My Baby Is Lazy And Strange

Normally we get G up for her morning feed at about 7 o'clock. But because we keep her bedtime relatively late at 8:30pm (so Mrs J has time to give her a bath and play with her a bit after getting in from work), G's often still a bit snoozy in the mornings, and usually needs a nap by about 9ish.

Anyway, this morning Mrs J had got up at stupid o'clock to go to London for work, and sometime after 7 I heard G wake up and start to gurgle to herself over the baby monitor. She seemed happy enough so I let her entertain herself for a while and went to have a shower. By the time I looked in on her (it was almost 8 by this point) she'd got herself back off to sleep again. She didn't wake up for another half an hour, either. Lazy, lazy baby. If I'd tried to pull that sort of thing when I was a child, my mum wouldn't have been impressed.

G's latest fun discovery is to lie on her back on my knees with her head hanging over the edge, looking at everything upside down. The picture above demonstrates what I mean. This strikes me as probably quite uncomfortable, but she seems to enjoy it. Here's what she looks like from the other side:

As I write this, she's still hanging off the end of my knees, occasionally laughing to herself about something. I have no idea what. Strange child.

Going To Sleep In Her Own Room

Baby G is ten weeks old today. It's already hard to imagine what we actually did with our lives before she turned up. Ten weeks doesn't seem like a lot, but I now understand that when you're a new parent and fitting in all of the new things you have to get done every day, ten weeks feels closer to about ten years. I also now understand that those people who say that time flies by and babies grow up before you even realise it are liars. Liars! I mean look at our baby, she's still a tiny baby! She can't crawl or stand up or explain the offside rule (as a girl, she may never be able to do this) or anything!

Anyhow, I'll grant you that she has grown up a little bit since she was born. Enough in fact for us to decide to put her in her own room at night from now on. G has actually been sleeping through the night reasonably happily for a while, so this measure is possibly more for the benefit of Mrs J, who usually finds herself being woken by G's every gurgle and movement even though the little one is doing it all in her sleep. So, the cot is now in the spare room, and G is currently in it, as the picture above (taken in the dark with a flash) shows.

Our new routine calls for her to be in her room from after her mid-evening bath and feed (about 7ish) onwards. Tonight, during the time between that and her usual late feed at 10:30pm, she kept waking up. This meant both me and Mrs J trooped in and out of the room all evening making increasingly useless attempts to settle her down by cooing at her, turning her mobile on (it's amazing how irritating that tinkly sound becomes after, oh, let's say the second time), putting her dummy back in, or just staring at her blankly in the hope she might stop crying (this was me). However, we didn't give in, and at no time did we remove her from the room. This, apparently, is important, and, also apparently, we will be grateful for it later.

After the late feed Mrs J went to bed and I tried to get G back off to sleep. Mrs J manages this by cradling her and softly whispering in the classic motherly style. Alas, when I attempt that, G cries and fidgets and tries to grab on to the collar of my t-shirt and, if that's successful, a clump of my exposed chest hair, to surprisingly painful effect. For the last couple of weeks, the only way I've been able to get her to sleep is on my knees, with her facing away from me. I like to call it the Superbaby position. Here's G demonstrating it a short time ago:

There are two things to notice about this photo. The first is that baldness is obviously hereditary. The second is that it doesn't look very comfortable. But G seems to like it, and that's all that matters. Another thing about being a new parent is that getting baby to sleep is of paramount importance, so if baby develops a taste for drifting off in the airing cupboard or tumble dryer (note - don't try this at home) you'd probably let her do it. Right now, the baby monitor gadget in front of me tells me that G is indeed fast asleep. So it's time I got some sleep too.

Sleeping In The Spare Room

Here's G having her evening nap in the little activity chair Mrs J's sister got for her. Our attempts to implement a routine are continuing, so currently after her last feed of the day at about 10:30pm I've been settling G to sleep in the living room. Once she's properly dropped off (this sometimes takes a few goes) I take her to her cot, which is in our bedroom. Having her in our bedroom at night makes it easier for Mrs J to sort G out when she wakes up for her night-time feed (she's sleeping longer most nights now, so often this isn't until about 5am).

That's all well and good in theory, but things might have to change. G is a noisy sleeper. She snores, she sniffles, she fusses, often for hours at a time without actually waking up. I don't notice because I'm usually too tired from staying up late with her for any of this to disturb me. But Mrs J has a mum's sensitive hearing and can't help waking up with a start every time G so much as gurgles. In fact, if Mrs J's ears weren't firmly fixed to the side of her head, I reckon they'd probably revolve like a cat's, always alert for the slightest sound.

The upshot of all this is that we're probably going to move G and her little cot into the spare room this week, and try our luck with the baby monitor. It's nothing personal, she's just a bit too loud. I'm sure she'll understand.

Dirty Protest

All of those infernal parenting books hardly agree on anything. Book one tells us to always go to a crying baby, book two suggests leaving a baby to cry, while book three swears by soundproofing your airing cupboard and keeping baby in there for 23 and a half hours a day with only a pay-as-you-go mobile and a list of nearby Chinese takeaways (I may have made that last one up).

However, if there's one thing all the approaches more or less support, it's the importance of getting baby into some kind of routine. What this routine should actually be is anyone's guess. But we're at least trying to do a few of the same things in the same order at about the same time every day, in the hope G will sleep a bit more regularly and our currently chaotic lives will become a bit more predictable. One of these is, when Mrs J is getting ready to feed her, I'll take G to the nappy-change station (as shown in the picture) and quickly sort her out with a new one.

I did this when G woke up and started squirming at about 3 o'clock this morning. Her nappy was wet but otherwise clean. Typically, it wasn't until after I'd put the new one on and done her clothes back up that I heard the dreaded baby-filling-nappy sound. It's a bit like that feeling you get in cricket, when a batsman hears his stumps being knocked over behind him. Only squelchier, obviously.

Later on in the morning it was feed time again, and so it was nappy change time again. Once more G was damp yet clean. But this time I didn't even get the chance to do the new nappy up before I heard that familiar noise again. Sure enough, a torrent of yellowy stuff came firing out all over the new nappy, the changing mat and most of my right arm. It's no trouble to clean it all up again, even if you've not had much sleep and you've got a screaming baby to contend with. But next time I have a ham sandwich, I think I'll give the mustard a miss.