Sleeping Beauty

After my last post, I realized that I left out one major milestone that occurred in June:  Clay's transition to his crib.  As such, I am dedicating this post to Clay's sleeping patterns (not sure that this will be interesting to anyone other than me but that's okay - I guess my blog is pretty self-indulgent anyway so this post is just par for the course)  :)

To understand why the transition is a big deal, let's back up to when Clay was born.  Okay, so the first night of Clay's life, I was wired to be a completely normal mother, you know, one that does not agonize about things like monitoring every breath her baby takes (okay so maybe agonizing about this is normal but I think I quickly took this to a new level) - initially, I planned on sleeping when Clay slept.  Well, that all changed 30 minutes into our first "night's rest" in the hospital.  When babies are born, going through the birth canal squeezes gunk out of the baby's lungs and life is good.  Shortly after the baby is born, the nurses explain that you need to keep a bulb syringe handy just in case there's any gunk left in baby's lungs and they try to cough it up on their own - you stick the bulb syringe in their mouth and just suck it out and carry on.  We'd just gone to bed and I woke up suddenly - Clay hadn't made a sound or anything but I woke up and found that he was trying to get the gunk up but was chocking on it - we tried to use the syringe but it didn't seem to be working, we paged the nurses who came in, thwacked Clay on the back and got everything out.  Clay was totally fine but that traumatic (for Mommy) event freaked me out so I've been extremely paranoid about him sleeping ever since then.  (This really was a very normal experience - I think if he'd been a bigger baby everything would have come out at birth and he wouldn't have had that happen - if this happens with any future children, I will have the confidence to know how to handle it and hopefully won't be such a weirdo!)

Anywho, that E-X-T-R-E-M-E-L-Y long story takes us to where Clay slept.  So for the first 6 weeks, Clay slept in a beautiful bassinet that we borrowed from our generous friend - Parker Musgrave.  I loved it.  It stayed by our bed, I turned Clay's head toward me (not the smartest thing since babies need you to rotate which side of their head they sleep on so they don't get a flat spot but fortunately, Clay is no worse for the wear) so I could see him at all times.  It was also fantastic because if he got fussy, I just leaned over and rocked the bassinet to calm him down.  Also, since he was nursing every 3 hours at that point, it was way convenient to have him right there next to me.

It was a bittersweet day when I realized that Clay needed to move out of the bassinet.  It probably should have happened earlier than it did but the turning point was when for the third night in a row, I'd woken up to find that my little wiggle worm had squirmed his way down in between the wings of his sleep positioner (I found out after the fact that if your baby is doing this, you need to STOP using the positioner) and was scrunched at the foot of the bassinet with his legs poking straight up - wish I would have gotten a picture of that but every time it happened, I just rushed to get him in a "safe position" - yes, I am a worry wart! 

Sweet baby Clay swaddled and tucked into the bassinet

After the bassinet came the pack and play.  Moving him to the pack and play was a big deal to me because while he was still in our room, he was no longer directly next to me.  It took a couple of nights for him to get used to the pack and play but we all quickly learned to love it.  It has two speeds of vibration both of which were fantastic at inducing sleep.  We have the Graco pack and play that also has a light that lets up check on the baby without turning on overhear lights (also a bonus because I made us leave the light to my vanity area on for the first 6 weeks of Clay's life - man, the more I write, the more I realize how completely neurotic I was), it also has music and nature sounds.  It was also about this time that I let him start sleeping through the night.  Yes, you read that correctly - I hadn't realized that since Clay had gained so much weight and was "thriving" that I could have long since stopped waking him up for the middle of the night feedings.  I am so grateful for the lunch date with Mollie and Claire Romness and Kelly and Parker Musgrave where I learned that I should let my sleeping baby sleep!  So at about 6 weeks, Clay started to sleep for 6 hours straight.  Clay stayed in the pack and play for about 6 1/2 weeks while I worked up the courage to not have him in the room with us.  Over those 6 weeks, I got used to listening to him on the monitors while Jim and I did stuff around the house (that was kind of ridiculous because I'd have Jim checking on him with every sound - most of the sounds were just our old house settling - yet another glimpse into my neurotic tendencies!)

There's my cute boy who pretty much wakes up this happy EVERY DAY!  Jim and I are so blessed!

At Clay's 2 month checkup, Clay's pediatrician told us that we needed to work on getting him to sleep in his crib.  His explained that we needed to have him in his crib by the time he was 4 months or else we'd probably have an issue with separation anxiety.  So, at 12 1/2 weeks old, one random Tuesday night, I decided that we should just go for it and well, the rest is history.  He did great!  He took to his crib like a champ (which was great since he was started daycare the next week and would definitely have to nap in a crib) and well, the rest is history.  Since then, he typically goes down pretty easily and will sleep for a good 7 - 8 hours if not more.  So I can't complain.  I still check on him multiple times before I go to bed for the night but at least, I'm not AS crazy but I am sure that I've already replaced worrying about him sleeping with something else.  As soon as I know what that is (or as soon as I am ready to acknowledge it) I'll share what my new brand of crazy is!

So, he's not sleeping in this picture and it was actually taken 4th of July weekend (about 3+ weeks after he'd made the move) but I just think it's a mighty cute picture.  Doesn't it look like he's receiving instructions for a space mission?