Infant Management

Week 9-10

Ariah drools, whatever else she does, she drools. She is not consistent about much but when it comes to drooling, it's every day all day. She drools on my shoulder, on the Ergo (baby carrier), on the floor if she misses my knee or my shoulder, she just drools. Recently she's also started spitting up too so you can imagine how great I look. Both shoulders are soaked and usually my lap. Even though she does it everyday all day I am still surprised when she spits up into my bra, that's my favorite, or into my lap. I am going to have to make a burp cloth-scarf that stays on all day. I just came up with that but I think it's a grand idea.

In addition to drooling and spitting up on us, she has developed some other tricks. Every evening daddy takes her in between feedings and they play. He sits her on his stomach while he is laying on the couch and holds her hands above her head and she pulls herself up to stand. At first you would have to pull her up and then she would flex her cute little legs and stand, but now when you start to raise her hands she straightens her legs from the sitting position. This has become our little game when I change her too, I pull her up by her hands and she stands and smiles, she is so proud!

She seems to be developing sleep habits but we are working on getting her into a routine. I am not a fan of the term “infant management” even though I guess that's what it is, it sounds so disingenuous. Two days ago we started managing our infant and to give you an idea of how well that is going I will relay this story.

This morning at 7:15am my husband got out of bed along with both dogs. Mama saw this as an opportunity to lay in bed without worrying about rolling over on the baby who was still in bed since her feeding at 4:30am. I was laying on daddy's side when the whole gang decided to come back to bed and join us. After being questioned as to why I was on his side and the only “thing” on my side was a 23” baby and pillows, we snuggled in for some family time. The dogs, sensing the love, decided to get in the action too. Now daddy, mommy, 60lb Dixie and 35lb Razzle are all laying on daddy's side and the 11lb13oz baby is still snoozing on mommy's side. All is well until Dixie starts licking her paw and Razzle shakes and daddy puts his head on my shoulder so he can look at the baby and pet the dog. Even this was ok til Dixie headed straight for baby territory and the baby opened her eyes. Like any sane mother would do, I jumped out of bed, held my hands up and clapped them 7 times giving a round of aggravated applause to my family for waking up the baby and shouting, “good job guys, she's up. Everybody's up, happy now?” There was total silence and then Kyle said, “oh my gosh, you've lost your mind.” I went into the kitchen and made coffee- since I was up, I needed to be caffeinated. I then peered back into the bedroom to see if everyone was enjoying being awake and making the most of their time together since it was so important for everyone to wake up, and then went in the laundry room and cried. Kyle asked me what was going on , comforted me and explained that while it's a good idea to try and incorporate the ideas in my books, it's not the most important thing, loving her and keeping my sanity is. The thing is, implementing a flexible routine is what will keep me sane, it's just been a tough 2 days trying to do things totally different. It seems like we were doing better before we tried to implement routine but I know it will pay off eventually.

If you know Kyle then you know that most problems can be solved and will be tackled with a white board or a project take off. The white board is to write down common sense things that seem to be forgotten amidst a baby's cry, like: Eat, Awake, Sleep, You= EASY, even though it's anything but. Also to write down the reasons for her crying: dirty diaper, hungry, tired and gas/hiccups. I wonder if I should write down, “hook bags/bottles to breast pump, then turn on” since I forgot to do that the other day too. I was sitting there with breastmilk pumping onto my legs for 30 seconds before it hit me that I forgot the bags.

Today will mark day 3 of infant management and hopefully tomorrow I will be writing about how awesome my baby is because she put herself to sleep on the playmat!