Humble

*I know I'm complaining a lot in this post and the last one; just for the record, for every time Evie makes me want to cry with frustration there are two moments where she makes my heart leap with love. If I only wrote about the latter moments you'd all throw up on your keyboards reading about it :) and Angie pointed out to me that I've worked hard enough for parenthood that I've earned the right to grumble sometimes, grumble about my adorable daughter and the privilege of being her mother.*

So, I ate some humble stir-fry for lunch today. After swearing up and down for three months that Evie doesn't have reflux, the doctor diagnosed her with it this morning (I guess it's called "silent reflux?") We went in for a couple of things: 1. a dry cough that started late last week and 2. white stuff in her mouth that I wasn't sure was spit-up or thrush (doctor says no thrush) and 3. her spitting up has changed recently; it is more watery (drool from teething) and she seems to choke on it more and is more upset by it, sometimes. So now we have an rx for Baby Z@ntac (I'm too lazy to get up and go into the kitchen to locate the bottle and type the real name). The pharmacist apologized that it is mint flavored but said that there's nothing she can do about it besides adding a fruit flavor to try to mask the mint. I think that grape + mint sounds disgusting, and since Evie's never had anything but formula, she's just as likely to hate grape as she is to hate mint. When I gave her the first dose before her 10:30 feeding, however, she just made a funny face but didn't cry or fuss about it. This evening's dose went smoothly with no funny face. Let's hope it's that easy.

After sleeping 10 hours last night (9:15 to 7:15) she was awake and happy from her first feeding all the way through our 8:30 doctor's appointment and following pharmacy run. She fell asleep in her car seat for about 10 minutes as I pushed the cart around the grocery store, waiting for the prescription to be filled, but woke back up as we left the store and then proceeded to turn on the Mommy torture for the rest of the day. Her longest nap was from about 2-2:30.

I started to reply to all of your wonderful comments on yesterday's post, but my comment was getting so long that I decided to just write a new post about it. :)

I used a combination of your suggestions; I put on a fan in the room for white noise and also put on soft music (a medley of lullabies, Beatles and folk music I created on an mp3 player). I tried the idea of not picking her up but soothing her inside the crib instead. I tried the "fuss it out" technique because I agree with Hillary it's not the same as cry it out; some babies seem to need to fuss in order to soothe themselves. Evie does sometimes wake up and fuss herself back to sleep, so it's not unheard of in our house.

Nothing seemed to work. Evie is trying to convince me that she doesn't need naps. She'll yawn and act sleepy, yes, but when I lay her in the crib and she wakes up she'll be happy and interactive. She'll watch her mobile, smile at me, talk to herself and give me signals that she wants to play, not sleep. But as soon as I pick her up and try to read to her or play with her, the fussing returns. Argh!

OK, I know that my attachment parenting books say that babies this age do not manipulate us, they cry because they have needs. BUT it is hard to remember that when she starts crying as soon as she hears my foot hit the top stair (note to self: check into how to eliminate squeaks from our wood stairs?) and quiets down again when she hears me ascending. I'm serious; as soon as I start upstairs she stops fussing and waits for me to come into the room. When she sees my face appear over the side of the crib she (often) flashes a smile. Such a flirt. So I'm just going to look at it this way: she's tired and she thinks that she needs me in order to feel better; that is why she cries for me. I am teaching her that she doesn't need me for this; she can make herself feel better (i.e. self-soothe).

Besides the comments on the last post, I had two other sources of advice today: Ask Moxie and my mom. Ask Moxie's advice (not directly but through reading old posts) is that Evie is going through the "4 month sleep regression" and I just need to keep trying things to figure out what will work for her, and not blame myself for her crappy sleep for a few weeks. My mom's advice is that babies Evie's age don't need as much sleep as younger babies and older babies; I think the idea here is that younger babies are growing and developing so fast that they need lots of sleep to accomplish that and older babies are crawling and playing so much that they get worn out. Babies Evie's age aren't growing as fast anymore but aren't mobile and thus aren't expending much energy and wearing themselves out. I don't know if I 100% believe either of these theories, but it's helpful to have some ideas at least.

I did put a sign on the door; the FedEx guy rang the bell anyhow (the new wheel assembly for our stroller came today...after it was mysteriously broken by a wonderful man whose name begins with the letter "J")...the delivery guy is lucky Evie wasn't asleep when he rang because I might have run down the street after him, shouting obscenities.

Oh, and an old lady at the grocery store looked at Evie asleep in her pink car seat, with a pink bib on, and asked "how old is he?" Huh? Old men get a pass for being color blind. Old ladies not so much.

And, by the way, Evie now weighs 13 lbs. and 3.5 oz., which is up only 2 oz. from her 3 month checkup. She's still eating well and not spitting up significantly more, so I can't figure out how she only gained 2 oz. in over 2 weeks. This weight puts her back in the 50th percentile, as she was at birth. I'm confuzzled. And tired. I'm off to take a shower and go to sleep.