Super Gerbil Baby Does The Crib

Jeff is narrating (forgive the heavy breathing; the man has sinus issues) but you'll hear my voice in the background saying "Thank you Jesus!" and "We should have done this two weeks ago!"

Sam had been sleeping in my room for the past month (has it really been a whole month?!) (and I say "my room" because Jeff snores so badly that he spends most nights in the guest room) but it got to the point where neither Sam nor I were getting any sleep together. 

In the beginning it worked great.  He slept like a rock, I woke up when he cried and fed him and then we both went back to sleep.  Then came the Gerbil Baby.  Sam would make these noises in his sleep (and sometimes while awake) that made me turn to Jeff and say "Are you sure we didn't adopt a gerbil?"  And then Jeff would pick Sam up and say "Little man, you gotta lay off the cigarettes!" because it seriously sounded like he had spent his tiny lifetime chain-smoking menthols.  At first it was kind of cute.  But then we realized he wasn't getting very good sleep because the gerbil noises were increasing to become nearly constant.  And he was spitting up a lot.  And smelling like sour milk an increasing amount of the time.

When my best friend Char, mother of four, came to visit, I asked her if any of her children had ever made these noises.  "No," she replied, looking vaguely alarmed.  "I've never heard a baby make noises like that."  That was enough for me; I was pretty sure Sam had reflux.  One visit to our awesome pediatrician later and I was proven right; my poor Gerbil Baby was gerbiling because acid was burning up his esophagus.  We tried thickening his bottles for a week to see if maybe some low intervention methodology would do the trick but alas, the Zan.tac, it is our new best friend.  I haven't heard from Gerbil Baby in three days.

However, Pirate Monkey the Wiggle Worm was still in da house and every time mommy rolled over in bed, his eyes would pop open (I imagine, I can't see inside his bassinet from the bed) and the screaming/whining/complaining would begin.  I see his point; no one likes to be disturbed during their sleep--I certainly don't.  Several nights of this brought me to the edge of a breakdown.  Sam started to sleep during the day and stay up all night.  Jeff ever so gently suggested Sam sleep in the crib, in his own room.

WHAT?!  HAVE MY BABY SLEEP AWAY FROM ME?!  He still wakes up twice a night to eat! I argued.  It's so much more convenient to have him near me!  He's too little to sleep on his own! 

You need sleep, insisted my husband, mostly out of self-preservation, I assume.  So, reluctantly, I tried it last week.  I put the reflux wedge under the crib sheet (he had been sleeping in his bouncy seat), put Sam in his sleep sack and put him in the crib.  THE KID WENT OUT LIKE A LIGHT.  FOR FOUR AND A HALF HOURS.  HE DIDN'T EVEN CRY.

All night I kept thinking: time to ditch the cosleeper, lady.  I should probably have put Sam in his crib a week ago, when he made it clear that he no longer needed or wanted to sleep with me.  He sleeps so well at night, barely waking to eat, and he's been a much happier baby since the switch than he had been previously.  He has a disturbing tendency to migrate off the wedge and into a sideways position but I rest easy knowing that the crib bumpers are piled safely beside the crib, instead of tied to the sides.  I still have to wake up to feed him but I hear him better than I thought I would (I've got the monitor turned up loud, just in case) and when he grunted in his sleep last night, I just pulled the pillow over my head.  He stayed alseep, I went back to sleep eventually and we all woke up happy this morning.

My little baby is growing!

Of Gardens and Wishes

Back in April, after Jeff turned over the soil in my garden, I put the seeds for my vegetable crop in the ground.  I was behind in my planting; the peas should have been in by St. Patrick's Day and where I live, the beans were more than ready to go in, too.  I was still a little tender from surgery but eager to be outside, taking advantage of the beautiful weather.  And I was eager to get back to my garden.

I crouched over the ground, sun fading behind me, fingers in the cold dirt, pushing the seeds deep down and patting them until they were covered with dirt.  As I planted, I whispered to them: "Grow.  Send roots down deep and grow.  I'm planting you in hope.  Maybe by the time you come there will be a baby taking root inside me, too.  They tell me there is hope, that though everything looks dead there is still the possibility for life.  There might be a baby in this garden before too long."  I whispered, my face close to the dirt.  The chill of the evening wind sent me inside, cheeks rosy and eyes bright with dreams.  I remember that I slept well that night.

It's July now and the cold April evenings are nothing more than a memory.  We bake during the day with temperatures over a hundred and humidity that makes me feel like I'm drowning.  Nights are cooler but still as humid and anyone who ventures outside is begging to be eaten by bugs.  The garden that I planted in April is a mess these days; I haven't been able to tend to it for over a month now.  There are more weeds than plants out there and my lone rosebush had to be cut back severly because it contracted black spot.  And I'm not sleeping much these nights.

But before the garden went completely wild, there were beans.  Glorius and green, bursting with flavor, we ate them the first week Sam came home.  It was sweeter than I can describe, holding Sam in my arms, savoring the taste of hope fulfilled after such a long, fallow season.  I stroked his cheek, watched his mouth move in lazy sucking motions and thought about that April garden, sleepy with promise.  I could hardly believe that after all this time, after so many seasons spent reaping despair, he was finally here, in my arms.  It's a miracle I'm still not over.

The yield was enough that there are bags full of beans in my freezer, stored away for the winter season when flavors go stale with the fading sun.  We'll eat them this winter, feed them to Sam as he tries solids for the first time.  Next year he will crawl across the lawn as I pick the harvest.  He'll be too young just yet to help me plant the next season's crop but he'll be old enough to "help" me pick it.   

I have half a package of bean seeds left from this year's planting.  Next year we will whisper to them together.