things and stuff: stats, yoga, gear, sleep, toys

As of his recent pediatrician appointment, the boy is 13 pounds 9 ounces and 26 and 1/2 inches long. Tall and skinny in baby-ese.

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Last week we tried a new mom-and-baby yoga class. This one was much more baby-focused than my usual.

Pink rose petals on the floor in the doorway, yellow flowers in vases and candles in holders scattered about, music playing as you enter. Four helpers scuttle around helping people get settled, signed in. Each yoga station has a mat, a pile of props, and a baby bed made from two pillows, a wool blanket folded, and a towel. Each bed has a blanket and an extra towel on top. You select your spot; a helper brings you two toys, one plush, one wooden, for baby, offers to remove your carseat to the other room. The first hour is all stretches and movements done while holding, swinging, and bending down and kissing the baby. Next we are instructed to strip the babies naked. The helpers come around with bowls and bottles of oils and we are led through a thorough baby massage. There’s a break in which we are nursing and the helpers offer swaddling blankets. Many babies fall asleep after this. The ones that don’t are offered a bounce on a ball with one of the helpers while the moms do an hour of mom-only poses. And at the end, we sing to the babies. All for only $16.

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I went to BRU this week to try out the cheaper options in stroller land. All I can say is: Will you still be my friend if I don’t go the sensible route? Abandon all reason, ye who enter into the land of high-end baby gear. And the people said ah-meyn and pulled out their credit cards.

No, I still haven’t decided on which jog/all-terrain stroller yet. Decisions are not my strong point.

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The boy took four naps today. FOUR! Two of them were nice and looooong. On Saturday he took one 2-1/2 hour nap and maybe one other quickie, I can’t remember. Today I was hanging out with a pregnant friend who was grilling me on baby care. Jonah was on his third nap of the day when we met up. Oh no, she said — does this mean he won’t sleep tonight? No, I said. Sleep begets sleep. Or at least that’s what THEY say. Or at least I’ve noticed that it hardly seems to matter what his nap pattern is, he still sleeps the same amount at night. Are there things that you do that work to help him to nap, or is it totally random? she asked. I’m going to go with random, I said. Oh, she said. There are things that we do, I said, that when they work you think: I am a superhero, and then sometimes they don’t work. Oh, she said, yeah.

And then I told her that other truth: The first three months it’s colic. After that it’s teething.

But I guess we do have some things that work, most of the time. Most of the time, if he’s tired, a stroller ride will get him to fall asleep. Or the car. The car fails more often than the stroller. Sometimes a bjorn or moby walk works — less often than stroller, more often than car. Once in a while, he’ll just fall asleep in my lap; usually if this happens, it’s during a moms group meeting. Like so:

And from another angle:

Almost every night, around 8p.m., Scott rocks and sings Jonah to sleep and then puts him down in the co-sleeper. We watch TV in the living room and then join him around 10:30. One night the rocking didn’t work and Scott brought him back out and handed him to me and he promptly fell asleep on my shoulder.

On Saturday, for the midday nap, we tried some aspects of a new technique we cribbed from the report from a mom in the moms group who’d hired a $100/hour sleep consultant (5 hour minimum), or rather Scott cribbed since I wasn’t around. He put Jonah on his side in the crib (pun unintended) with rolled up towels to bolster him, and let him fuss a bit and then went in and “reassured him,” and then let him fuss a bit more, and then after about two rounds of this, Jonah had fallen asleep.

The sleep consultant had used a shush-pat technique that sounds similar to the Baby Whisperer. I don’t know if Scott shush-patted, and he’s asleep now so I can’t ask.

It turns out the consultant had also prescribed the white noise machine, so I learned today in a follow-up email. We don’t have one of those though.

Counting Baby Whisperer, which I haven’t looked at in weeks, I now have three sleep books that I’ve partially skimmed. I don’t seem to have the attention span to actually read them. Which is why stealing tips from an expensive consultant via a friend’s success story email is so much more do-able.

Could what we are doing be called CIO? I don’t think so. But Scott’s early success with the variation on the shush-pat and reassure is emboldening. Of course we haven’t tried it and encountered the full out tortured-cry response… yet? We’ll see how we do if it gets to that. I still feel skeptical of the term “self-soothe.” Ugh. It may be true, who am I to say? But it gives me the willies.

Are we moving Jonah to his own room? So far, only for naps.

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Teething: The evidence.

Here’s a pic of the boy with my two recent favorite toys:

And — Boy in Hat with Crazy Crab: