8 posts tagged “peter”

Out with a bang

Dec 31, 2008
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Happy New Year!

Weary

Nov 24, 2008
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I am exhausted. I am coping, but I am exhausted.

Ever since THE CROUP, Peter's preferred* sleep position is nestled against me, with my boob in his mouth. All night. The good news is - as soon as he starts acting sleepy, all I have to do is undo my nursing bra and - voila! Sleeping baby. The bad news is - it's not like I can just sit and nurse him for hours, twice a day, what with having those other two children to care for. And the other bad news is - our bed just ain't big enough for the three of us.

*Read: the only method that results in actual sleep rather than hours of wailing.

I'm at a loss. If Aaron weren't so chronically tired, I could maybe rely on him to help with the nights and together we could muscle through this, get through the sleepless week or two of sleep training Peter needs to learn to sleep well in his bed. But Aaron is exhausted too, and a sleepy daddy is a crabby daddy, and I can't bring myself to ask him to temporarily sleep even less to make this work. Even though it would result in more sleep for all of us in the long run, we still have to survive the short run.

I truly didn't think we were going to have this problem with Peter. How is it that my baby who slept through the night at two and a half months is now, at nearly six months, waking four or five or six times a night? What a colossal failure I feel like, for letting it get this bad.

He like to move it, move it

Nov 23, 2008
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Way back in the days of labor fake-outs (remember those?) I predicted that Peter would be a stealth ninja baby. As it turns out, I was right: the wee boy has been increasingly mobile this month, but stealthily so. When I put him down on the floor to play, he doesn't appear to be moving - so I'll look away to stop Noah from pounding David with a block or crack open another Diet Coke, and when I look back he'll be at the other side of the room, gumming an electrical cord. That's strange, I'll think, I don't remember putting him down near such an obvious hazard, but I didn't see him moving, so perhaps I did... I'd write it off as slipshod parenting, except for the slug-trail of drool on the carpet leading back to where he started. Ninja baby!

A few weeks ago I remarked to Aaron that what I needed to do was install a time-lapse camera on the living room ceiling to get a better idea of how Peter moves. This didn't pan out, of course, but now that his movements are becoming a little more defined, I took a movie with our digital camera. Please excuse the poor lighting - here in the upper midwest, we won't see the sun again until April, and we're making do with rather shadowy interior lights.

So, here is Peter, age five-and-two-thirds months, aiming for the remote control:

Peter - Ninja Crawling!

P.S. - Yes, I completely dropped the NaBloPoMo ball. What can I say? I don't even have a good excuse - just that for two days in a row, I totally forgot about blogging until after I was already in bed, and I just couldn't work up the enthusiasm to get up and try to write something. Sorry, universe - maybe next year.

Newsletter: Month Five*

Nov 1, 2008
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Dear Peter,

Right now you're sleeping in your crib. This sounds like an awfully simple thing, doesn't it? Don't all babies sleep in cribs? Most of them do, yes, but it's harder than you'd think to make this happen. You've been an exception to the babies-don't-like-to-sleep-in-cribs rule since you were born, by some odd mixture of your naturally cooperative temperament and your daddy's and my relative experience as parents of newborns; and for the most part you've been a cooperative baby who goes to sleep on your own without arguing about it much ---

-- until a week ago. Because a week ago, you came down with THE CROUP, and you couldn't sleep unless I was holding you upright. So for six nights I held you in a steamy bathroom to help your cough and then dozed in the recliner while you slept on my shoulder. Yesterday you were finally better enough that you didn't immediately begin barking the minute I laid you down, and I naively thought perhaps you would be happier napping in your crib instead of on my lap - but you responded to this suggestion by clinging forcefully to me with your face mashed against my neck, and arching violently away from your daddy whenever he would try to hold you.

So we had a very long night, with lots of picking you up and comforting you and putting you back down and trying to figure out just exactly what would make you happy until finally I collapsed into bed with you at 3:30 and you spent the rest of the night gnawing on my nipple. I was steeling myself for a day of fighting with you to get you to sleep on your own, but then - miracle! - you dropped off happily in your crib on the first try, and suddenly this weekend is looking a lot more bearable.

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This month we've seen the beginnings of mobility, something that scares me because, look, we already have two mobile kids in this house. Would it kill you to give me a few more months of finding you in the same place I left you? But you are determined to go places, and already you're pulling yourself along the carpet by your elbows, making progress inch by barely perceptible inch until suddenly I look up and you're across the room gnawing on an electrical cord.

Thanks to a lot of urging from my therapist, I'm finally getting out of the house with you and your brothers more these days. I've joined a mom's group at church, and once a week you spend two hours in the nursery charming the little old ladies and drooling on someone else's carpet. Invariably, when I pick you up they remark about how cheerful and friendly you are, and are you always so content? And the answer, unless you've just spent your nights barking at me with THE CROUP, is yes: you are a deliciously cheerful boy.

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You're also a remarkably drooly boy. Your daddy's nickname for you is "Bubbles," because your new favorite sound to make is this: PHHHHBBT, which you do through the thick layer of drool that constantly covers your chin. When you started drooling a month ago, we thought you must be teething; but it's been a month and there are still no teeth in sight, so maybe you're just drooly. Your doctor commented on this at your visit last week: "Well, he's certainly well-hydrated," she said. You and I are both well-hydrated these days: you on your face, and me on every article of clothing I own, thanks to your prolific saliva. I've given up on multiple wardrobe changes and I now spend my days with drooly patches on my shoulders and neck. It's a small price to pay for your wet, open-mouthed kisses.

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Love,

Mama

*Yes, I am a plagiarist.

rhapsody

Aug 9, 2008
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As of yesterday, Peter has been ours for ten weeks already. Hard to believe - he seems so new and tiny, yet it feels like he's been part of our family forever. Here he is modeling his Shrek Baby look:

I bristle whenever someone asks me if he's a "good" baby - are babies who don't nurse well or sleep through the night therefore bad babies? I hate the implication that one can pass value judgments on an infant based on brand-new personality traits - but in fact, ever since he finally stopped with the false labor scares and the midnight rib-kicking, he's been remarkably easy and laid-back. I say none of this to brag, understand; it is due to his own complex wiring and not my slipshod parenting that he's so good-natured. He smiles gamely whenever anyone shows him the slightest attention, and often stops nursing mid-meal to give me a gummy grin with my nipple in his mouth. He's put himself on a very manageable routine, in which he eats, plays for a bit, and then drifts off happily for a nap in his crib - it's as if he'd read the Baby Whisperer book himself, in utero, to pass the time while I was lounging around on bed rest.

And, the best part: He sleeps through the night! Last week on my birthday (good heavens, I'm twenty-seven and an adult, when did this happen? Shouldn't I still be worrying about my driving test and passing notes about boys in class?) I woke up at seven in a puddle of milk and realized he'd completely missed his 4am feeding and in fact had been asleep since I gave him a drowsy feed at 11:00 the night before - a birthday miracle! Then he did it again the next night, and the next -- and as a result I am feeling so much more pleasant, and like this mother-of-three thing might work out after all.

Of course, tomorrow morning we leave town - my grandfather died on Thursday, and we're facing a 420-mile drive to the funeral, after which I may be feeling like the mother-of-three gig is no fun at all and promptly list the boys on ebay. But the boys have been unbearably cute in anticipation of the trip to visit their grandparents, and right now I am feeling so sparkly and rested that all I want to do is nibble on their delicious cheeks and dissolve into a puddle of maternal bliss at how squishy and sweet they all are.

I am so relieved to be feeling this way, even if tomorrow's drive is a nightmare. I am relieved that I can feel this way, that third-time new-motherhood is conquerable, if only for a day or two at a time - I want to toss my hat into the air and twirl like Mary Tyler Moore: We're gonna make it after all!

Better

Jul 24, 2008
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It's been a while. Peter will be 8 weeks old tomorrow and is thriving, so adorably pudgy and round he looks like he'd bounce if you dropped him (not that I've tried). I'm still existing in a place between words, only thinking in complete sentences when I'm in the shower or stopped at a red light, impossibly far from my keyboard.

My camera, fortunately, is more often close at hand. Here are my three, reveling in brotherhood:

Noah, David, and Peter, 7-18-08

Pease porridge cold

Jun 8, 2008
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Peter is nine days old today, and it's been a week since I've written. Through no effort on my part, he has himself on a pretty steady rhythm, awakening to nurse every three hours and then falling back asleep as soon as he's done. This is lovely, and would be even better in a first baby - as it is, having two older children renders "sleep when the baby sleeps" a ridiculous impossibility most of the time. Sleeping in two-hour snatches and horrific hormone fluctuations have affected me much more than I expected them to; this whole experience, starting with his birth and continuing since we got home, have felt surreal and intangible, and I'm only now starting to warm to the little guy in anything deeper than a "feed-cuddle-repeat" sort of way.

I want very much to try and describe Peter, the grumpy-old-man face he makes when he scrunches up his cheeks, the cauliflower ear he's getting since he insists on sleeping with his head to the left. But I'm very, very tired, and feeling quite out of touch with reality these days. I want to be absorbing this whole new-baby experience, tucking it away to treasure for always, for when he's two or twenty-six or fifty....but mostly the days are washing over me like waves, pushing me with their strength but disappearing quickly, ungraspable. I doubt very much I'll be writing much of anything, any time soon.

He's here!

Jun 1, 2008
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Peter Andrew, arrived Friday 1:53 p.m. after a very easy induction. He's 7 lb 9 oz, 19 1/4 inches long, lovely and perfect. More later, perhaps when I can type two-handed (i.e., once he's off to college).