Snow covers the ground, unmelting. The cold still grips the northeast with a steel fist. My car is covered with a fine layer of salt, and though you can wash it off, it is a pointless job. Drive another ten minutes and the film will be back on your windshield.
But today, while it is clearly not spring, brought to me the hope of spring to come for the first time this year.
It's beautiful and sunny outside. Birds sing happily. Flocks of geese chatter to each other with their nasal honks as they head - that's right - north. The grocery has blueberries and plums on sale, and the streets of Manhattan are dotted with budding tulips in pots.
The groundhog has not yet spoken, but spring is inevitably coming. And for now, that is enough.
Sasha is eight months and nine days old. She is cranky. She drools until her chin is red and chapped. She chews on anything within range of her menacing gums with the intensity of a homeless beaver with winter knocking at the door.
In short, she has all the symptoms of teething. But she has NO TOOTH.
This is not surprising. Neither her father nor I cut our first tooth until about her age. And being that she is still primarily breastfed, I suppose I should be particularly grateful. But... she has shown these symptoms of teething off and on since she was three months old! We are approaching half a year of toothless agony for the poor child!
We check her gums for a pearly little glimpse of enamel once or twice every day. The ordeal involves one parent pinning her down, while the other one probes behind her lips with a numble finger, trying to do her no harm despite her thrashing head. She does not enjoy the tooth-checking process. Once her first tooth appears, I am sure we will become less interested in the precise timing of subsequent teeth.
All in good time, I suppose. It's hard to be patient, though, when it's your kid who won't stay asleep at night unless you dope her up full of Tylenol.
My kitchen is: sparkling and spotless! Thank you, FlyLady!
Last night, something terrible and wonderful all at once happened. Let me preface this by saying that my job required me to be up at 7am this morning, so that I could be at my office by 9am sharp.
Last night, we put Sasha in her crib at around a quarter to 8. She looked at me, rolled onto her side, and fell fast asleep. I went downstairs and enjoyed some quality time with my laptop and television.
At roughly 10pm, she woke up and cried. Matt checked on her, rocked her for a few minutes, and then put her down again. She fussed off and on for perhaps 20 minutes before settling down to sleep a second time.
I intended to go to bed at 11 or 11:30, around when Sasha was likely to wake up hungry. At 11:45. she still wasn't up, so I went to bed anyway... and I waited there, awake, listening for her voice.
At 1:30, she was still asleep, and I was still awake. Sometime after that, I finally drifted off myself, only to be awoken bythe finally-awake baby. I looked at my watch. It was 3:55am! She hadn't slept that long and soundly since she was 3 months old!
Of course, I walked into her room to fetch her, and then brought her back with us, to be warm and snuggly. I slept more easily after that, anyhow. Of course, I was exhausted at my client's site today, but perhaps this is the sign of more restful nights and deeper sleep to come, for all of us.
My kitchen is: almost clean!
The issue of your child's sleep habits are a muddlesome maze of conflicting advice from experts and doctors, psychologists, family, and friends. There is the let-them-cry camp, the co-sleeping crowd, the doctor who insists that at such-and-such an age, a child no longer needs to wake up to eat, and the been-there parents who say that it's all a bunch of hooey.
It's certainly not easy to navigate through all of this, but sometimes it's even harder to stay the course you've chosen. When it's 11 at night and your baby is crying like her heart is breaking, and you're pointedly ignoring her, it's not easy to be sure you're doing the right thing.
Confessions of a Co-Sleeper
I never intended to be a co-sleeper. When Sasha was still a newborn, I would nurse her to sleep, and put her down in her makeshift bassinet (her stroller, actually). She would wake up typically by around 4am, and I would bring her into our bed and nurse her so we could both get back to sleep quickly. It was lovely, and it worked. By the time she was three months old, she was falling asleep at around 10pm. I would put her in her crib, and she would sleep as late as 4am... and then came the day we realized it was 6:30 and she wasn't up yet. It was positively giddy. I was sure we had beaten the sleepless parent roulette game.
Then we put her in daycare.
Daycare ruined a lot of things for poor Sasha. But one of the most long-lasting effects has been what it did to her sleep cycle. No longer could I put her down in her crib at night; she would wake up and cry within a half hour. We thought perhaps she needed some extra care and attention from us at night, because we were separated during the day, so I began to go to bed with her at around 10 at night.
There is no doubt in my mind that human beings are made to sleep with their parents during infancy. It was (and is!) wonderful to have her snuggled up against me, warm and soft. I could hear her breathing and feel her stir. I knew she was all right, I knew she was warm enough, I knew if she woke up hungry.
"Ferberizing"
But we knew it couldn't go on forever. As happy as we were to have her with us, the problems were myriad: She needed to be in bed and asleep by 8 or so, and I didn't want to go to bed so early every night. She needed to nurse to be happy falling asleep, and although it hasn't happened yet, sooner or later I'm not going to be there for her at bedtime. She became an active sleeper, kicking and tossing and turning all night (and I have the bruises to prove it).
Introduce Dr. Richard Ferber. His method of dealing with sleep issues involves changing the baby's sleep cues so that she learns to fall asleep without nursing, for example, or in her crib instead of in a parent's arms. You go through the new routine, put her where she needs to fall asleep, and then check on her after ever-longing periods of time to make sure she's not crying for good cause.
The first night we tried it, she cried for close to 40 minutes before falling asleep. We were steely-hearted, since we could tell from her voice that she was simply angry. The next night, it was only 20 minutes. The next, about 8. We had a few magic weeks of being able to put Sasha into her crib at bedtime and have her sleep for a few hours. We weren't aiming for sleeping through the night, however, and when she woke and cried at around 11pm, I would take her in with us to feed her and send her back to sleep.
But then we all came down with horrible colds, and I couldn't leave Sasha to cry alone when she felt so sick. She had some bad teething spells, and simply wouldn't fall asleep. We just got her on the schedule again, but Thanksgiving came and disrupted everything once more. Just when we got everything back in order a third time, we went away for Christmas.
Current State of the Binky
Now, we have something new in our Ferber arsenal. Something that will hopefully make the process that much easier. Sasha is now in her own room!
We have had limited success. Now, we can put her down in her own crib at night, and she falls asleep with no complaint. But she wakes up every couple of hours until midnight, and she wakes up about every half hour thereafter, until we take her into our room for the night. It's not perfect, but progress is progress.
My kitchen is: mostly clean! Baby steps, people, baby steps.