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...

The highs and lows

Being parents of a new baby is an occupation filled with high points and low points, and as Poppy's grandma noted on Saturday, the younger the child is, the more extreme those points are.

Friday was a low - perhaps one of the lowest yet. K was trying to work on finishing her thesis which is due this Wednesday. I was at work. Poppy, who had been very fussy on Thursday, took things to a new level. She wasn't feeding well. She wasn't napping well. She couldn't be put down anywhere without crying. So instead of working on her paper, K spent all day pacing around the house with Poppy in her arms - about the only thing that would stop her from crying. At one point we were instant-messaging and she was telling me what was going on - under normal circumstances I would have left work to come home and take over. However I was going through a major crisis at work, the loss of a bunch of shared data on a server I was configuring. This was not something I could simply leave, and that made my day much worse. Back at the homestead, K was conscious of the time that was being lost, and with nerves made raw by the incessant crying, she was pretty much done by the time I got home - tired, upset, frustrated and genuinely worried about missing out on getting important studying done.

Now it was my turn. It didn't take long for me to experience the same situation. I started to get genuinely concerned. What could be making her this upset? At one point she cried with such intensity that she stopped breathing for a couple of seconds, that weird moment where babies need to pause before letting out the next scream. I measured her temperature, which was fine, and continued to try to soothe her. None of the tricks worked - changing her diaper, feeding her, rocking her - she was just pissed off with the world. Finally we attempted to do the going-to-bed routine, and amazingly she went to sleep. We were left with ringing ears, raw nerves and some lukewarm pizza, looking at each other with wide eyes wondering "what the f**k just happened?"

The next day, she was perfect. She smiled plenty in the morning, fed well, took long, deep naps and was alert and engaged in her playtime.

On Sunday she was also pretty good, but went through a fussy period in the afternoon and early evening. It was now we decided to check on something suggested by both my mother and one of K's friends: teething. After feeling around inside her mouth, we think there's noticeable bumps on her upper gums. This may be nothing, or it may be an indication that her periods of irritability might be down to sore gums.

The other theory is that she is picking up on the stress level in the household. As K ticks down the final days of her 27-month masters degree program, and works feverishly to finish a 70-page group thesis, the pressure has been building, as has her stress level. Our friends C&C noted that their 8-month-old is always at her worst when either of them is stressed about something.

Finally, the high point. As I was getting ready to leave for work this morning I looked in on Poppy in her bassinet. I could see that she was awake and just chilling out in her swaddle. As I approached her she suddenly noticed me and immediately gave me the biggest full-body smile ever! Smiles are nothing new for her - she's generally a pretty smiley and happy baby - but they are usually pretty random. This was the first time she has ever smiled in direct response to seeing me. WOW! And she's started doing this thing where her whole body convulses like she's trying to laugh when she has the biggest smiles. It's amazing.

So yeah, a high high and low low in the past three days.

Bubbles and sleep

Poppy changes on a daily basis. The latest development is the ability blow bubbles with her saliva. Okay, not exactly crawling, smiling or talking, but makes a nice change from her usual routine of feeding, sleeping and crying.

On Sunday she will be four weeks old and on Tuesday it will be one whole month. What a crazy time it has been so far! It was most interesting to visit friends yesterday who have an 8-week-old. He seems MASSIVE in comparison to her and he has a cry that sounds like an Aprilia 250cc racing motorcycle. Funny to think that she'll be roughly that size in four weeks. What was encouraging to learn is that she gained one whole pound in the last two weeks as she went from 8 to 9 pounds. That would be like an average 160lb adult gaining 20lbs in two weeks!

Finally, since the most common question we get asked is "are you getting any sleep" here's the current answer: yes. She generally has two feeds each night, sometimes one, each taking about one hour from the moment we wake up to the moment we're back to sleep. Since we go to bed around 10 or 11 and wake around 9 that means in theory we're getting something like 7 or 8 hours a night. Many nights it doesn't work out quite so well, either because we go to bed too late, get up to early, she feeds more often or takes longer to get back to sleep. Those are the nights that suck, and we had two in a row this week. The good news is that the pediatrician says we no longer have to wake her for feedings - we can go until she wakes. This is great, since she is capable of sometimes going five hours from the start of one feed to the start of the next which can mean a four-hour block of sleep for us. Two of those in one night would be amazing, and might be just around the corner....

Feed me Seymour

Poppy is now only 2oz shy of her birth weight, and should hit it before her two-week birthday, the standard for making sure babies are getting enough sustinance. Glad those 3am feeds are working!