Sleepwalking.

(As a follow up to yesterday’s post, Puck seems to be fine. And other than yesterday’s puddle, I haven’t found any more yet.

I’ve got my fingers crossed though.)

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So Baby O’s sleep habits have changed over the past month or so. Whereas for a few glorious weeks he’d sleep through from 8 until 7 or 8 the next morning…

… not so much now.

I think last week’s nursing strike killed his sleep because he was waking up hungry.

And this week? He’s been recovering from our trip to Cape last weekend to meet my cousin, my cousin’s kids, and my aunt and uncle. My cousin’s kids – 6 and almost 2 – well, they were kids. And they were loud enough to wake Baby O from his naps. And the 2 year old apparently screams in her sleep many nights. So we didn’t sleep well on Sunday night, either. So by Monday night Baby O was VERY short on sleep. And after a day at the beach (his first beach trip!), I thought the poor kid was going to keel over from the tired.

I was SO.WRONG. Where I thought he would sleep the instant we put him in the car… In fact, he was overtired enough we spent the most stressful half hour of our lives driving home, listening to Baby O scream in the backseat.

“Any moment now he’s going to fall asleep,” I told J.

And he did.

(Of course, it was AFTER we actually stopped driving so that I could take him out of his carseat and calm him down. Poor kid was covered in sweat, snot, and tears.)

Anyway. This week has been tough for night sleeping as Baby O recovers and gets back into his routine.

And I’ve not been sleeping very long in the mornings, either, since I’m trying to get myself ready for going back to work. (And also, in the mornings when Baby O’s asleep, it’s really the only time I have for myself.) Combined with going to bed later than usual, since we’re cramming house chores into the evenings afer Baby O goes to bed… well, I’ve been just as tired as my baby. Really.

But.

Two nights ago, Baby O didn’t wake me up until 5am to be fed. I was almost giddy with excitement. I told the people who were aware of his sleep issues – “He slept through almost the whole night!” I woke up feeling somewhat refreshed.

Then. Last night over ice cream, J said to me: “You were MEAN to me last night. The only reason I didn’t get up when the baby cried was because you told me that you would take care of it.”

“What are you TALKING about?”

“Last night. You know, when you got up to give Baby O his pacifier… and you made it clear to me that I should have been the one to take care of it?”

“What? Baby O wasn’t EVEN UP last night!”

“Um. Serenity. Yes he was. I spent a half hour at 2:30, rocking him to sleep. Because you made it clear to me that I needed to do something to get him back to sleep.”

“Are you sure you’re not thinking about the OTHER night? He slept through last night until 5. I was really happy about it when I woke up to feed him.”

“I’m positive. Last night, at 2:30, I was rocking him to sleep.”

I have no memory of that at all. Not getting up to give him his pacifier. Not grousing at J that HE needed to take the next time. I didn’t hear J get out of bed, nor did I hear J come back in after rocking Baby O to sleep.

Nothing.

I sleptwalked through it all.

And apparently I’m a MEAN sleepwalker, according to J. Grumpy and tired and angry.

So.

This morning, when I came back to bed after feeding Baby O at 5, I casually asked J: “This is the first time he’s been up, right?”

When he answered, “Yes,” his voice thick with sleep…

… I relaxed.

Just a little.

The cat’s meow?

My day started by discovering that Puck had peed next to his litterpan.

NEXT TO his just changed, absolutely clean litter.

There was nothing that happened this morning (that I’m aware of, anyway) which would make me feel like this is a behavioral issue.

And the combination of tinfoil and a food dish we put near where he HAD been going before has given us three full months without peeing on our rug.

I’m not going to cry “Kidney problems!” yet, but we’re going to keep an eye on it. If it happens again, he’s seeing the vet this weekend.

But.

It just made me realize how much he’s changed since we brought Baby O home.

He now spends the majority of his days upstairs on the third floor in the hidey hole at the base of the platform bed. He comes down to use his litterbox and eat.

And I can count on one hand the number of times he’s snuggled with me in the past five months. Which, you have to understand, is completely unusual. Puck has been known to sleep on me for entire DAYS before.

Even though we’ve been so much better at giving him love and kisses, he turns away from me most of the time.

Fine. He’s mad at me still. I get it.

I’m just sad today. Puck has been my one constant since I graduated college. I’m upset that our relationship has changed to the point where he seems more of a nuisance than my companion of eleven and a half years. He should have a life where he can doze in front of the fireplace, instead of hiding out on the third floor.

I have no way to conclude this. I just hope that he’s ok. That this morning was a “woops…”

… instead of the beginning of the end.

Wordless Wednesday: I love baths. And my mommy, too.

You can’t trace time.

Change is in the air in the Serenity household these days.

The days are getting shorter and cooler – good sleeping weather for all of us (including Baby O, who seems to have figured out the sleep at night thing again. Thanks be to all who made it so).

I have a new job. With a fancy title, even.

And last week Baby O tried a little bit of rice cereal for the first time.

He’s been showing signs for a little while now that he’s ready for solids. He sits in his highchair at dinnertime with us, eagerly watching J and I eat our dinner. He opens his mouth like a baby bird when I lay him on the feeding pillow, frantically pulling at my shirt to be fed when he’s really hungry. He’s long since turned his head away from me when he’s done eating. And the few times we’ve given him tyle.nol, it seems that his extrusion reflex is almost gone – he works his tongue so that he can swallow a liquid thicker than milk.

So I was interested to see if he was, in fact, ready to take cereal. And so last week, we tried. And he did really well. Opened his mouth eagerly to accept the food. Swallowed it instead of spitting it out, though it was pretty messy. Turned away when he was done.

I confess that I haven’t done much more than that, though. Because coincidentally, Baby O also went on a bit of a nursing strike last week, where he’d just cry and cry when I tried to feed him. I didn’t want him to replace nursing with solids, so I wanted him to get back on track with eating before we started solids as a regular meal.

And thankfully, this weekend he got back to nursing with vigor. So this weekend we’ll try some food again. Maybe some more cereal. Or avocado. Or sweet potatoes. Or banana.

Because in a little more than two and a half weeks, I’m going to start a new job. And Baby O will start daycare. And he’ll be six months old. And what with all the changes going on, I’d like to have one less he needs to worry about right now. So we’ll start solids nice and slow and see what happens.

But man. I can only shake my head in absolute astonishment.

I can remember the day we had him with absolute clarity. Like it was yesterday. I remember what I was wearing, what I did that morning at work, what I had for lunch that day.

To sit here, almost 6 months later, watching my son play in his exersaucer and have him look up at me and smile as if to say, “Look mommy! Look how I can make this spinny thing go!”

Well. It just absolutely blows my freaking mind. And there’s a part of me which wonders when I’m going to wake up and realize it’s all a dream.

Thing is, we worked hard to get to this point. I spent almost 5 years at my firm. I worked nights, weekends – hellish hours. In my third freaking trimester too. I had a lot of responsibility and gained a shitload of experience. This job with the fancy title? I have absolute confidence that I will be great at it.

And Baby O? Well, I do think we got really lucky with him. But it took a lot of pain and fear to bring him home with us, too. And I really got used to the slow time of infertility. Feeling as if I were in a holding pattern, marking time until it was our turn. For more than two and a half years I felt stuck, left behind, waiting.

So it’s amazing to me to be able to experience the cliche. Amazing, and just a little bittersweet to see the itty bitty newborn we brought home turn into this awesome little boy.

I got the job.

I am now the Director of Financial Reporting at a publicly held company.

A company which right now has revenues of $75 million, but where management expects to be at $500 million in three years.

I start on September 15.

J brought home flowers and a small bottle of champagne last night, and we took Baby O with us for ice cream to celebrate.

Happiness.

The days here have a distinct early autumn feel to them this week. The temperatures have been dropping into the 50s at night, and the days have been clear and sunny.

And here I am, contemplating a new job which will begin in about three weeks.

I find myself full of emotion when I think about the rest of the year. I’m really excited about gaining some measure of my own intellectual life back; I miss the challenges of work and the adrenaline of a deadline. I’m excited about working for a company which actually saves lives. I’m excited to have responsibility for their regulatory reporting.

But I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that it’s bittersweet for me too. I can’t believe how quickly the 6 months of Baby O’s life has flown. I love that we had this summer together, he and I. And though there are days where I am tired, and resentful of all the chores which need to get done… I also love that I can linger over coffee in my pajamas. And see his happy smile multiple times a day when I get him from his nap. Or when he’s playing in his exersaucer. Or when we take a walk. Or go to the store together.

And of course I worry how I’ll balance it all. The few days of interviewing and sleep issues nearly killed me with exhaustion, and that wasn’t even a full 8 hour day. I worry about how J and I will fit everything we need to do into our lives and still have time to focus on Baby O.

But like my friend D says. We’re not the first to be working parents, and we’ll make it work.

It’s just funny. For the past few years, I’ve dreaded the arrival of the fall. Because I knew that it heralded my busy season during the winter. Because we were closing out another year in which we weren’t pregnant. Because the days get shorter, and colder, and it meant we’d have to go inside until spring.

This year, though, I can’t say that. I’m looking forward to taking Baby O on his first hike this fall. To his first tooth. To his first Christmas. To bringing him to Florida to see his great-grandparents; to seeing how he does in the condo’s pool during kids hours. To seeing him crawl, and then maybe walk this winter. To his one year birthday this spring.

It’s just so different. I’m unused to looking ahead and not dreading something.

And I have such a hard time finding the words to describe how content I am these days.

All I know is that every day, when I look at Baby O…

I feel so lucky to be his mom.

Sleep update

Baby O woke one time last night – his usual 4:00am for food.

I can’t take credit for any of the sleep last night, really. He just didn’t nap at all yesterday.

Why? Well, I had an impromptu meeting with the audit partner of the company in which I am interviewing yesterday. Luckily my MIL was visiting for the day, so I actually had someone to watch Baby O.

I left here just before 2, after feeding Baby O and seeing it that he was sleepy enough to nap. When I left, my MIL was rocking a tired baby in his darkened room.

When I got home three hours later, my MIL was rocking an OVERtired baby in his darkened room. Poor kid was fussy, with bags under his eyes, and my MIL said “he’s so tired he doesn’t know what to do with himself.”

Apparently he didn’t nap. He didn’t want to eat. He just fussed and fretted the whole time I was gone, the poor kid. (And poor MIL too!)

But he rallied when I took him, and we managed to have a surprisingly nice evening.

Before, of course, he crashed at 8pm. (I wasn’t that far behind him!)

And slept straight through until 4am, when he wanted to eat.

So apparently if I want Baby O to take a long nap during the day, it means I’m going to suffer at night.

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions – they were all good. We will be introducing rice cereal in the coming weeks, so if that’s the problem, then there’s relief on the horizon. And I am not against a modified CIO, either, if it proves we need to use that as well. It seems like torture (for me! Because really, it’s all about me, isn’t it?) to listen to Baby O cry in the middle of the night.

But, you know. If it means short term pain for long term sleep gain… I am willing to try anything.

At any rate, I am much more rested today.

And from what I hear from the recruiter, if there is going to be an offer on the table, which as of yesterday was looking good, likely it will be today.

I’ll keep you all posted.

The horror… the horror…

We interrupt this Wordless Wednesday to whine about the battle over sleep we have in our house lately.

(Brought to you by Baby O! Now with less sleep!)

It’s been starting for the past few weeks, really. He wakes up, hungry, at 4am. Some days it’s 3am. Sometimes 5. But always early. And he’s always hungry.

And though sometimes it takes him a little while to go back to sleep, he manages to do it on his own. So really all I’ve needed to do is sleepwalk into his room, give him the boob, put him back into the crib, and go back to my own bed. Bada bing – like nothing had happened. Wakeful to sleep again in less than 30 minutes. 

Well.

Last Friday he went on a nursing strike during the day. Where not only did he fight me to take a nap, but he ALSO fought me when I tried to feed him. Almost EVERY nursing session, except the ones in the middle of the night when he was too sleepy to make too much of a fuss. 

Same thing Saturday and most of Sunday too.

He did have a runny nose on Sunday, so I figured maybe it was a cold which was bothering him. And I resolved to be more patient with him, since he clearly wasn’t feeling good.

Until he was up every freaking TWO HOURS on Monday night. (You know, the night before my 9am meeting with the CFO and VP of HR for the job I really, really wanted.*) Hungry, of course – since he hadn’t eaten enough during the day.

I gave in and fed him at 1:30. And then again at 4. And complained to J “shouldn’t we be past this every-two-hours newborn stuff?”

And wouldn’t you know there was no sign of sniffles yesterday? He took a nice three hour nap while I was in my interview, so I didn’t really even get a chance to recover with him.

So last night I was determined that we get enough feedings in that he at least slept most of the night. So I tried to cluster feed him last night before bed. Then I gave him a nice warm bath. And rocked him to sleep, too.

Dammit if the kid didn’t wake up at 3:30. Except this time he wasn’t hungry. At least, not at first. He was just widefuckingawake.

I thought maybe at first he was cold, so I got a warmer blanket (yes, he sleeps with a blanket. He prefers that to sleep sacks. Besides, he loves to sleep with his little teddy bear blanket over his face – has been doing that since he was two months old. He’s fine), wrapped him in it, and started rocking him.

AS I AM ROCKING HIM, I’m thinking: “this is really stupid, Serenity. He’s going to get used to you rocking him back to sleep. Really fucking stupid.”

So I put him back into his crib.

Fuss.

Shit.

I rocked him again, this time so that his eyes were droopy. And then when I put him down, I heard the “I’m hungry but really tired but so hungry so mom can you come and feed me?” cry.

So I fed him.

All in all, he was up almost an HOUR last night.

Which is fine for him – he can sleep in. But once we hit 4:30am? I’m awake. Like wide awake. Like if I go back to sleep I’m going to be even more tired than I was before I slept wide awake.

So here I am. And I have no idea what to do. I thought about introducing some cereal this past weekend, but I do NOT want to do that as a substitute for nursing; I want to make sure he’s back on the boob regularly before I add anything to his diet. From the list our pediatrician gave us which tells us he’s “ready” for solids, the only one he doesn’t meet is the ”he’s really hungry all the time” criteria. He’s hungry because he’s skipping nursing sessions during the day.

Clearly the rocking thing in the middle of the night will have to stop at some point, too.

So how long do we deal with this before it actually becomes our reality that we’ll never have a full night’s sleep again? And is there something I can DO right now to get him to sleep better at night? I suppose I could keep him up in the evenings so that he sleeps through the night. But I don’t know – seems that less sleep isn’t the right answer either.

Right now my instinct is to ride it out and see if it changes. I mean, it WAS better last night – he only woke up once. (Well, except it was for an hour.)

I just have a sinking sense that if I don’t DO something, this is a battle that we won’t win.

So any assvice you’ve got? Feel free to hit me with it.

Because it IS Wordless Wednesday and Baby O still remains damn cute, even at 3:30 in the morning, I HAVE included a picture.

Lucky for him me he’s adorable, huh?

*The interview went really well, despite my sleep deprivation. I really liked the CFO, I still really like the Company, and I’m so excited about the possibility of working there. Allegedly we’ll hear back this week, potentially with an offer. We’ll see though.

The next step.

The feedback from my interview: The Controller really liked me. Even though I didn’t have quite the years of experience he thought he wanted, he thinks I’m the right person for the job.

I go back next Tuesday to meet with him again, as well as the CFO and VP of HR.

Woot!

What a way to make a living?

To answer Mrs C’s question from yesterday’s post: No, Baby O didn’t manage to break free of the Bumbo on his own.

Instead he gave up on trying to get out himself and fussed and fretted and then looked at me and squeezed out some real tears. And of course I picked him up.

Sigh.

I told you, the kid’s a master manipulator already.

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Warning: The following is about my job search, and my feelings about getting a job and starting Baby O at daycare. I want to reiterate that staying home with Baby O is not an option for me OR J. So I will ask you to make nice and NOT judge us for our decision.

I haven’t really talked much about it, but I’m in the midst of interviewing for a new job. A few weeks ago, I decided to put my resume on a job search site, you know, just so I could start the process.

I got SEVEN calls from recruiters that day.

The first recruiter who called me was the one with whom I worked back in 2006 when I was thinking about leaving my firm. Given that he got me three interviews and three job offers back then, I’ve been working with him exclusively.

My first interview was a couple of weeks ago. Straight up corporate accounting job; handling month end close for a retail company. Really nice people… but I came out of the interview BORED.

But then. The recruiter submitted my resume for two different positions – one for a Financial Analyst position in Business Development (read: mergers and acquisitions) at one company, and one for a Director of Financial Reporting position at another company. Both companies are publicly held, and growing like mad. Both are in the life sciences industry, which was my specialty at my firm.

And both jobs were “a little bit of a stretch” according to the recruiter.

So imagine my surprise when BOTH companies were interested in me. I had a phone interview with one on Monday. (Which, as an aside, whenever anyone asks me “how are you under pressure?” I now have an answer. Picture me, standing in my second floor BATHROOM, on the phone with a senior vice president of mergers and acquisitions, while there’s a SCREAMING baby downstairs, strapped into his carseat, wondering where the hell I am. Those last few minutes were the worst – I just wanted to get off the damn phone and comfort my baby. Trust me, it’s an experience I never want to repeat.)

And I had an in-person interview yesterday for the Director position. It was the most un-interview I’ve ever been on – he and I just chatted about the accounting issues at the Company. We did talk about my background JUST a bit, but I can’t remember him actually ASKING me a question.

For the first time in what seems like FOREVER, I came out of my meeting with the Controller excited. I WANT this job. The company does good things – makes medical devices which assist heart attack victims. The Controller is great. The job will be heavily focused on the areas in which I am familiar, but there’s enough complexity in the issues which will keep me challenged. Management of the company are old GE guys, so there’s a big focus on results and analysis.

And on top of it, the Controller has two little girls. And he and his wife share drop-off and pick-up duty, so he understands the whole working parent thing.

And the title is a huge one. Director of Financial Reporting. Me. A Director of Financial Reporting.

HA!

The whole time I’ve been interviewing, I’ve been really torn about the whole thing. There are days where I absolutely love being home with Baby O, and I cherish every moment. But then there are days when I just get so resentful of J – that he gets something for himself, that he gets to go to work, that he can escape the mountain of DOMESTICITY which I can’t. There are the days where Baby O fusses and frets, where he fights going to sleep for EVERY FREAKING NAP, and then cries when I let him stay up because I’m tired of fighting with him too.

Those are the days where I look forward to going back to work with some measure of excitement.

And again. We cannot afford for me to stay home. There’s just no way – we cannot pay our bills if I don’t have a job. One income will not work for us.

So early on, I decided that I wouldn’t take a job unless I was really, truly excited about it.

That’s how I found myself yesterday. I was practically giddy when I emailed my thanks to the Controller. This was a job which would be WORTH putting Baby O in daycare. The best of both worlds – lots of challenge and responsibility, but also some flexibility so I COULD attend to my family.

And oh yeah. The company is 25 minutes from my house, too. Regardless of the time of day.

And when I didn’t hear back from him yesterday afternoon, I started to worry. He didn’t ask me a question. Should I have sold myself better? Not sold myself? Focused the interview on MY experience, instead of asking questions about the accounting issues there? Did I assume too much when I emailed him and told him that I was excited about the opportunity?

But then last night, I had an email from him, telling me that they would be in touch for the next step of the process.

I happy danced my way to bed.

Now, see. I’m not going to lie to you. I WORRY about Baby O’s transition to daycare. I know he’s going to be fine in the end, but in a way it would have been a lot easier on HIM if I had gone back to work at 3 months post partum. Why? I’ll use yesterday as an example. I left him with my SIL, who told me that he cried for a half hour when I left. He didn’t bother taking a bottle while he was there, nor did he nap.

Granted, my nephew was awake the whole time, and she told me that once Baby O calmed down (and he did calm down on his own), he was interested in watching D and play with his toys. And my SIL also put him in D’s exersaucer, so he got some good playtime, too. And when I came to pick him up, he seemed fine in K’s lap, hanging out, watching D eat his cheerios.

So I’m not really sure what I’m worried about. I suppose I just want the best for him. And a little part of me I guess feels like HE is going to be upset that mommy isn’t always there for him anymore.

Or maybe it’s my OWN sadness that I can’t be there for him all the time.

I don’t know.

Either way, we’re going to be fine. As my friend D says, we’re not the first people to put our baby into daycare. Baby O WILL adjust, as will I. It’ll just be a bit of a … transition. That’s all.