Cool Resource

Yesterday I was done. After hours of cuddling and nursing and attempting to soothe a fussy 8-month-old, I found myself placing her gently in her crib, telling her I loved her, and leaving the room. She fussed. Then cried. Then wailed. I felt horrible. But nothing I had tried had made her feel any better. More than anything she needed to sleep. More than anything, I needed a few minutes to breathe. But everyone from Harvard to Dr. Sears have told me that letting a baby cry is akin to inflicting brain damage! Or at least being a generally neglectful parent and bad person. Right?

Listening to her cries broke my heart. But she really needed to sleep and holding her seemed to make it worse, rather than better. So I decided I should do more research on how bad it really is to let a baby cry in a crib for 10 minutes (which is what it took for her to fall asleep). Well, I still felt bad for making her cry herself to sleep for the first time in her life... but on the bright side, I stumbled across a great resource: AskMoxie.org. Most reassuring was this entry: Ask Moxie: Babies and CIO. Make sure you also read her post about sleep regressions.

Knowing what I'm dealing with won't help her sleep any better, but hopefully it will make it more tolerable when I remember that this is truly a phase and I will get through it. That my almost-nine-month-old will not sleep is probably not a sign of my own personal incompetence.

:o)

Just Another Day with Bayba the Dynamatrix

Picture an elementary school gym, packed for an awards ceremony. I stand proudly in the back, GERD-girl in sling (she had already soaked us both in spit up in the two minutes it took to traipse from car to afrorementioned gymnasium), three year old hanging from my right arm, climbing my leg to do flips. The climbing and flipping were less disturbing to others than the stealing-of-other-kids' (and one adult's) chairs that she was doing earlier, so I was content to pat and dab puking baby with my left hand and control a flipping tasmanian devil with my right.

Smiling, I manage to shoot thumbs-ups and happy nods as my eight-year-old is called to the front SIX times to collect her awards. No other child's name is called more than once, so I'm already garnering a little more attention than I'd like - yet I have to admit that the misplaced My-Child-Is-An-Honor-Student-At-_______-type smug glow is creeping up.

The awards ceremony concludes. The students gather themselves to exit the gym as the parents wait. I release Bayba's hand to hold a cloth diaper over the front of the baby so that her projectile vomit won't land on anyone around us.

And then a siren scares the living daylights out of everyone in the gym.

Oh. No.

Oh yes.

Holding the be-slinged baby tight against my body, I dive for the media cart where a BULLHORN is flashing red lights and blaring an alarm. Somehow I find the switch Bayba had turned and turned it off. Blushing like crazy, I laugh with the parents who are chuckling sympathetically and hurry past those who aren't as I usher my dynamatrix out the door.

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