eight months

Dear Leila,

today you are eight months old. It's your first thanksgiving this weekend and you've become such a little charmer crawling around smiling at your family.

I feel like we're finally starting to string days together into weeks, months even. Before, when you were brand new, everything was just a series of randomly occurring events. Each day we would wake up and tackle every problem like it was the first time. We could never put together time in a way that made sense. We couldn't learn to repeat days into patterns, into weeks, into time. In those early months I felt like we were floating through a void and all we had to keep us afloat was our love. You clinging to me and me to you, bouncing on the blue exercise ball in a poor attempt to emulate the rhythm of waves.

Now that you can laugh, and play and eat bites of my french toast everything is different. You still reach for me when you need me, but now, that's not all the time.

I love you small human,

Mom

Happy babies know that puppy toys are better than human toys.

the sound of silence

I have never met anyone of any age who fights sleep like Leila. Tom once pointed out that its like she thinks she's dying every time she tries to fall asleep. As I write this she is screaming in the background, in foreground Simon and Garfunkle are doing a shitty job drowning her out.

She's exhausted, but she won't fall. Not in my arms, not eating. There's seemingly nothing I can do to make her happy right now. You know those fleeting "what if" thoughts you have that you know you would never act on? I've more than once thought of leaving a note on a the door that just says, "She wouldn't stop crying, I'm sorry." And then I would take off and run away somewhere where I could sleep for eight hours straight.

On our honeymoon she fought sleep so much we gave up eventually and decided we'd just have to let her cry it out. We'd get her to sleep, no joke, ten times but every time we put her down or stopped touching her or stopped "shhhhing" her she would wake right back up. Anyway, the hotel was really well sound-proofed. When she was in the bedroom I could barely hear her in the other room. Our house is pretty much the opposite. I feel like I'm right next to her screaming, purple face. I go in every ten or so minutes and tell her I love her and that she's breaking my heart, for all the good it does.

In case you were wondering, this sucks.

three steps back

If my grammar, spelling or general sense sucks today, I'm sorry, I got three hours of sleep last night. Tom likes to point out that I'm prone to exaggerations like, "I was up a million times with the baby last night." This time, however, no hyperbole is needed.

I went to bed around 11 last night and Leila woke up when she heard me come in the room so I nursed her. I had just put her back in her own bed when Tom came in at 12 and woke her up again. It's not his fault, she's a light sleeper when she's first asleep, anyway I tried to nurse her again, but she wasn't having any of it, so I tired to rock her and again she wasn't having any of it. She was wide awake and thrashing around. So I turned on the light and hung out with her for a while, she was pretty quiet and docile and pooped twice. Her diaper basically looked like a very large person had blown their nose in it, poor bean. Her insides are obviously still not happy. Anyway, the last time I looked at the clock it was 2:10am. Then she was up again at 3:30am. And then again for real at 5:30am. Between 5:30 and 7 she sort of thrashed around while I lay their half-awake but too tired to do anything about it. At 7 I got up and gave her to Tom (who had wisely chosen the living-room as a place of more uninterrupted rest), and then I slept for another hour until he left for work.

Basically, I want to die. I am so tired I think my brain is going to fall out of my head. You know that weird dissociated feeling you get when you drink too much cough syrup? That's me, all the time. Also, my landlord is renovating the suite downstairs so while I attempt to nap all I'll hear are hammers...

captain cranks

A little while back, I started referring to Leila and Captain Cranks when she would get in a mood where she needed to be constantly bounced, rocked, moved around and etc. Those times where I felt like I was doing everything I could to keep hysterics at bay, and I was just barely winning.

Right now, I feel like the Captain is winning. Leila used to fall asleep in my arms at nap time. I would bounce her or rock her and she would, after a few tears, drift off happily. But I can't do that anymore. I need new tricks. It seems like every time you figure our how to be a parent the game changes. For once, I'd like to be ahead of the curve.

Tom took the day off work today, due to a mounting concern I might throw myself off the balcony. I'm kidding by the way, but I had a rough day yesterday. I really had no idea how hard having a baby would be on the relationship. I guess I really should have since being utterly sleep deprived tends to take a toll on any relationship. It took a little while but I think we're at a place where we're working at as a team rather than as two clueless individuals. I turned to him tonight and said, "you know, I think if I was doing this with anyone else I would have killed them by now." Am I not a true romantic?

eight minutes to freedom

When Leila was brand new she would sleep no where else other than plastered to my side. Even if she was fast asleep and we tried to move her to her cradle she would instantly wake up. So it was much to my surprise that after another horrible night of sleep Tom put her in her cradle in the living room and after crying for eight minutes (during which he held me to the bed so I wouldn't go to her) she fell asleep and stayed asleep. Since then, she's only been waking up once a night usually around 3am to eat, then she wakes up and 6:30 and comes back to our bed for cuddles and another snack. Sure, I'm not basking in sleep, but this is so much better than waking up every 30 minutes between 3 and 6am. I almost feel like a normal human.

It's strange in a way to let go like this. Before I had her I read a lot of stuff about "attachment parenting" or the gospel according to Dr. Sears, where it sounds like, given a choice, babies would rather sleep with their parents for ever and ever until they were fifteen. Leila certainly doesn't want to sleep next to us anymore though. For a while she did, but now she's far too grown up for that. I feel like I sleep more deeply now that I'm not always unconsciously aware of her in the bed. I'm still in tune with her, I just don't wake up every time she inhales.

the good, the bad and the sleepy

When I was in high school my dad used to wake me up every morning by saying, "there's good news and there's bad news, which do you want first?" I would croak something about "the good" and he would answer, "well the good news is that it's morning, the bad news is that you have to get up."

Right now I feel like that. The good news is, I've reintroduced coffee to my life. Yes, the caffeinated kind.  The bad news is I need it desperately. I didn't drink coffee throughout my pregnancy, and except from a stolen sip from Tom here and there, I haven't had any since she was born. This morning I sat down and drank a whole cup, and it was magnificent. I feel like I could conquer the world. I was actually going to go for a walk but Tom went out with my keys by accident. I feel like it can't  be worse for Leila than having her mother who is so sleep deprived she can't function normally without bursting into tears.

The bad news is that Leila has decided she does not need sleep. The past couple of nights she has refused to go to sleep before 10pm and then has slept for a couple of hours and has woken up thrashing around like a mad baby. Rinse and repeat every half an hour. Last night Tom drove her to Squamish and back so I could get some sleep. She was hysterical because she'd only taken one short nap and had refused all my attempts to get her to sleep. Around 8pm I was holding her on the bed rocking her back and forth sobbing, "I just want you to be happy baby, I love you so much, please just be happy." Fortunately, Tom stepped in told me to go to bed, picked her up and took her down to the car.

She did wake up in the middle of the night again, somewhere around 1am. She was kicking and thrashing and trying to nurse, but then pulling her head away. I tried swaddling her and she just wriggled out of it like an pissed-off caterpillar. I've never been angry with her before. I always manage to divert my frustration onto poor, long-suffering Norton or Tom or a pillow.When she is freaking out I will snap at one of them, but last night in the middle of the night I was furious with her. I picked her up and I was taking her out of our room and I was going to put her in the cradle in the living room and leave her there even if she cried. I didn't care. As soon as I put her down in the cradle (and woke up a bit more) I realized what was going on, she was drawing her legs up to her chest and then kicking them out like she does when she's gassy. My anger evaporated and I scooped her up and took her over to the couch where I held her on her stomach and patted her back until she was gas free. Then I made some "stomach calming tea" (fennel, cammomile, and peppermint) that is suppose to pass through my milk into her stomach and help her relax. After an hour or so she'd pooped, eaten and was feeling much more pleased with life. I swaddled her up and again and brought her back to bed, where she fell asleep instantly.

It's hard somehow not feel angry when I don't know why she's upset. I would do anything for her, but I can't  do anything if I don't know what to do. Yesterday I missed Tom's mom so much. My mom is stuck in Iceland waiting for a flight home and there was seemingly no one I could call for advice on what to do. My friends with babies are all in the same boat as me, figuring out what works and what doesn't, and I really needed some sage grandmotherly advice. Even if it was just to tell me that, "this too shall pass."

The even better news is Tom's mom is coming for a visit in less than a month. When I am awake at night and can't fall back to sleep I count down the days until her next visit. Twenty-two, in case you were wondering.

A rare moment these days.