Presto Mama!

Motherhood is really giving me a new spin on the term, Carpe Diem.

In the past, I would have whiled away half an hour just doing nothing. Nothing of note like surfing the net mindlessly, vegetating out in front of the telly watching yet another episode of TyraShow or just stoning.

Now, even 10 minutes of quiet seem like a LOOOOOOONG time that can be used to accomplish a LOT. And 30 minutes is like an godsent glimpse of eternal bliss!

In 30 minutes now, I can:
- Do the laundry/ clean the house
- Prepare and/ or cook a meal
- Check mails, keep in touch with friends
- Have a meal

In 2 hours, I can now:
- Vacuum the house
- Do the laundry
- Prepare another meal
- Shower and change
- Eat a meal
- Complete a unit of writing for work

I’m truly amazed at how much more I’m achieving with every minute than I have ever before in my life. (What have I been doing with my life all this while before I had a baby?!!!) In a way, I’m really leading a more fulfilling life – no more wasted time. Every second now counts for something.

For many years, I have tried to work on bettering my time management and multi-tasking skills with little success. Who would have thought that having a baby is how I will learn them best!

Off I go now to enjoy my cup of coffee while he naps. I am so pleased with how much I’ve achieved thus far, if I may say so myself.

Sleep Camp: Update

Training Routine

Here’s a brief outline of what I started doing to help Elisha develop a regular nap routine as well as training him to fall asleep independently:

• Off to Bed 1.5 hours after being awake, regardless of whether he is tired
• Side-Coaching: This includes explaining to him what he is feeling, why he needs to rest. A sample script : “I know you’re tired. It’s alright to be tired. There’s no need to cry.You just need to close your eyes. You’re crying because being tired is not a good feeling. I understand. Just close your eyes, relax and drift to dreamland. You will wake up with more energy. We will play and learn together when you wake. “
• Play white noise and a rattle
• Minimal carrying, rocking and patting
• Encouraging him to listen to his body cues e.g. “You’re yawning because you are tired. Your brain needs to rest.”
• If he cries badly, I pick him up and give him a tight 8-second hug him and affirm his ability in learning to fall asleep.

Progress Update

I am so proud of how far Elisha has grown in the area of sleep! Here’s why:

• 4 day naps established: Elisha took 3 days to adapt to this schedule.  Each nap lasts 45 minutes on average. They tend to be 15 to 30 minutes longer if we’re out for a walk.

• Less Tears When Tired: He hardly cries now when he is tired and needs to sleep. At today’s late afternoon nap, he cried for a mere 30 seconds. I picked him up for a hug, and he cried for another 15 minutes. When his eyelids began to droop, I laid him back onto his bed, and he soon fell aslep.

• Less dependence on being carried or rocked or patted: At this evening’s bedtime, he just stared dreamily at his teddy mobile before drifting off to dreamland. I didn’t have to carry or pat him. I didn’t hold his hands either.  He woke up a little after but that I think is because I turned him onto his tummy prematurely.

What’s Worked

• The Use of Affirming Sentences: I believe using positives like ‘ You are a gentle and considerate baby. You like to sleep.’ helps influence his behaviour more effectively than using ‘Don’t’ s and ‘No’s.
  
• Power of the 8-second Hug: This helps to calm and settle him quickly. I just hold him really tight and tell him how much I love him, and how proud I am of him learning to fall asleep independently.
  

Reflections

When I saw Elisha smiling in his sleep as he was entering his sleep cycle, I was so glad I didn’t continue with the ‘Cry-It-Out’ method on him. I think the methods I’m trying out with him are more gentle and suited for his temperament. I’m even tempted to conclude that CIO is an unnecessary alternative in sleep training because there can be gentler means. I’m even thinking that the ‘No-Tears’ method does not wear the parent thin and create a demand-monster out of our children as its critics have stated.

Of course, every method has its supporters and detractors. Ultimately, it is the parents’ individual decision to choose one that best suits their parenting style and children.For me, I’m sticking to methods that are gentle on the spirit of both parent and child.

Little Rapper

Elisha doing the ‘Hip, Hop, Hooray!’ when he turned a month old.

(This set was taken on 19 October, 2008.)

A Few of My Favourite Shots

My little prince, how you have grown!

I’m Okay, Mama!

After crying for several minutes, Elisha finally fell asleep. He seemed to be saying, “I’m fine, Mama. Don’t worry about me! I’m a-okay!”.

Sleep Camp

Elisha has been put on a more intentional nap and sleep routine for the past three days. As he comes into his 4th month, I decided it was time to start helping him learn to fall asleep independently. I was also a little concerned about him not getting enough rest in the day. Now, he goes to his cot every 1.5 hours after he wakes, regardless of whether he is sleepy or not. This is to help prevent over-fatigue from interferringwith his rest cycle. He’s been doing quite well so far and I’m proud of him.

I did some research on the various sleep training techniques and tried different things.

What Does Not Work:

• The ‘Cry-It-Out’ method: Works him into a rage. After 15 minutes of crying, he cries even louder and it becomes harder to calm him down.

What Works:

• The ‘Controlled Crying’ technique is more useful. However, I don’t follow strictly to it as I vary the timing between him crying and picking him up. I listen to his cries and watch his body language. If the crying is starting to turn into screams, I pick him up. If it is showing signs of winding down, I just continue shaking the rattle.
• Side-coaching him: I tell him how proud I am of him learning to fall asleep independently. I explain why he needs to rest, and extol the benefits of sleep for him. I encourage him to listen to his body.
• Hugging him and telling him that it’s okay to be tired.

Road Ahead:

• Establishing a regular wake-feed-play-nap/sleep cycle for the day.Now, it alternates between this and a ‘wake-play-feed-play-nap/sleep’ cycle.
• To move Elisha from needing me to be by his side to fall asleep to true independence.
• Night-time sleep: This has been out-of-whack for the past week. He’s getting up almost every hour from 2am till 7am. Suspect that it’s the cold so shall be experimenting with ways to regulate our room temperature.

The Desirability of Sleep

I am coming one night-time sleep short of screaming, “I NEED SLEEP!”.

Elisha woke up a total of 5 times from the time I put him to bed at 7pm last night to 7 this morning. And that included an hour of him being fully awake from 3am to 4am. I was exasperated and frustrated! He had finished nursing but he was uncomfortable. I checked his diaper and changed it even though it wasn’t very wet. I cradled and rocked him. That made him wail louder. 

Several days of having intermittent night sleep really got to me and I snapped. I plonked the screaming baby next to his daddy and asked him to help while I catch some needed winks. Roy promptly got up.  He did his best to soothe him back to sleep. He did so by first ripping off Elisha’s sleeping bag because he thought he was too warm. That didn’t work. Roy laid him on his chest as he sat up in our bed. Elisha wasn’t happy with the lack of movement.  Roy took him out to the living room to try the stroller and the rattle. Still, it didn’t work.

Elisha bawled even louder. That woke my father up. Grandpa came to the rescue of the poor baby’s father. Roy came back to bed, and we exchanged a few snappy words with each other. He snoozed within seconds, but I couldn’t. Not when I could hear my father doing flashcards with the baby at that hour. So I dragged myself out of bed, thanked my dad for helping out and took Elisha back into my arms. We went into the room and I rocked him till he slept. Thankfully, it took only ten minutes before he did.

Why has he been waking up so often in the night? Why was he up for a whole hour? Questions I have no answers for. I’m trying to set the feed-play-nap routines in the day and putting him to bed earlier.I am still using Shichida’s method of suggestion by whispering ALL benefits of sleep and how good he is at sleeping when Elisha rests. If such conditioning is not really helping him, at least it is helping me to keep positive. Maybe it is just a phase and he will get back to sleeping better through the night soon. Meanwhile, I celebrate every second of sleep I get.

Chubby Cakes

As I was nursing little Elisha today, he grasped my finger with his chubby hands. I was awed by how much his fingers have grown. How much he has grown since I first met him last September! I don’t remember how tiny his fingers were then, but they were tiny and scrawny. Now, his digits have plumped into fat, fair cocktail sausages. They are so soft and springy to the touch that I cannot help but smother them with kisses!

Sleep Baby Sleep!

I haven’t been able to write at all since the last post because I was finding my hands full with the flurry of activities revolving around baby. He’s been sleeping a lot less! So I’ve got to work a lot harder at entertaining him during the day.

For a couple of days in early December, I thought he was starting to sleep through the night (read: sleeping 4 – 5 hours at a stretch). But alas, it was short-lived joy. Now, he’s been waking up at least 3 times a nite at 2 – 2.5 hourly intervals. Argh. Why?

I am trying to study my schedules to see if I can spot anything I’m doing that is causing this. But no. Even before we went to HK for a short Christmas break, he was doing the same thing at night. Funny thing is he sleeps a lot MORE when we are out. Perhaps he really does need to be in the sling to sleep because that is how I carry him when we are out. Oh! But my poor back!

What I’m trying out now is Shichida’s method called ‘the power of suggestion’. I just read it in his book, Babies are Geniuses!, last night and decided to try it out. This is akin to the ‘power of confession’. In a nutshell, this power of suggestion works by having you, the parent, talk to the child in a positive fashion. For example, if the baby is fussy and impatient, gently repeat the sentence, ” You are not a stubborn , fussy or impatient baby. You are considerate, gentle and patient” each time you pick him up.

So that was what I did last night with a little modification. Since he was already asleep, I whispered to him, telling him that he is a baby who LOVES sleep, who will sleep well for at least a 4 hour stretch through the night and will sleep for another 4 hours after. Did it work?

Well, it might have been a coincidence but he  slept for more than 4 hours He woke up 4.5 hours AFTER his last evening feed. Unfortunately though the rest of my suggestions didn’t work. He then woke up thrice after that. However, at 5 am, I tried the method again and told him to sleep for at least another 3 hours and wake up at 9am.

He woke at 8.30am, 2.5hours after he slept. So it is not working exactly to my suggestions …yet. I shall just persevere with this method and see how it goes.

Sticky Bear Baby & Tree Trunk Mama

I’m fast becoming a tree trunk in more ways than one.

For starters, my torso has become the favourite reclining place for my little darling. Slung around me in my trusty sarong sling, it is where he calms down and falls asleep. He’s already 12weeks and 5days old. I still don’t see him learning to fall asleep independently.From what I’ve gleaned from reading expert advice, I’ve tried to train him to fall asleep on his own.  I’ve tried to put him down when he’s sleepy but he awakes immediately and bawls till he turns into one silent screamer.  When he does, I worry about causing him distress and teaching him distrust instead of trust. So in he pops into the ‘auto shut-up sloth machine’. After several seconds, he shuts up.  Then when he finally slips into that sweet state of sleep, I am almost too afraid to put him down for fear of waking him up and having to deal with his tears, again.

What do I do? I end up busying myself with household chores and meals with him plastered on me. This then leads me to the next reason why I’m getting close to looking like a tree trunk. Eating decently has become a personal challenge. I’ve only successfully managed to cook three meals for myself since I started looking after him on my own. Most times, I’ve been stuffing my face with the most accessible but least healthy of foods – cereal bars , chips, chocolate. Plus, it’s no easy feat trying to NOT drop crumbs or spill hot soup onto an infant strapped so closely to my mouth. ( I shan’t say just how many times I’ve picked a flaky piece off his scalp thinking that it’s cradle cap only to find it’s only my breakfast.) I’ve also been nursing this horrid craving for sugar.  My post-natal tummy looks bigger than it did after I gave birth. Sigh.

So here you have a Sticky Bear Baby and me, a Tree Trunk Mama. I’ve got a long way and many calories to go before I’ll ever reach a Yummy Mummy status.