Travels with Baby 2: Baby in a Hotel

Baby's first flight was OK.  Thanks to the easy availability of food and comfort in the form of breastfeeding and some work on my part shushing and bouncing her, she stayed mostly quiet and even slept a little bit.  If you want to be realistic, I think that's about as good as you can hope for.  That's certainly as good as you can expect.  If it goes more smoothly than that, good for you.  And of course, this experience will be vastly different given even a month's difference in age (The Baby was 5 1/2 months old for this trip).

We arrived in San Diego, put The Baby into the carrier, collected our bags, made it to the rental car place, got the car seat installed and made our way to the hotel, all without incident other than at this point The Baby is about four hours behind on sleep.  She was more or less delirious, but she was hanging on and being a pretty good sport about it.  She would've fallen asleep in the car, but the hotel was really close, so she didn't have much of a chance.

As soon as we got to the hotel, we called down to have them send up a pack and play.

Tip #5:  Call the hotel and tell them you'll be staying with an infant.  Most will have pack and plays and other infant products that guests can use for free.  We'd planned to rent a pack and play until a friend told us to talk to the hotel.  Easy peasy.

Here's a tough question then, assuming you're not staying in a suite: where do you put the pack and play?  If you put it in the bedroom, you're consigning yourself to many hours of sitting in the dark reading quietly.  Or you can do like we did and put it in the bathroom.  Problem there is...  What do you do when you need to get ready for bed or take a poo yourself?  On the balance, I think the bathroom is the smarter move, but you literally need to be more prepared.  Before putting baby down for a nap, make sure you've done your business.  At night, before you put baby down, plan it out so you have access to your bedtime products in the bedroom so you can pop into and out of the bathroom as quickly and quietly as possible so as to disturb baby as much as possible.

There is a third possibility depending on your hotel room: if the closet is big enough, you can put baby in there.  This would be the best option, providing a quiet, dark place for baby while still giving you access to the bathroom.  The closet in our room wasn't big enough for us to be comfortable with this, and it may sound strange, but remember what makes for a good place to sleep - quiet and dark.  Closets are good for that.

The next few days, while not as relaxing as a pre-baby vacation would've been, were really pretty smooth.  We did our best to respect The Baby's sleep schedule.

Tip #6:  Respect your baby's sleep schedule.  I know, I know.  There are all these fun distractions right next to your hotel, and it's so easy to pop over for an appetizer or a drink or whatever.  You know what you're like when you're tired, and you know what your baby is like when he/she's tired.  If you want to push it, that's your business, but prepare yourself to deal with a tired, cranky baby.  For us, it has as much to do with "doing what's best for baby" as "just not wanting to deal with a crabby little shit while in public."  We pushed it one night.  There was a good Mexican restaurant across the street.  We thought we could put in an order to go and enjoy a quick beer while we waited for the food.  We ended up tag-teaming The Baby; while one of us sat nervously at the bar, drinking alone, the other walked around outside the restaurant doing our best to keep her quiet.  Just the kind of night you look forward to on vacation!  You can respect the schedule without being a slave to it.

I thought I'd get to thoughts on Being Thought a Bad Parent, but this ran on longer than expected.  Next time.  Also, stay tuned for Poopmageddon!

Travels with Baby 1: Flying with Baby

As I may have mentioned, The Wife is a physician and one of the perks of her position is a good travel budget to encourage her and her colleagues to attend and present at various conferences.  She had a poster selected for presentation at a conference in California, and it just so happens that her grandfather, The Baby's great-grandfather, winters within a couple hours of where the conference was.  So we decided to make a vacation out of it.  We'd go to the conference and then spend a few days with great-grandpa.  GREAT!...

When it comes to travel, I am a minimalist and poor planner.  The Wife is the opposite.  Historically, we've nicely balanced each other out, but when traveling with a baby, minimalism goes right the hell out the window.  YOU BRING EVERYTHING.  Nuks?  Check.  Rags?  Check.  Book that The Baby cannot understand and has looked at twice since birth?  Check.  Toy that The Baby has never shown the slightest interest in?  Check.  You do this because you will do anything, and I mean anything, to keep a child occupied during a three-hour flight.  What silly objection could you possibly have to bringing along that stupid stuffed animal that's she's never played with?  You don't want to take up the space?  You want to *look* like one of those couples who has it so together they manage to travel with a baby but without checking a bag?!

You're a fool.  So you bring it all.

We got the packing taken care of with little stress once I let go of my silly objections to taking a bigger suitcase (I mean honestly, what was I thinking?).  We did a good job of tempering our expectations.  This would not be a vacation by the definition that existed pre-Baby.  No lounging by the pool sipping drinks.  No luxurious dinners out.  In fact, while the conference was on, since we were still going to make breastfeeding happen, it wouldn't be a vacation at all - we'd have to work to make that happen.

Tip #1: Temper your expectations.  Your days of relaxing vacations are over.

Once the packing is done, the next thing to worry about is moving all that shit plus The Baby.  With curbside check-in, this really turned out to be a non-issue.  We dumped the suitcases, unhooked the baby seat, dumped it into its nifty red "GATE CHECK" bag, handed that over, put The Baby into her Ergo, and hit the line for security.  This would be the first time of many that my blood pressure spiked and I thought I would get an ulcer, but security was amazingly, remarkably, mind-bendingly anti-climactic.  The truth is, I don't give The Baby enough credit.  If she's comfortable and full and has things to look at, she'll stay happy and quiet for a long time, and she proved it in that security line.  The other amazing thing is, people LOVE to see a dude wearing a baby.  This is one of the first examples of sexist unfairness with being a SAHD that I noticed.  When my wife wears her, it's no big deal; just another lady with her kid.  When I wear The Baby, everybody smiles, including TSA.  We got a special card so we didn't need to take off shoes and went through a separate line so we didn't fry The Baby with microwaves or whatever the hell those new scanners use.  Easy peasy.

We boarded the plane and did our best to stick to a schedule that would have The Baby nursing during takeoff, but she had other plans.  This would be the second time my blood pressure spiked.  You can see people taking stock of their seating arrangement as they board the plane, and you can see them see a baby, and you see them slump.  They know.  They know this flight could be a living nightmare, and YOU know it could be the fault of your precious little poop factory.  That's a feeling I dreaded, so much so that I actually brought ear plugs for our neighbors.

Tip #2: Bring ear plugs for your plane neighbors.  Nobody will take them, but you offering them communicates the following: "I know my child may make this an uncomfortable experience, and for that, I'm sorry."

Tip #3: If possible, time it so your baby is nursing during takeoff and landing.  The sucking will help his/her ears equilibrate, which will reduce crying, which in turn will decrease the odds that the flight attendants will through you off the plane or put you down with the baggage.

As I said, we tried to time it right, but The Baby had other ideas and was finished nursing by the time we took off, which also ended up being not a big deal.  If her ears bothered her, she didn't show it.  After that, it's just a constant battle to keep the kid occupied and/or asleep.  This isn't easy, but it's also not anything you haven't done before.  Just like you brought every fucking baby accessory in your house, you also need to bring every soothing tool you've acquired since birth.  I hadn't shushed The Baby for months, but I shushed the shit out of her on that flight, and it sort of worked.  I hadn't stood and bounced her for even longer, but that worked too.

Tip #4: Do whatever it takes to get your baby to sleep.  This may mean standing with the baby back by the bathrooms, which will make you feel like a total creeper, but if it keeps the kid quiet, nobody will care.

In the next installment, we'll talk about fears of being thought a Bad Parent, then we'll tackle how to stay sane in a hotel with an infant.  Oh, and at some point, we'll talk about Poopmageddon, or The Terror at 30,000 Feet.

Peace Like a Hallmark Card and Final-ish Thoughts on Sleep Training

As you may have surmised from the dearth of recent posts, things are really good with The Baby right now.  This has allowed me enough slack in my mind space to really start to appreciate this fatherhood thing.  I'd heard and read that it can take fathers longer to bond with their children because we don't have the immediate intimacy of breastfeeding.  When I laid eyes on my daughter for the first time, I thought buuuuuuuuuuull shit.  My feelings of love were immediate and real.

However.

I think I kinda sorta get it now.  My wife has been working evenings this week, which means I'm the sole proprietor of bedtimes.  The Baby has always been OK with a bottle, but now she's a pro, which means she doesn't fight it, is cleaner, and we just don't struggle the way we used to.  I've actually started to enjoy feeding time, and even more so bedtime.  Earlier this week, I was feeding her, and she kind of nestles into my armpit when we feed, and with my non-bottle hand, I work on keeping her hands from disrupting the process too much.  So she's eating, and she's kind of stroking my hand and holding onto my fingers, and she's looking up at me with those perfect blue eyes (that will be the death of me when she's older and knows how to use them), and dammit if I didn't just about explode.  And I thought, "This is it.  This is what The Wife experienced from the very first feeding."  I know our relationship will be evolving for the rest of my life.  I know we will drift together and apart and together again over the years.  That's the nature of a human relationship.  This was just the first time I recognized and felt us drifting together.  That feeling is what I was looking for from parenthood.  Feels really good.

The slack in my mind space has also allowed a lot of time to reflect on sleep training.  I hope to put more of these down in the future, because there is so much baggage that goes along with sleep training you could write a book on it (which of course many have).  Bottom line is, things got markedly better as soon as we started and have continued to improve since then.

But why?

This question is a rabbit hole down which you can go really, really deep.  Did we really sleep train The Baby?  Or was she just ready to sleep better?  Is she really sleeping better, or did we just decide to stop agonizing and obsessing over her sleep?  Did we really do it for her own good, or were our motivations more selfish?  The truth, like most reality, is it's likely a combination of all of these.  She is sleeping better, but I don't think about her sleep much anymore either.  Obviously, good sleep is essential, so doing what we thought we needed to do to get her better sleep was for her benefit, but I'd be a big fat liar if I denied how important getting time for myself back has been.  For now at least, I feel like I'm back on top of my life.

Sleep Training End of Week Two

It's been a really, really good week, which accounts for the lack of posts.  As I've said before, good times inspire me more to appreciate what's happening in the moment.  Bad times inspire me to over analyze, dwell, and in an effort to get the negativity out of my head, to write it down.  In general, fewer posts = better times overall.  Plus, there's been so much written about the magic of parenthood, it's impossible not to write cliches.  I mean, how many different ways are there to describe how small their hands are without sounding like you write for Hallmark?

As far as the sleep, there's progress yet to be made, but I'm calling it a success.  She's consistently asleep by 6:30 pm and will usually sleep through until 1:00am.  Even when she does wake up, she puts herself back to sleep pretty quickly and pretty quietly.  The mid-night feeding is fast.  30 minutes from pillow to pillow for me, even if I have to change a diaper.

Naps are less consistent, but SO MUCH BETTER.  She's still on a three-a-day schedule, going down at 8:00am, 11:00am, and 3:00pm, give or take an hour.  Each time, she'll sleep for around an hour and a half, sometimes more.  The big thing is, unless we totally misread her, we put her in her sleep suit, pop her nuk in, sing Twinkle Twinkle, set her down, walk out the door, and she's asleep within 10 minutes.  Not always, but most of the time.

What all this means for me is I'm in a good mental place and I'm having fun with her.  She rolled from front to back a few weeks ago and is really close to rolling from back to front now.  She's developed the instinct and dexterity to put everything in her mouth, which is oddly enchanting for me.  "Oooh, what's this?...  IN MY MOUTH."  I notice so many little developments.  We put her in a bouncer when we're in the kitchen, and it features a plastic bee with crinkly wings, and it's on a cord, so she can pull it out of the bouncer far enough to get it to her mouth.  A week ago, she had the dexterity to grab it and pull it to her mouth, but her fists would get in the way.  She wanted the bee in her mouth, but she got her fist, which was apparently incredibly frustrating.  A few days ago, I watched this same scenario unfold, but instead of getting frustrated, she moved one hand down to the cord below her other hand, and BAM, bee in mouth.

And I just realized that this is what I was most excited about when I daydreamed about being a parent - watching this tin blob develop into a human being.  I was a preschool teacher in college and I was eternally fascinated with how kids interacted with the world, especially how much more open and honest they are.  I couldn't wait to watch my own child learn and develop and teach me about innocence and openness and honesty.  It's happening.  

Sleep Training End Of Week One

My neighbors are good people and we're on our way to being good friends.  I was out back to shovel and saw him over the fence and said hi.  As usual, he asked how things were, and I mentioned that sleep training seems to have been successful.  He's kind of a smartass, so he asked, "Do you really think it was something you did, or do you think she was just ready to sleep better?"  It's a good, big question.

To cut to the chase, I think it's both, but I did confide in him one of my insecurities about sleep training.  What if The Baby is not actually sleeping any better?  What if all we're doing is choosing to ignore her distress so we can sleep better and have more hands-off time during the day?  I suspect if you've gone through CIO sleep training or are considering it, you've dealt with this feeling or something like it.

As part of my therapy (finally had my first appointment after almost three month's wait!), I'm working on identifying the thoughts that bring me down and make me feel angry, identifying how they make me feel, and working to get to the bottom of whether or not those thoughts and feelings are rooted in the real world or not, and ways of redirecting them.  It's called Cognitive Behavior Therapy, and what I've just written is about as much as I know about it, so if you want to know more, you know...  Google it up.

Anyway, as part of trying to figure out if thoughts and feelings are rooted in reality, you look for objective evidence, i.e. information that another person could look at and that would lead that person to the same conclusion that you did.  So when I ponder that question of whether or not I look to our trusty spreadsheet:

Couple things: C = crying, A = awake but content, A/C = intermittent crying.  On the 9th, The Baby had her 4-month vaccinations, which accounts for the hug sleep numbers over the next 24 hours.

First thing to note is those HUGE, uninterrupted blocks of time down at the bottom.  That's right - all week we've been putting her down at 6:00 give or take, and she's staying down until after midnight.  HELL YEAH!  We had friends over for dinner the other night.  They got to see The Baby for half an hour, then we put her down, and we enjoyed adult time for the rest of the night.  Magical.

Second thing to note are the sleep totals at the bottom.  Pre-training, we were working really hard to get 14 hours a day.  Totals have gone up, and we're not working at it like we were before.

Third thing: Not much crying toward the end of the week.  This isn't to say she never squawks, but she is more content between sleep cycles and moves more quickly and smoothly from wake back to sleep.  We've had minor regressions that still make me feel like a bad parent and horrible human being, but the spreadsheet helps me see that we're on an upward trajectory.

So are things really getting better, or did we just do it to make our lives easier?  Honestly, it's probably a little bit of both, but way more of the former than the latter, and here's the thing about the latter - it counts.  If I'm better rested, my mood is brighter, I'm more patient, and I'm better equipped to give The Baby the care she needs.  Maybe I'm justifying here, but I'm learning to think of health holistically.  It's not JUST about what's right for The Baby, or for me, or my wife, or the dog.  Each has to be considered as part of the overall health of The Family.  Our #1 priority is The Baby, but not if it means the dog is neglected and starts to piss and shit all over the dining room (which happened).  We'll make sure The Baby is getting the care she needs, but maybe pull back before it sends Papa to the looney bin, eh?

Nap Training The Baby

We knew the 25 minute cat naps and marathon rocking session were not sustainable.  The cat naps would never be sufficient, and the marathon rocking session was isolating, depressing, and consumed so much time.  I know, I know.  You do what your baby needs.  We get that, but we also get that there comes a time when it's no longer about the health and happiness of just the child alone, but the health and happiness of the family.  Fact: if I'm exhausted and depressed, I will not be giving my daughter the care she needs, and she will suffer for it.  We couldn't let her continue in her chronic, sleep-deprived state, and we needed to start addressing the impact it was having on the health of the family, especially me.  So we decided to do sleep training.

I'm calling it nap training though, because nighttime sleep hasn't been quite as big a problem as naps.  We decided on full-extinction cry it out (CIO).  This is not without controversy.  You can read horror stories for days, and there are those who maintain it's more or less child abuse.  If that's your view, it's OK, but no study has show any detrimental affects to the development of the child, and unless you can show me one, let it suffice that it's what we decided would work for our family, and you're entitled to your (hopefully well-informed) opinion.  There are loads of resources on sleep and nap training, so I'm not going to go too deeply into the "how" of CIO.  We've been reading "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Dr. Marc Weissbluth.  It was recommended to us by numerous friends who have kids who sleep well and is based on loads of medical data.

We started last Sunday night (it's Wednesday as I write this), and I am overjoyed to share with you that as I check our sleep log and the baby monitor, The Baby is going on two and a half hours of uninterrupted daytime sleep!  That's right baby, SHE WENT THE FUCK BACK TO SLEEP!!!

I wanted to write a post on Monday, because Monday really fucking sucked.  She did OK Sunday night, went down smoothly for her first nap of the day Monday (one hour after waking, as usual) and was awake 30 minutes later, again as usual, but this time, she was on her own to sort it out.  She was awake but pretty happy for 30 minutes, and then cried for another 30 before we got her up.  Lather, rinse, and repeat for the rest of the day.  Listening to your child cry when you know it's in your power to make it stop makes you not only feel like a bad parent but a horrible human being.  The Wife and I did a pretty good job of keeping each other strong though (Jesus did I win the lottery every day when I landed her).  Sleep training is all about long-term benefit.  The Baby needed more sleep, and that wasn't gonna happen unless she acquired the skills to do it.  So Monday sucked.

Monday night was pretty typical.  The Baby got tired around 7:00 and went down for a cat nap as usual.  She was up again 30 minutes later for a final feeding, diaper change, and then right back down.  The rest of the night was pretty typical, except when she woke as usual at 5:30, we didn't get up.  We know from experience that's not her "awake for the day" time, and as we hoped, she squawked for about 15 minutes and then went back to sleep until 6:30 when we got up.

Naps on Tuesday were better.  She was already noticeably better at putting herself to sleep for her first sleep cycle.  There were a couple times after setting her down that I was sure she wasn't going to do it, but she did, every time.  Sleep for 30, wake, squawk for a little while, and then she finally managed to get herself back to sleep for another sleep cycle, unassisted, for the first time that we could remember.  Parenting is all about little victories, and that was a big little victory.

Today is better yet, with even more improvement in getting herself to sleep.  I also need to call out a product here - Baby Merlin's Magic Sleep Suit.  We've only used it once, so take this with a big grain of salt, but we just got The Baby up after a solid two hour nap.  After a while, I thought she'd either stopped breathing or the feed on the baby monitor had cut out, because I'd never seen her stay motionless for that long during the day.  I'm not ready to call the suit a magic bullet, but if this last nap is repeated, I won't hesitate to say it.

That's it for now.  We're so proud of The Baby!

We Went To Trader Joe's

That is all.  It was enough.