End of summer

Tomorrow Baby Peanut will be 17 months old, or one month shy of a year and a half.  How quickly time flies! He's currently sleeping next to me after a very cranky evening/day.  Poor dude,  I guess he's tired.  He can probably pick up that Mom and Dad are all wired up after  the burglary.

I realized I haven't written much about his sleep in a while.  It's weird,  I feel like not much has changed but when I read my last sleep entry it just takes me back to a much worse place.  So I guess he has been improving!  I don't think I mentioned before,  but he finally managed to overcome his lactose intolerance and silent reflux a few weeks after he turned 13 months old.  He can now eat cheese!  And yogurt!  And eat cereal with milk,  and pizza,  and cream,  and cake and chocolate and just anything  he sees!  Which means that so do I!!! That was a big,  nice change.  He loves  ice cream and chocolate and cookies and yogurt.  I still try to keep him from eating crap food,  but I don't like forbidding foods,  I feel like it just makes them more attractive.  He is observing excellent portion control even with things like cookies and cake,  so I want to encourage a healthy relationship with food.

Sleep is still fractured.  He cut a canine last week and another two are on the way,  so it was hard for a couple of weeks.  But before that,  I had been somewhat successful cutting down the milk takes at night from 4 or 5 to 2 or 3. I am back to just letting him be for the time being,  cutting teeth is no fun for him and he wasn't eating much at all,  so obviously he was making up with night calories.

I'm feeling pretty zen about his sleep.  I am sleeping two or three hours between takes,  so that's a great improvement over an hour and a half or less from a few months ago.  I can function much better! He is not really sleeping on his bed,  unless I spend the night with him on it.  It's a comfy matress so I do it a couple of times a week,  but whenever I climb into my bed he wakes up in less than an hour and asks for mommy.  So I either climb back down with him or pull him into  our bed again.  Other nights he starts in our bed and just sleeps there, screw it.  It's not worth the trouble.

Another great development is that sometimes Cookie can put him down to sleep.  Or,  I guess it's more accurate to say,  Cookie can sit down with him while he falls asleep when I am already passed out.  Which also means he doesn't always falls asleep at the breast! That too is kind of new - he always kind of could fall asleep without the breast but he still prefers it.  I don't even mind,  to be honest,  I don't know what the big deal is.

Do I wish he had weaned by now?  Maybe,  yeah.  It would be nice to wear all of my clothes,  regardless of the ease of access to my boobs.  I would be nice to sleep all night or to have personal time after he goes to sleep.  But I also love cradling him like a baby,  and I love his smiles and the twinkle of his eyes when he's nursing and I'm tickling him and singing silly songs.  I love his heavy,  sweaty little body.  I am in awe of how fast he's growing,  how big he is,  how smart and human he is.  It's such a short stage,  even if it doesn't quite feel like it because it's HARD,  like,  capital HARD  and strenuous and exhausting and stressful and you know,  an entire human being  is being formed in your care and you can barely take care of yourself on the daily basis,  what the he'll are you doing and who thought putting you in charge was a good idea.  But it's so short.

Almost a year and a half is gone.  When he was a little tiny baby all I could think was is he eating enough?  Am I producing enough milk?  Did he pee and poop enough today?  Is he breathing?  It was so exhausting.  I was worried about his survival all the time.  Nowadays he sits on his chair and I serve rice and meat and veggies,  pour water in a mug and he eats with his hands and his fork and his spoon and when he gets bored he throws food to the dogs and I worry about him not breaking the cup or doing a mess.  It's certainly a less dramatic kind of stress.  I do my best to let him be.  He's turning out to be a joy of a little person.  This journey of discovering who he is and helping him become a man?  I never thought I was capable of so much love,  never knew I was this strong.

Cookie and I are doing much better too.  There's been some bad days but nothing like it was back in May.  We do what we can, we take care of each other,  we make it through another day.  I'm grateful we can do this together. Parenthood has been a lesson about Love in every aspect. How it can be overwhelming,  inexplicable,  but also a conscious,  faithful decision.  We made a promise to each other and we're working together because it's worth keeping.

Things my doctor said

You look sad.

I think you have post partum depression and we didn't catch it earlier.

How long has it been,  10 months?  Why didn't you come sooner?

We could give you some antidepressants,  though if you are still breastfeeding...

If you continue to feel bad and you decide to wean the baby,  we can get you on some meds.

----

Soooo. I am not on meds. I don't plan to wean Baby Peanut for a while.  My breastfeeding goal was one year,  and I feel like the worst of the PPD and PPA is mostly over.

I ended up going to the doctor because an unrelated problem.  It seems I might have some sort of allergy and irritation on the lady parts.  Funnnn. If the treatment doesn't work I'm in for some testing,  since it's making our love life pretty much non existent.  Meh. We have had some arguments and lots of guilt and unhappiness in that department.  The doctor says part of the problem is the PPD,  but there is definitely something else going on.  So.

Peanut continues to not sleep,  even worse than before.  Wakes every hour,  every hour and a half.  It's difficult.  Very,  very difficult.  I had stopped the reflux medication but I think we're going to go back to it, and hopefully the sleep will improve.  He's getting better at crawling though!  Still not quite there,  but getting there!

I've been reading a lot about sleep.  It's not helping to improve his sleep,  but it's very interesting and I think it's helping me to cope,  at least.  He'll sleep when he sleeps,  I guess!

I guess I shouldn't have said anything

Of couse we are now in the middle of a sleep regression, right after I said Baby Peanut was sleeping fine. He's been waking every hour, screaming, needing to nurse to fall asleep. I'm trying to reduce the number of nursing sesions at night, because 5 or 6 are just not feasible, but so far the best I've managed is three, with wakings every hour in between.

I *think* he's having confusional arousals, amd not actually waking up. Not sure if it's developmental or if he needs an earlier bedtime now that he's dropping a nap, though, but he rouses screaming, eyes closed shut, and eventually he stops and is suddenly fast asleep again. He's even opening his eyes and staring through me or rolling into his stomach with his eyes closed, crying. Cookie isn't sure he's asleep, but he doesn't seem awake to me. Even the crying and screaming is different. Needless to say, I kind of really need some consolidated sleep.

I had stress dreams the last couple of nights. It was weird, this time around they were about meetig new clients and getting new projects. I also had a stress dream about failing all my classes because of a big misunderstanding on my part. I thought I was all done with dreaming about school!

I ended up asking someone to help me with the office renovation project this morning, I don't think the pay is worth the amount of stress it was causing me. Hopefully that will make it go away faster! I don't really want to take on any new projects right now, though I probably will. I would love to get some completely free days, to do my Christmas shopping and declutter my house and my office and visit some relatives. I'm gonna try to make some time. I already feel better, anxiety wise, now that school is done, but I suspect the anxiety is shifting to the whole "new projecta aversion" and it might paralize me later. One step at a time, though.

Rope's end

On Friday morning the dogs would not stay inside while I tried to go out to open the fence so we could take out our cars and Cookie could leave for work. The neighbors' dog was outside and our dogs wanted ouuuttt they wanted to bark and run and ouuuuttt and I had had a terrible night and the baby was crying inside and so I headed for the garden hose to scare the dogs into the house with some water. He stopped me, told me he knew I was angry but there was no reason to be mean to them. The dogs ran inside anyway the moment they saw me head for the hose, anyway. I said goodbye to him, with tears in my eyes, and I said it. "You don't understand."

----

I went out to work on Saturday and he stayed home wih the baby. My friend P picked me up, and when we arrived to K's house we found out her old lab Sophie was agonizing. We sat with them for a while, chatted with K's mom, petted the poor old thing -we've been working there for 6 months, I loved that dog- and P suggested we return later to do what were going to do, to give them some privacy.

We went to the other site, dealt with things there and headed back to my place. We ended up talking about our kids and our husbands for about an hour, just parked outside. When I went in, Cookie was pissed. "You could have come inside," he said. "This is not easy. I could have used a break."

He had the baby from 10 to 12:45. I just stared at him in disbelief. I'm sorry, I said. I don't know what else to tell you. He said it felt like I just didn't want to come in.

Can you blame me? I asked him. I said I wished I could have a break from the baby that wasn't me going to class or to work. "You were outside for an hour. You could have come in for tea or something. Given me a 15 minute break."

I didn't know what to say. I wondered if he could listed to himself.

He took a shower. I fed the baby.

I got angry. Angrier. I realized I never showered that morning, so I did. Took my time. So angry. Then it all turned to ashes. Sad. So tired. So ready to flee, to be done with everything.

The day got grayer and grayer, my mind slowing down to a halt.

K messaged me. Sophie had finally died. Where had I buried Max last February?

I took a nap while the baby ate. Woke up. He was playing on the computer, never said anything about lunch or supper. Eventually I gave up and cooked. I knew he was worried about me, perhaps maybe even a bit sorry for being angry at noon, but I didn't care. I couldn't muster energy to do anything. I wanted to sleep more than anything but I couldn't fall asleep for another nap.

I downloaded Ferber's book, How to solve your child's sleep problems, read the first four chapters. I don't like CIO methods, even controlled crying and gradual extintion sounds like too much for me, but I was ready to try anything. I needed sleep, and Cookie had previously been on my case about sleep training.

Baby Peanut cried for 45 minutes before falling asleep on his own, gradual extintion not feeling gentle at all. I wanted to die. I told Cookie as much. "Is there any rule in the book about quitting after an hour and just holding your baby and telling him you love him?" he asked. No. No such rule. The crying was killing us. He slept for only 40 minutes, and then we were back to wanting to eat to fall asleep.

My back hurts so much from picking him up and putting him down every hour or two. I gave up in the middle of the night, screw Ferber, I can't do it like this. Not while I'm this sleep deprived and tired.

We had an awful night, worst than the one before, I think.

But somehow I feel better, the weight of his words is finally slipping off me. He was right. In his own way, maybe he does understand. A 15 minute break would be nice.

The 4th month sleep regression

Poor baby Peanut has been sleeping pretty badly for the past... ...7 weeks? Almost two months now. Given that there is not much that I can do about it, I read about it. The hows and whys and how longs, and it helps me, it keeps me on the rational level instead of the gurgleeeimdyingggahhhhhggggg sleep deprived madness. First it was a growth spurt, then he had his fourth month vaccines and a low fever and general unhappiness for a few days, then we had a couple of better nights, then another growth spurt, and now.. The 4th month sleep regression. It's been two weeks of bad nights, every night, but it seems it's a development leap. In a matter of a week he learned to drink from a sippy cup (since he haaaates anything that is not Teh Boob),

he reaches up and makes grabby motions when he wants something, he can hand off objects from one hand to the other, swat at things, bring things to his mouth, all of these things he wasn't doing well or consistently or at all two weeks ago.

Also he's trying to roll. He can manage when he's not wearing diapers (making our changing station a danger zone), but not the rest of the time yet, so he tries and tries and tries, all the time. And then he goes to sleep (eventually!) and his brain can't shut down and he keeps trying in his sleep, the poor thing, and wakes himself up, and he cries, so frustrated. All he wants is some sleep! Stop that, brain! 

I found it both awesome and heartbreaking that he is working so hard all the time. Baby brains are unbelievable. But I wish he could rest better, too, not just for my sake. Poor baby, so angry at his own gross motor milestone.