Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Hallelujah!!! 4 weeks old!



Yesterday, Hubby stayed home from work and we moved the baby's crib into his own room. With all our string of company, and for nursing reasons, we had originally put his crib up in our bedroom with the idea of using it as a co-sleeper. The co-sleeper thing didn't work out for 2 reasons: the crib is designed where we could not have the baby's mattress up against ours without a gap between and #2 I still haven't mastered nursing while laying down. What turned out to happen with our nightly rituals was this:

I would nurse Quint around 7 or 8pm and go to bed in our bedroom. Hubby would stay up until 1am or 2am playing computer games in the loft and feed Quint a pumped bottle at his feeding between 10pm and midnight, and then keep him in the loft. When Quint needed his middle of the night feeding, Hubby would bring him to me in the bedroom where I'd nurse him and put him down in the crib in our room. Hubby would sleep in the loft where he wouldn't be woken up by our baby's noisy sleeping habits. I would sleep in our bedroom where I quickly learned how to sleep through the non-urgent noises of a content baby. As a result, Hubby and I have not shared a bed for nearly a month WHICH SERIOUSLY SUCKS!!! Especially since we could spoon now that my huge pregnant belly is gone.

So yesterday, we took one side off the crib so we could get it through two doorways. We also moved my nursing chair and all that setup into the nursery so I can nurse him in the night and not have to wake Hubby up with lights and noise. I know some women think that the man ought to be awake every time the mom is awake during the night, but that's just not logical. Unless there's a bottle pumped, there's no need for Hubby to wake up to do what, wait until he's done nursing so Hubby can change the diaper? The few times that I have been awake nursing and Hubby was asleep nearby, I have been ticked that he wasn't awake as well, but I managed to refrain from throwing a bottle of water at him. Logic soon prevailed, even though it was 4am. Let the man sleep. He had already engineered 5 hours of consistent rest for me that evening which is a marvelous thing.

Anyway, so last night, Quint was in his crib in his room, and was fed a pumped bottle around midnight. Quint returned to his crib and Hubby returned to his computer games. Later, Hubby joined me in our bed. YEAH!!!! At 3:30 when small fry erupted, I went in his room and nursed and changed him. Back to his crib he went and I returned to my bed with Hubby. Same thing happened at 7:30. At the bright and early time of 10am, we all got up for good. Much snuggling and spooning during the night which has done us WORLDS of good.

I can hear the passionate cries of Quint through the wall between our bedrooms, so we won't have to move the monitor back and forth every night. We've got it set up where we can have him in the pack n play downstairs with the monitor and we can be anywhere in the house and hear him on the monitor. Every mother knows that one note that means business within their baby's cries. The trick now is to distinguish between imagining that I heard it in the night and actually hearing it in the night. And to remind myself that if I can't hear him crying over my husband's breathing (not snoring) then it probably isn't serious.

For those of you following my nursing progress, I think I may be past that first month hump of difficulty. We've figured out how to not hurt me and still get him plenty fed!

1 comment:

  1. Okay! I'm caught up on your blog. It's a special treat to sit here and read it. Quint is beautiful and looks awesome. I keep visiting him in my dreams and am surprised at how big he is. In one dream he was impossibly big and I kept thinking that breastfeeding *works*, and what are you eating.

    So, question time. How often do you pump? What kind of bottle nipples are you using, because your little boy obviously does not have nipple confusion? When did you give him his fist bottle? Are you going to stockpile some milk before returning to work? How much do you eat? If the crib had attached to your bed, would you have liked that? Do you use a nursing pillow?

    That's all I have for now. I'm glad to hear that you enjoy being a new momma. I always knew you would be a good momma, but I wasn't always sure you would enjoy it, especially the sleep deprivation part.

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