Scheduling

It's great to have family support. I had no idea what I was doing with this kid. I thought mom would teach me everything I need to know. But really, there just wasn't time, and there's no way for her to impart on me the endless knowledge and research out there. And, ok, I'll admit it - there's a lot of what she said I didn't want to hear. Or I just wasn't ready to hear. isn't that always the way it is? We stubbornly refuse to listen to what mom says. Mea culpa.

So I was flying blind. Thankfully my sister in law brought me a couple of books to help me figure out how to deal with fussyness and sleep time. I've gotten through one and it's already proven invaluable. Swaddling, jiggling, white noise. Techniques I've successfully employed to get and keep DJ asleep. Then we went to the reunion and a cousin gave me more books. The one I'm reading now talks about how putting your infant on a schedule as early as two weeks in will get them sleeping through the night by week 9. Wow... that's a lofty goal. But a good one to have.

There's more to it than just scheduling, but I'm not giving up sleeping DJ in the swing until he's at least 3 months old. Right now, we just need it. Or giving up jiggling him to sleep and co-sleeping (which I try to limit to once a night or in dire circumstances. If I can't see straight and I'm getting up every 15 minutes to deal with fussy anti-sleep and B isn't awake to help with jiggling, usually associated with the 6 am nap time, then he's coming to bed with me. Sorry, that's just how it is. I can't have him crying for 15 minutes at 7am when I need that hour more of sleep.).

So, with that in mind, we are off. Now, I had basically been feeding DJ every 3 hours or on extreme demand anyway. I mean, there were times when he had growth spurts and he would want to feed every other hour during the day. Plus, he was trying to lock in my milk supply. But I was absolutely certain that he was hungry and that nothing short of the boob would cure his ills. I just tried to hang on for dear life. But most of the time it was 3 hrs or bust. What I was doing incorrectly is allowing the schedule to slip if I started a feed late. So say he was supposed to eat at 5, but it took me an hour to bath and redress him (cause he pooped in the clean diaper I just dropped on him). So now it's 6 and I'm feeding him. I'd push the schedule back to 9 and then keep it there. And the whole schedule would slip in definitely. Well, the book says, nope, keep the next feeding at 8, maybe just knock it back by 30 min and work your way back to normal schedule.

DJ has already been showing signs of sleeping more at night. He won't get up in less than 3 hours, or hasn't in a few days. And a couple of times, he's slept for many hours before waking me up to eat. And I've been THANKFUL for those nights. So hopefully it will work out.

So far, he's taking to the official schedule well. And for the first time in my life, I'm happy to exercise first thing in the morning. Granted, first thing is 9am or so, depending on when the feeding finishes and when we get out of the door. I'm walking him around the neighborhood. It's slow going, gods forbid I start to itch and burn, which has already happened once. But it's exercise and we walk for 30 minutes. He needs the air and I need to get my weight loss started. I'm hoping to get some mall walks in as well, maybe once or twice per week. Lofty goals. Before I popped I also wanted to walk in the parks. That hasn't happened yet. Perhaps B and I will get around to that.