So Much We Don't Know

Piper Blue - 8 Weeks, 3 Days

Time has been slipping by quietly and nearly unnoticed. I will be returning to work in a little more than a month and will do so with mixed feelings. Taking care of Piper has been far more exhausting than I ever thought possible. I had no idea being a parent would consume virtually all of time and most of my identity. Going back to work may give me a better chance at getting some rest.

I had always assumed that there would be sleepless nights when my baby would cry and keep me awake, but I didn't know that it would drive me to the edge of sanity some nights. We try to do everything that is the best for our baby, but if you don't know what they really need it's very easy to fail. This summer has been brutally hot and Piper had been wearing just her cloth diapers all day. We would wrap her in a blanket if she seemed cold and would do the same at night. At night we were swaddling her as well, but she is a thrasher and could get out of the swaddle and kick the blanket off her completely. We figured she was hot and that the swaddle was just torture for her. Why torture our kid?

Things have gotten remarkably better over the last week or ten days. It's really hard to say how long since my days all seem to blend together, but before this 'improvement' Piper was sleeping from about 3 hours down to as little as 10 or 20 minutes at a clip at night. There were nights where she barely slept at all and, therefore, we barely slept at all. Piper sleeps in a Moses basket on the floor next to my side of the bed. During the night she would start screaming from a dead sleep and scare the heck out of me. I would pick her up nurse her until she calmed down and then wake Griffin to change her. Griffin would wake with a start like I just told him the house was on fire. He would leap out of bed before I could utter the word 'diaper'. It was as much comical as it was disturbing. This was happening 5 or 6 times every night.

So Griffin would change her diaper and return her to me to finish nursing. He would wash his hands and return to bed. Laying in bed, Griffin would try to get back to sleep while I nursed Piper. I had to have the bedside lamp on, so Griffin would balance a pillow over his eyes. One twitch and surely it would flip down and smother him. I spent a lot of time looking at him sleeping that why while Piper chewed on my nipples and spit milk all over the place. I wanted to sleep too.

So I would lie in bed with Piper and nurse her as best I could. I was struggling with a forceful letdown, actually Piper was struggling with it. Every time I would nurse her my milk would come out so hard that she would choke on it. Sometimes she choked so badly that her lips turned blue for a moment - or maybe it was my imagination; either way it scared the hell out of me every time. I kept having visions of her dying in my arms choking on my milk. How horrible it would be to go through all that we did only to lose her now! My heart would pound as I gently, but firmly patted her back until she could breathe again.

Getting her back to sleep was a challenge too. Usually, after choking a few times, Piper would get sleepy and doze off while nursing. I would try to carry her back to her basket and put her back to sleep. Some times it would work and she would stay asleep and I could crawl back to bed. Other times her eyes would POP open as soon as her head touched the sheet in her basket.

At that point, I had two choices, pick her back up and rock her until she fell asleep again, or let her lie in her basket and hope she would fall asleep on her own. I did try the latter several times. Usually it was exhaustion that drove me to try it, but it was a foolish thing to do. Piper would not go back to sleep, she would wave her arms wildly and slowly wind up her crying into a full-blown wail. Usually, I had just gotten settled back in bed and would have to leap out and pick her up again.

Then it was back to trying to soothe her to sleep all over again. This cycle would go on all night. Usually every two hours or so. Sometimes it would take an hour or more to get her to sleep again. Griffin would walk her, bounce her, rock her and she would go from being almost asleep to wailing and back again. We would try to return to her bed, but no matter how carefully we tried to get her into the basket when she was asleep, more than half the time she would wake right up. I couldn't figure out how other parents could do this. What were we doing wrong?

Since it is summer and rather hot on the second floor of our house where our bedroom is, we have an air conditioner running at night. It makes the stifling, sticky air more tolerable. Unfortunately, we didn't realize that babies like to be warm - warmer than we want to be. One day I read that 'cool sheets' could be 'trouble' for a fussy baby. The recommendation was to "put a warm towel down in the crib for a few minutes before laying the baby down". Where was I supposed to get warm towels from at three in the morning? However, I did have a heating pad that I had used for my sciatic pain when I was pregnant, so I decided to try using that to warm up her basket.

One night, not so long ago, I put the heating pad in when Griffin picked her up to change her (we switched the routine so that Griffin changed her first and then I nursed her back to sleep). When she was clean and dry and she ate her fill, I carried her limp, sleeping body back to the basket, yanked out the heating pad and placed her in. She stretched out, almost smiled, and fell deeper into sleep. Miracle! Of course two hours later she was up again.

After several nights of doing this it dawned on me that she might be cold at night. We sleep on our bed with comforters and sometimes it is hot, but I can't sleep unless I have something on me and I love to snuggle into the blanket as the air conditioning cools the room. When I would put a blanket on Piper and tuck it in, she would just kick it off in a matter of minutes. I thought this meant she was hot and "didn't need no stinkin' blankets", apparently, she is just a kicker. She kicked off the blanket because she likes to kick, she wasn't making a calculated choice to be cooler and remove the little cotton blanket. My mistake.

I had read over and over that a baby should wear one more layer than you wear. They need to be kept a little warmer, but this is the summer and with every crying jag she sweats up a storm. Wearing clothes just makes her sweat more when she cries - nevertheless, I decided to try putting a little sleep sack on her for the nighttime. This was the kind that has a piece of fabric you can attach to it and velcro it into a swaddle. I didn't put the swaddle on and just zipped her into the sack part. It was sleeveless, so I figured she wouldn't be too hot in it.

After feeding her that night, I put her to bed wearing the 'sack'. Low and Behold! She slept for four hours! I was so shocked when I looked at the time that I was afraid she had died in her sleep. I clicked on the light and looked at her in her basket. She was awake, but not crying, just squirming and mewling a bit. Griffin changed her, I fed her and got her back to sleep in a half hour. Didn't even need the heating pad.

The next night I dressed her in a sleep sack with sleeves and she slept for five hours! Piper was cold all this time. What horrible parents we are for not figuring this out sooner. I felt so guilty that I had been letting our baby freeze overnight and I felt stupid for thinking I was doing it because she wanted it that way.

During the day we were still just dressing her in only her diaper and a blanket. It occurred to me perhaps she is cold during the day too? Perhaps this is why her naps are so short? Perhaps. I put one of those little 'onesie' outfits on her and she slept for four hours during the day. Well, I felt doubly stupid. Of course she was cold during the day, we have been sitting in one room that has air conditioning and we try to put her into her swing to sleep and with the breeze of swinging she was turning into a popsicle!

Needless to say, we have been dressing Piper night and day now. Her sleeping has gotten so much better. Those nights of barely any sleep and feeling like a zombie during the day seem like so long ago now. I feel foolish, but in my defense, of all the advice I had gotten about how to get her to sleep longer, no one said to us, "Put some clothes on that kid!". There's so much we don't know. Live and learn. Sorry, Piper, we will try to do better.