Mad skillz

The rate of development we're seeing in Poppy is mind-blowing, and I'm sure every other new parent finds the same thing. She's learning cause and effect at the moment, and is enjoying dropping a plastic ball on the floor when she is in her Exersaucer. She has discovered that when the cause is the ball going on the floor, the effect is that Dad comes over to give it back to her. Not because he's a sucker, but because this is the point in her development that she needs to start understanding how one event connects to another...

She's pretty close to being able to sit, and often does baby crunches in an attempt to sit up. The strength isn't there yet but it will come. In the meantime, when we put her in a sitting position she can almost stay there without topping forward, backward or to either side.

The big thing we're seeing (hearing in fact) is how very vocal she is. The nanny commented too that she is very talky. She is constantly making noises and has started singing to herself when she's in the car. She has learned a new squeel which she seems to enjoy practicing a lot, and often makes sounds that sound like "hiiiiii" or "heeeeeeeey". It's pretty fun.

She also seems to be obsessed with our parrot, Ozzie. It's common knowledge that babies love animals so we're not surprised but it's really cool to watch her gaze constantly follow him as he scavenges around the kitchen or plays in his cage.

Humble pie

We were discussing the other day how being a new parent is a totally humbling experience. Prior to Poppy's arrival, we had lots of lofty ideals about how we would do things, and what we wouldn't do and what we thought of particular approaches other parents had used and so on and so on.

One such ideal was how ridiculous it was that some parents brought in sleep consultants. "What a bunch of yuppies" we had said. Why would people pay so much money just to tell them how to get their kid to sleep?

We were wrong. Our deepest, humblest apologies to anyone who has brought in a sleep consultant before us.

We've had an ongoing battle trying to get Poppy to nap during the day. At night she goes down pretty well after a bedtime feed, and after middle-of-the-night feeds she will now soothe herself to sleep (she chats away and practices new noises for about 20 minutes). Daytime is another issue. The only way we could get her to sleep was by bouncing with her on the yoga ball until she was out cold, then putting her in the crib. This meant that when she woke she was disoriented and would get upset instead of going straight back to sleep. A typical day involved a lot of time on the ball and lots of short unhappy naps for Poppy. The situation was untenable, and despite trying some techniques we found in some articles, nothing helped.

Our friends C&C had just brought in a sleep consultant to help their 10-month sleep through the night, and professed an immediate benefit. They said it was like flicking a switch. So we followed suit and booked some time with Sleepy Family.

Sara Cohen came over on Sunday, and she outlined a plan. Instead of putting Poppy down for a nap every two hours, she would be on a set schedule. We were under the false impression (thanks to The Baby Whisperer) that routine is important, not schedule, but Sara told us that by four months babies have a Circadian biorhythm, meaning that they know what time of day it is. So she told us what times to put Poppy down. The first nap is the one where she learns to fall asleep without being on the yoga ball. Even if that means she cries for 90 minutes, we just have to perservere, comfort her with our voices and with patting her back. The second nap is back to the old technique with the ball, the idea with this one is to have a nice long nap. Finally, the third nap of the day is the bonus nap, where whatever happens, happens.

Yesterday we started the process. It took K 45 minutes, but eventually Poppy fell asleep by herself. Although she was only down for 25 minutes, Sara considered it a success, and said that if it took less time the next day, we were on the right path. Poppy's middle nap was a fabulous two hours! And the third nap (which is usually a disaster) was a solid 45 minutes. She was happy all day when she was awake, and lasted a good two and a half hours of being awake at the end of the day, whereas normally she can't go more than an hour. We were delighted.

Today, I put her down, and it took all of 11 minutes!!!! What's more, she stayed down for 100 minutes (which turned out to be too long according to Sara - we should have woken her after an hour, ooops!) For nap two K only needed 7 minutes on the ball before Poppy went to sleep. Another great result.

So we are humbled. If this continues, our lives will have made a huge change for the better, and I am sorry that we felt in the past that anyone who wanted that for them and their child was being overly fussy or dramatic.

Today's bonus track: a couple of pictures of Poppy in her beloved Exersaucer:

The nanny situation

The time has come. We need a nanny. This isn't a permanent thing, but K has a short-term consulting gig, 2-3 days per week, so we need to find someone to look after Poppy.

We thought we had someone lined up, but it turned out that she had just found a full-time gig. The next step was to join the Yahoo group for parents in our neighborhood. There were a few posts looking for someone to share a nanny, or for someone to use a nanny on days when they didn't theirs.

I got close to finding someone, only for her to say that she had found work. Now we started to worry. I sent emails to other people on the parents list, got a referral list from the Children's Council of SF and even sent some emails to nannies who had posted on Craigslist. Finally I posted on the parents list myself.

We found one family who wanted to share their nanny on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and they were happy with a short-term situation since it gave them some time to find a permanent solution. We went over to their house last night, met them and their nanny, and it looks like this will be the way we end up going.

The takeaway from all this is that finding a nanny is a tough, cutthroat business.

We have one additional thing to stress about with having Poppy be looked after by someone other than us, and that is that she has decided that she won't feed from a bottle anymore. We can trick her, by putting her on the breast and then sneaking the bottle into her mouth, and she'll happily feed from that, even if I take over holding the bottle, but the moment she takes a break we have to start the process over again. Luckily a bottle-striking baby didn't seem to worry the nanny, since she's seen it all before. At times in the past she's even resorted to using a spoon to get the milk into the baby. That seemed like a creative solution to me and instantly made me feel like she is a pro.

Wonder Weeks Part 2

I dare not predict that we're done with the 19-week mental spurt, but the last two days have been much happier for everyone. After a really tough Friday, in which the poor little thing only managed two 20-minute naps, and was beside herself with grumpiness and tiredness, she went on to sleep for TEN hours straight, a new record. To make things even better, we got a pretty early night and ended up getting 7 1/2 hours in one block ourselves. To tell the truth, this was the longest either K or I had slept without waking since halfway through her pregnancy!

Poppy went on to have three naps for a total of 2 1/4 hours, a massive improvement, and she was happy and engaged all day. She went to bed at 7:30, about 45 minutes earlier than we had been doing, and had a good night's sleep again. Today, we managed three more naps, once again clocking in at more than two hours. Even when we were out shopping this afternoon and Poppy was clearly tired, she didn't get grumpy. In fact, she was a sheer delight to be around all weekend.

Adding to our satisfaction with the weekend is the fact that it looks like our attempts to get her to learn to go to sleep more easily and also take a bottle are both showing small signs of success.

Fingers crossed that things continue to improve.

The Wonder Weeks

Crying. Crying, crying, crying. Why is this happening?

It's been perhaps four days of progressively more difficult parenting. What had been a baby that stayed on her routine pretty well and slept well (only up once during the night for a feed) was turning into a fussy, clingy, unhappy little thing.

Last night she woke four times in the three hours after going to bed. This was unheard of since she was much younger. We could only guess that she perhaps had an upset belly.

In desperation, K posted about it on Facebook. There were LOADS of responses as our friends sought to find answers for us, from a crazy swinging hammock to driving around in the car to whiskey on the gums. However, one post unlocked the vital piece of information we were missing. It pointed us to a blog posting on Ask Moxie that talked about a book called the Wonder Weeks. Based upon extensive research by Dutch academics, it describes how virtually all babies go through a similar pattern of mental development spurts, independent of the widely-discussed growth spurts. These spurts manifest themselves as an increase in crying, clinginess, crankiness and unsettled sleep. And unlike physical spurts, which tend to vary in timing somewhat, these mental spurts are pretty universal. There's even a chart to show you when the spurts happen and when your baby is going to be at their most unhappy. Poppy is just over 17 weeks old. We looked at the chart and BOO-YAH, there's a rainy cloud symbol right above 17 weeks!

This explains so much. To understand the phenomenon is to be able to accept it, and instead of looking for magic remedies we can just sit tight and wait a few days for her to come through this phase. It won't be pleasant or easy, but at least it won't be scary or mysterious.

The good news is that in between these spurts, babies are at their happiest and do their best sleeping, so we have plenty to look forward to!

Size DOES matter

Poppy had her four-month appointment with our ace pediatrician Dr. C at SF Bay Pediatrics on Thursday, and it confirmed what we thought: she's long, lean and has a big brain.

She's in the 75th percentile of height and only 50th of weight, so right now she's skinny and tall like me. She's also in the 75th percentile of head size. According to the Nova documentary that K and I watched last week, the human head grows based upon the brain growth within. Humans with stunted brain growth end up with small heads. Since she's got a big head, there's probably a big ole brain in there, which might be why she is so curious and seemingly switched on all the time. Everyone who meets her says the same. This is a good thing!


In other news, she has truly discovered her tongue and has really enjoyed playing with her new toy. Exhibit A:

Back to the blog

We've been very poor at keeping the blog updated. Initially this blog was just a place to talk about the pregnancy, but once Poppy arrived it seemed to be a good place to post about our experiences as new parents and updates about Poppy's progress in the world.

I'm going to try to be better about that from now on.

To be honest, she changes on a daily basis, so there's plenty to talk about. Whether it's the fact that she slept for nine hours in a row last night, her unusual feeding habits lately, her newfound rolling abilities or just some new photos, posts should be coming thick and fast.

So, how about those nine hours of sleep she got last night? Pretty crazy. We didn't do our best to capitalize on it because we went to bed later than we should (we try to make it 10:30 but somehow last night it was 11:30, whilst Poppy hit the hay around 8:30).

Here's a couple of cellphone pictures of her before and after her trip outside today. Don't worry, she didn't go in the laundry, but it is a pretty funny shot...