Week 7, the unfairness of it all

First of all, who gave my OB permission to have a kid of her own?

Turns out, my OB, whom I dearly loved, has had a baby of her own (she got married partway through my pregnancy), and is on maternity leave until January. This is an inconvenience for me. I can't believe she didn't check with me on the off-chance that I might be unexpectedly getting pregnant while she might be out. It means that I either have to see another OB or wait until January to be seen by mine. Since this is a second pregnancy, I don't have the list of questions that I had the first time, so I'm OK waiting if they are. I'm supposed to get a call from her nurse in the next few weeks, to get me scheduled. So I'm probably going to be somewhere between 11 and 13 weeks by the time I go in to get my first appointment. Heck, by that point last time, I think I'd had my first ultrasound.

The next peeve I have is, why does my son FINALLY start sleeping through the night at the same time I start waking up at least twice a night so I can pee? UNFAIR! It's been a year and nine months since I had a good night's sleep, and now that I finally have the opportunity for one, since Brendan has managed to go pretty much every night since right after his birthday and either sleep straight through the night or put himself back to sleep without crying, I have to pee. That was the first symptom of pregnancy I had when I was pregnant with Brendan, and it has shown up with a vengeance.

The last unfair thing is that I STILL am having digestive trouble. I just wanna go potty like normal! When, oh when, will this go away?

It's about time

Brendan FINALLY slept through the night. At least, he never cried. Or if he did, I didn't hear it. And considering how hypersensitive I've been to the baby monitor, I'm pretty sure I would have heard it, regardless of how tired I was. I know he changed position at least once last night, since he was most definitely not where I left him (he ended up at the very top end of his crib, lying across the crib, on his tummy). So he managed to wake up enough to change position without waking up enough to cry about it.

I'm pretty sure this isn't going to happen every night for the rest of his life; as a matter of fact, I'm expecting tonight to be payback for last night. But at least I know he's capable of doing it.

I didn't completely freak out when I woke up, either. I actually got up and went to the bathroom, then got back in bed and stayed there for another five minutes, before deciding to get up and check to make sure he was still breathing. I guess that cements my disqualification from Mother of the Year from yesterday.

So, after about 17 months (since my first symptom of pregnancy was needing to pee in the middle of the night), I finally got a completely uninterrupted night's sleep. I am glad to know that I still can sleep through the night. I thought I might have lost the ability.

So much for the Mother of the Year award

I did something extremely stupid last night. When I put Brendan to bed, I forgot to put the side of the crib back in place. The crib is not a drop side crib; the top eight or ten inches are hinged to the rest of the side and secure to the corner posts at the top with deadbolts. My father-in-law made the crib for my niece, and we have it on loan to use for Brendan. When Brendan was little and not mobile I didn't worry about putting up the side. Ever since he got big enough to sit up on his own and get on his hands and knees, I've put the side up when he's been in it. And now, of course, he's mobile enough to stand up in the corner of the crib and potentially try to climb over the side. So this was a pretty dangerous thing for me to do. And then, to top it off, I made this a "cry it out" night; I did not go in to check on Brendan when he woke up and cried but instead let him put himself back to sleep. He work up at least four times from the time I put him in there, which meant at least four possible times for him to fall out of the crib. I am soooooooo glad he never got worked up enough to kneel or stand in the the crib last night.

As evidenced by the above, we're working on sleep training. Unless he really gets worked up and starts sobbing, we're letting him cry during the night. The last few weeks I've gone in if he's awakened after about 2 am and given him a bottle, figuring he'd be pretty hungry. But he needs to get weaned off of a nighttime feeding, and so last night I decided I was going to wait and let him cry. If he got really agitated, I would have gone in after him (and probably gotten him a bottle too; and I would have discovered my mistake with the side of the crib), but he eventually tapered off and went back to sleep. I'm hoping that he'll wake less and less over time, or at least cry less and less, until he gets to the point where he's shifting positions without ever actually waking up. We are still working hard to get him to bed at bedtime. He fights it pretty hard, and we're not exactly following what everyone recommends, which would be putting him down in the crib while he's still awake and letting him go to sleep on his own. I'm hoping that after he gets to the point where he's easily putting himself back to sleep in the middle of the night, we'll be able to start putting him in the bed while he's still somewhat awake. We'll get there.

And the angels sang hallelujah

FINALLY. After 8 months and one week, Brendan finally made it through the night without my intervention. He went to bed at 8:30 (with my husband putting him to bed instead of me), slept until about 5:30, took a bottle, then went back to sleep and slept until I got him up at 8:30. He did wake up a few times and cried a little, but each time he went back to sleep by himself. I did get up once, at about 4:30, because I thought he was going to get himself started and I figured he'd want a bottle, but by the time I mixed up the bottle the noises in his room had subsided, so I went back to bed. I'm sure this doesn't automatically mean he will now sleep through the night every night, but it's at least a promising start. Hopefully he'll get to the point where he won't wake up and cry at all. When he DID wake up at 5:30, he just SOBBED brokenheartedly until I got the bottle into his mouth. I don't know if it was because he was *starving* (I mean, this is a kid who is used to eating every 2-3 hours), or if it was because he was disoriented (I mean, all that sleeping can really take it out of you), or if he just missed me. No idea.

I could have slept longer myself--I got up at 8:00 because I knew I needed to get Brendan up and get him over to the sitter for the day. But it's nice to know I may get some sleep eventually.

On the weight loss front (and back, and rear, and thighs), I haven't done a very good job this week of eating better or exercising. I have taken the dog on a couple of good walks around the neighborhood, but that's been the extent of it. I've tried to eat a little better, but we ate out for dinner the other night, and I made brownies yesterday. I think I'm going to try to stop at the gym this afternoon, see if I can sign Brendan up for swimming lessons, and get a workout in. Hopefully next week will be a little easier. I did weigh in this morning at 232.6, which is a minor improvement. I only need to lose 1.5 lbs this week to be on track for my goal weight loss of 60 lbs by May 19, so I guess things are still going OK, but I need to be better. Maybe I should make a spreadsheet like the one we used to use, that recorded the daily weights and measurements, and then calculated the weekly totals and losses or gains. To do that, I should reprogram the scale with my starting weight and age. That's going to mean looking up on the internet how to do that, since I'm sure the manual is long gone.

Anyway, the sleep is a good thing, and hopefully the weight loss will be as well. Stay tuned...