Mothers of the Year

The word of the week in our house is sleep.  Oh wait, that was last week.  No, this week too - but this time, it's a good thing.  He's sleeping!!!  We had two nights last week where Zain slept 8 straight hours, and most nights lately he's only woken up once, around 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. for a feed.  Life is suddenly much more happy for all of us!  To what do we attribute this rapid change of conditions?  Well, two things... first, we think he wasn't getting enough milk for his growing little self.  And because he wasn't getting enough nutrition, he wasn't sleeping well, so he was tired, and he didn't have enough energy for aerobic breastfeeding sessions.  So it was all an ugly cycle that led to a hungry and tired and whiny (and occasionally screamy) little baby.  Luckily, Shif's milk production has finally started keeping pace with demand in the past week or so.  

Second, we think we weren't swaddling him tight enough at night.  He sleeps really well when he's very tightly bundled up and his overactive little arms can't cause him trouble.  But, befitting his future career as a linebacker, he's very strong these days.  Our wussy swaddles were no match for those flailing appendages.  If there's any room for movement in his swaddle at all, he'll try to bust out of it.  Then, the combination of the effort to bust out and his wayward arms flying all over the place totally wakes him up.  So the key is to get him strapped down nice and tight.  We used specially made swaddle blankets when he was younger (oh so long ago), but he developed a passionate hatred for the sound of the velcro closures being readied.  So we went to homemade swaddles in receiving blankets, where you're basically just relying on his body weight to hold down the last tail of the blanket.  Despite his hefty size (10 lb, 14 oz last week), he could usually still worm his way out.  As we neared our wits end, I jokingly suggested we use duct tape.  And as we even further neared our wits end, it became less of a joke.  :-)  We are fully expecting to receive our Mother of the Year awards any day now - yes, we duct tape our child to sleep! And it WORKS! 

Okay, don't get excited and call CAS. It's not like we're wrapping him in tape. Just a little piece!

While the duct tape was out, Shif created this MacGyver Mobile over the pack 'n play. 

 

So our lives this week have been significantly better than they were last week.  Last week when we were trying to figure out why nothing seemed to make him happy, we invented the acronym NFI.  It became the frequent answer to questions like do you think he's hungry?, do you think he's tired?,  do you think we're ruining him forever?  N stands for no, I stands for idea, and F stands for a word we won't be able to say out loud much longer.  Let's just say it was they were frustrating times. 

Big news this week has been the arrival of more smiles and laughs!  Not tons of them, but we get a few every day.  It's so much fun to get some happy little feedback from Zain.  The highlight of this past week was a visit by my sister Lorna and niece Maya from Ohio.  They were thrilled to finally get to meet the little guy.  Maya was especially intrigued by this new type of creature.  She was very helpful in calming Zain down when he was upset and entertaining him when he was awake.

A smile for Maya