Book Review: My Quiet Book

I searched the web and couldn't find the exact book I have, but there are similar books out there. This is a cloth/fabric book that unzips open and has several things for the baby to play with: buttoning, sticking things like street lights and apples with velcro on various other things like apple trees or in backpacks or in a train car. It has counting and emotions and snaps with shapes. Despite the fact that the label says it is for 2+ year olds, my son got really into it at 1 year & 3 months. He picks it up daily and brings it to me or his daddy or anyone else willing to sit down and spend a half hour looking at it. And we do sit down with him- we have that rule, otherwise all of the parts that come off of it (4 apples, 4 emotions on the faces of bears, 4 shapes, a penguin, an elephant, 3 stop lights and more) would be scattered around the house.
Our version is red and white striped and has a flower and a sunshine on the cover. It's a great learning book and I can see us using it for years to come!

Travel woes

When our toddler was just a baby, I probably complained about how much more work it was to go anywhere: we had to make sure enough diapers were washed (and dry!), pack several changes of clothes for the baby (and us since he tended to get our clothes dirty too!), remember all of the baby food supplies, breast pump supplies, boppy, blankets, toys and miscellaneous crap that goes with the modern American baby.

Now our boy is a toddler and we STILL have to pack like that (minus the breast pump supplies and plus more of the food items), however he is a biped now and quite quick and clever. Knowing he will get into everything, all of the packed items are put neatly on the couch, which he can't quite get onto yet, but he's still able to pull several bags down and unpack them as fast as we are able to pack them. So, a morning of packing ends up being a morning of packing and re-packing and re-packing. I hope parents of babies can read this and appreciate how much easier it is to pack ALL of that baby crap ONLY ONCE. Yes, the caps were necessary there.

Sleep Problems

Our baby was sleep deprived. This is what we tried:
1.       90 minute sleep cycle. FAIL
2.       4:30 naps daily. Napping at the same time every day. FAIL
3.       8:00-8:00 bed time, naps at 10:00 & 2:00. FAIL
4.       6:00 bed time. SUCCESS!

The main problem with our baby right now is sleep deprivation. This started at about ten months of age, maybe a little sooner, and we are still battling it. I thought it started at about the time we travelled to California (which really messed up his schedule) but the fact that he learned to crawl right before the trip might have had something to do with it. I read that once a baby learns a new skill, like crawling or standing or walking, he doesn't sleep as well. And sure enough, after a few months of joyously sleeping through the night, he was up again, sometimes twice, in the middle of the night. So I talked to some friends who referred some books. 

The first book was The 90 minute sleep book. The gist of the book is that babies are on a 90 minute cycle in which they go from alert to sleepy. So if you pay attention to when they wake up, 90 minutes (or 3 hours, or 4 1/2 hours) later they are in their sleepy phase. There is about a 15 minute window in which it is easier to get the child to fall asleep. Other new parents I have talked to have said that the 90 minute method worked for awhile and then it didn't. This could be because young babies (the first few months) nap more often and so will fall asleep every 90 minutes. Older babies don't need to nap quite as much, so they get sleepy after 2 or 3 sleep schedules. For my 10 month old, it was 4 1/2 hours, or 3 sleep cycles before he was sleepy again. The other thing that makes it difficult, is if the baby is sleeping in their crib, or anywhere but in your arms, it's hard to know the exact moment they woke up, unless they always wake up crying. 

The second thing I took from the book is how to know that your baby is sleep deprived. There are several things, one of which is waking up crying rather than happy. Also, they wake up easier (noise, light affect them), they sleep lighter, they don't nap as long, they fight sleep, etc. Every one of the symptoms mentioned described our baby at 10 months. And so we knew he was sleep deprived. And we knew to try to watch the clock to pay attention to the 90 minute cycles. But although it might be "easier" to get the baby to sleep after 90 minutes, it doesn't mean you will be successful at it, especially if the baby is sleep deprived and has the symptom of fighting sleep! As you can see from the symptoms above, a sleep deprived baby has difficulty getting to sleep and staying asleep. It takes some serious patience and frustration from the parents. And library books!

The second book was Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. Other than the fact that it is written for the stay-at-home mom and the busily working father (seriously, what century is this?!) it has some good points. In fact, I read a mother's story in it that sounded exactly like our baby- down to the times he was falling asleep and the method in which we used to get him to sleep. There were also plenty of stories in there with the same BS: "We tried this for three days and it worked!" "After just a few minutes he was asleep!" which I read while listening to my baby cry and cry in the next room after a week of the same trial and no success. Which made me want to punch the people reporting their stories. But punching a book would be stupid.

In an effort for him to get more sleep, I tried everything I could to get him to take a 4:30 nap. (We shucked the 90 minute crap and decided that sleeping at the same time every day was the key to getting him to sleep easier).

The solution, repeated over and over throughout the book, is earlier bed time. We had been putting our son to sleep around 8:30-9:00 and the book says 7:00 is a good bed time. In order to do that, the book says he shouldn't be going down for a nap after 3:00. 

Okay! Once again, new plan. No more 90 minute cycles. No more 4:30 naps. 

• Day 1: he's super fussy, but he will not nap, so no problem! Fast forward an hour and he's sitting in    his high chair waiting for his food to be prepared, and he falls asleep. Well, no dinner tonight but at least he's getting an earlier bed time!
• Day 2: He falls asleep at 4:15 and he is OUT. Exhausted. Good nap.
• Day 3: He falls asleep at 4:30 and sleeps, in his crib, for an hour. So, basically as soon as we change up the schedule, he starts to nap at 4:30? Maybe he's just exhausted because he only sleeps in the morning at the babysitter's.  

Okay! New plan. The book suggests (over and over) to put an 11 month old baby to bed at 7:00 pm, wake them up at 7:00 am, and put them down for naps at 9:00 am and 1:00 pm. It's supposed to work with the baby's biological clock. But it doesn't work for our schedules. So we decided to shift it an hour and have him sleep from 8:00-8:00 and take naps at 10:00 and 2:00. He already naps at 10:00 every day. The 2:00 one will be the difficult one to establish, and he is at the babysitter's at 2:00 for 4 days a week.

The babysitter does not let him cry himself to sleep. Therefore, some days he goes without a nap while he's there. This has been a problem, but if they only thing we ever complain about is the fact that they don't let him cry, we should probably not complain too much. 

So, the shifted biological clock plan didn't work either. Seems you can't screw with a baby's biological clock. We found after trying different bedtimes that he falls asleep pretty well around 6:00 every night. At first, he would wake up at 4:30 consistently. And not go back to sleep. Major sleep deprivation for us! So daddy insisted that we let him cry in his crib between 4:30-5:30 until he got used to sleeping until 5:30. It was hard. But after a few days, he was sleeping until 5:30! Success? No, he then began the habit of pooping around 4:30 each morning- the one thing he could do that would keep him from laying in his crib for an extra hour! So we would get up, change the poopy diaper and put him back in the crib where he slept until about 5:45. 

He hasn't been napping as well as we would like him to, but the change in his bed time has allowed him to get at least 11 hours of sleep overnight, and he seems to be much less fussy and less clumsy because of it. My new advice to friends with babies: earlier bed times! Just try it!

Sleep problems seem to be common among babies. And once again, like all things baby, there are dozens of books out there with dozens of suggestions, some of them contradicting each other! They say "find out what works best for your baby". What works best is adequate sleep. How do we get there? After over a month of exhaustion (baby sleep deprivation=parent sleep deprivation) try everything even if it doesn't work with your schedule. Like crazy early bedtimes!

Fast forward a few months: Bed time is around 6:00. He is absolutely exhausted by then. If he skips his afternoon nap then he will be in bed around 5:30. He was sleeping until about 5:45 and then when daylight savings happened, he started sleeping until 6:30 am. That would make sense except we fell back, so that hour moved in the opposite direction. He wakes up and plays and only starts to cry a little after he's been playing in the crib for awhile. We still struggle with him getting decent naps, but at least he is no longer suffering from sleep deprivation.

Baby's first vacation

In May, we went to California. Before the trip, it was a little stressful trying to figure out what all was needed for the baby, and how to pack it all without paying extraordinary luggage fees! What I learned was that airports are quite family-friendly! Oh, and our little boy was absolutely in his element at the airport. This was quite fortunate since we had a couple of hour long delays at the Cedar Rapids airport. A small airport with not a lot of entertainment. Unless you are 10 months old. Having just acquired his crawling skills, he spent an hour crawling around on the airport floor, chasing after a little plastic cup. He had a blast. Then, when we put him in his stroller, he made adorable smiley faces at all the strangers he got to catch his eye. This was entertaining for us as well, since we got to see many strangers, including men in fancy business suits and the type of shoes that need to be shined, talking baby talk to our little guy.  This continued throughout the trip. By the time we boarded the plane, he was exhausted. I nursed him and he was out. Slept almost the entire flight to Denver. We also learned that airplanes are not very baby friendly. They don't really have a way to change a diaper. when we asked, the flight attendant suggested we hold him with one arm and change his diaper with the other. Um, he's over 20 pounds. We waited for the plane to land. Luckily he didn't fuss. But next time you are on a plane with a screaming baby you'll know there's a pretty good chance they have a wet or poopy diaper and the parents have no way of doing anything about it. Luckily, we had just barely enough time to change his diaper at the airport before boarding the second plane.

We learned that you can check a car seat (no charge) and take the stroller to the gate to check (no charge). It doesn't matter what the size of the stroller is. So why not bring the mammoth stroller? Because in the airport, you will be taking the baby in and out of the stroller so often, it will be much better if you don't have to strap him into the 5 point harness. Plus, it was just easier to travel around with a much smaller stroller. Plus, if we lost the thing, we could replace it for about $19 at any big chain department store. Plus, we're unlikely to lose it since it's highly unlikely that a $19 stroller is going to get stolen. In fact, people tend to be happy to get rid of them. We got ours for free, anyway!

And security lines were a breeze. The Cedar Rapids airport was small. There was no one in line for security. We chatted with the security people for a bit because they seemed bored. Bored people, on the clock, tend to make a lot of googly eyes at babies. Small airports can be great. Leaving San Francisco, for some reason, took about 1 1/2 hours at the ticket counter. No shit. People in front and behind us had missed their flights and were LIVID. Traveling with two parents was a huge plus here because I got to take the baby out of the line, to the bathroom to change his diaper, etc. during that time while my husband held the place in line. Then, there was a super long line for security, but we got to go through the family line, which no one was in. So, we breezed through security and got to the gate in time and we didn't miss our flight! Thanks to our baby, we were not livid! And I thought traveling with babies would be more stressful.

Baby Bjorn style

The trip went pretty well, everywhere we went, he was getting a super long walk in his stroller, which he loved. Knowing we were maybe being a little excessive, we brought the stroller AND the Baby Bjorn AND the Moby. But we used them all! My husband likes the Bjorn better, but it hurts my shoulders, so the Moby was for me. And the stroller was great so that we didn't have him in a carrier when walking around outside on hot days.

Breast feeding was handy. I have never breastfed in public so much, but when he was hungry, I could provide. I looked for park benches in the shade. at one point I had to feed him in a restaurant. I had a thin blanket that i covered him with, and the waitress said people do that all the time there, so it didn't seem too awkward. Also, it wasn't like I was going to see anyone I knew!

We did run out of clothes for the baby. I was going to look for a laundromat to do a load, but the timing worked out so that we could do the laundry at our friend's house during dinner one night. It was great being halfway through the vacation and having all clean clothes for the baby!

Having only worn cloth diapers, we had to figure out what to do for the vacation. If we packed the diapers, they would take up too much room, requiring another suitcase ($25-$35 each way). Plus, we would have to find a laundromat every few days. We went with the Grovia disposable inserts, and they worked great. 

After the trip, I realized having planned this for weeks and having organized lists worked well. We had everything we needed and it went pretty smoothly. The one thing I didn't realize was that we wouldn't be able to do as much as we wanted to because the most important thing when traveling with a 10 month old is that he gets adequate naps, so that means a lot of hours hanging out in the hotel room. Which isn't such a bad thing, just look at those cheeks.