Speaking of poop. . .
I never in my life imagined that I would be so interested in another person’s bowel movements. You could not have convinced me that I would have a person in my life whose poop I would study, noting color and texture, charting the frequency of said movements. Well, enter baby.
Baby poop is a fascinating study, particularly for a breastfeeding mom. Unless you are a pumping mom and feed from a bottle, which we do on occasion, you have absolutely no idea how much nutrition your child is getting. Then, how do you measure input? You measure output of course. I have charts from her first days of life where we noted every single poop (and pee, for that matter, which is equally important, just not as interesting). We were able to stop charting the poop factor after a couple weeks, but never lost interest in that fascinating yellow stuff.
You can’t talk about baby poop without discussing its evolution. That’s right, baby poop evolves. This is also something very new to me since I have had a child. First we started with the most foul, horrible substance known to humankind. It has a friendly name – meconium – but oh, it is not so friendly. If you’ve never seen this stuff, consider yourself lucky, but I will have to describe it to you. In your vast imagination, let’s start with plain poop. Let’s go with semi-diarrhea if you will. Then, I would like you to mix it with tar. Good. Next, stir in some rubber cement. Now you’re getting it! Finally, to top it off, we’ll add some flour to thicken it up. And it would come out of her like water from a faucet! It was supposed to be a “few” diapers full, not 10 PER DAY for THREE DAYS.
Next on our evolution, the poop gradually turned from black to green to get to the next stage: seedy yellow mustard. This was also an odd phenomenon. I found out later that it’s undigested, curdled milk, but at the time I wondered, who is feeding my baby sunflower seeds with mustard?
Gradually the poop evolved to something more poo-like, changing from day to day based on what I ate. For example, we discovered at one point that she didn’t do well with tomato sauce when her poop turned black.
It was during this stage that we had a few accidents. A blowout in the financial planner’s office was quite embarrassing. Poop was EVERYWHERE. A couple of bathtub poops – you don’t want to see that. We’re not talking floating Snickers bar here, we’re talking poop soup.
On to the stage we enjoyed the most: Intermittent Poop. I guess there is a point where breastfed babies are able to digest nearly all of their milk. The longest she went without going was 5 days. This was a nice stage.
Something happened though, and our newest stage is Frequent Poop. Today she pooped 3 times.
I’m a little afraid of the next stage: The Baby Who Eats Solids poop. The last thing in the world I want to change is a diaper with actual human-like poop in it.
The Science of Sleep - the progression of Rosie's shut-eye factor
Before I became a mommy, I had no idea that sleeping would become the biggest factor of our lives. When we sleep, how we sleep, and how little we sleep, these are all major topics. I had no idea that books, books, and more books are dedicated to the subject (I now own at least 4, I lost count). There are online message boards completely devoted to sleep problem support (I belong to three). There are "sleep training systems" ranging from letting the child cry till he drops to wearing your baby on your body during all your waking hours while baby sleeps. And almost always, the first question someone asks me when they meet my baby: "is she sleeping through the night?" or, "is she a good sleeper?"
The answer for us was usually No. She was not sleeping through the night and she was not what anyone could consider a good sleeper. Ok, actually she was able to go 4-5 hour stretches pretty early on in her life, but those 4 or 5 hours were usually surrounded by us rocking her, putting the pacifier back in her mouth, running up and down the stairs to console her crying. And let’s not even talk about naps. At one point during my maternity leave I was crying to Leo that I felt like all I did all day was fight her to sleep. I hated it. I hated when she woke up because it meant that with in 2 hours I would have to start the fight all over again. She would never stop moving – from birth – constantly, moving, looking, moving, kicking, punching… She would go hours and hours without sleeping, and cry because she was so overtired but simply would not close her eyes. We actually had to start rubbing her eyes closed because they would not shut on their own.
Finally we had a breakthrough and discovered the single thing that saved our sanity: the miracle blanket.
Rosie finally slept. She could nap. She could stop her body from moving long enough to actually relax. It was heaven. This kept us all sane for a couple months. We were sleeping again. No, no, not through the night, silly. But she was napping. It was so beautiful. We loved the blanket. Oh the blanket was our friend! We naturally assumed that we could continue use of this blanket until she went off to college. We didn’t dare think that she would outgrow it. No, that wouldn’t happen.
And then it began. It started slowly… writhing in discomfort occasionally… the happy smile not so happy during the wrap. We were in denial. This couldn’t be because of the swaddle, right? There must be something else.
Then she learned to roll – a full body roll in any possible direction and with determined speed. But rolling has nothing to do with swaddling. The two are unrelated, right? We stayed in denial until the day Rosie’s nanny came to me and said, how long has Rosie been able to roll over while she’s swaddled? My heart sank. What would we do?
That night was one of the worst night of our parenting lives thus far. We put her to bed unswaddled. And although she was physically ready, her little mind could not handle it. She was confused and upset, and it was absolutely horrible. You don’t need details, but suffice it to say that I cried nearly as much as she did. I hated hearing our happy baby so sad.
But babies learn fast, especially young ones and the very next night she had a much better handle on it. She could sleep. Ok, we were rocking her to sleep, and she was waking up every 2 hours, and we were up and down helping her go back to sleep, but she wasn’t miserable, and she was learning that her limbs were not enemies.
I know this is getting long, bear with me, there is an ending.
So at this point in the story, we’ve gotten through swaddleholics anonymous, yet Rosie is still waking every 2 hours. Soooooo frustrating. I went back and forth on what to do. Do I sleep train her? Would we be horrible parents if we let her cry? Would she learn to sleep? Could she? To fall asleep unassisted??? Or do we just continue this ridiculous circle of pacifier placement and re-placement?
Upon a recommendation from my online buddy Steph of the Ellistrator, I made a decision. I would Ferber-ize her. Ferberizing is one of the many “sleep training” methods out there. Basically it involves letting your baby cry for increasing increments of time. The first day you wait 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, and then 15 minutes each time after that. When you go in, you soothe, you comfort, but you don’t pick baby up and you leave after a couple minutes, baby crying or not. It was hard. The first night was a struggle. The second night was better. The third night was worse than the first. And the fourth night? A miracle happened.
I’m sorry, but Baby Laws prevent me from going any further. You see, if I gloat about success, my daughter’s telepathic powers will know. If we discuss it, sonar ears will hear me. The rules will change . . . maybe not tonight, tomorrow, or next week but they will change. But I can tell you this: now when people ask me the age-old question, “Is she a good sleeper?” I can say YES, and our house is swaddle and pacifier-free.
the first post
what is this?
Our blog - the family blog - is a daily diary. Although, "daily" is a figure of speech. When I can find the time, I'll let you in on some good secrets, update you on what Rosie is up to (what could be more important?), or just stop by to give you something to think about (please don't expect enlightenment - I'm going on 4-hour increments of sleep for about half a year here). I decided that rosie's website - as cool as cool can be - is too visual. You need information! And this is where you'll get it. I got the idea from my cool online friend Steph.
who are we?
If you are here, you probably already know who we are. We are Leo and Trista and we were married in November of 2002. We are now a family of three. The dramatic turn of events that gave us the status of "family" happened on May 25th, 2004 at 2:29 pm, when our little Rosemarie Katherine was born.
You can read her birth story if you want, but if you are here then you probably already have. Rosie needed a little encouragement to come out (in the form of synthetic hormones administered to me by IV), but once she got started she exited with lightening speed.
who is rosie?
Rosie is 4 months old. One word describes her personality: happy. She started smiling at real things when she was just 3 weeks old. She practiced her belly laugh in her sleep when she was only 6 weeks old, and when she was barely 2 months old she started full blown belly laughs and hasn't looked back. She is a laugher. Giggly giggly, and everything is funny. You can see her laughing here. But sleeping? Oh my friend, that is a whole 'nother entry. Sleep is a big topic around here, and we'll save that for another day.
who am i? who is leo?
We're the parents, but who cares, it's the baby who is important. That's all you really care about, isn't it? Well, maybe you want to know all there is to know about the fabulous people that produced such an amazing little girl. No worries, if you come here often, you'll get to know us.
more later folks.
