From the first night little Vivian showed up I was bracing myself for the worst. I had heard all the horror stories about sleepless nights with a screaming infant who would refuse to nurse. We had one sort of rough night together, the first one home, at which point I decided there was no way I would actually rollover on my baby and kill her in the night, and determined that co-sleeping was what worked for us. After that we were waking up once or twice a night together to nurse, and then once, and then never. People would make remarks to Justin and I when she was only a few weeks old about how we probably weren't getting any sleep lately, and we'd just sort of look at each other and shrug. Truthfully I slept better after having her than I did while I was pregnant. We climb in bed every night, turn off the light, she falls asleep, and that's it, we hear from her again in the morning.
She slept well, she ate well. She seems to be an exceptionally smiley, happy baby. We've gone entire days without hearing her cry. We've forced her to spend an entire day in her car seat without much backlash, and only then at the end of the day when we're so close to home that we've made her wait to nurse. The hardest part of parenting appeared to be trying to keep the house clean when it's seemingly always littered with baby supplies and unfolded loads of laundry.
Then something changed. I'm not sure what the catalyst has been, but several weeks ago we climbed in bed, turned out the lights, and she snuggled up close to me, and then started kicking, and flinching, and then writhing around, and then there was unabashed fussing. I thought maybe she wanted to nurse. No. Turns out she wanted to stand up. So there I am holding up my baby so she can stand on top of me, and I can make out in the dim lights her little eyes darting around the dark room. They came to rest on her father who had wisely rolled away from her and was feigning sleep. I jostled him until he rolled over to see her standing there, wide-eyed staring at him in the dark. He leaned in to ask her why she was still awake and was greeted with her jumping up and down on me, flapping her chubby little arms and squealing with excitement that the fun parent was awake again. The fun parent, laughed, rolled over, and went back to sleep, and she was stuck with Mom again. Sorry, Viv. After some time of her standing on my stomach, chewing on her fingers as she laughed, growled, shouted with enthusiasm, and then cried whenever I attempted to get her to sit or lay back down, we got up. She wasn't fussy, she just wanted to play. At midnight. I let her roll around on the floor to amuse herself for about half an hour and then we got back in bed and she drifted off and slept the rest of the night like nothing had happened. Weird, but I figure there are worse fates than a baby who is hyper late at night. Then the next night we had a repeat incident. Same thing, the lights went off and she immediately wanted to stand up. This time I had her standing on the bed between Justin and I, and she carefully moved herself into position and then took a seat on her sleeping dad. She sat there on him for probably 30 minutes or so chatting and chewing on her fingers, and crying inconsolably at me every time I moved her. She finally gave up on him and allowed me to get her back under the covers and to sleep.
Since then our baby has been quite erratic about sleep. Sometimes we enjoy a peaceful night of sleep, other times...like last night for instance, we climb in bed and she lays there squealing and wiggling, insists on being stood up, or rolls on top of me and pants in my face (a favorite tactic to get Mom to laugh so she knows I'm not really sleeping yet). She of course makes up for lost hours of sleep by napping throughout the day so she can be rested up again for the next night's party. I've had to start limiting nap time, something I never thought I would have to do.
So that's not really so bad, weird, but not unmanageable, and I still wouldn't ever trade any of that for the stories of colicky babies I hear from other mothers. However, we have crossed into a new frontier of solid foods and this is not as smooth sailing as I had hoped. We decided to start her on solids a little early (she's still only 5 months) because she has realized that we're eating in front of her, and this has been a very upsetting realization for her, and therefore has limited our ability to eat in peace. We tried a little rice cereal and she wasn't all that interested in it. So we moved on to bananas, and we seemed to have a winner. She loved it, and the two times we fed it to her she enthusiastically sat in her high chair desperately trying to snatch at the spoon to shove it into her mouth faster than we were getting it there. Unfortunately, bananas do not love Vivian. Four days later we still hadn't seen the bananas, or anything else for that matter, exit Vivian, and she seemed to be experiencing some degree of distress. So after calling the pediatrician's office we were instructed to soak her in a warm bath of baking soda for 20 minutes, and if that didn't work try bicycling her legs, and if that failed move on to an enema.
Justin was helping me bathe her and after 15 minutes or so in the bath he leaned in and pleaded with her "Vivian please poop so we don't get to that last option." Nothing. We tried the bicycle legs, she cried and acted uncomfortable, still nothing. I gave my baby an enema. She screamed, I cried, Justin looked completely dismayed, like he wasn't sure which one of us was in more distress. The problem was however resolved a few moments later. However, here we are four days later without a dirty diaper, but thankfully this time she seems to be fine so we can wait a little longer and hope this works itself out. My mom overheard me saying to Justin that I never in my life thought that I would be so concerned with the frequency of another person's bowel movements. She just laughed at me, and told me "welcome to parenthood." There are many, many little parenting hardships that I had contemplated and prepared myself for, and then this...this is not one of them. I never saw this one coming, and I find it to be a very distressing situation.
The last day or two she's learned to sort of soldier crawl along the floor, but will only do it when she's trying to reach something. I've discovered that if I put a bottle on it's side on the floor she will chase after it, but always nudge it a little with her fingertips and roll it further away. Maybe it makes me a bad parent that I do this to her on purpose in the hopes that this exercise will get things moving along on the inside, but I tell myself it makes me a good one.
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