It’s a truth universally aknowledged that babies cry.

Which is fine.

And truthfully, I really don’t mind it when babies around me scream their guts out. As the books say, they’re just trying to tell us something.

What I do mind is the sound of my baby crying. I mind it especially when it begins at 6 a.m. and it keeps up a steady and consistent pace until 7 p.m. when my baby mercifully passes out in snarling exhaustion.

Today was one of those days.

After I’d tried the bouncing and the shushing and the feeding and the burping and the singing and the dancing … and after I’d tried the trusty pacifier and had it spat back into my face five times, I resorted to yoga. Why not? All else had failed.

We began by singing three times the song of om. August cracked a smile which grew into a grin. But wait, was he laughing at …  me? Harrumph.

Enough of om. Aug lay back in savasana and I ran my hands down his torso to his toes.

At this point I had his attention and was it … focus?

Then we did a visualization exercise which went something like this:

You are outside, lying on a bed of soft grass. You are warm, well-wrapped in a blanket. (Actually let’s make that a swaddle.)

You are looking up at the sky. Surrounding you are trees, their leaves turning from green to yellow to orange. The yellow leaves start floating and spiraling down and land on your tummy. They land on the grass beside you. You can make out the branches against the sky.

You start to notice the sound of waves lapping at the shores of a nearby lake. A mist emerges from the water and twists among the tree trunks, rising up, up, through the branches to the leaves…

…And so on…

And then August started to cry. But hey, it soothed him for 10 minutes, and for today, that was a record.

Back to BabyAugie.com

Tags: Crying, Exhaustion, Parenting, Schedule

The curtains in the nursery are drawn, a night light casts small stars on the walls and ceiling. The baby is blessedly asleep. He went down without too much squealing and squawking. All in his bedroom is peaceful and dark.

In the living room, however, here is mum, awake, but barely. They say that when baby sleeps, mum should sleep, and yet, it’s almost impossible to turn down this opportunity for a bit of me-time; a bit of time to check the bills, empty the dishwasher and maybe even post to this blog.

Time keeps ticking and each second draws closer to the moment that the wails will pierce through the drone of NPR and Baby Augie will have to be hoisted out of his bed and bounced and fed and me-time will fade away like a dream.

Can I bear to sacrifice me-time for an hour more of sleep? Survey says: YOU MUST! And yet, here I sit, unable to drag myself away from this grown-up world . . .

Tags: Exhaustion, Mother, Nursery, Sleeping