frugan

Today I am fruganizing over at Vanessa’s blog:

thevoyageofv.wordpress.com

Six months. Six months! Do it again and that little sweet and scary bundle I brought home from the hospital will be a year. Woah.

At six months Sigrid is:

Energetic. The only time she is calm and still is when she’s sleeping. She demands constant movement, activity and stimulation. I’m only able to write this right now because my mother, Grandma, is playing with her on the floor. My mom has been here for almost a week and will vouch for the fact that Sigrid is able to tire out three adults in no time.

Happy. Sigrid is in a good mood the vast majority of the time and nowadays pretty much only cries when she’s tired or bumps her head.

Frustrated. Happy and frustrated? Yep. Sigrid wants to crawl, to stand, to walk, to talk but as of now can’t quite do any of it. That annoys her.

Funny. She’s an imp, she’s a ham, she’s goofy and to those who love her, endlessly entertaining.

Loud. Every morning I leave the bedroom for a half hour or so in a desperate attempt for a few more minutes of sleep but I’m usually not able to get much what with all the YELLING that is going on in the other room.

Curious. (See energetic.)

Strong. When she pinches it hurts.

Able to sit, babble, feed herself a baby corn snack and roll both ways (and, eh hem, right off the bed).

At six months, Sigrid is a fully fledged, fully amazing, fully exhausting person. She loves oatmeal and my cabbage patch kids. She loves standing and other babies. She still laughs when I bark and hates when I wipe her nose. She likes sleeping on her side, looking at herself in the mirror, and being with her pappa. At six months, when I pick her up, she drapes her arm around my neck and it’s just about the best thing I’ve ever felt.

I have no recollection of this but sometime when I was pregnant, I seemed to have signed up for a weekly email from Parents’ magazine. Usually I look forward to these little descriptions of where my baby “is at”. They tend to confirm what I’m seeing and give me something to look forward to in the coming weeks (oh, soon she’ll laugh! coo! babble!). This week’s email? Not a hit around here. It began as follows:

By 6 months, about 60 percent of babies snooze through the night (at least 5 or 6 hours, and probably closer to 9 or 10 now).

Here’s a tip to the writers of these newsletters: that kind of info doesn’t help anyone. Parents of babies who sleep through the night don’t really need the sense of community that comes from knowing they’re part of that lucky 60%. And those of us whose babies don’t sleep through the night (no way, no how, don’t think she ever will) really don’t need to know that 60% of our peers are actually rested. If these writers knew what they were doing, the newsletter would have begun like this:

40% of 6-month-olds don’t sleep through the night. Kudos to their mothers for surviving this long without banging your head into the wall.

I suppose that tone is too much to expect from Parents’ but writing from the perspective of the underdog isn’t.

Sleep. Yep, it’s still rough around here. Siggy does not sleep through the night. Like really doesn’t. Like this week she’s been waking up every 45 minutes or so all night long. We go in, we give her back her pacifier, she falls back asleep. 45 minutes later, we go in, we roll her from her stomach to her back or side and she falls back asleep. And…repeat.

I am going on 7 months of very little sleep (7 because that last month of pregnancy wasn’t so great either with all the middle of the night trips to the bathroom). This can and has and will get me down. Not all the time, though. I have learned that a cup of coffee and a chocolate croissant from my neighborhood cafe can work wonders for a tired mom. I’ve also learned that nothing is permanent. This week she’s up every 20 minutes, last week she slept for 3-hour stretches, next week…

Although our little sleepless one is still our little sleepless one, we have made progress. During Erik’s vacation we took on two challenges: we stopped swaddling her and we moved her into her own room. Swaddling was a lifesaver for us. Sigrid has always been relaxation-challenged and swaddling her constantly moving arms and legs gave her and us good chunks of sleep. We kept it going for as long as possible but by 5 months she was too big for the swaddling blanket and resisting like she never had before. So we stopped. That was tough. Kind of like being back to square one, teaching a new baby how to sleep outside the womb. But we did it. Once Sigrid got the unswaddled thing down, she started to toss and turn in her sleep, keeping Erik and I awake. We decided to move her to her own room; that took some getting used to but we did that too.

When I am ready to topple over from tiredness I remind myself that Sigrid is sleeping unswaddled (!), in her own bed (!), in her own room (!). Things change and every day is one day closer to a full night’s sleep. Couldn’t you just write that, Parents’ magazine?

To be fair to the surely childless writers at Parents’, they did go on to discuss what could be the cause of a baby not yet sleeping through the night. They tried to help the 40% of us losers but they got it wrong again. One thing that I really dislike about the parenting industry is it’s tendency to give a million reasons and solutions for everything. Reasons and solutions give you the feeling that things could be different, and by extension, that you’re doing something wrong. I fell for that a lot in the beginning. She cries! It’s the chocolate! It’s the coffee! It’s the milk! It’s me! Half a year on and I’m understanding that some things just need to be chalked up to personality.

No, my baby isn’t getting too many daytime naps. No, she isn’t getting too few. No, she doesn’t seem to be suffering from separation anxiety. She’s just not a good sleeper. And the only real reason seems to be genetics. I had a peek in my baby book the other day and found these notes in my mom’s familiar handwriting:

At 8 months Amy investigates everything…she doesn’t sleep through the night, we’re anxious for that!

At age 2 Amy is adorable but HATES to go to sleep!

Amy went into her bed in June 1981 and slept through the p.m. from that day on.

June 1981. That puts me at over two years. My Sigrid seems to have inherited my love for food and dislike for sleep. As far as I know, my mom never did bang her head into the wall. Instead she spent night after night on my bedroom floor reading a book, waiting for her frightened little girl to fall asleep. With the help of coffee and chocolate croissants, I will try to do the same.