Adventures in Being Myself

We reached a milestone last night: our little buddy slept in his crib, in his own room, all night. Sleeping apart was a much bigger deal for me than it was for Zane. I know it's time, and a necessary step; but, I missed him. Even though I slept well, it was the first time since learning I was pregnant that my son and I were not together during the night. I think it is common to approach parenthood determined to follow certain tenets, or to not make certain "mistakes." I know I did. During pregnancy, I had Very Definite Ideas about how to manage our baby and our sleeping arrangements. I insisted that my child would be sleeping in his own bed from Day One because co-sleeping/sleep-sharing/family beds were for airy-fairy, hippy-dippy, granola types, not highly-organized and efficient (read: control freak) people like me. But my Very Definite Ideas changed as soon as I met Zane. Parenthood instantly became an opportunity to let go of control, act instinctively and do things...

Our Sweet Baby Zane is back (finally). As part of his 2-month checkup yesterday, he was stuck in the leg FIVE times. I am totally on board with preventing the reemergence of epidemic diseases that are totally preventable, but, yesterday afternoon, I questioned our decision to vaccinate our sweet, angelic baby boy. The poor heart was so out of sorts, and the worst part was he had no idea WHY he was so upset. He looked so pitiful, it was heartbreaking. Peegie and I, of course, knew why he was fussy and crying, so we were reduced to spoiling him with lots of naptime, lots of holding, lots of sleeping on our chests and lots of soft crooning of blessings into his sweet little ears. It worked. He nursed very well last night at bedtime, and he slept very well. When we awakened at 6:30AM, Baby Z was all smiles and sweetness again. Score one for the benefits of attachment parenting.

Having an 8-week-old baby in the house means that Peegie and I experience the 5:00AM hour quite frequently. Like most people, neither Peegie nor I find much humor in the 5:00AM hour. All of that changed this morning. We have established a pretty good nursing/sleeping routine for Zane: nurse at 10:00PM/11:00PM, burp, swaddle, comfort, kiss repeatedly, down to sleep until 4:00AM/5:00AM. When Zane awakens to nurse, Peegie gets up with him to change his diaper and brings him to me to nurse. This morning, as they came back into the bedroom, Peegie was laughing convulsively. At 5:00AM. Zane loves to be swaddled. He is a snuggler and will immediately settle into sleep when swaddled. Apparently, he also loves to stretch . Hence the convulsive laughter at 5:00AM this morning. As Peegie began unwrapping Zane to change his diaper, Zane began stretching and groaning (the type of groan that generally accompanies a good stretch...) The groaning and stretching continued in perfect harmony as Peegie ...