Lights, Camera, Action!

Now that he's sleeping, we're starting to learn more about what Zia's like, since he doesn't have to be all cranky now from lack of sleep. Not that he was always cranky, but he certainly seems now to be happier on a more regular basis than previously. 


One of the things we've discovered, inadvertently, is that he's most definitely a super-extrovert who likes to be in the limelight. 


I know, I know -- shocking. How could the child of Katie & Mo be extroverted?! It's so not what you expected. Haha. So it's not that we're so surprised in general, but what is surprising is the way in which it shows up. It was most abundantly evident last week at the strike Mo helped to organize.

Mo & I had had intense negotiations about how long Zia and I were going to go to the strike. Mo started with eight hours; I countered with two. We both stayed strong for several rounds, not wavering, until Mo countered with twelve. Then fifteen. Then sixteen. 


You can understand why he's a union representative/organizer.


Negotiations being one of his strong points (obviously) and not mine (again, obviously), I finally settled on, "We will come after his morning nap and stay as long as he stays calm."


Which, as it turns out, was endless. We finally left after seven hours. Not including transport time there (walking, Kaiser shuttling, and BARTing, both ways) and back -- even on the way back, he was still charming the woman in the seat behind us! So we were gone for over nine hours in total all day. Crazy!


This boy is THRILLED to be out in public. Audience? No problem! In fact, delighted! Now I'm energized, happy, and able to carry on with my day. At home with only Mama to give me attention? Boorrrinnnnggg. I need my adoring audience!

We were seriously shocked at how well he did. He basically just bounced back and forth between Mo and me, getting passed around among the nurses, smiling the whole day. He was especially delighted when Papa put him up on his shoulders and danced with him. (Yes, there was dancing at this strike. It wasn't exactly your usual strike, with angry, scowl-faced people making demands. Put some nurses in charge of a strike, and they've got everything from 'Celebration' to Lady Gaga rockin' it and are doing synchronized dances with picket signs to make their demands.)

This trend has continued. When we take him to restaurants, he's delighted to sit in his little highchair (yes, he can do that!), play with a spoon, and look around at the room, watching the action, staring at people until they smile at him and/or tell him how cute he is. No fusses, just enthusiasm and love.


Yeah, he knows how to work it. We *may* have created a monster!!

Take cover!

WARNING: This post is not about sleep. I know you may not be able to wrap your head around that, so I thought I should let you know ahead of time so that you're not trying to read between the lines, trying to figure out how it relates to sleep, since that's pretty much all I've talked about so far.

Zia finally has a room. Yes, he's technically had a physical room all along, but it's finally set up to look like his room, rather than a dumping ground. It's very exciting.

As I was finishing it up the other day, he was sitting on the floor playing with toys. I had to vacuum the futon because it had plaster from my belly cast on it. (Zia's room is also the guest room; hence, the futon.) The vacuum was right next to him on the floor, and one of the things he was playing with was a soft fabric block. As soon as I turned on the vacuum, he put his head straight down on top of the block. Like an ostrich putting his head in the sand.

I turned off the vacuum to make sure he was okay, and he brought his head up. So, I went ahead and turned it on again. What did he do?? Head straight back down on the block! Hil.ar.i.ous.

I decided to be nice and finish it up with him in my arms, since he was clearly traumatized by the vacuum's noise.

Once I finished that, I set him up on the futon so I could vacuum the floor, figuring he'd be okay since he wasn't on the floor next to it. 

What happened??

This photo doesn't capture the heart of it. His little hands were up next to his ears, plastering himself against the futon like he was in a stick-up. 

And what did his loving mom do each time? Laugh.

And then tell his dad about it, who proceeded to help me recreate it so he could see it. (That's where the photos come from, which is why they're not as good as the original moments.) Great parents, huh?!

He's a funny little guy. So much for the vacuum calming babies!

Best of Both Worlds

I'm sure you're dying for an update on how crying it out is going!


Well, it turns out that Zia has the best of both of his parents: Mom's ability to learn new things quickly, and Dad's doing things in extremes.


He continued to get to sleep quite quickly every night but became increasingly difficult to get back to sleep the rest of the night. (We were trying to build up crying sessions in the night and not have him do it all night right away.) So, we had another session with our trusty sleep consultant, who said that he sounded like he was ready to push it and go through the night crying. We also needed to get him sleeping in his crib, in his room, and she said to just go for it all at once! 

Getting used to my crib!

So, last Wednesday night, we did just that. We were both nervous, not knowing what was going to happen. (Especially Mo, since he had to leave at 4:00AM for work the next morning.) We didn't anticipate the sadness of climbing into bed and not having him in the room with us; I actually teared up a little.


He still woke up every 1-2 hours, but he always stopped crying within 10 minutes, so we just left him. I was worried about if he was hungry back there since he was used to getting fed every 2-4 hours throughout the night, but I figured he'd cry like mad and let me know when he was hungry.


By 3:00, that hadn't happened, and we both felt like we were pushing it making him also not eat that long, so I went back and fed him when he woke up crying. (And let me tell you, I had SUPPLY by that time!!) He woke up crying one more time and was then just happily awake at 7. And didn't seem to hate me when I came to get him up -- *whew*!


The next night, we were curious to see how much the crying sessions would extend out, and drumroll, please ....


HE DIDN'T CRY FROM 7:30PM TO 4:30AM!!!!


What?!?!


He also still didn't seem to need to be fed at 4:30. By 5:30, when he was lightly crying for the third time in an hour, I figured he was ready for some food. But then he ate so much that he didn't go back to sleep. 


Oh well. We're learning. 


So, he learned super fast and did the extreme of crying often one night and not at all the next night! It was also hilarious, because he managed to get himself from one end of the crib to the other in about 10 minutes after we put him down last night. (We've now observed that he does this not by rolling but by putting his feet up on the side of the crib and pushing himself around the edges -- it's hilarious to watch!)


Then, when I went in to make sure he was still alive (because, remember, he'd never slept more than four hours at a time, and that happened rarely), he had found the corner of the crib where I had a blanket hanging so that he could cram his head into that corner, which was cozier than the other corners that only have the super-thin bumper covering them.


Babies are funny, aren't they?


His sleeping-through-the-night trend has continued, and he's now taken to sleeping with one arm behind the bumper, like he's cuddling it. He's his daddy's boy. :) I want to take a picture, but I'm afraid I'll wake him up, and after all this work to get him to sleep, we're not taking that risk!! 


Now Mo & I just have to figure out what to do with all this time on our hands since we're no longer spending a huge chunk of our day wrangling with him to get him to sleep! Such luxury! And I have to retrain my body to sleep continuously. I can already feel the difference in my demeanor, and I still haven't slept longer than a few hours at a time!


Hooray!!

The Laugh It Out Solution

Well, so far the joke's on us. 


We finally started 'crying it out' two nights ago, at our wits' ends with the bouncing, rocking, walking, driving, and other madness that was ensuing, taking upwards of 1-2 hours to get this boy to sleep. 


We did the extreme of hiring a sleep consultant to help us sort out what method was going to work for him and to help us craft a plan. I know, I know -- a sleep consultant?? Yes, you can do anything for work and be an expert in anything these days! But let's be real -- sleep is clearly not something that comes naturally and getting oneself to sleep is a learned skill. Zia clearly needs additional help with it, and we were getting tired of sorting through the stacks and stacks of conflicting advice about how to get your kid to sleep.


Enter sleep consultant.


Who was SO worth the money so far!! Why?

First of all, she explained a ton to us about Zia's temperament that really helped us to understand him and how to approach him. That right there was worth talking to her in and of itself. She also helped us make a plan for the daunting work of letting him cry himself to sleep, because again, there are as many opinions on how to do it as there are people who have written books about sleep. And, really, we just needed the confidence and reassurance to do it.


She said that most kids will take 30-60 minutes to cry themselves to sleep in the beginning stages, and that kids with temperaments like Zia's are likely to be persistent and take longer. (This had been our suspicion all along; hence, our hesitation to get started with it. Remember: Zia doesn't cry; he screams bloody murder. So contemplating over an hour of bloody murder is not exactly my vision of a pleasant evening -- on repeat for a week, or multiple weeks!)


Her recommendation was to let him cry for 1.5 hours and if he was still wailing, pick him up and do what we usually do to get him to sleep. 


So, Mo & I were 100% prepared for 1.5 hours of tortured screaming. We had things out to distract ourselves and prepped ourselves for the emotional drain.


We went in after 5 minutes, as instructed. It was hard. I got teary-eyed. It's not easy giving your helpless little infant reassurance that you love him and support him in his struggle when he's *clearly* MISERABLE and hating what he's having to endure. We were to go back 10 minutes later, but not if it was de-escalating.


Which it unbelievably did!


Mo & I sat, staring at each other in wonder -- could we be hearing correctly? And sure enough ... how long did it take altogether??


15 MINUTES!!!!


What??

We figured it must be a fluke. So, the next night, we put him down even earlier because I couldn't get him down for his usual third nap and he'd therefore been up for five hours, which is way too long for a child of this age -- and was thus clearly overtired.


How long the second night?


6 MINUTES!!!!


Unbelievable.


How much are we kicking ourselves for the pain we've been causing ourselves to get him to sleep?? 


Alas, all things in time. We clearly weren't ready before, and maybe Zia wasn't either.


Tonight was also 6 minutes. And might I also add that he's needed our assistance to stay asleep far less than usual after getting him to sleep in the first place. Hallelujah!

The next step is going to be trickier, though, because it involves letting him start crying it out during his (MANY) night wakings. We tried that last night when he'd already been up for 1.5 hours and I'd fed him, bounced & rocked him, Mo had bounced & rocked him, and he was wide awake. So, we thought, either we take him for a drive at 3AM, or we let him cry it out. We figured, why not? It's been going well so far! How bad could it be??


Really bad.


When it was 4:20AM and he'd been crying for 1 hour and 20 minutes and I'd been up since 1:00AM and we couldn't even be in our bed since we're still working on putting together the crib to transfer him out of our room (a whole different saga for a different day), I said, 'Enough.' Fed the boy, he fell asleep, and we were done with that. 


Hopefully, the night waking crying it out won't continue to be so hard, but man, are we laughing at ourselves for being so scared of, um, well, nothing, it turns out. 


Ah, parenthood.