Starting solids - a long story about something not terribly important

I didn't even realize this weekend was a wild party weekend until I started seeing all the green outfits pop up in my Instagram feed. Oh, how times have changed. 

Our wild partying.

In news that will surprise no one, I've been agonizing over a decision that is really not that important, and neither fork in the road seems to lead to negative consequences. When to start solids? I spent a day asking everyone with kids at work and no one whose kids were over two even remembered because again, not important. But that's how I roll.

Most kids start between 4-6 months. At Dalton's four month appointment, the pediatrician said we could start rice cereal at five months, but there was really no reason to rush since he was gaining weight well and thriving. At first I was really excited and couldn't wait to get started. Then, I did more internet research, which is a terrible idea. First of all, rice cereal has arsenic and will kill your baby. If anyone says their baby ate it, and their baby is with them, clearly they are lying. 

Naturally, you can find tons of support for why starting at various ages is definitely terrible and sure to result in ruining your kid for life. I've already done tons of things that will ensure his downfall, so I ignored all that. I did find some resources that outlined signs of readiness for solids. Dalton didn't seem to have many of those, and he also didn't seem interested when we would sit him with us while we ate. Because of that, we held off. 

A story all upstate NY-ers can appreciate - I told my mom we were waiting until six months and that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that. She thought I said Wegmans recommended that and was like "oh, yeah, ok that makes sense then". If Wegmans could offer literature on parenting advice, I would follow that exclusively and be set for life.

You would think with the decision being made that we were waiting until six months, the agonizing would be done, but you would be wrong. There are endless decisions to mentally grapple with! Next up: what food to start with?

Obviously rice cereal was out. I bought baby oatmeal, but after talking to some other moms and reading up on my friend's awesome resources, we decided to start with vegetables instead. I kind of struggle with being a rule follower, like I was just telling Eric how we got these "To Do" list pads a few years ago at work and all the time I see people just using them as regular paper and NOT even writing any sort of list, much less a To Do list, and he knew without me even telling him how much that upset me. The point is that I was really having trouble going "against" what the doctor said to start with. 

We planned to start next weekend, right before Dalton hits 6 months (that's on a weekday and those are too rushed to take such a monumental step). We were cooking green beans as a side for last night's dinner, and I told Eric I was going to puree some and freeze them for Dalton.

Our green beans

His green beans

 He got all disappointed when I said I was going to freeze them and was all like "oh man, I thought he was going to eat with us tonight!", so we decided to go for it.

First of all, Eric demanded his turkey/egg/hamburger meal be shared on the blog. 

He should have taken a better picture.

Let's do this thing!

He didn't hate it!

He grabbed the spoon and did this - however, he tends to put everything in his mouth, so it may have been meaningless.

First family dinner with all 3 of us eating!

I wasn't sure what to expect. He seemed mainly confused, but didn't make faces or spit it out or anything. We estimate he ate about 1/4 of a green bean in total.

I'm pretty excited to get to experiment with all different foods with him, but it's a little bittersweet. Up until now, he's been 100% dependent on me for nutrition, hydration, and survival in general. I know 1/4 of a green bean doesn't change that, but that's where we are heading and eventually he won't need me for survival. During state testing, when I basically just have to walk in circles in silence for 70-90 minutes, I was having a panicked "he's leaving me and he'll have his own family and never even call!" moment. Which is ridiculous, because by the time he's old enough to do that there's no way we will still be using phones for phone calls. We barely even do that now.

I also devoted part of my weekend to a social media crusade against United Airlines. My friend flew with her baby, two weeks older than Dalton, and when they arrived, she found her car seat straps had been slashed! She was stranded at the airport, with no safe way to transport her infant, and United said "tough luck" and left to her to figure it out herself. My other friend Kari, of former blogging fame, wrote this Buzzfeed article about it. It got over 1,000 views within just a couple hours, so feel free to check it out, share it, or tweet at United with the hashtag #replacethecarseatunited.

What were your exciting St. Patrick's Day plans? Dalton ate a green food, and also I'm making Shepard's pie on the actual day.

When did your kid start solids and what food did they start with? Do you even remember?

Don't forget me

Last week was amazing. Three snow days, and one early dismissal day. I think this week we are going to actually work the full five days, start to finish, which will be my first time doing so since September, thanks to my good friend Mother Nature. It's weird because when I would have snow days while pregnant, I would lament the end of snow days meaning sleeping, watching TV, and eating candy all day. I thought nothing could come close to the joy of hearing the alarm, checking my phone, and turning it off and going back to sleep.

Wrong.

He has mastered the duck face at a young age.

That feeling didn't even come close to the overwhelming happiness I feel now. Thinking I have to say goodbye to Dalton (it's still traumatic each morning) and then finding out I get to spend the whole day with him...incredible.

My friend just reminded me that while he was in utero, I had concerns about us bonding. Because what did I know? At that point I had never even met the guy, who knew if we would like each other?

I think I've pretty well documented that was an unnecessary concern on my part. I'm going out on a limb and saying it's ok on his end too. Here's what he does while Eric holds him.

Stares me down. Side note - Babies R Us just had an awesome bottle sale.

He tracks me and then gets mad when I leave the room. I can't even pretend to be upset. I love it. I think about how one day he'll be a teenager and won't even want to be seen with me and want to cry.

This past weekend we took him to the aquarium with our friends and their son. 

He looks around in wonderment just going from the living room to the kitchen, so all week I was ridiculously excited to see his little face react to all the new things.

 It was pretty awesome, although at one point we were trying to get his attention to show him a really cool fish. He was staring intently at something, and we couldn't figure out what. Finally we realized it was the bright red life preserver hanging above the tank. Babies be crazy, amiright?

This is getting way more sappy than I'm comfortable with so lets take a look at my assignment in my evening class last week.

Yeah.

Thank goodness this class is a pass/fail type situation because if we were being graded, I would definitely fail. Actually, then I wouldn't be certified to teach the unit, which sounds perfect. The class is finally over though so I don't have to go through that torture anymore. Yesterday I didn't see Dalton for 11 hours and it was absolutely horrible.

But daddy/son time is always adorable.

One of many stupid things I did this week was go to Whole Foods after an exercise class when I was starving. I embraced the spirit of blogging and spent a ridiculous amount on nut butter. I am ashamed.

But it has caffeine. And is delicious.

An important task I've tackled recently is doing research to determine the order, in terms of addictiveness/taste, of the three kinds of Cadbury mini eggs.

So far, this is the leader.

I need to complete my research with the regular traditional milk chocolate ones but Walgreens was out last night?! I'm out of coffee though so it's essential I hit the store tonight. Dalton's daycare provider tells me someday I'll be happy to let him stay there a little longer so I can do errands like that without the added logistical challenge of a baby/carseat. Maybe, but I'm not there yet. He likes looking around the grocery store too.

My little farmer.

Ok, I've completed a blog post. Don't forget about me.

Rate the Cadbury mini eggs in order of taste - dark, white, and milk. If you haven't tried all kinds, immediately get some, eat them all, then report back.

Pumping at work - teacher edition

My sweet closet setup - I think it's improved my balance.

At first, I thought I could never post about this, and would have to leave the intimate discussions of breast milk up to moms who have jobs where they work exclusively with adults. I’m about two months in now, and certainly no expert. One thing I have learned is that to make it work, you need to have no shame about it. Not that it’s a shameful thing, at all, but there’s just something about pulling out your boobs at work that doesn’t feel like it goes hand in hand with professionalism. Obviously, it’s not something that I share with the children, but you know what, if a child or parent from school finds this, well, I’m discussing doing what I need to do to feed my child the way I choose to.

If you don't want to read about how this child eats, you need to stop now.

This post is in no way a “how to”, because as I said, I’m pretty new to it myself. It’s just my experiences with it so far, to compare, commiserate, or maybe give a look into the future for any pregnant teachers. Like, so, so many things, and many more I’m sure I have yet to discover, my thoughts about this while pregnant and my thoughts about it when the time came differed quite a bit. I planned to breastfeed exclusively while on maternity leave, and transition into pumping and sending breast milk to daycare (continuing to provide straight from the source on nights and weekends) when I returned to work.

I started pumping and Dalton started on bottles when he was three weeks old, as recommended by our pediatrician.

 I had heard a lot about babies refusing a bottle, and it made me really nervous. That was my first lesson in not worrying about things that are not actually problems for your baby, because Dalton guzzled his first bottle down with no issues.

Much like his parents, anyone who feeds him is his friend.

From then on, Eric would give him a bottle once a day (usually in the middle of the night) to make sure he would continue to drink from them.

Ahhh you can barely even see him here because he is SO TINY.

I pumped twice a day for the most part. Once to work on building a freezer stash, and once around the time Dalton would get his bottle. While that meant I was waking up in the middle of the night to pump, I still felt like it got me more sleep since the pump didn’t require a diaper change or being soothed back to sleep. It was worth it to maintain my supply and start work with a decent amount of breast milk in the freezer. (Breastfeeding is a supply and demand process, which means that it’s important to pump when the baby eats, so your body knows to make more milk.)

My original attitude was that I would make it work no matter what. Let’s stop here, because I need to put a caveat in. I 100% support any mom who feeds her baby. Period. I’m not a doctor, but I don’t agree with “breast is best”. I understand the nutritional profile comparison, but my personal opinion is that a healthy, sane mom is best. I don’t think someone forcing themselves to do something that they aren’t comfortable with 8-12 times a day is best.

With that said, we did decide that breastfeeding was best for our family. But once my maternity leave was coming to an end, and especially my first few days back at work, I started to realize that providing breast milk while I was away from Dalton wasn’t such a cut and dry process. I had foolishly assumed that it was a simple equation. Mom + Pump = Bottles.

So, so many bottles.

Only when I actually dived in did I realize that pumping is one fickle bitch. Did you know you can pump at the exact same time, in the exact same place, after eating the exact same thing, two days in a row, and get half as much milk on the second day for no apparent reason? I sure didn’t.

I was totally unprepared for just how much it takes over your life. Imagine if you absolutely had to hook yourself up to a machine which renders you immobile, every 3 hours, at work,  preferably in private, no matter what. Just think back on last week and try to fit it into your schedule. It’s doable for me, but it has to stay at the forefront of my mind. Also, you know how they say don’t weigh yourself every day, because your self worth gets caught up in the number? Luckily I don’t suffer from that problem, but it’s really easy to start measuring your self worth in how many ounces you can (or can’t) pump. Crazy, yet true.

For all intents and purposes, this is what you become. Less cute, though.

Then there’s the math. My boobs aren’t nice enough to pump exactly the amounts that Dalton needs for each feeding, so there’s constant storage, transferring, and my god the math. Way more than this reading teacher ever wanted to do.

This is my evenings now. Bagging, rotating the freezer stash, getting bottles washed and new ones ready for daycare - fun times.

Another factor is everybody’s good friend, stress. Stress can take a happy pumper and SHUT. THINGS. DOWN. As I was getting more and more anxious about returning to work and Dalton going to daycare, I was getting less and less milk in my home pumping sessions. It became a vicious cycle; the more I would watch the bottles to see how much, if anything, I was getting, the less I would be able to pump.

No problem, though, right, because I was on my way to pumping only in everyone’s favorite stress free environment: work! The first day was a disaster. I time my pumping sessions for various reasons that are boring. Which means I can tell you that exactly 2.5 minutes into my first work pumping session, I got walked in on. In my classroom, with the door locked. I had been merrily pumping along, and then the shock of the door opening completely ended things. No more milk that session, and pretty much for the rest of the day. I didn’t get nearly the amount I needed for daycare, and I cried. At work. In front of kids.

Crybaby.

Clearly, something needed to give. My “I’ll make it work no matter what” attitude was shutting the whole operation down. I changed my mindset to “if it works, great, if it doesn’t work, formula, and either way he will be fed”. It wasn’t quite as easy as POOF! new attitude!, and it’s certainly not like I never count my ounces and stress over it, but eventually I got to a better place.

Teaching is kind of simultaneously fantastic and terrible for pumping. There is absolutely no flexibility in the daily schedule. The good news there is that my boobs are now on this schedule and know when it’s time to get it going. The bad news is that you don’t choose your schedule, and it may suck for pumping (you really need your “breaks” to be spaced out).

As I said at the top, I quickly learned that it was crucial to get over being embarrassed about it. I can only speak for my profession, but teaching is a pretty collaborative job. I teach elementary school, so I have students with me at almost all times of the day. Obviously, I’m limited to pumping only during times my class is with another staff member (special area and lunch). Even during those times, I often have to meet with colleagues. That left me with three options: don’t pump, don’t attend the meetings, or get over it, throw a cover on, and keep it moving. I went with #3.

Generally, people go into teaching because they like kids, so they often have their own. This means my coworkers are really supportive when I inform them that during our meeting I will be stripping down, playing baby crying videos, and using a loud, irritating machine for the majority of the time. In my short time as a work pumper I’ve gone from crying over getting walked in on (by a good friend, not a random) to sitting in a data meeting with maybe 10 other adults, discussing test scores while pumping under a cover. All staff members involved were mothers, and really nice about it, although there was a college intern that I most likely traumatized. I needed to pump, and I needed to discuss data with my team, so there you have it.

I have to be borderline maniacal about protecting my pump times. We just went on a field trip, and I called ahead and found a place to pump and once again my wonderful coworkers supported me by watching my class there, and when we returned (when I needed to pump again). I leave my night (penis) class to pump in the bathroom. I’m pretty sure everyone thinks I have to take a twenty minute dump at 5:30 each Wednesday night, but it is what it is. I had to just lay it out there for a male coworker who “needed” my help during my planning time, and tell him that if I didn’t pump at that time, I wouldn’t have enough breast milk to send with my son to daycare.

Missing one pump session isn’t going to derail all my efforts. But, aside from the obvious reason of needing the milk to feed Dalton, my supply depends on consistency. Again, one deviation isn’t a big deal, but at work (and I’m guessing this is the case at all jobs) there’s always something that comes up. It seems like it could be a very slippery slope to skip it “just this once” for the field trip, the data meeting, because the gym teacher needs me, etc, etc. So I don’t skip it. Ever. Unless a true emergency does come up.

Originally, I was going to breastfeed for a year, come hell or high water. Now, I aim to just make it one month at a time. Dalton is five months, so my current goal is to get to six months. He starts solid foods then, although I recently learned does not mean he needs less milk. I would be absolutely thrilled to make it to the end of the school year. I really love breastfeeding. I'm not planning to go all Lysa Arryn or anything, but if the stars align and the gods smile at me and we are still going at the one year mark, I don’t necessarily plan to wean then. However, all that will be thoroughly reevaluated when Dalton gets teeth.

That thought is what nightmares are made of.

From what I understand, the way some people are blessed with height, or perfect teeth, or whatever, some people are blessed with the natural ability to make a ton of milk. I am not one of those people. If you google “how to increase your supply”, you can assume I’m doing all the things you will see. I pump in a closet at lunch, balancing the pump parts and my lunch in my lap because I honestly can’t afford the extra 3-4 minutes it would take to return to my classroom (where I could actually eat at a table). I pump four times (at least) each weekday to get enough milk to send the following day, and 1-2 times on the weekends to build my freezer stash. I’m not complaining – I feel super lucky to be able to do it at all, and it’s 100% worth it for me.

Because those thigh rolls do not grow themselves.

I do wonder if milk production is genetic? It’s hard to evaluate because pumping at work wasn’t really as much of a thing in the previous generation, and my mom just breastfed all of us exclusively after her three ZOMG natural births (the desire to do that sure as hell wasn’t passed down). My sister and I both noticed that our lefties carry the team, while the right boob is like the guy who just lets everyone else in the group do all the work while he completely slacks. We were fairly similar in our pumping output. If my prediction is right, and she’s currently carrying my niece (they aren’t finding out!), maybe we can see in like 30 years. But by then pumping will probably be revolutionized and way easier.

Thoughts on milk production being genetic? Feel free to keep any stories along the lines of "I pump ten ounces in a few moments just like my mom!" to yourself though.

If you work with me, on a scale of 1-10 how sick are you of seeing and/or hearing about my boobs?

If you have nothing to say about breasts, what's the worst problem that stress causes in your life?

ClassPass - try it. I'm not getting paid to say that.

I’m going to hit the pause button on eating spoonfuls of cream cheese frosting in front of the TV to talk a bit about exercise.

Dessert is the best.

 

First of all, I’ve updated my keychain to reflect my current priority.

Out with the old, in with the new.

I do still love running. Just not 50 miles. Or 5 miles. Or outdoors. But I did sign up for a race! Actually Eric signed me up. Not one that I have to train for or anything. A small, inexpensive 5k. It’s to benefit a local program that teaches high schoolers and middle schoolers (Eric’s school is one of only 8 middle schools involved!) life skills such as budgeting, note taking, etc.

 

I know I can run 3.1 miles, on the treadmill anyway. So we are running it. And so is Dalton! He will be 6 months old then and strollers are allowed. Probably not the best idea to make everybody’s first stroller run during a race but we like to live dangerously. For various reasons, I’m not comfortable running with him in the car seat in the stroller. Including, but not limited to, it’s winter and I run at 5am and this.

 

Yeah no.

 

Last year I deferred a marathon entry because pregnant, and I originally thought maybe I could actually run it this year. I just remembered it’s this Sunday. The thought of a marathon made me laugh as hard as when my friend said “I thought babies want to take naps”.

 

I’m trying to use my heart rate while I run these days. Heart rate training is a thing and I don’t know much about it. I do know that it’s easy for me to be lazy and come up with excuses for why I can’t run any faster. Wearing my heart rate monitor keeps me honest when I pretend I can’t pick up the pace and validates me when I can barely keep my eyes open and run really slow.



Those thighs though...

 

I work out exclusively at home. It’s hard enough to get motivated to do so. I can say with confidence that if I had to go out in the dark in single digit temperatures to get to a gym my gym membership fee would pretty much be a donation. I can at least roll out of bed, throw on shorts and hit the treadmill maybe 60-70% of the time. I’m very proud of myself that I’ve consistently worked out at least 20 minutes (usually closer to 30), 5 days a week since returning to work.

 

This week, I’m mixing things up and attempting some workouts at places further than 20 steps from my bed. Yes, it is frightening, but it’s also exciting. Baltimore recently got a new program called Class Pass. I’m trying it out for my blog.

 

 

 

This is pretty awesome, because despite blogging for like, almost five years now, I’m too lazy to figure out HTML and go self hosted or monetize or have ads or anything. I really love money, and I hate not having it, but apparently I love not trying even more. So when I get little perks, it kind of blows my mind.

 

Class Pass is sweet, and they aren’t paying me or anything, I promise, in fact, I’m too dumb/lazy to even figure out how to send in the paperwork to create an affiliate link to sign up. Which means you can trust me. You know how you always see cool classes on blogs, like Barre, special spin at spin only studios, and hot yoga? And you wish you could do these things, but it’s expensive, and you’re poor? Maybe that’s just me. Even if I was willing to shell out for something like Barre, that would mean that was the only type of workout I could do. Class Pass lets you pay a monthly fee, and then you can try classes at all these specialized studios throughout your city.

 

I originally tried it out in February, and had an awesome weekend where I finally tried Barre (HOLY CRAP I died) and a yoga bootcamp combo class.

 

Not sure I could pick him up after class.

You had to wear grippy socks. So I wore the ones I got from the hospital to walk around after giving birth.

 

 

I finally attempted to use my brain and think through logistics. I realized that the membership would pretty much be wasted, since Eric was getting home late from coaching basketball, relegating me to taking classes on weekends only. Unless I wanted to go at like, 8pm, which, get real.

 

The rep was really accommodating and let me shift my membership to March. I planned to start yesterday, but we had an ice storm, and the studio closed. I ran on the treadmill and started season 4 of Game of Thrones. By the way, can we get more season 5 previews please? I am dying here. I planned out my whole week to do my best to get to some classes. Tomorrow, I’m attempting a 5am boxing class. All part of my plan to teach my body to function without sleep.

 

If I can figure out the affiliate link thing, I’m posting it, and then you can sign up and try cool classes AND pat yourself on the back for contributing to keeping a cute baby in diapers. I'm already considering purchasing a membership for another month. My only concern is that a lot of the classes are hot yoga, which I love, but I’m hesitant to try them while breastfeeding/pumping. Does anyone have experience with that? I’m a mom who can’t really afford any drop in supply. I posted on a breastfeeding Facebook page, and was told to just hydrate appropriately.

 Would you rather work out at 5am or 8pm?

 

 

The best thing in life

Another blog post brought to you by another snow day!

He was mainly indifferent. 

I have some actual topics I would like to discuss, although granted they are mostly mommy stuff. But first I need to share my weekend. Because cute things happened all over the place. Hopefully those posts will happen someday.

First of all, on Friday night, Dalton finally got to meet his baby buddy, Calen. Dalton and Calen were born ten weeks apart and his mom and I have taught together since 2005!

Like everything else placed in front of him, Dalton felt this other baby needed to be in his mouth.

So much fun. I can't wait until they are old enough to really play!

We had a wild ladies brunch this past weekend. I really enjoy hosting events and requiring people to wear pajamas. Because wearing real clothes should be strictly a Monday through Friday thing. If I ever become president, I'm outlawing even that.

Make a note. Bubbles will amuse kids of all ages. I can vouch for this up to 2.5 years.

Then things really got crazy. Baltimore got hit with snow hard and fast. This is a city that shuts down for an inch, and we got like a foot. Everyone was screwed getting home, and Carolyn and Nathan got stuck with us.

Luckily for them, Nathan is only a size up from Dalton in diapers and we had plenty of 3s for him. Also, Santa brought Dalton some baby food in his stocking. Since Dalton is holding out on real eating for now, he shared some with his buddy. 

We followed his good example and shared our bacon wrapped meatloaf with his mom.

"My dad can eat more bacon than your dad."

Since Dalton is a growing champ, Carolyn had brought us some bigger jammies, because between his chunky thighs and love of peeing on things, we didn't have enough to carry us through each week. When we looked through our larger clothes to find some pjs for Nathan to borrow, we found the same pair. This allowed us to experience one of life's greatest, cutest joys. Babies in matching outfits.

Is there anything better in this world??

Nathan is the happiest person I've ever met. 

In other news, I am continuing to attend class Wednesday nights to learn how to teach the fifth grade health curriculum (unpaid yet required). My saving grace is that Dalton's daycare is on the way to class, so I can at least stop in and squeeze him for ten minutes. Otherwise I wouldn't see him for twelve hours and then I'm pretty sure I would die.

A direct quote from a handout in this class "If a student asks what an orgasm feels like, tell them it feels different for different people." Everyone else in class is acting like this is normal. I would rather stab myself in both eyes with a fork than discuss that in school. I want to have a very open relationship with Dalton and hope he asks me or Eric any questions he has. I just don't want to answer these questions in the classroom for other people's children. I feel comfortable bringing this up on my blog because (as I've learned) it's a Maryland state law that we teach this unit and all parents are allowed to view it at any time. The bottom line is, if you hate your job today, remember I have to say "penis" to a room full of ten year olds.

What's your "I don't get paid enough for this" moment? 

Ways I'm ruining my kid: part 1 - Sleep training (or lack thereof)

Before Dalton was born, I just assumed I would sleep train him. Because I love sleep. In fact, it’s a basic human need.

 

But then it turned out he was still cute, even at 3am.

 

 Next to labor and delivery, the lack of sleep was probably my biggest fear regarding new parenthood. If I had a quarter for every time I heard “sleep now while you can!”, I would have so much money. Enough to pay for like half a day of daycare. There is no greater joy as a parent than frightening pregnant women about L&D and lack of sleep. I will admit I am guilty of the former. But I try to avoid the latter.

 

Because they do sleep, on occasion. 

 

                A few weeks ago a friend sent me this post and I loved it. Another friend just sent it to me today and I loved it so much it made me cry. She says it so much better than I can, but basically the idea is that while it can be tough to get up multiple times in the night with a baby, the really hard part is feeling like it’s your fault, and even worse, that you are ruining them for life.

                Yes, the internet is a huge problem in perpetuating this. But I run into it in real life too. One of the first questions people ask when they see you holding a baby is “how is he sleeping?”. Then they will often inform you that they read such and so book and their baby then slept through the night (STTN) at 5 minutes old. Rice cereal in the bottle, then they’ll sleep like a champ! Which implies that, since I did not read such and so book and I’m not giving him rice cereal and my baby is not yet able to STTN, it’s my fault. Maybe they aren’t implying that at all, but my mom guilt sure does. People love to say things like “it’s time to let him cry it out!”. Why exactly is it time for that? It’s always followed with stories of how they let their baby cry it out and now she sleeps for 12 hours straight every night and then even changes her own diaper while she’s at it. And again, then it feels like the implication is that I’m doing something wrong by soothing him when he cries.

                Let’s stop right here. I am 100% pro sleep training. Because I know that it’s hard, and therefore if you do it, you have a good reason, and its right for your family. I am just not pro people telling me when it’s time for me to do something. Especially, as it so often is, when it’s strangers or people I barely know that have spent about ten minutes with him.

                If the time comes where it’s right for us, we will sleep train, or cry it out, or do whatever we need to do. I’m not feeling it right now though. He’s up to eat 2-3 times per night, more often than not 3 and maybe some others for unknown (to us) reasons. The doctor said this was fine.

 

 

It doesn’t bother me. I feed him, put him back in his crib, fall back asleep. I don’t watch the clock or count wakeups or tally up the total hours I get of sleep so I can whine and be a martyr about how god forbid my healthy child is behaving completely normally. Albeit not as “good” as some other babies (don’t get me started on the “good” baby nonsense). That easily leads to the self-fulfilling prophecy of “I only got x hours of sleep, I will be sooooo tired today). Nobody cares how much or how little sleep you got, how long a stretch you slept (or didn’t sleep) I’m not the only tired person out there, and I’m still expected to do my job at 100% regardless. As I should be. Because I expect Dalton’s teachers to do their best, even if they just popped out their own kid and he or she isn’t a “good” sleeper.

However, I was getting really scared. Almost all my friends have sleep trained. I started to wonder what would happen if we didn’t sleep train. Not sleep training was unheard of. You might as well just not potty train. The sleep is not a problem for me, it doesn’t seem to be a problem for him (he’s rested and happy, at least as best as I can tell during the day), so if it ain’t broke, why fix it? Well, because everyone and their mom is (ha! See what I did there?). Nobody wants to be the odd one out.

 

We are trying everything to get him off the swaddle, but he's a true junkie.

 

I texted my mom to ask if she sleep trained us. She did not. So that makes at least 3 non-sleep trained babies who are now productive adult members of society. I considered posting about it on a mom Facebook group. It’s such a loaded topic though. I couldn’t think of a way to word it that wouldn’t result in some sort of heated debate.

I was terrified of the four month sleep regression. It’s a THING. It’s well documented on the internet. So it’s real. Sure, my mom never heard of it, the doctor never mentioned it, but it’s ON THE INTERNET. Tomorrow Dalton will be five months old. I’ve been wondering when we will get slapped in the face with this regression. Probably now, since I spoke of it. My Instagram friend, who had her baby a few days after me, told me they just came out of the 4 month sleep regression. Her baby was waking 1-3 times a night. Around here, we call that a good night! Maybe everyone’s perceptions are just different. It is possible, because babies are all different. Almost like they are real people. Getting sucked in to fearing something just because the internet says it’s a THING can turn into another self-fulfilling prophecy.

I tried to read some sleep books. Eric threatened to burn one because it stressed me out so bad. They are really big on telling you what you did wrong. There is no way to right these wrongs. The best you can do is start socking away bail money or at least money for therapy because you have ruined your kid. The books say sleep training is great for working moms, because obviously you need to be at your best to be professional. Perfect. Then there is all this stuff you are supposed to do to make them nap right so they sleep at night. He naps at daycare. I can’t control what happens when I’m not there. The books tell you to make sure they sleep until 7am. That’s when we walk out the door. They want them to sleep 12 hours at night. Sorry, but I’m not putting him down five minutes after we get home, unless he really needs it. We need time together. Maybe by working moms the books meant people who blog full time for a “job”? Because no one I know with a real job can do these things.

Long story short, for today, I’ll continue to do everything “wrong”. Picking him up when he cries, nursing to sleep, letting him nap on daddy, and sometimes even *GASP* bringing him into our bed.

I miss when he used to pass out on me all the time.

Maybe sometime I’ll fall asleep in a faculty meeting and risk getting fired and we will sleep train immediately. Or it will just be time. Maybe I never will and won’t bother potty training either and we will send him off to college in an adult size Halo sleep sack and adult pampers.

Experiences with baby sleep, sleep training, non sleep training, your own sleep, or mommy martyrs at work who whine about sleep. Go.