When I was awakened this morning at 5.20 a.m. by robust squawks from the nursery, I didn’t have too much to complain about. Michael had sportingly taken the lead in manning the nursery door, delivering the line — “Good night, August. Sweet dreams. See you when it’s time.” — and August had magnanimously refrained from crying most of the night. Sleep training … so far, so good.

All in all, I had a relatively good night’s sleep under my pajama waistband. I was encouraged. August and I started our day well: We hung out. We sang. We fed. And THEN it was time for the morning nap.

See, what I had omitted to factor into this whole sleep training thing, is that the training doesn’t stop when the sun rises. Nope, it continues well into the next day and naps — sigh — are no exception. We are on the express track, my friends.

Before we set loose the sleep train, I had envisioned every nighttime scenario and planned out appropriate solutions. What will I do if he cries for three hours nonstop? What will I do if he wakes me up before I wake him for the dream feed? What will I do if he can’t fall back asleep? What will I do if … well, you get the idea.

But stupidly, it hadn’t occurred to me that the following day I’d be sitting on the sofa listening to more shrieks issuing from under the nursery door. Call me a fool today. But trust me, this time tomorrow, I’ll be prepared. Oh, and for the record? Daytime nap training is far worse than nighttime sleep training. Especially when you’re home alone.

Tags: Crying, Sleeping

The sleep train? Well that sounds like fun. But trust me, it’s no fun. We’re currently riding it down to hell and back (or wherever the sleep train travels).

Our journey began at 6.45 this evening. August had been fed, washed, creamed, brushed, deposited into his sleep sack, and placed squarely into his cot. Mummy delivered a previously agreed-upon set phrase — “Good night August. Sweet dreams. See you when it’s time” — and she walked out of the room closing the door firmly behind her.

Forty-five minutes later there was debris on the track, so to speak, in the form of “Cough, cough, splutter, squeak, wail, waaaaaaaaaah!”

Under normal circumstances, Mummy or Daddy would have rushed to August’s rescue, dashing into the nursery to deliver cuddles, hugs and dibby dops (still more on those later). But not this night.

It was Daddy’s turn: He opened the nursery door, walked in, placed his hand on August’s chest, delivered the agreed-upon line, turned on his heel and walked out closing the door behind him.

The squealing continued. And continued. The pitches rose and fell. The lights on the monitor were on fire with screeches.

We turned on the TV, opened a bottle of wine. Daddy called his parents for moral support. Mummy made a slick escape to pick up a pizza. And while she was dawdling at the pizza parlor, her phone rang: August had cried himself to sleep, Daddy reported.

Already? And the pizza wasn’t even done yet.

So here we are, having completed stage one of the sleep journey, but the night is long with ample opportunity for August to shake himself awake. If he does, we’ll march in to the nursery, deliver the line and march out, loaded with purpose. Then, we’ll hole up in the bedroom with happy thoughts and good books and a slab of chocolate and try not to cry ourselves.

What’s the reward at the end of this journey, you ask? After two or three days, we’ll have a perfectly delightful, sleep-trained child who settles for naps and goes down peacefully at bedtime. At least, that’s what the experts say.

The jury’s still out on whether it will work with August.

Tags: Sleeping

So, I was gearing up to write a post about how my sleep transmissions have finally paid off. You know, the hypnotic mutterings I pipe directly into August’s ears when he’s in a receptive state. “You are verrrrry sleeeeepy. You will not wake until mooooorning. If you do, you will falllll asleep again…”

I backed up up these transmissions with a portable Sleep Sheep for additional sleepy insurance — Stream! Rain! Ocean! Whale Songs! (August’s favorite, of course, is whale songs) — and I spent hours dangling over the side of the crib soothing my beloved with restful tummy rubs and head strokes. Plus, there was the pacifier.

And you know what? It paid off. Really it did. August began sleeping great big long stretches that filled his mother’s eyes with tears of gratitude. Indeed, after a late-night feed at 11 p.m., he’d close his eyes and not open them until a reasonable — even alarming — 6.30 a.m. or 7 a.m. It made me want to sing with the angels. Tra-la-laaaaah!

AND THEN…one night, it changed. He fussed at bedtime. His eyes sprang open. He snarled. Two nights ago, the hourly wake-up calls began at 2 a.m. I shushed August with my eyes closed. I dangled over that crib. We played whale songs at unprecedented levels. “August,” I said, “We need to talk.”

The following morning, I was the walking dead. After five non-consecutive hours of fake sleep, I felt like I’d flown twice around the world holed up in an economy seat and just woken up to 12-hours-worth of jetlag. I was so fried, I could have slipped unnoticed onto the McDonald’s dollar menu.

Last night the shouts began at 1.30 a.m. I went into the nursery. I shushed and patted. And it occurred to me (or rather, it occurred to Michael) that maybe, just maybe, he was suffering another teeny tiny cold. Out came the elephant trunk and we rooted around in his nose for a while. And before you could say, “snot!” he was asleep. He woke up at 6.30.

Chance?
Luck?
A legitimately blocked nose?

Only tonight will tell… stay tuned!

Tags: Health, Sleeping

Anyone who knows anything about babies (and even those who don’t know much, say, myself) has heard of the witching hour.

For those who haven’t, it’s a stretch of time from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. (or is it 10 p.m.?) during which baby is extra cranky, colicky, fussy and snarly. There are squawks, there is kicking and there is general discomfort-in-one’s-skin. This coincides perfectly with the end of the day, just as mum and dad are ready to kick back and unwind with a glass of wine. How painful is that? (Click here for a more professional primer on Witching Hour)

Traditional witching hour never made it into our home, but August not to be outdone by other babies and imaginative as always invented his own witching hour — one that revs up in the morning. Ugh!

Here’s how it works: Between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. when mummy and daddy are passed out in their bed, August’s eyelids suddenly flip open and his status switch tunes into AWAKE AWAKE AWAKE! This information he transmits to his parents by way of shrieks which crackle through the monitor (now parked outside the parents’ bedroom in the hallway) causing the light display to fire up and cast blue shadows on the walls. Then mummy drags into August’s bedroom where he waits for her AWAKE but EXHAUSTED which any parent will tell you is the very worst combination.

Then the soothing, go-back-to-sleep routine begins and the eyelids flutter back to their closed position. But no sooner has that happened when the legs sling up: AWAKE AWAKE AWAKE!

After extreme coaxing, sleep eventually takes over by which time ol’ mummy herself is way, way, way too wide awake to close her eyes. One might even refer to her as AWAKE but EXHAUSTED. Sound familiar?

Yay! August’s own personal witching hour! Go Aug for the creativity on this one. I’ll have to remind you of it when you’re a lazy 15-year-old sleeping in until 11 a.m. Or, make that noon.

Tags: Napping, Sleeping

When it comes to sleeping at night, I give August a solid B+/A- with the occasional C thrown in.

B+ for only occasionally (but still occasionally) needing encouragement at bedtime.
A- for sleeping fairly long stretches at a time.
A- for not being reliant on the pacifier and only using it 50% of the time.
C for flipping like a switch between smiling (awake) and snarling (tired) with the put-me-to-bed-now-or-this-will-be-the-end cry.
A+ for sleeping in his crib, on his own, in the dark with no reliance on swings or other movement sources.
B+ for more or less being able to alternate between the crib and the stroller.
A for giving up his bassinet when he was still a tiny piglet; and A for being willing to go back into the bassinet after he’d clearly given it up, when the construction project upstairs was giving us all a headache.

It’s true August is not sleeping through the night and it’s true he demands dinner-time-top-ups at various unpredictable moments between midnight and 6 a.m. But who am I to complain about that? That’s small potatoes.

I’ve heard the horror stories, my friends.

One young fellow, a four-and-a-half-month-old from Baby Yoga needs to be bounced on the bouncy ball — vigorously — before he falls asleep. That includes before bedtime, before every nap and before every middle-of-the-night wake-up-call.

Babies wake up and go to sleep a great many times in a 24-hour period. So, can you imagine vigorously bouncing a baby on a ball at 2 a.m.? And then, say, again, at 5 a.m.? And then again at around 8.30 a.m.? And then again at around noon? And then maybe at some point in the mid afternoon? And then in the early evening? Well, exactly.

So I’m not going to rock the boat: I’ll take what I’ve got and not complain about the occasional wrinkle in August’s sleep habits.

Tags: Sleeping

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of climbing into a bed made up with freshly washed, crisp, white sheets. No wrinkles, plump duvet, you can just feel the stresses melt away.

Isn’t it just the best?

Well, that was my night last night. I climbed into bed, eyelids heavy with exhaustion and I plumped up my pillow and turned to one side and shut my eyes. And then I turned to the other side. And then I opened my eyes. And then I stared at the ceiling for a while. And then I rearranged my pillows and tried sleeping on my tummy. And then I went back to my original side and tucked my legs up. And then I dozed for a while…but wait, did I hear crying? Yes? Yes?

No — just the sounds of the night. And then I watched the monitor with its green eye and then just as I my eyelides were starting to close, the monitor perked up — beep beep beep — with a lost signal. So I hopped out of bed and fixed it.

Back into bed. Looking at the ceiling. Is the nursery to warm? I’d better go check. Temperature fine. Baby breathing. Check, check.

Back into bed. Looking at the ceiling. Checking the clock. Tick tock, another sleepless hour logged. Turning to my side. Plumping the pillows. Counting back from 20. I hear the songs of the They Might Be Giants ABCs soundtrack. It’s rocketing around in my head like … rocks. Check the clock. Check the monitor. Close my eyes.

And the monitor perks up and lights flash blue, the wailing begins. Over to the nursery for a feeding. Baby up, baby fed, baby down.

Back into bed. Looking at the ceiling. I close my eyes. It’s almost 4 a.m. Sleep descends And then, good morning! It’s time to wake up, it’s 6.15 a.m. on a glorious Monday. Up, out of bed, off to the nursery to collect the squawker.

Who needs sleep anyway?

Tags: Mother, Sleeping

Some things just go together —

For example: Red beans and rice are a natural combination. So is peanut butter and jelly, cookies and milk (see previous), hot dogs and mustard, bangers and mash.

And some things just don’t go together —

Babies and construction work.

So, here’s the thing, if anyone was wondering why Baby Augie hasn’t been updated in a while (Lauren), it’s because we’ve suffered the most almighty construction project. Located where? Right above the nursery.

Here’s what happens: At 7.56 a.m., we hear the first clomp, clomp, clomp of workers’ boots entering the apartment. There is about half an hour of touring as the workers examine everything that happened the day before. Then they start pounding the walls with what — pick-axes? crowbars? heaven only knows what — and rocks, rubble and dust come flying down the walls entering our apartment under the floorboards. That continues until 12 p.m. when the workers take a break for lunch. Then, at 12. 30 the workers return and the drilling begins. A bit of drilling here and a bit of drilling there. Then there’s quiet for a while and then, just when you least expect it, the drilling will fire up or an entire bathtub will dropped or a cement-mixer or whatever it is they’ve got up there. And that continues until 5 p.m. when we hear the clomp, clomp, clomp of the workers’ boots leaving the apartment.

Meanwhile, downstairs in the Donner apartment, August wakes up and just when he’s about ready for a nice quiet feed on the couch, the pounding begins over the living room. So we hoist ourselves off the couch and move through to the bedroom (mercifully quiet), and there we hang out doing our best to ignore the pounding until nap time. Then August is wrapped up and dropped into his bassinet for his afternoon “nap.” The screaming begins after about 4 seconds, rising in pitch and intensity because it’s not his crib and it’s not familiar. And that continues interspersed with bouncing and shushing for about 30 minutes at which point August is placed lovingly in his stroller and pushed up and down the Upper West Side.

Then we return to the apartment and ensconce ourselves in the bedroom coming out only to change nappies amidst the construction dust clouds. Finally, ready for his late afternoon nap, August is once again placed lovingly in his stroller and carted about through Central Park where his eyes finally close. Then at 5 p.m. we’re back at the apartment where a desperately unrefreshed August is encouraged to wind down in his bedtime routine.

The nursery is a safe zone by then, so after a calm feed and a calm bath and another calm feed, he is wrapped up and placed in his crib and oh my-oh my-oh my-noooooo! Where is the bassinet? The crib is unfamiliar, the nursery is unfamiliar. And after bouncing and shushing and rubbing and calming, August finally — finally — drops into a fitful sleep waking up mummy oh, only 40 times-or-so during the night. And well, so the cycle continues.

So, in case anyone was wondering, that’s where we’ve been and no, construction works and babies do not go together.

Tags: Crying, Nursery, Sleeping

Sneaking into August’s bedroom at 10.25 p.m. for a late night snack. “Would you like cookies with that milk, Master August?”

Loosening the swaddle, stroking him on the belly, seeing the stretches, watching the yawns…It fills your heart to bursting.

He twists to the side, arches his back and curves his body into the shape a tiny shrimp. Oh, CUTE!

Then we feed.

And then, hopefully, hopefully, he goes down without a fight.

(Which he did.)

Tags: Feeding, Sleeping

Oh my goodness gracious me! Ol’ mummy learned something today. Oh yes she did. She learned that contrary to popular belief, her baby is not the most perfect baby on the block.

What?!

I know, but it’s true.

Little Anna, three doors down, who was born just a few days prior to August is sleeping through the night on her very own. Not even pseudo-sleeping through the night, like, midnight to 5 a.m., but the whole nine yards: 9 p.m. to 8 a.m. Scrap nine yards, that’s practically 12 yards.

I used to think my little August was perfect because he generally wakes up just once in the night and he sleeps unassisted in his big boy crib but clearly Anna’s doing sleeping better than he is. In other words, August brilliantly duped his mum into thinking he was more perfect than he is.

Or, perhaps August just didn’t get the sleeping memo.

Tags: Sleeping

On the heels of Desperate Times for Desperate Measures, my darling baby woke me five times last night. This behavior was previously unheard of. At most there were two wakings and more recently there was just one.

But last night, August broke his own record. The wake-up calls began around 2.30 a.m. and continued through to 6.45 a.m.

There was certainly an avalanche of tears for every hour: 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m., 5 a.m., 6 a.m.

Good grief, it makes me tired just to write it.

Obviously, the child understands that his mum suffers unconditional love or he’d never behave like that.

As a result, we operated on a rigid schedule today and did boring things like go to the bank and thumbed through Gina Ford for the thousandth time to see if there was some crucial elements we’d missed. We skipped fun things like baby yoga and seeing friends. That’s what happens when you wake up five times in one night. No prizes for you, Aug.

Tags: Crying, Gina Ford, Schedule, Sleeping