This is kind of quick because the darling little beast is waking up as I type this.
I'm going to write this so I know I may be held accountable for its contents. I've not really been very good at this whole stay-at-home mom thing. It's friggin' tough!! More on that another time, but as of today this little girl of mine is going to be on a better schedule. Not that I'm going military on her but just helping her stay on track so mommy knows what's going on and can thus be a better mommy. She still wants to eat around every three hours during the day, which is fine, remember because she was a preemie her adjusted age is like 5weeks old. But at night she may go 5 hours one stretch and 4 hours the next then three hours that last "night time" stretch, not too bad even if I do wish I got to sleep for more of that.
So here goes: she needs to be up in the morning between 7 or 8 to "eat" breakfast. This means she can be up and play till her lunch at 10 or 11ish and then its down for her only real nap of the day. This needs to be over between 2 and 3 so that she can be up to play for a couple more hours before we try, stressing try to get her to take a mini nap around 4/5ish. Then it can be bath time around 730-8ish and then a bottle and bedtime. I turn the lights low to kind of signal that to her and I've been doing that since she came home.
And now here it comes, she is really waking up now and hungry! I typed this out to kind of get some feedback as to how that sounds. Yes, I know all babies are different. And yes, thank you for reassuring me that I'm her mom and know her. But still, oh moms that know, let me know if that sounds reasonable. I'm kind of basing this on what she does anyway, just hoping to keep her on track so that we can get a bedtime thing going. She doesn't really like to nap often, just that one long one in the middle of the day and around that she will dose in my arms as I to stuff around the house or just dance with her.
I'm off now to get a bottle ready and feed the wee beastie and we'll see if the above plan is something we can do or if I'll get my first real laugh out of her because Mommy's trying to plan something :)
Peace out!!
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Thursday, January 17, 2013
A bit of unloading
I feel the need to vent via keyboard this evening. Hope you don't mind being my sounding board.
Norah's acid reflux makes it so hard for her to sleep peaceful which means I don't sleep either. I do get upset sometimes that she won't even lay down for me to stretch my back or go to the bathroom but mostly I just can't handle watching her in pain and struggling to keep her food down. My heart clenches when she spits up and it comes up her nose and then its like she just can't catch her breath for a few seconds and the look on her face is like pure terror. And I feel like there's nothing I can do. She's on Zantac (1ml twice a day) and she sleeps in a bassinet thing that is at an angle. I hold her kind of upright against my chest for at least 45minutes after she finishes eating to give time for her belly to digest her milk. I hate that she has to work so hard just to keep down her food.
I had been doing some reading about comforting a crying baby. There was a couple of articles that made mention to the "fourth trimester", that babies are actually born early and need their new environment to mimic the womb for another three-ish months. So the snug feeling can be achieved by swaddling, the womb noises mimicked by white noise or low music, the motion of being in the womb mimicked by rocking and bouncing, etc. We had not been swaddling Norah because she seemed to be fighting it, trying to get her arms out. But last evening I was just at my wits end because she was crying. She doesn't really cry for no reason very often at all and not for as long as this had been. None of the usual stuff that she likes was working, dancing and music and being sang to. So after reading that article, I decided to swaddle her and hold her and try to see if she would eventually calm down. I realized that I was expecting my comforting methods to work immediately and that was silly. If I'm upset, something that will comfort me will not necessarily work in seconds so I need to give her time to just be upset and then realize that everything is alright. I swaddled her tight, held her pretty snug in my arms, gave her the paci, and rocked with her sitting on the couch, humming every so often when she would cry or struggle against the swaddle. She started to kind of calm down very shortly and after about 20 minutes or so she was dozing and calm. I kept that up last night and she slept more than she ever has. Today her acid reflux was very very bad so she would cry when laid down, but while being held she slept so well. Like more than she usually sleeps. Which got me thinking...
How long has she been needing that and I haven't been doing it? Has she needed that much sleep for a while and I've not been providing the comfort she needed to get that sleep? When she was like a month or six weeks old, I had someone keep asking if she always sleeps so much and does she ever open her eyes and I guess it got me paranoid. And then when she started really being able to hold her head up well and look around I kind of started treating her like she was a bit older. Not like riding bikes or anything but just having her up and playing with her on her new mat she got for Christmas and being up and dancing with her, tickling her belly laying with her on our bed and showing her the lights and windows and her books. Maybe I should have been spending much more time snuggling with her on the couch, just hanging out.
At that thought I realized that while she is 12weeks old (three months next Wednesday), because she was so premature, her adjusted age is only 4weeks. Four weeks old! I guess I kind of let the implications of her prematurity go in light of how good she is doing and how big she is getting. She is probably at nine and a half pounds or so and wearing mostly three month clothes because she is so long. Seeing her so big now compared to how tiny she was when we brought her home makes me forget, I guess, just how young she really is.
I feel so terrible. Like I have been pushing her and not giving her what she needs just because I want to forget that I couldn't carry my girls to term. I know that Aislynn was just Heaven-bound because for whatever reason that was God's plan so being premature didn't really affect her. There is no way of knowing if we would have gotten any more time with her or even if she would have survived being carried to term. But that and how well Norah did and how short her stay in the NICU was doesn't really alleviate my guilt over delivering early. I spent so many hours going over that last week in my mind, trying to figure out if I had missed something or if there was anything else I could have done. I am getting past that part slowly.
I am also struggling with feeling guilty about being so tired and sometimes cranky about being up with Norah so much. I know its normal but I also know that I was supposed to have two babies. I was supposed to have both my girls and how would I have coped since I can barely cope now with just Norah. This leads to the horrible feeling that Aislynn was taken because I couldn't have handled them both. I also know this is a very emotional response and hardly rational but being rational is darn near impossible on three hours sleep a night for two months.
This is one of the hard days. I'm tired, I kind of hurt, I miss my daughter and I would give anything to be able to hold her just one more time. So I probably hold Norah a little longer than I should while she sleeps, but that extra time is for Aislynn. That is to show Aislynn from her place in Heaven that I am a good mommy and that I would have held her for as long as she wanted. We would have snuggled on the couch at 2am for as long as she needed so she could sleep soundly. I have to do a good job, I have to be the best mommy for Norah because she was our gift from Aislynn. Aislynn protected her while they were in my womb and I have to honor her by being the very best for her sister.
I need to remember that no matter what I feel like, I am Norah's mother. Her only mother. She is my baby and she is Jay's baby. She has other people who love her dearly, but she belongs to us. I need to go with my gut and just react to what she wants to do and not listen to the opinions of others. I need to be strong and brave and only care about the opinions of two, Norah and God. But I need to react to all things as God would have me. I need to remember that at the end of the day I am her mom and I will take her home and that she does really need me, specifically me. And on nights that I'm so tired, I need to remember when I couldn't hold her whenever I wanted to. When she was attached to her bed via wires and tubes and it was a production to get her wrapped up and out of the incubator just for a short snuggle. It's not that I have to hold her all night long now for her to sleep, it's that I can hold her any time I want.
Norah's acid reflux makes it so hard for her to sleep peaceful which means I don't sleep either. I do get upset sometimes that she won't even lay down for me to stretch my back or go to the bathroom but mostly I just can't handle watching her in pain and struggling to keep her food down. My heart clenches when she spits up and it comes up her nose and then its like she just can't catch her breath for a few seconds and the look on her face is like pure terror. And I feel like there's nothing I can do. She's on Zantac (1ml twice a day) and she sleeps in a bassinet thing that is at an angle. I hold her kind of upright against my chest for at least 45minutes after she finishes eating to give time for her belly to digest her milk. I hate that she has to work so hard just to keep down her food.
I had been doing some reading about comforting a crying baby. There was a couple of articles that made mention to the "fourth trimester", that babies are actually born early and need their new environment to mimic the womb for another three-ish months. So the snug feeling can be achieved by swaddling, the womb noises mimicked by white noise or low music, the motion of being in the womb mimicked by rocking and bouncing, etc. We had not been swaddling Norah because she seemed to be fighting it, trying to get her arms out. But last evening I was just at my wits end because she was crying. She doesn't really cry for no reason very often at all and not for as long as this had been. None of the usual stuff that she likes was working, dancing and music and being sang to. So after reading that article, I decided to swaddle her and hold her and try to see if she would eventually calm down. I realized that I was expecting my comforting methods to work immediately and that was silly. If I'm upset, something that will comfort me will not necessarily work in seconds so I need to give her time to just be upset and then realize that everything is alright. I swaddled her tight, held her pretty snug in my arms, gave her the paci, and rocked with her sitting on the couch, humming every so often when she would cry or struggle against the swaddle. She started to kind of calm down very shortly and after about 20 minutes or so she was dozing and calm. I kept that up last night and she slept more than she ever has. Today her acid reflux was very very bad so she would cry when laid down, but while being held she slept so well. Like more than she usually sleeps. Which got me thinking...
How long has she been needing that and I haven't been doing it? Has she needed that much sleep for a while and I've not been providing the comfort she needed to get that sleep? When she was like a month or six weeks old, I had someone keep asking if she always sleeps so much and does she ever open her eyes and I guess it got me paranoid. And then when she started really being able to hold her head up well and look around I kind of started treating her like she was a bit older. Not like riding bikes or anything but just having her up and playing with her on her new mat she got for Christmas and being up and dancing with her, tickling her belly laying with her on our bed and showing her the lights and windows and her books. Maybe I should have been spending much more time snuggling with her on the couch, just hanging out.
At that thought I realized that while she is 12weeks old (three months next Wednesday), because she was so premature, her adjusted age is only 4weeks. Four weeks old! I guess I kind of let the implications of her prematurity go in light of how good she is doing and how big she is getting. She is probably at nine and a half pounds or so and wearing mostly three month clothes because she is so long. Seeing her so big now compared to how tiny she was when we brought her home makes me forget, I guess, just how young she really is.
I feel so terrible. Like I have been pushing her and not giving her what she needs just because I want to forget that I couldn't carry my girls to term. I know that Aislynn was just Heaven-bound because for whatever reason that was God's plan so being premature didn't really affect her. There is no way of knowing if we would have gotten any more time with her or even if she would have survived being carried to term. But that and how well Norah did and how short her stay in the NICU was doesn't really alleviate my guilt over delivering early. I spent so many hours going over that last week in my mind, trying to figure out if I had missed something or if there was anything else I could have done. I am getting past that part slowly.
I am also struggling with feeling guilty about being so tired and sometimes cranky about being up with Norah so much. I know its normal but I also know that I was supposed to have two babies. I was supposed to have both my girls and how would I have coped since I can barely cope now with just Norah. This leads to the horrible feeling that Aislynn was taken because I couldn't have handled them both. I also know this is a very emotional response and hardly rational but being rational is darn near impossible on three hours sleep a night for two months.
This is one of the hard days. I'm tired, I kind of hurt, I miss my daughter and I would give anything to be able to hold her just one more time. So I probably hold Norah a little longer than I should while she sleeps, but that extra time is for Aislynn. That is to show Aislynn from her place in Heaven that I am a good mommy and that I would have held her for as long as she wanted. We would have snuggled on the couch at 2am for as long as she needed so she could sleep soundly. I have to do a good job, I have to be the best mommy for Norah because she was our gift from Aislynn. Aislynn protected her while they were in my womb and I have to honor her by being the very best for her sister.
I need to remember that no matter what I feel like, I am Norah's mother. Her only mother. She is my baby and she is Jay's baby. She has other people who love her dearly, but she belongs to us. I need to go with my gut and just react to what she wants to do and not listen to the opinions of others. I need to be strong and brave and only care about the opinions of two, Norah and God. But I need to react to all things as God would have me. I need to remember that at the end of the day I am her mom and I will take her home and that she does really need me, specifically me. And on nights that I'm so tired, I need to remember when I couldn't hold her whenever I wanted to. When she was attached to her bed via wires and tubes and it was a production to get her wrapped up and out of the incubator just for a short snuggle. It's not that I have to hold her all night long now for her to sleep, it's that I can hold her any time I want.
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