Operation: Move and Tuck

Every night, I read Hannah a story, give her a cuddle, lay her down, put her blankets on, turn on the sleepy music (thanks to the baby monitor), say good night, and turn out the light.  No problem.  At least it didn’t used to be.  Recently though, Hannah has been ditching her blankets and moving about her cot before going to sleep.  Sometimes her feet will be where her head usually is.   Other times, and apart from losing her blankets, this is the issue, she will fall asleep sideways.  I don’t mean on her side, I mean her head and her feet are both against opposite sides of the cot.  The problem is she is too big to fit that way without having to make like a sardine and bunch herself up in an awkward, uncomfortable position.  Then she wakes up in the middle of the night and instead of resettling herself like usual, she has to move to a more comfortable position, and then is quite awake, and has trouble going back to sleep.  Not to mention she is cold, since she ditched her blankets.

I got brave one night before I went to bed.  Holding my breath, heart beating a mile a minute (because if you wake a sleeping baby, it’s pretty much the end of the world), I slowly turned the knob on the door that leads to her bedroom.  The bedroom with the sleeping baby.  I could hear every spring compressing as I turned the handle.  I shut my eyes, paused, listened, scrunched up my face in anticipation.  No stirring, she was still asleep.  Phew….  I opened the door and crept in.  Operation tuck had begun.  I snuck in Hannah’s room every night for a week and put her blanket on.  She didn’t stir at all.  Then I got even braver, I decided it was time to move her.  Maybe she wouldn’t wake during the night if she didn’t have to remove herself from her sardine can.

How do you move a sleeping baby?  Easy, this is how I do it, step by step:

1) Open door.  Don’t just open it, open it quietly.  Turn handle, then push door open.  You don’t want to find out what happens if you don’t get the contraption all the way inside the door before pushing.  Sleeping babies probably don’t enjoy the loud clicking noise it makes.

2) Enter room.  Hold breath and stay still after not so gracefully colliding with the dresser on entry.

3) Somehow navigate the minefield of toys and clothes and make your way over to cot in the dark.

4) Determine where in the cot baby is laying.

5) Find out which end is head, which is feet, preferably without taking out an eye.

6) Once shoulders are located, place hands under baby’s armpits and slightly lift baby while dragging to desired position.  Hannah prefers her head to be right up to the end of the cot, belly down.

7) Put blanket on baby.  Don’t cover her head, she won’t like that and you don’t want to smother her.  If your feeling really adventurous, you could tuck the blanket in at the sides.

8) this should be an 8, but it seems WordPress thinks it should be a smug looking emoticon man.  Stifle giggles and try to exit quickly without running into anything as baby does a long, loud fart which rivals grown mens.

9) Close door in manner discussed in step 1 (because we know what happens if you don’t turn the knob first).

10) Enjoy not having to get up in the middle of the night to recover or reposition baby.  Sigh in relief.

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Waking your baby up by camera flash is not a good idea

Stubborn linea nigra

Time since birth: 6 weeks
Weight loss this week: Forgot to weigh myself this morning, can’t be bothered to right now
Total weight loss: see above….

I would have thought that by 6 weeks my linea nigera (or whatever it is called, that line that goes down the middle of my stomach) would have disappeared, or at least started fading. It is still there, loud and proud. My lochia has pretty much stopped now (about time!!!), which I’m extremely happy about.

I was brushing my hair the other night, and couldn’t get the brush through a bit in the front. On closer examination, I found there was something white that had dried in my hair. Baby vomit…. I have no idea how long it had been there (well, I mean it was that day sometime). I guess you know you’re a mom when you find baby vomit in random places.

Speaking of baby vomit, sometimes Hannah vomits (well, spits up) quite a bit. Then I think “is she sick, does she have reflux, is this normal???” Some of the girls (from my antenatal class, we get together every week) were wondering the same thing, so they asked about it at their mothers group. They were told that if the baby isn’t upset after spitting up, then it’s not a problem, they either drank too much, or it came up with a burp or something. Phew, she doesn’t get upset when she does it, so everything is a-ok.

For some reason, Hannah likes to take her morning naps on me (or Aaron on the weekend). I try to put her in her cot a few times but each time she cries, then it gets to the point where if I don’t let her sleep on me, she is not going to get enough sleep, and considering she doesn’t get a lot of sleep anyway (she sleeps 11-15 hours in a 24 hour period, they say babies should get 16-18), I relent and let her sleep on me just so she gets some sleep. I’ll have to ask about that in my mothers group which starts on Tuesday. Hannah likes to keep us on our toes when she sleeps on us. Her favourite position seems to be face first on your shoulder. I have to keep my hand on her back just to make sure she is still breathing and not suffocating herself. I don’t know how she breathes when she is face first on me, but somehow she does.

Finally, I don’t have roots down to my ears! The Jess came over on the weekend and dyed my hair for me. I am now a brunette (with a reddish tinge), and it only cost me $9.99 (but since there are no pennies in Australia, it was really $10).

I will have a very busy week this week. I have my 6 week check up tomorrow to make sure I’m all healed, etc. after giving birth. Tuesday I have my first mothers group, Wednesday, my boob specialist appointment, and then on Friday, I should be starting a postnatal pilates class. I left the registration a bit late (I’m faxing it tomorrow), so hopefully I will get in. I’m also going to take Hannah to the shopping centre to get some groceries. If she gets hungry, I can just take her to the mothers room which, I’m told, has TVs so you can feed your baby and not be bored.