Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Phantom baby cry

Perhaps you've heard of phantom limb, a sensation in which an amputated limb seems still to be attached to your body. I've uncovered a similar phenomenon: phantom baby cry.

Phantom baby cry manifests itself in several ways. When you're sleeping and your baby starts and then stops crying, you continue to hear the crying in your head. Only when you look at the baby monitor and see that it is not lighting up like the Fourth of July do you realize that your baby has settled down and is no longer crying. Yet you continue to hear the crying in your head.

Phantom baby cry doesn't always begin with your own baby crying, though. Any sound that resembles your baby's cry, such as children playing outside, certain types of music, and even birds, can trigger it, and then you stare at the baby monitor, trying to figure out if your baby is in distress.

I first experienced phantom baby cry in the hospital after delivering E, and it interrupted my sleep then as much as it does now. I simply cannot return to sleep after experiencing phantom baby cry.

I am hopeful that phantom baby cry will fade, just as the baby-in-the-bed dreams have mostly gone away. In the early days, I woke several times per night to B patting, hugging, and jiggling a pillow, attempting to soothe it because he thought it was E. Other times, he'd wake in a panic, patting around the bed looking for E until I explained that he was in his crib. These moments were somewhat funny until I started having the same dreams, waking up and thinking that I had lost E in the bed.

Anyway, the baby-in-the-bed dreams mostly went away when E started sleeping in his own room, and I hope that when E's sleep becomes a little more predictable and less fraught with tears, phantom baby cry will go away.

Please let it go away...

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

My latest obsessions

And now for some non-baby chatter.

My latest obsessions...

Pandora
I'm late to the party on this one, but I'm rarely an early adopter of anything, so no surprise there. Pandora, if you are also late to the party, lets you create your own radio stations. You start with an artist, a song, or a genre, and by liking or disliking music, you can take your station in just about any direction. Or if you want a low-touch experience, you can skip the liking and disliking and listen to what they throw at you.

I have been going through phases. For a while, it was Time to Say Good-bye radio, and I walked around the house pretending to be an opera singer. (I suspect that B is glad that my Sarah Brightman phase has passed - for now.) Now I'm listening to Halleluja radio; I think I could listen to that song all day.

My Billy Joel station is also a fav.

Having a working cell phone
Perhaps "obsession" is too strong of a word. In fitting with my what-is-technology theme, I use a Blackberry that B bought before we were married. About a month ago, I learned that it was no longer receiving incoming calls. Shortly after, I found I could not send text messages.

Unfortunately, this situation is no longer tolerable. I need to be reachable, and I'd like to be able to send text messages. Maybe I'd even like to take a picture or two.

B and I decided that we'd buy new iPhones when the iPhone 5 came out, except...yeah, the iPhone 5 didn't come out. I decided I could live with the bargain-priced iPhone 4, and B ordered the 4S for himself, and our new phones should arrive in the next week or two.

I have mixed feelings about this purchase, considering my new phone is a year old, and do I really want to jump on the bandwagon before the rest of the world has had a chance to vet it, but I am taking a gamble on Apple. Apple, don't make me regret this decision.

My Kindle
I bought my Kindle over a year ago but didn't start appreciating it until E came along.

I went back to work after 6 weeks of leave (a story that I suppose I ought to share, perhaps sometime, if I'm feeling very brave), and B stayed home with the little man for a while. B watched him during the day, and I took over at 4 o'clock, after my workday ended. Part of the evening involved, obviously, putting E to sleep.

I wanted E to learn to fall asleep on his own, but this task is not an overnight process. I'd rock him, and then I'd put a drowsy-but-awake baby into his crib to see if he could fall asleep on his own. If he started to cry, I'd pick him up and start rocking, and try putting him down again in a few minutes.

Sometimes he'd fall asleep, only to wake up a few minutes later and need more rocking.

This process could easily take a half hour at night, sometimes more, in a darkened room. My Kindle and its booklight-equipped cover provided me with entertainment and an opportunity to do something that I enjoyed each day while teaching E a valuable skill.

The Fremont Jones books by Dianne Day will probably always remind me of that time period, as they were my main entertainment. I ran out of Fremont books and have since moved on to the Mary Russell books by Laurie King. Both books feature strong female protagonists who investigate crime. I would more strongly recommend the King books, particularly if you are a fan of Sherlock Holmes.

Buying a Kindle has transformed the way that I buy and think about books. Before, I carefully considered every book acquisition because I would need to find a place to store it, and our bookshelves are already full. Now that my books are digital, I can buy as many as I want and never have to worry about storage.

My book expenses have, needless to say, skyrocketed. On the other hand, since my clothing is frequently covered in drool, snot, and spitup, my clothing purchases have been radically reduced. Why buy nice stuff if it's only going to get baby-gooped?

I miss Anthropologie...

Friday, October 7, 2011

Baby as handbag and other misconceptions

We booked E into a daycare center before we told family and friends that I was pregnant. I had heard about lengthy waiting lists and didn't want to be stuck without daycare options for him.

At our orientation, we learned that they were open from 7 AM to 6 PM. These hours gave us pause.

In the olden days (pre-Rooster), we both left the house before 7, and B always got home around 6:30. Depending on traffic, I usually got home between 5 and 6, but epic traffic days could involve a 2-hour ride home and an unpredictable arrival time.

For pickups after 6 PM, the center charges $1 per minute. Timeliness is of the essence at the end of the day.

We realized we were going to have to make adjustments in our lives. At the time, I reasoned that B could take the later train, dropping E off at 7 AM on the dot, and I could pick E up, arriving by 6 each night. In my mind, I thought of E a bit like a handbag that one could drop off and pick up at will and who would happily adjust to whatever schedule we needed to keep for work.

Parents of babies, feel free to snicker at my naivete. I certainly do.

After E came along, reality set in, and I realized that a baby is not at all like a handbag and he does not happily adjust to anything unless it's something that he wants.

I now know that his being at daycare from 7 AM to 6 PM would be difficult, if not impossible, since he usually does not wake up until 6:45 or 7 AM and usually goes to bed for the night between 5 and 5:30.

Yes, he really goes to bed for the night at that time, and he sleeps the whole night through (in his crib!) without needing a feeding. We have a sleepy baby.

In other sleepy news, he needs 3 naps a day. Most but not all babies eliminate the third nap by 9 months. If I had to guess, I'd say that E is going to be one of those babies who still needs a third nap.

He can't be awake for more than 2 hours without needing another nap, and 2 hours is pushing it. Usually, he needs to sleep after being up for an hour and a half.

As a result, we are frequently housebound. Sure, we could take him out in the car, and he'd fall asleep, but he wouldn't have a good nap; he'd wake up frequently; and any sleep that he might have had in his crib would be lost. I feel guilty doing that to him.

So we stay home almost all the time. If we need to run an errand, one person goes, or my parents watch Eli while we leave together.

Did I expect to be housebound for the first year of E's life? No, certainly not. Again, I thought he'd be like a cute, smiling handbag that one could take about during one's day, and that he'd nap when it was convenient for me.

On the plus side, E is more charming than I anticipated, and he brings me more joy and happiness than I expected. Every night before bed, I peek into his room and see him curled up on his left side, sleeping away, and I smile and say thanks that he's in my life. When I go into his room in the morning after he's woken up and he smiles up at me and is genuinely happy to see me, I accept the tradeoff that I've made - freedom gone, but new joy discovered. The sacrifices are worth it.

And I am grateful that B and I had 6+ wonderful, travel-filled, and delightful years before we undertook this adventure.