On scheduling and sleep, or: What do I do with my baby all day?

A few weeks ago, I wrote a long and rambling post about infant sleep but decided not to post it. It was too disorganized, and I couldn't figure out what my point was. 

So, here's my second attempt, and I will clarify my point up front: I'd like to share what I know about infant sleep so that if you have a new little one or if you have one on the way (or for whatever reason, you are interested in infant sleeping patterns), you won't make the same mistakes that we made.

I'll start off by offering the following guideline: Think of each day as a math equation that consists of sleeping parts and awake parts. Your goal in the first four months of your baby's life is to create a day that consists of the following parts:

• Awake for the day.
• Nap 1.
• Awake.
• Nap 2.
• Awake.
• Nap 3.
• Awake.
• Asleep for the night.

Some babies fall into the 3-naps-per-day schedule early on, while others prefer taking many catnaps throughout the day. However, by four months, most catnappers have lengthened their naps and can have 3 naps per day.

The trickiest part of this math equation is determining how long the awake periods should be. For most babies, the first awake period of the day is very short, particularly for newborns. Most babies can handle being awake for only an hour before needing to go back to sleep for what might be a lengthy nap.

E, who is one of the sleepiest babies I have ever heard of and who continues to sleep 15 or 16 hours every day, could handle being awake for only an hour until he was 5 or 6 months old, maybe older. (It's a bit hazy.)

The second awake period is usually longer, though again, with very sleepy babies, you might be looking at an awake period of only an hour in the first few months. Until just a month or two ago, E couldn't go much longer than an hour and 45 minutes without turning into a gremlin.

The length of the third nap varies, but it's frequently the shortest and is the first to be dropped, at some point by 9 months. After the third nap is typically a baby's longest awake period of the day, so it's a good time to try out solid foods (if you're there) or run an errand.

During the awake periods, you feed your baby, change his diaper (typically at wakeup and before going down), and play with him. You might feed your baby upon wake-up or right before putting him to sleep. Newborns typically fall asleep while feeding, so there isn't much opportunity for play, but with an older baby, the awake period is a good time for kicking on a play mat, practicing tummy time, playing peekaboo, or watching Mom or Dad do household chores.

Your job as a parent is to learn your child's sleepy cues so you can figure out the ideal awake periods for your baby. Signs of sleepiness include a dazed look on the face, yawning, and rubbing eyes. If you see either of the last two signs, put that baby to sleep immediately because he's in danger of getting overtired, and if he gets overtired, he will be very difficult to put to sleep. If he gets overtired and is very difficult to soothe and settle, note how long he was awake, and put him to sleep after a shorter wake-up period the next day.

Every baby is different, but I'll give a sample schedule of how a day might go for a four-month old:

• Wake-up: 7:00 AM
• Nap 1: 8:00 - 10:00
• Nap 2: 11:30 - 12:30 PM 
• Nap 3: 2:30 - 3:30
• Bed: 6:00
• Nighttime wake-ups: Ideally, no more than 2 for feedings, usually around midnight and 3 or 4 AM.

You might think that a 6 PM bedtime is very early. For some babies, it is. But most babies should go to bed between 6 PM and 8 PM (though some go to bed later in the first month or two). Don't make the mistake of thinking that your baby will sleep better at night if you keep him up. In fact, the opposite is true. A baby sleeps better at night if he sleeps well during the day, isn't allowed to get overtired, and goes to bed at the right time for him.

E's bedtime is even earlier than 6 PM most nights. He has gone to bed as early as 4:15 and slept through the night. On daycare days, he usually goes to bed around 5 PM.

Here is a typical (non-daycare day) for E these days:

• Wakeup: 6:45 AM
• Nap 1: 9 - 10:30 AM
• Nap 2: 1:00 - 2:30
• Bed: 5:30 PM

Again, this comes back to the math equation. I know that E can be awake for a little more than 2 hours after waking up, and I know that he can be awake for 2-3 hours after his first nap. He consistently goes to bed for the night 3 hours after waking from his second nap.

You'll note that E is down to only 2 naps. By 9 months, babies' naps get longer in duration and they drop their third nap. Almost overnight around 8 months, E went from 45 minute naps to hour-and-a-half naps (an amazing transformation). Now I sometimes have to wake him from his first nap in order to keep his naps on schedule. (A note about waking a sleeping baby - don't do it, unless his sleeping will prevent him from taking his next nap on schedule. That doesn't happen until you're down to 2 naps per day and have a regular sleeping schedule.)

You might be thinking that this schedule is rigid and doesn't leave a lot of flexibility for leaving the house. You are correct. I believe I have blogged about my house arrest status. However, life is full of choices, and we have made the choice to put Eli's sleep first. He's been sleeping through the night since 7 1/2 weeks, so I believe that we are making the right choice.

And if you're wondering when babies drop their morning naps: That usually happens between 12 and 21 months.

If you want to learn more, check out Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth. Its organization is shockingly bad, but the content is great. (That said, prepare yourself for needing to read it multiple times to figure out the most important parts.)

So sick

I have been known to make fate-tempting declarations, including "I've never had a cavity!" and "I'm one of the healthiest people I know!" The former is still true (so far). The latter, sadly, is no longer true.

I've been sicker this winter than I've ever been in my life. I'll take it even further: I think I've been sicker this winter than the average person. Sicker than average! Nobody wants to be average (right?), but even less desirable is worse than average.

But so it is, and E, our huggable, lovable little mucus factory, is almost entirely to blame. That little boy's nose hasn't stopped running since mid-November, with the exception of a 3-day stretch in which he battled the norovirus and nearly had to go to the ER for dehydration.

The norovirus was the tipping point for me, when my winter went from unpleasant (two cases of mastitis, a cold, and a couple of sequences of bad sleep for E) to downright horrible. E caught the bug first, naturally. B and I spent the weekend holding him and spoon feeding him Pedialyte, praying for wet diapers and no more vomit.

B caught the bug next and had a milder case. A few days passed, and I thought I had escaped without succumbing, but in the end, the stomach bug bell tolled for me, too, just days after I caught another cold.

The stomach bug went away. I started feeling better. And then a week and a half ago, I got a sinus infection. I suffered through a weekend of headaches, sinus aches, and toothaches, and then I went to the doctor on a Monday. She recommended waiting to take antibiotics in case the infection cleared on its own and prescribed Afrin and Motrin in the meanwhile.

This occasion was the third in my life in which I waited to take antiobiotics. The first time, when a doctor diagnosed bronchitis, I made the right decision, and the illness went away on its own. The second time, when I had mastitis, waiting was the wrong decision and just made the illness worse. And in this case, I suspect that waiting was again the wrong decision, though there's no way of knowing whether time or the drugs helped with my symptoms.

When the Motrin was no longer doing anything for my pain, I filled the amox prescription and then had to wait another 2 days before I felt any improvement. Now on day 5 of the antiobiotics, I can almost start chewing on the left side of my mouth again.

My inability to chew on the left side of my mouth for over a week combined with a stomach virus and the generally poor appetite that accompanies illnesses has left me at my pre-college weight. Is this Mother Nature's way of helping me drop any remaining baby pounds because if so, she has achieved her goal and then some.

So, here is my warning to all soon-to-be and future parents: If your child goes to daycare, your first winter is going to be hell. There will never be a day when all of you are healthy. And you'll never know whether this coughing illness or that vomiting illness will leave your child unable to sleep through the night for days at a go.

According to our pediatrician, the first winter is the worst. Please let it be so.

Life changes

In 2000-2001, my life changed dramatically. I took a year off school and got an internship in another state. In the process of leaving my life behind, I discovered a new life with a happier, better me.

In 2010-2011, my life changed dramatically. I got pregnant. I gave birth to a wonderful baby boy. I've redefined my normal once again, and while this new life is less indulgent and more structured, I've had the honor and privilege of creating a new life, and I am lucky enough that I can watch him grow up.

Between you and me, I'm a little scared about what 2020-2021 has in store for me. Luckily, I have a long time before I find out.

Everyone tells me about how fast time passes when you have a child. I understand it. The past eight months have gone by quickly. (Though I have to say that the first 8 weeks of those 8 months were among the longest of my life.) I think time is passing so quickly because we haven't had many fun adventures to break up the monotony of bottles, diapers, and naps.

I'm looking forward to going on adventures with E. I ask B all the time where we should take E for his first vacation. That we are even contemplating a vacation with him is a huge step. I don't see myself hopping into an airplane with E any time soon--I'm not that brave--but maybe we can do a long weekend somewhere this summer.

A lot of people really enjoy the baby phase, but I am really looking forward to E being more like a mini human and less like a baby. I want him to be able to eat the food that we're eating and tell us what he's thinking and offer opinions and engage with us in a way that his little brain just can't do now. But whenever I find myself wishing for him to be older and more self-sufficient and frankly, a little less in need of so much sleep (seriously...15-16+ hours/day is nice but inconvenient), I try to remind myself to sit back and enjoy his baby years because they'll be gone soon.

Putting an end to the suffering

When I suffered my second bout of mastitis just days after completing the antibiotics course for my first bout of mastitis, I decided it was time to re-evaluate the pumping situation.

I like the idea of providing E with the very best nutrition, but my pumping was distancing me from him and potentially interfering with my ability to care for him. When I pump, I cannot pick E up, feed him, or even bend over. When I'm home alone with him, I pump during his naps, but when I have mastitis, I have to stick to a more strict schedule, so I need someone else to be available to take care of him while I pump (and when I'm unable to get out of bed or pick him up).

My mother took care of E both times that I got mastitis. I'm so lucky that she was able and willing to do that, but not being able to take care of your own child is a daunting position to be in.

I decided that 7 1/2 months of pumping and 2 bouts of mastitis was enough. I had suffered enough. (A touch dramatic, perhaps, but I was in rough shape.)

I am now slowly, slowly, slowly reducing the time that I pump, with the goal of stopping pumping all together at some point in the near future.

I drop a minute from each pumping session every 3 or 4 days. B and I joke that I will still be pumping on the day of E's high school graduation. Ok, probably not, though it could be months before I'm able to stop completely. Going slowly is the key to avoiding another run-in with the big M, mastitis. 

My weaning myself from the pump means that E now has to drink some formula. I thought that I would feel guilty after giving him his first bottle of formula, but interestingly, I did not feel guilty. I felt relieved. I was no longer solely responsible for producing his nutrition. And luckily for us, he is willing to drink formula, which he gets only at school for the time being. We still have enough breastmilk that he doesn't (yet) have to drink formula at home.

My pumping journey has been long and difficult, and it's not over yet, but I'm proud of myself for making it this far, and I am so looking forward to the day when I no longer have to pump.

The most wonderful time of the year, or know thy limits

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. It was...Thanksgiving 2011.

I worried how E would handle Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. Mostly, I was concerned about his sleeping. Now I know that there are so many other things to worry about!

For Thanksgiving, we traveled during naptimes, and E slept reasonably well in the car - hooray! However, after a few hours of socializing and people and chatter and attention, the little guy was so wired, he couldn't fall asleep that night.

His normal bedtime (4:45 now, or 5 if I'm running late) came and went, and he was nowhere near ready for sleep, though not because he wasn't tired. He was exhausted, but the overtired state is complicated for babies. Babies have a lot of trouble falling asleep when they are overtired.

After much rocking, crying, and hand chewing, he eventually fell asleep around 7. We were both pooped.

Meanwhile, the extended day away from home combined with E's super-late (for him) bedtime messed with my pumping schedule. Thanksgiving night, I felt feverish and sore and decidedly unwell. By the next morning, a call to the doctor confirmed my fears - I had developed mastitis.

I haven't felt that bad since I had the flu. I felt like I had been hit by a truck. B had to delay his work day and my parents had to come up and watch E because I could barely get out of bed, let alone take care of a baby. I started on an antibiotic and round-the-clock Motrin and was starting to feel more like a human within a couple days. I just took my last antibiotic today and feel completely better.

We learned our limits. I now know not to push the time between pumping sessions. And we now know that 3 hours is too long for E to socialize.

I apologize now to everyone we'll be seeing for Christmas. We'll show up, but we won't be able to stay long. I hope by next year, we'll be able to resume more of our holiday activities.

To procreate or not to procreate

This was the question I asked myself many times before B and I plunged into parenthood.

We (ok, I) deliberated long and hard for years and years about whether having a child was the right decision for me.

The difficulty with this decision is that you can easily identify the negative aspects involved in becoming a parent, but the positive aspects are more difficult to understand, particularly when you hear such wishy-washy wisdoms as "Your life will never been the same - for the better!" and "You don't understand your purpose on earth until you become a mother!"

So, let's start with what I knew. I knew that our lives would change. I knew I would get less sleep. I knew that vacations would be more difficult and that simple things that we took for granted, such as running out to the store, would no longer be as easy. I knew that our days of sleeping in and watching TV on a rainy afternoon would be over, for a while, anyway. I knew that my time would not really be my own anymore and that my priorities were going to shift dramatically.

I thought I was prepared for all the difficulties, but the truth is, you can't even begin to fathom the challenges until you experience them. Everything that you think will be hard is actually much harder than you expected. I've done my best to convey this information in previous postings, so I won't belabor the details again.

Because this post isn't going to be about how difficult it is to be a parent. I've written a lot about that, and for this post, I want to talk about the good stuff that comes when you become a parent. If you are on the fence about being a parent, you might benefit from my attempt at clarifying the wishy-washy wisdom.

Here is my clarification: In short, it feels good to be a parent. When you create an environment in which your child is happy and is thriving, you feel like a better person. You receive positive affirmation every time your child smiles at you or laughs because of something you did, whether you thought it was funny of not. In life, there are few opportunities to receive positive affirmation so many times in a single day. Imagine receiving 60 compliments in an hour? That's what it's like to take care of a smiling baby!

Every time your child reaches a milestone, from rolling over to sitting up to swallowing his first mouthful of mashed peas, you feel proud of yourself because the achievement happened under your love and care. Every time your child does something cute, you wish you could capture it in a little bubble and relive it over and over again, and again, you feel pride that your offspring has done something so memorable and wonderful. (On a side note, you sort of lose your mind regarding the awesomeness of your child's achievements and think that everything from a hiccup to a toe grab is the cutest thing ever, so you get to experience these moments all the time.)

Every time your child does something that reminds you of yourself, you receive more positive affirmation. After all, if there are two of you in the world doing the same thing, it must be a good idea! And when someone compliments your baby's cuteness or good behavior or skills, you feel as if the person is complimenting you.

When you sneak into your baby's room at night to watch him sleep (and perform your paranoid-mom is-he-still-breathing check), you feel wonder that you and your partner created the most perfect human being on earth, and you feel grateful that you have 18 years with him before he leaves and starts his own life away from you.

And part of you looks forward to that time, when you can sleep in again, vacation easily, shop when you want to, watch TV on a rainy day, and call your time your own. But part of you knows that no matter how difficult the 24/7 parenting days might be, you will miss them when they're gone, and so you try not to focus on the difficult parts and try to enjoy all the smiles and giggles and hugs.

You have the right to remain silent

B and I were discussing our significantly scaled-back social lifestyle recently and decided that having a baby is a little like being placed under house arrest.
Sure, sometimes we leave the house. On weekends, we usually take turns. One person goes to the grocery store, and another person gets the oil changed. (Or B goes to the grocery store and then gets the oil changed - whichever.)

When my parents are kind enough to babysit the little man on weekends, we both can leave the house together. Sometimes we even (gasp!) go to a restaurant. Usually we run errands. I know, I know--contain your envy.

Rarely do we both leave the house with E, as he usually falls asleep and then his naps for the rest of the day are thrown off.

Knowing that this lifestyle is somewhat self-inflicted makes it a little easier to tolerate. A few months ago, after reading several books about infant and child sleep, I chose to put E's naps first whenever possible. And so we do, but my goodness, it's difficult.

How do we cope with this huge lifestyle adjustment? First, we accept that it's how our lives are going now, but it's not how they will always go. We hope that by the time E is down to 1 nap per day (which usually happens between 12 and 15 months), we'll have a little more freedom.

Second, we buy as much as we can online. Amazon is my new best friend. I joined Amazon Mom, which is a free program that offers 2-day shipping on nearly everything. (It's amazing.)

And finally, we do our best to enjoy this time with E. Life with a new baby presents many challenges, but witnessing these early months and all his discoveries and firsts is pretty amazing. He gets more and more charming every day.

And some day, we will be able to take him out so he can show off this charm to the rest of the world.