Taking a Break... or Failing to.

It seems that, from the moment I gave birth, I lost my ability to relax. I used to be renowned for being able to take an hours-long bath, refilling it where necessary with hot water, taking with me tea and snacks and a book, napping in there, reading in there, relaxing in there. I used to thrive on spending hours at cafes, reading a novel or working on my own, listening to music in my headphones and being entirely enveloped in my own luxurious world. 

Right now, my husband has taken my boy for a walk in order to give me a break. You know what I did? I went to the supermarket to buy some things for dinner. Then I started to make dinner... then realised what a pig-stye this joint is, and did a bit of cleaning. Then I reprimanded myself and had a bath, bringing with me the book 'Brain Rules for Baby', and also my phone, in case my husband called. I lasted about three minutes in the bath before I realised that it wasn't possible for me to relax knowing that I had to make dinner, clean, deal with the wet laundry still in the machine, steam him a few fruits and veggies so I don't have to reply on the jars of food for him all week (the over-achieving parent's idea of failure...), etc etc etc etc etc etc. 

My little boy is not a relaxer himself. The five minutes at the end of baby swimming where all the other babies lay on their backs with their head against their mum or dad's shoulder, relaxing and floating while listening to some lovely music... Ruben just wouldn't do it. He'd try to sit, roll, push, yank, splash and squirm until I gave up and we left the lesson early. He struggles to sleep and is not much of a cuddler. He is active active active! I wonder how much of this, if any, has to do with the fact that I had a solid six weeks of terrible anxiety when I was pregnant, made all the worse by knowing that all those anxiety hormones were being pumped into my baby... 

A few days ago, a girl on a facebook mother's group I belong to posted an article about the stay-at-home mother's need for a break , and while I disagree with some of the sentiments, particularly those that pretend to understand exactly what it means to be a father, it also really hits the nail on the proverbial sleep-deprived head. "From the moment I open my eyes in the morning, there isn't a single second of my day where I'm not engaged and on call. There isn't a single moment where I am alone with my thoughts."

I'm sure that if I got more than four hours of cumulative sleep for more than one random night, I'd be able to keep some semblance of order in my life. But, as I have heard from all-but-one Mummy friend, we are all just floundering about attempting to keep it together as best we can! 

I can't wait to be in Australia in one and a half weeks, where my mum will eagerly take this little boy in the early morning, and perhaps my husband and I can BOTH sleep until 9am. Insanity! Of course, all of this doesn't mean that I wish for my life pre-boy. He amazes me every day, makes me laugh and makes me appreciate life in a whole new way. I just wish that I was still able to relax when the opportunity presents itself!

My Sick Boy

My little boy has been really really sick since my last post about the sleep training. Before I go any further, I want to thank all you lovely people out there that have offered such brothers-in-arms support over the sleep thing. It seems we are most definitely not alone!

So I am going to give a blow-by-blow account of the last week so I can just move on. I'll do it unemotionally, but know that there is supreme turmoil. You know it. In other news, I feel like I use this blog to vent. Scrap that. In other news, it is apparent that I use this blog to vent. I do, however, have so many things to be happy about. So I have a 'happy' blog where I am writing letters to my little boy about the new discoveries he makes in the day, and the ways that he brings me joy. If you want to read happy things, go over there.

Poor little sick boy at the doctor on Saturday morning

- Thursday night - attempted the sleep training. Resulted in a lot of vomit and a sad sad clingy boy.

- Friday - didn't eat much and just didn't seem himself throughout the day. The night greeted us with exorcist-style vomiting non-stop for an hour, fever, and a little boy who was very very poorly.

- Saturday morning - Doctor says gastro-enteritis and throat infection. Bean stops eating and drinking, and we battle battle battle to get some water into him with a spoon.

- All weekend - Doesn't eat or drink. Battles with the spoon. Wakes up every ten minutes in hunger and thirst all night, but really struggles to take anything in. Stops weeing throughout the night... waking up with a completely dry nappy.

- Monday - Keep calling the doctor, but it is engaged all day. ALL DAY. Small pimples break out around his mouth, what I think are a reaction to the vomit. At 5.30pm we call the emergency children's doctor, who says that we need to go in that evening urgently. She diagnoses Stomatitis, a viral infection which was causing enormous ulcers all through his mouth - gums, cheeks, tongue, throat, the whole shebang. We got anti-inflammatory meds, more pain-killers and a numbing spray for his mouth. She says to use Bepanthan on his spots around his mouth.

Those sores around his mouth are growing...

- Tuesday - After five days of not eating, my skinny boy (we both very much noticed how different he felt when we held him) began to eat a tiny bit of very cold yoghurt and some very very runny cereal. Seemed to be a bit happier.

- Wednesday - Still eating better and seeming much happier. Still a little dehydrated as can't have a bottle. Pimples around his mouth get bigger and begin to ulcerate.

- Thursday - HAD A BOTTLE! Yahreepa! Eating is almost back to normal. But those pimples are spreading...

- Friday - A tiny spot on his thumb has become an enormous pussy wound with tiny pustules all around it. The 'pimples' around his mouth are oozing and continuing to spread. Straight to the doctor, who now says it has become infected bacterially, and gave us an antibiotic cream to apply five times a day.

- Saturday - Thumb is looking absolutely horrific (I have a photo but won't make you vomit by showing it), and the infection has spread to two other fingers. Hitting it hard with the cream. Face is looking a little bit better... at least no worse. The boy is happy though, and is eating and drinking.

Let's see what tomorrow will bring. Still waiting for him to sleep longer than thirty minutes at a time at night...

Why do I still feel like this is connected to sleep training? Well, he vomited from stress during the torture - I'm sure of that. He was not remotely sick or unhappy throughout the day beforehand and he went to bed as usual, so I don't think it was the gastro then. The next day he was very clingy, understandably, and didn't eat very much. Perhaps the tummy bug got in because he was so exhausted from the night before, and the vomiting then had left him vulnerable... And from then on, one thing has led to another. Please please please make this the last thing my little boy has to deal with for a while...

Adventures in Sleep Training. AKA: Torture.

Traumatised, waiting the designated minute.
What else is there to do but document how I feel?

The Sargeant household is traumatised by our first evening's attempt at sleep training. I wish, right now, that I could just pop my little boy right back into my belly where he knows that everything he needs will be there on demand, where he is just all comfortable and warm, where he never has to struggle. My poor baby. This is without a doubt the most horrific thing I've experienced since having my little boy. And to know that we chose to do that to him? That it was a conscious decision we made? Ugh. I hope he will forgive me. Experiment over. .

I've always been opposed to sleep training, figuring that Ruben was waking for a legitimate reason, whether that be that he is hungry or just needs me to feel safe or just wants to sleep next to his Daddy... But something inside me cracked a few days ago, and I decided enough was enough. I think it was when he decided to stop eating so much in the day, and upped his milk consumption in the night. I know what you're thinking: Just feed him more in the day, right? When I give him a bottle, he pulls away and thrashes about in a fit until I take it away. He spits out any food I give him.

This is what happens lately when I give him food. No
matter what it is, it doesn't even make it into the mouth.

Now, in hindsight, I'm thinking there must be a reason for this. Maybe MORE teeth, yet again. Molars are next... maybe having anything in his mouth in this way is causing him pain. We should have just let him be, sat it out with him, comforted him through it. There are no adults I know that don't eat anything in the day and then get up every hour to eat throughout the night. It was surely going to end at some point.

So we tried the SleepEasy Solution. Amongst many other things, it discussed this problem and talked about night weaning, where you slowly lessen the amount in the bottles at night until they stop waking for it and learn not to rely on it. The big thing was to set an alarm in the night an hour before he would usually wake for a feed, and feed him before he wakes up for it. That was the plan. We didn't get that far.

We've never had a problem with Ruben going to bed. We have a very set bedtime routine that seems to work perfectly:
- Dinner

Bath time!

- Daddy comes home and they feed the fish and look at the cars
- We play five songs from play school while he sits in Duncan's lap
- Bath time (no idea what happens there... that's Dunc's thing)
- Pjs, sleeping bag
- Book (always 'Time for Bed') and bottle
- Lullabye and bed.
He is totally capable of falling asleep in his bed on his own at the beginning of the night, and for that I am thankful.

Here is what happened last night:
We put him to bed, as usual, with no problems at all. He had a smaller bottle than usual but fell asleep no problem. Yay! So far so good! And then about an hour and a half later he woke up. Cue plan. We had already put a bunch of dummies all around him so that he had the timer ready, the pen and paper, the book ready for go-to advice... this was going to work.

Writing things down minute for
minute at the 'sleep station'

We waited a minute and then went in. We spoke to him about what a beautiful boy he was and how much we loved him, how he was so big now and learning to sleep by himself, we consoled him, but didn't pick him up - I know that when I pick him up he falls to sleep, and the whole point was to get him to learn to do this on his own. For the next half hour, he would cry, then we'd go in, he'd cry some more, then he would be quiet for a minute or two and we'd think he'd done it. Then he'd cry again...

At some point, he did a little spit up from crying so hard. I had read about this in the book, and it says to just calmly say, 'Oh, Ruben, you had a little spew. It's okay, we'll clean you up.' That's what we did, and I held him until he was totally calm and relaxed. He started crying again as soon as I made any movement towards the bed, though, so I let him fall asleep in my arms (*gasp*). One minute later he was crying again and had done the most enormous spew I've ever seen.

All three of us were total wrecks, I was sobbing, Ruben was sobbing, Duncan was so angry at the people that wrote that book and made us believe it might work... It took around half an hour or forty-five minutes of me holding a spew-covered boy until he was simply breathing normally again. And then I had to put him down to get him changed and wipe him down... and the hysteria began again. Dear god it was all just so horrible!

So I am done. That's it for us. Experiment over. No more sleep training. Our little Bean has always been really sensitive, and now I have proof that he is a cuddler. I just want him to be happy, and if snuggling to sleep every night is the way to go, then so be it. What could be nicer in life than having the person you love most in the world cuddle you to sleep every night?

Oh how I love my little boy. Stay smiling, little one!