Letter for Month Two

Dear Aida,

Yesterday you turned two months old but you were actually 8 weeks last Thursday. You continue to grow and change and amaze us everyday. You becoming more and more alert every day. I try to have playtime with you at least once a day and I like to think that you are having fun with your crazy mom cooing and babbling and waving things in your face.

A few weeks ago your Uncle John, Aunt Mia and cousin Ethan came to visit. It was fun to have a toddler in the house to give your dad and I a little preview of things to come.

A couple weeks ago you went through a "fussy" stage and our perfect little angel baby became the "I want to be held all the time or I will scream and cry" baby. Luckily that only lasted about a week and now you are back to your easygoing self. I'm sure you will go through a couple of those stages but I like to think that it was a fluke and will never happen again.

You are an absolute joy and the complete love of your father and I's life. We can't believe how lucky we are to have you and know you. Thanks for coming to join our family.

Love,
Mama

Sleeping Like A Baby (yeah right)

We are starting to struggle with Aida and her sleeping. Some nights she does awesome and only wakes for her feedings and then goes right back to sleep. Some nights she wakes up, eats, and then just wants to hang out. Some nights she wakes up, eats, and then cries and cries.

I remember reading a blog post while I was pregnant about the technique the author used to get her baby to start "sleeping through the night" and the debate that this post started in the comments section was really eye-opening. I read for the first time terms like: "cry it out", "attachment parenting", "co-sleeping", "Feberized", "sleep training". I had no idea sleeping habits in children was such a talked about and heated issue. There were fanatics on both sides, equating "cry it out" to child abuse and others claiming that "attachment parenting" would only lead to needy, spoiled children.

Reading all those posts and opinions in my pre-baby state, I was shocked that this was such an hot topic issue. Why would anybody care how another parent raises their child as long as the child is happy, healthy and safe and they are doing what works best for their family? This was my first taste of how judgmental and sometimes downright mean people can be about parenting, especially mothers toward other mothers. But I guess that is a topic for another day.

Anyway, now that I have a child of my own and I am the one who is not getting good sleep, I now very much understand the interest in the whole sleep issue. I must admit that I became a little obsessed with how to get Aida to sleep better and I checked out about 5 books from the library on the subject. I was reading the books cover to cover and I was determined to follow the programs they outlined to the letter. But the more I read, I started to realize that all of these authors were also just offering their own opinions and suggestions and none of their methods was the absolute right way (even though they all offered up enough arguments and statistics to try to convince you of that fact.)

So I've lightened up. Aida is still just a little baby and with her being 5 weeks early, its hard to know if she should be sleeping like an 8 week old baby or like a 4 week old baby or maybe somewhere in between. Most of those books are for parents that have unintentionally instilled bad sleep habits in their babies and now need to reverse those habits in their toddlers so half of the information doesn't even apply yet. I've embraced the fact that Aida is still too young enough to be on any sort of rigid sleep schedule and she is definitely to young to "train".

Now, there are things that we can start doing right now so we hopefully won't have to go through a huge process when she is older and we are trying to do those things whenever possible. We swaddle her, we replaced the light bulb in her lamp with a blue light to darken the room, we use her bear that makes womb sounds (thanks grandpa!), and we put her down in her crib when she is drowsy but not fully asleep. Zack seems to have the magic touch when it comes to putting her to sleep and has come up with a lot of his own techniques. Sometimes all of this works and sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes I just want to hold my sleeping baby while she is still little enough to hold.

So I've lightened up. I still get frustrated at four in the morning when Aida has been up for three hours since her last feeding and just won't go back to sleep. But I realize that she will have bad nights and that she will have good nights and that, of course, this is only temporary.

And no matter how little sleep I've had, how tired I am, how frustrated I get in the middle of the night, when I go in her room in the morning and see my beautiful little girl waking up for another day, it gives me just what I need to make it through another night.