Baby: July 2005 Archives

While most of you were sleeping, I:

• picked a half-awake Anne up and carried her, pacing up and down the length of our rather small house hoping she’d go back to sleep
• cleared the sofa of three remote controls, a box of tissues, a handbag, mobile phone and a rather thick book with my toes, balanced on one leg while still carrying Anne in my arms.
• lay down with Anne on my tummy and fell asleep for a few minutes before she started wiggling again
• paced about some more
• put her down, attempted to swaddle her to prevent her from punching or kicking herself awake, but without success
• resorted to using my hands to hold down her hands, and my knees to hold down her feet, resulting in an awkward maneuver that was out of kilter with the natural position my skeletal structure could assume in earth’s gravity
• held myself and Anne in that position for an hour while she feel asleep
• slumped myself beside her, hands still holding down her hands and one knee making her legs don’t kick, buying myself about thirty minute’s worth of sleep
• spent twenty minutes lying beside a now fully-awake Anne, who decides to speak to me in her pidgin of baby babble and fist-in-mouth mumbling

It’s a brand new day.

In this case, I’m referring to the Really Simple Science of the feed. Feeding a baby, in particular. But I’ll extrapolate futher, because like all good scientific principles, this one can also be applied in a myriad of different realms.

After spending the last hour and a half of trying to feed Anne, I decided to share the obscure science of the feed.

Back when Anne was younger, it didn’t matter if her milk came in the form of a breast or a bottle. She’d even drink milk that came straight out of the refrigerator. Cold breastmilk, of course. Not cow’s milk. Now three and a half months old, her taste has grown more sophisticated. The milk has to warmed up just right, and it better come in the right packaging or there’ll be hell to pay.

So where feeding her was once

it is now starting to look like

As you can see, it is becoming exceedingly hard to find the right time to feed her. Too early, and you’re left with a 98% full milk bottle that’s quickly cooling down to room temperature. Feed her too late, and you’ll be spending the next hour or so on your feet placating the little bugger. Oh, and you’ll be holding a 98% full milk bottle doing it.

Update:

CC wanted to know why I didn’t put Anne directly to the breast.

Since Faith’s maternity leave ended yesterday, the graph for CC’s suggestion would look like this.

Same for RSS

Now for the extrapolation unto the less milk-related form of RSS. Techical jargon ahead. Reader beware.

There has been a lot of talk about RSS and the giving up of content, the losing of regular site visitors to newsreaders, and whether we should be putting ads in RSS feeds to “recoup our losses”, so to speak.

Like Anne, users used to be easy to feed. A good excerpt of what promises to be great content would have them checking out your site. But users have evolved to become more picky and a sort of power struggle ensues during feeding time. The user, who is used to being the center of attention, now demands full feeds so that he doesn’t even have to visit the site anymore. The content provider would like some revenue from clickthroughs to ads, so the activity of content creation doesn’t have to be an all-out altruistic, self-sacrificial act.

A parallel to Anne’s feeding habits, here’s to the user: Grow up. Just as Anne eventually needs to realise that her parents need sleep, you have to realise that freebies, while they do exist, don’t last forever.

It is hard work producing content. Don’t muzzle the ox when it plows your grain.

It’s 5 in the morning. I’ve had Anne asleep on my stomach (like here) for more than an hour to kinda settle her in. About fifteen minutes after I put her down, she start rubbing her face vigorously again.

At some point we thought we had it down pat. Anne was sleeping almost through the night and we were feeling really blessed and all. The glimpse of parenting heaven lasted only a week and a half. Anne would rub her face with her mitten-covered hands, kick her way out of any ingenious swaddling restraints and eventually wake herself up in the process. By the morning her face would look like it got hit by a truck.

So for the past number of nights (I say number because I can’t remember how many due to prolonged sleep deprivation, and blogging about sleep deprivation) I’ve been carrying her, walking her back and forth in the hopes of settling her down enough to get her some shuteye. It was like Day Three again.

A few moments ago I decided to try putting Anne to sleep on her tummy. Now before any of you goes postal on me: yes, I know about SIDS. Yes, I know I’ll absolutely hate myself if anything bad happens to Anne. But I also know that she doesn’t get the rest she needs because of her flailing arms and legs when she lies on her back.

Faith said that putting her on her tummy probably doesn’t mean we get more sleep. We’ll just wake up more often to check on her. But it isn’t the issue of getting more sleep; I just don’t want her to wake herself up every half an hour, suffer from a tomato-y red and raw face in the morning or become extremely dependent on having to lie on us in order to get her sleep.

So should my baby sleep on her back or her stomach? All the baby books unequivocally state that I should be putting her on her back. This report in particularly has me all freaked out. But my grandma, who has been a midwife for more than half a century tells us to put her on her tummy. We’ve refrained and “listened to the experts” till now. It is comforting to know other parents face the same problem, and many did the same as we’ve done tonight.

It’s a really hard decision, fraught with a lot of self-doubt and confusing expert advice. I hope I’m doing the right thing. I really, really do.

Anne hasn’t been sleeping at all well these past two days. The crying fit she threw yesterday was the longest I’ve seen her throw by far. She literally cried till no sound came out of her. No provocation, no drop or rise in temperature, no loud noises were needed to help her start. She just breaks out crying.

Also, she has refused to sleep in the cot on her back. She’d continually rub her face with her mittened hands or punch herself on the noggin, which wakes her up. And waking means… refer to paragraph one.

So Faith and I hold her close to comfort her, and sleep half reclined with her still on us.

One possible reason could be that Anne is ill. She started coughing yesterday night. It has been hard to ask friends and relatives suffering from the flu to keep their distance. Somewhere our vigilance faltered when it seemed Anne had not fallen ill even when coughed on and handled by less than sanitary hands. Faith and I had hoped that common sense and consideration would prevail, and that we would not have to tread the minefield of euphemisms in order to preserve the peace and keep relations going.

Now that Anne is ill (and crying), preserving the peace is a moot point. Preserving our child’s well-being becomes a priority. Our sanity is at stake. We now suffer the consequences of our inaction.

I have to be mad at someone. Right now I’m mad at myself for not having been firmer. Next time I hope I’ll be gentle for your sake, but immovable for Anne’s.

Anne laughed.

Anne turned 3 months old yesterday. Thanks to the advanced technology available today, we are able to catch her figure-skating technique frame by frame.

Insert your caption.

edit: Image removed. The image in question was one of Anne, seating on a sofa in a reclined position, smoking a cigarette (photoshopped in, of course).