our love of the name "Gen. Zebulon Pike."  –J.]

In addition to Captain S, there are several other potential Star Trek characters inhabiting the NPR airwaves. (I have been listening to a TON of NPR as I sit in the nursery while Finn chows down.) I don’t know where they find their reporters, but they have some of the MOST interesting names you’ve ever heard. It’s fun to imagine them in their Star Trek uniforms milling about midships or crawling through Jeffries Tubes…Here are some of my favorites:

• Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson (sounds like some sort of intrepid Old World explorer who might get passage on the Beagle)
• Robin Gianattassio-Malle
• Ofeibea Quist-Arcton
• Kai Risdahl
• Cy Musicker (who actually does music reviews on Friday afternoons!)

Captain Squirrelulon could have quite a time commanding that crew!

Driving around late at night in an attempt to get your overtired infant to sleep gives you a lot of time to think. Finn had a rough go of it last night and would not settle down and go to sleep, so at 9 pm I set out with him in the Green Peanut and circumnavigated San Jose.
Have our lives changed since having a baby? Absolutely yes. Do we love Finn more than we could have imagined? Again, absolutely yes. Are we resentful that we will be sleep deprived for many years to come? Of course. But I remember that he’s just an infant, and John and I have the unfair experience and advantage of leading scheduled, planned, and rational lives–something that tiny Finn can’t even begin to comprehend yet. And I also know now about some things that change inside you when you become a mother–the mama tiger comes out and you’d do anything to protect your child from harm, pain, green meanies, and sickness. So even while you’re hating the fact that you’re ineffably tired and you’re stuck in the car, driving around endlessly so your kid will sleep, you do it because you love him and you want him to be ok. And then when you get home and he stays asleep for a stretch of 3.5 hours, you feel a little better for everyone involved.

I had one more “W” but I haven’t slept in days, so I’m a little dotty!
Finn had his one-month check up today at the pediatrician. After a few recent days of lots of spit up, sleeplessness, and rowliness after feedings, we asked the doc if there might be something wrong. She checked him out and he has a bit of acid reflux, which is irritating his throat and esophagus. At least we now know that there’s a reason for his discomfort, which we are (frustratingly) not able to do much about. We will give him zantac to help reduce his stomach acid, and try to keep him more upright after feedings to help gravity keep the food down. Hopefully within a few days his throat will be feeling better. I’ll also be trying to feed him a bit less than I have been, because he seems to have been taking in more than he could actually stomach.
That maybe why he–drumroll please–weighed in at 12 lbs 1 oz today! That’s a gain of almost 3 lbs in one month. He’s also up to 23 inches already! So he’s definitely growing and thriving, which we’re really happy about.
Many thanks to my wonderful, wise sister, who counseled a freaked-out and frayed me over the phone late last night and suggested that Finn might have reflux, based on her experience w/ her own son. She was right on the money and was a really welcome voice of calm reason when I called. Thank god for sisters who’ve been down the “new mom” road before.

Finn is getting bigger and more interesting by the day. He’s packing on the oz’s and he’s spending a lot more time awake than just a couple weeks ago. When he’s awake, he spends a lot of time looking around, tracking shapes and faces, and trying to figure out if those little hands that are waving around belong to him. Most of the time he is really calm, and seems to enjoy sitting on the front porch with me, watching the world go by.
Today I tried out a new sling so I could wear him on my chest and walk around hands-free. He really dug it–fell asleep and didn’t make a sound for about an hour as I walked down to the coffee shop and back. Being hands-free is really a luxury–it feels like I spend about 98% of my time holding him. Don’t get me wrong, I love it, but it really hampers my ability to do anything else (like eat lunch!).
We are visiting the pediatrician on Thursday for our 1-month checkup. I can’t wait to find out how much he weighs! He’s a thirsty kid and seems to be thriving, which makes us very happy.