Back To Sleep

The big news in our camp is that Calliope learned to clap!

Well, clapping of the silent variety. But we are very proud nonetheless.

(Blogger is once again being a PITA so check it out, please, on YouTu.be. It's worth the trip, I promise.)

Calliope Clapping, Accompanied by Eleanor.

In other news, the sleep issue has arisen. Again.

I know, but seriously, cover those muffled yawns. This issue is hard to put to bed, no pun intended.

So Calliope has been waking up more frequently the last month or so, since she got her teeth. I can't remember why, but somehow we fell off the wagon of only feeding 2-3 minutes at night. And I decided that she was really hungry, so I should feed her.

Now she's an easy one to put to bed, no fuss, no muss. So she goes down and eats once during the night -- seems reasonable, right? Especially since she usually goes right back to sleep afterwards, either in the crib or my bed (I'm happy to co-sleep but not happy with the inquisitive pats on the arm nor the cozy "chatting" that sometimes emanates from my bed partner. It's adorable, but I'm not in the mood to be adoring at 4 am. Sorry, love. It's back to the crib with you in these scenarios.)

Well, so then it suddenly was happening twice a night. Sometimes she was waking up when I was going to bed. Always very hungry.

But suddenly I'm exhausted.

But I can't do pure CIO in the middle of the night like my friend Amy. Maybe it's easier with the baby in a separate bedroom and a spouse to tell me that we are doing the right thing. But solo, in the same room? No way. Especially since I have a baby that rarely cries. If she's screaming, it's because something is wrong. Generally, she's hungry.

So three nights ago, I timed her night feeding (only one that night, how nice): five minutes. (Yeah, she bolts her food!)

And two nights ago, I limited her to four minutes. She went right back to sleep. Unfortunately, she was up at 5:40. An hour before I want her to get up, since I get up then to exercise and shower. I nursed her for one minute and put her back in the crib but she never went fully back to sleep. Drat.

Last night, I bravely decided to accelerate things again and decrease her to only three minutes, even though we had only done one night at four minutes. So we did three minutes... and she went right back to sleep in her crib. AND she slept until 6:45 am! Perfect!

Although I'm feeling greedy, I think I'm going to stick at three minute feedings for tonight and tomorrow night. It's the weekend and I don't want to rock the boat anyway.

Here's my only concern. All week, Calliope hasn't been taking much milk. Only seven ounces in the ten hours that I am gone. I had the nanny start giving her solids, but she wasn't really taking more than a taste or two. Mid-way through the week, I had to start giving her yogurt, and she loves that. But today she only took five ounces the whole day.

I'm feeling anxious about this.

I called the pediatrician yesterday and she suggested I switch to a faster flow nipple. Calliope had still been using the slowest nipple because I had read that its best not to upgrade to faster nipples for breastfed babies. But I had a couple extra faster flow Pla.ytex nipples. Well, lo and behold the nanny hasn't been giving her Playtex bottles for a while. I thought we had been alternating between Pla.ytex and Born Free, but apparently she's been emptying all the Playtex bottles into the Born Free bottles. Humph. I'm not entirely thrilled that I wasn't informed of this.

Anyway, Calliope refused the new Playtex nipples, so that was a bust. But apparently the Born Free bottles aren't all that slow, anyway.

But, given that today she only took five ounces, I'm on a hunt for level two Born Free nipples. Amazon has them... but for expedited shipping, it would cost $25. For a nipple experiment! No thanks.

I just had a stroke of genius and called a pharmacy in nearby Park Slope (a somewhat yuppie and entirely child focused neighborhood, for the uninitiated) and lo and behold, they have them! So that's just a subway ride and not a bus ride to the fascinating but ultimately exhausting mega Tar.get sort of near me.

Fingers crossed that this works.

I know, intellectually, that I shouldn't worry. My healthy girl won't starve herself!

But emotionally, my mama heart worries. I worry on the one hand that she will waste away and on the other hand, now that she has tasted solid food, she won't want breast milk anymore.

Oww. I'm not ready to think about that.