One Step Forward, Two Steps...

I'm disappointed to report that Miss A's sleeping was just starting to get on track again and now it's completely unraveled again.

My parents bought us this hotel package in Vancouver as a Christmas gift. We picked a perfect sunny weekend and enjoyed the Stanley Park Seawall and a fantastic baby-free dinner date out. The night, however, turned into a complete nightmare. I tried to get her down before we went for dinner, but she would not fall asleep in a strange place. The nylon on the side of the travel bed we bought is bright red, and makes a neat noise when you brush your hands across it. After 2 hours of trying to settle her, it was now 8pm and we were hungry, so my parents encouraged us to go and they'd get her to sleep. We arrived back at 10:30 and she was asleep, but hadn't been sleeping long. Oh boy... I should have seen the foreshadowing here. Minutes after we arrived back she woke and would not settle back to sleep even with rocking, nursing, or me lying in the travel cot with her (yes this was a sight to be seen). Ha, and I thought we might even get some couple time that night. By 2 am I pulled her up into our bed and she finally slept -but I didn't get much myself with a little face that needed to be nuzzled against my breast and little hands tickling me. By 5:30 she was awake for the day... but terribly grumpy and I felt like I had the worst hangover since binge drinking in university. My eyes were even bloodshot -I looked like a train wreak.

We changed our plans around and I got on the first ferry home the next day with my mom's help while my dad and DH stayed in Vancouver to get my sister from the airport.

So, sadly I think that's it for travel for us for a long while.

New Library Card

My daughter is the newest member of our local library. I had to return a book today and asked about getting Anika her own membership card. I gave the information and presented her ID. The librarian gave the spiel about late books and overdue fines while Anika nodded and smiled -LOL!

She chose 3 books for her first withdrawl, so we now have some fresh bedtime reading: "Nose, Eyes, & Toes", "Bath Time", and "The Lucky Duck". She`s just started to take a real interest in patting and turning pages, so we`ve been doing more reading.

We also learned about their free story time programs for infants and toddlers. Maybe we`ll do some of the drop in classes when it works between naps. Too much fun!

Infertility Awareness BBQ

Our clinic hosted a BBQ yesterday. It was very well attended despite the torrential rainfall (they had an indoor back-up). It was sure nice to see some familiar faces of some of my cycle pals, as well as clinic staff. My counselor was particularly excited to see Anika as we've missed her on other trips down. Miss A. was all smiles and right in her element with all the people to look at and draw into socializing with her. How did I get such an extroverted daughter?

It was great to see all the successes, and all the families that are linked in some way by the same doctor and his team. There were probably 100 people there give or take, and that's just the ones who turned out for the BBQ.

They had silent auction items to raise money for an organization that helps people with fertility preservation (egg freezing) prior to undergoing cancer treatment or major surgery that impacts the ovaries. I perused the items and was interested to see one of them was an IVF cycle (starting bid at $1000). A friend and I remarked that nobody had bid yet, and joked about each other signing up. No way! We have both moved on from seeing ourselves as fertility patients. A past life. Part of us, but not something we want to revisit again.

Dr. H spoke briefly and mentioned that there are many more patients who are not as fortunate to walk away with the ultimate dream that brought them to the clinic. I too was thinking of these friends and strangers out there who are suffering in silence. What a tough place to be, and the last thing you'd want to be doing is hanging out at a family BBQ, although winning that IVF cycle would be a steal for someone getting ready to cycle again. Others yet are not ready to "out" themselves by attending such a function. I must admit if this were held in my own community, I might feel the same. Why is it such a difficult thing? Is there a stigma attached? Will raising awareness eventually change that for future patients? I sure hope so.

Sleep Update

3 nights in a row with only 1 wake up for a feeding! Can I call it a new pattern? I sure hope so. I don't want to jinx it, but we are celebrating this success. She had been waking every hour or two for nearly a month prior to this. I don't know exactly what triggered it, but we're happy. I can finally see straight again. She's down early (6-6:30pm) and up early (5:30 am) but it's working. I will happily get up that early after sleeping several hours straight. It's far better than getting up at 6:30 after sleeping 8 stretches of 45 min each.

She's still a short frequent power napper during the day, but puts herself to sleep in her crib with no fuss. She's got her soother and ribbon taggie blanket to rub. Hopefully with time and maturity she will start to string some of the naps together, but for now it's fairly easy to work around. She will do the odd nap in the carseat or stroller, but these aren't as easy for her. I try to avoid these when possible. Yesterday, we couldn't resist a trip to the beach however, who doesn't sleep well in the fresh air with the sound of the water?

Mother's Day

A few days ago a friend wished me a happy day for Sunday. I had to think for a minute what she was referring to. Oh, mother's day of course. LOL, I realized that I still think of it as a day for other people. It feels strange to include myself in the league of moms, but I guess I am celebrating mother's day this year.

Miss A. woke up extra early to greet me this morning (5:45). After she fed, DH, who is normally a sleeper inner, got himself up, told me to stay in bed, and took the baby upstairs. I awoke an hour or so later to an extra special meal of french toast served in bed, and a baby that had already gone down for her first nap of the day.  Later in the morning DH did all the vacuuming, mopping, and a load of laundry. Ahhh... so sweet.

I'm preparing a big turkey family dinner tonight to celebrate mother's day for my mother and grandmother, as well as a belated birthday for my dad, and a very belated Easter.

It's a very different spin on a holiday that used to be a reminder of what I wasn't. I think of all my IF friends out there, as well as those who have lost their own mothers and don't have reason to feel celebratory today. I hope you manage to survive the day.

Sleep?!?!?

We've been really struggling with sleep lately. Sigh.... My good little sleeper at 3 months has been taken over by a sleep demon at 4 months. We had a pattern of 12 hour nights with 5-6 hours between wakings for feedings, and 3-4 naps during the day of varying length - after being awake for about 1.5-2 hours she would just fall asleep anywhere.

Now, she's fighting naps during the day, and up frequently during the night every 1.5-2 hours. The bad sleep patterns started while we were on our trip. I chalked it up to jet lag but they haven't really improved dramatically since we've gotten home 2 weeks ago. Mommy is not functioning well on 8 one hour segments of sleep at night to say the least.

I've been doing some reading up on the topic and have implemented some strategies. First, I'm making habit to put her down in her crib for every nap just before she gets tired. She was crying herself into hysterics (to the point of vomiting) if left to cry it out. Hmmm... so I introduced a taggie blanket and a soother last week. She is now able to calmly get herself to sleep for a nap without fighting. Progress! The only dilemma is that I feel very tied down to the house with all this crib napping. We tried an outing the other day and she refused to sleep at all while we were out for 6 hours. The world is just far too interesting!

So what to do at night? I usually wait a few minutes to see if she'll resettle, but 99% of the time she won't. If it's been 4 hours or more since a feeding I'll feed her and she'll nurse and go back to sleep after 10-15 min. If its only been an hour or two I try offering the soother. She hasn't mastered the art of keeping it in all the time, or getting it back to her mouth, so sometimes this means I'm up again in 10 minutes retrieving the soother. Occasionally nothing I do works so my DH gets up and rocks her back down.

So I obviously need some help in this department. How do I get the 5-6 hour night time stretches back again? What worked for you? Am I doomed to staying home all day and getting up several times a night for the next several months? Years? Ughh...

Traveling with a Baby

Things we learned about traveling with an infant:

• Do it young! We left when Anika was 12 weeks old. Just old enough to be past the newborn stage, but young enough to be not yet mobile, exclusively breastfed, light enough to be carried everywhere, napping anywhere on no fixed schedule, and not yet afraid of strangers. By the time we got home she was nearly 4 months and ready for a more predictable routine.
• Pack light, but not too light. We went without a carseat or stroller, just one large rolling duffel bag, and one carry on each. It is possible to rent baby equipment in many places, but do your research to make sure you are getting equipment up to safety standards. We did this in Spain because we rented a car there.
• Travel by plane, train or bus whenever possible. It's far easier than having to strap the baby into a car where they can't feed, cuddle, or move around.
• Call the airline ahead of time to request a bassinet for long haul flights. Unless you want to hold your baby for 9 hours, this is a must.
• Take advantage of pre-boarding the airplane, and special lines at security checks to avoid any extra waiting in line time.
• Wear the baby -we brought a both a sling and baby carrier (Beco) which both were invaluable
• Book accommodations with laundry in house, and full kitchens so you can prepare your own meals
• If you eat out in restaurants, go for lunch, eat breakfast and dinner in. 
• Plan one thing to do or see each day, more than that and you will just wear yourself out.
• Pack more diapers than you think you'll possibly need with you for every outing. Always carry two spare changes of clothes also.
• Pack the extra clothes in ziplock bags, or reusable wet bags. If something gets wet or soiled, you can then pack it up in the waterproof bag.
• Sleepers with zippers are a must for travel days. No fuss with a million snaps, socks that fall off, or shirts that ride up. If your baby is a drooler or spits up, add a small bib.
• Wear white! Believe it or not this is the opposite of what I usually do when traveling, but light colours don't show spit up.
• Bring a travel bed -it will help to have a familiar space for sleeping when everything else is unfamiliar. We brought our Baby Bivy which easily fit inside one of the suitcases.
• Bring your sense of humour, and let your smiling baby make friends around you while she is content. A box of ear plugs to hand out to all the passengers might be in order if you don't think your little one is in the mood for charming the neighbours.

Wales

The final leg of our trip was to Wales to visit my younger sister. She is attending Atlantic College there, and has only a month to go before she comes back home for the summer and then goes off to New Brunswick for university this fall. She hasn't seen Anika since she was 3 days old, so there were lots of changes to observe.

We were put up in the town nearby by her link family. We also stayed two nights in the castle on the campus, and another two nights at a holiday flat in the beach town of Tenby. The rain from Spain seemed to follow us to Wales, so most of our days were very mixed with plenty of showers, but lots of sun in between too.

This marks the end of our month away. We are still getting over our jet-lag several days later, Anika included. It was an amazing trip, we are so very glad we made it happen. We are also very happy to be home in our own beds again, and back to some semblance of a routine.

More photos:
 https://picasaweb.google.com/117900006088174950877/Wales?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCP-64oOH9NfCjAE&feat=embedwebsite

Spain

Spain was going to be our week to enjoy some sunny beaching and relaxing. My parents decided to take their own trip to Italy and meet us in Spain. Unfortunately the annual rainfall decided to make it's appearance during the week we were visiting. When it wasn't raining it was very windy, making beaching out of the question except for one warmish afternoon. So much for the rain in Spain falling mainly on the plain. We filled our time with touring the cities of Valencia and Alicante, and the towns of El Compello and Guadalest near by. Gramma and Grampa enjoyed spending time with Anika, and DH and I even got out for a dinner date one night. We were the early birds eating at 8:00 pm!



One funny little encounter we had was while waiting in line at the supermarket. An older woman came over to admire Anika. She then started talking to my dad in Spanish telling him we needed to get her a "bando elastico" to hold her ear in place (she has a slightly stick out ear on the one side from when she was head down in utero and her ear was folded over). My dad said that we like her just the way she is. The woman responded that when Anika is older she is going to be upset that we didn't fix her ear. She told us we could even put a flower on the bando elastico, and pointed out  where we could find a selection of them in the store.

The most unfortunate turn of events happened right at the end of our stay in Spain. My parents were helping us down to the car with our bags and baby gear. My mom decided to take the stairs down while carrying the baby bassinet and she slipped and cut her forehead on the marble. Initially all seemed to be OK, but there was a lot of bleeding and she eventually required a trip to the hospital to get some stitches. The doctors recommended she not fly home for a couple of days, so they rearranged their flights and stayed on. She is recovering well, but has two black eyes. It could have been far worse.

More Photos are here:
 https://picasaweb.google.com/117900006088174950877/Spain?authuser=0& authkey=Gv1sRgCKjn1eeJifP3Xw&feat=embedwebsite

Diapers

At home we use cloth diapers and I never imagined I'd miss them so much while we were away. My daughter seems to store up her poops for a few days, so when she goes it's usually not dainty... well you get the point. We'd only ever had the occasional blow out with the cloth, but this unfortunately did not hold true with the disposables. Every time she went it involved a soiled outfit and a required a head to toe bath. Not easy when you never know when it's going to happen and you have to change in some tricky locations. At first I thought it might be the brand. We started with Earth's Best from Canada then switched to Petit Marseillais from France, Pampers from Germany, Huggies from Spain, and finally a home brand of UK "nappies". None were engineered well enough to prevent the blow outs. Oh, I wished I'd brought a cloth diaper or two along with us, or at very least a cloth diaper cover. The fortunate thing was it only happened every 3rd or 4th day, and somehow we were usually not too far from a bathtub. Ahhh.. it's good to be home.

Germany

We spent Easter weekend in Germany with two friends I first met when they came to Canada in highschool on an exchange program and we ended up in the same grade 10 art class. Who knew that 20+ years later we'd still be in contact. Our long weekend in Germany treated us with good food and good company. We were introduced to the comforts of train travel and cruise boat along the Rhine river.

Here are a few photos from this leg of the trip:

More are posted at this link  https://picasaweb.google.com/117900006088174950877/Germany?authkey=Gv1sRgCIbd9vPN_7ukeA#