Second Kid Stress

So here I am, trucking along into my 25th week of pregnancy with Baby #2. That puts us into viability range, which of course, is a nice relief of a milestone. In only a few short weeks I will be pushed over into the Third Trimester. I am starting to feel the stress of having two children creeping up on me.

I'm sure all toddler and newborn moments
 look like this, right? RIGHT?!?!

I know very well I won't be the first to do it, but I am spending more and more time lately trying to wrap my preggo-brain around the logistics of the first few days/weeks/months of my newborn's life while intermingled with my toddler's day-to-day needs. Looking back on my experiences with my first born, I think about how easy it was from my perspective now (go back and read some old posts and see how much I am rewriting history here) and if I was going to be a first-time mom again (which is impossible), I'd be SO. READY.

But that's not really the case here. As much as I know all to well how it works to have a baby, I know NOTHING about what it is like to have a baby AND A TODDLER. And my freakouts are getting a little bigger by the day.

Of course, we must plan for the hospital stay, and my toddler will not likely enjoy or understand that experience and is best left at home until the baby has arrived. This requires planning, especially since we have no family nearby, are new to our new country and therefore have a limited social network, and well, Bugga has never been away from both her parents at once for longer than an hour in her life. And though I "lucked out" last time by only being in labor during daylight hours, there's always that chance that I will need to call SOMEONE to high tail it over to the house at 2AM to watch my daughter as we go speeding off to Labor & Delivery.

Once we get home, then at least we will have a couple weeks of man-on-man coverage with both kids since my husband will be home (thanking my uterus for birthing babies during end-of-the-year holidays once again). But once I am left to my own parenting when he goes back to the office, I am trying to wrap my brain around how I will juggle two severely different nap schedules, nursing, and toddler entertainment and activities that will likely require getting out of the house. Did I mention I'll be doing this in the wintertime? In Canada? Yeah, think snow - lots and lots of snow. I'm not even going to entertain my husband's jokes about nursing outside.

What tiny advice I have obtained here and there is that baby #2 (and any baby after that, should we be crazy enough to go for more...uh....forget I typed that) will be required to be much more flexible then we ever gave baby #1 credit for. Gone will be the eerily quiet household when the baby is sleeping. Gone will be the peaceful nursing sessions in the dark in the glider. And a myriad of other things too, I'm sure.

I'm trying to collect more information on how to plan for the changes, but I'm still coming up short for my own comfort. I found an e-book (The ABC's of Baby #2) last night and devoured it at the gym today - helpful but brief. If anyone out there in internet land has any tips, or resources, I am ready!!!

Nap Breakthrough!

Holy naptime, batman.

After almost 10 months of nursing my daughter to sleep for every bedtime and nap, and then holding her in my lap (thankfully she's been tired enough at night to lay into the crib), we have broken this habit!

Bugga has been a light sleeper for quite awhile. Yes, every newborn will sleep anywhere with any level of noise, but our kiddo grew out of this phase very quickly. Sometime around two months old, she would be easily startled if I turned the car engine off after nodding off during a drive, or woken by the floor creaking if I crept past her bouncer. Realizing she desperately needed more nap time in order to maintain healthy development, I started to nurse her to sleep and then hold her in my lap, barely moving, so she could log some valuable sleep hours.

Her naps started at 20-30 minutes here and there, but soon extended to up to almost 3 hours! I was thrilled, but this meant a lot of butt-in-the-glider time for me. I love to cuddle my little girl, but besides this being precious time that I could use to be productive around the house, if she ever wanted to change sleeping positions, my lap was not conducive to this and any movement she made would lead to her waking up and not getting the full nap she needed. It's been a long ten months for nap challenges around here.

I needed to teach her how to nap in her crib.

I read several books over the previous months on sleep training so I referenced these now to figure out what could be done. The catch is that this wasn't a straight issue of nursing to sleep, since most who do this, do this all night long. We had night-weaned back at 5 weeks or so when Bugga started sleeping through the night. She also could be laid down in her crib at night still awake but drowsy, and roll over and go to sleep. So I knew she had some soothing skills. But I knew I wanted her to a) do this for naps without freaking out (which had been the result if I ever tried before this), and b) be able to put herself back to sleep if she woke up at night (bonus!).

OK so I just went cold turkey on the naps in the crib, figuring I'd give it a try for a week. I was scared to death I would simultaneously ruin bedtime by putting a fear of the crib into my child. I put her down at her scheduled times, twice a day, after nursing. At first there was crying and protesting. I'd lay her down with the lights off (closet light on for a slight light), white noise on, leave the room and close the door. She would begin to cry as I left the room. I watched her on the video monitor for five minutes. She sometimes would sit up or stand up while crying. After five minutes I went back in and offered her the pacifier, laid her back down, rubbed her back for about 2 minutes, then left again. I repeated this until she finally fell asleep.

I started last week on Monday, and by this past Monday (8 days later!), I feel she is officially comfortable with falling asleep on her own. Out of the 14 nap windows during this time, she cried anywhere from 0 to 50 minutes before falling asleep. The 50 minute scenarios happened only (gulp) twice, and although I continued the checks, the second time this happened I just picked her up and moved on - no nap that time. Sometimes she would let out a couple whimpers and/or just nod off; sometimes she'd cry for 5 minutes then be out. And the strange thing is there was no rhyme or reason for which option would happen when. But now she will pretty much go down without freaking out at all (yay!!) and sleep anywhere from 50 minutes until 3 hours (and we had to wake her up from that one). She really is getting better sleep this way, and my husband and I are getting some kid-free time on the weekends which is completely new to us.

If you are struggling with this scenario, I am happy to answer any questions!

Baby Schedule (8, 9, 10 Months)

I thought it would be a good idea to share our latest schedule. I think the last time I posted about the details was way back when I was first planning on being a Stay at Home Mom. Well, to say the least, things are different now. For one, my kiddo is 5 months older. (WHOA! I've been doing this for FIVE months already?!?) Also, I was a little clueless as to what was realistic as far as scheduling goes. So if you want a good laugh, please check out how I thought we'd be spending our weeks.

We've hit a good stride lately, and as long as we stick. to. the. schedule. everything is great. WOW do babies need a schedule. We've tried to put her to bed a little later some nights when we are caught out of the house when a family activity runs late, and we pay for it. The biggest problem ends up being a cranky baby - but the worst result has been a baby that is overtired and either will not go to sleep until several hours later, or wakes up several times throughout the night.

I know that some baby experts recommend that babies be eating 3 meals of solids a day at this age (several others leave this open-ended as "food is for fun, until after one"), however we are still just at 2 meals a day. Honestly - we spend sooo much time nursing, eating solids, and napping that there is hardly time for anything else during the day. As it stands, we pretty much have time to leave the house once a day, so we have to use our errand/activity time wisely. If we are out somewhere for lunch during the day (that does not involve a drive-thru) I have Cheerios handy to keep Bugga from turning green from food jealousy. And they make for easy cleanup.

Also, we are currently on two naps, with the longest one being in the late morning. The second nap is a little harder to come by, and lately it's usually done in the car on the way back from somewhere. My formerly very "green" self has vaporized in order to keep my child napping, and since she wakes if I try to move her, I have spent a lot of time sitting in my garage (door open!) with the air-conditioning/heat running.

I feel like it would be useful to post our schedules from previous months, and since I am still logging everything in my Total Baby app, I will go back in the next week or two and pull the schedules from Bugga's previous ages.