sleep

Like Wrestling an Octopus

Have you ever tried to swaddle a wiggly baby in the middle of the night, in the dark, when you’re exhausted? It’s quite an adventure!

Chickadee still loves to be swaddled at night. She actually sighs in relief when I wrap the blanket around her at the end of the day. I think this is a great thing. Turkey and Bunny were never into swaddling, but Moose and Ladybug both liked it, (although maybe not this long), and it helped all three of them relax and sleep better, and I’m all for that. I’ve gotten special “swaddle blankies” for them, that have velcro fasteners, which are very helpful in keeping the swaddle intact, even when the baby gets bigger and more active in his or her sleep.

Despite being straightjacketed, though, Chickadee manages to work an arm (or two!) out in her sleep most nights. It starts innocently…a single hand sneaks out, usually in a desperate attempt at thumb-sucking. It’s usually followed, in frustration, by the second hand.

At that point, it’s easy for a whole arm to work its way out.

And, the second one often follows.

I usually discover this when she wants to nurse at about two in the morning. And so begins the wrestling match!

First, I try to open the swaddle as quietly as possible. But velcro is not a quiet material, especially in the middle of the night when the house is silent. So, hopefully I don’t startle Chickadee awake, but sometimes I do. In that case, lots of shushing ensues.

Then things get tricky. Once the blanket is open, I try to sneak the escaping limb back in a quickly as possible, so I can get the blanket re-wrapped. This doesn’t always work, however. Sometimes, as I’m trying to sneak the left arm in, the right arm pops out. Sometimes the left arm escapes before I can get the velcro closed back up. And sometimes (and this is really fun!), Chickadee throws both arms over her head when I open the blanket, and then I have to try to get them both back in at the same time, without really waking her.

The fun doesn’t end there, though. Because some nights, when she’s particularly restless, the legs pop out when I’m trying to get her re-swaddled,too!

You might wonder why I go to all of this trouble in the middle of the night. The short answer is: because Chickadee isn’t ready to sleep without it. Even though she’s the one undoing the swaddle every night, she’s not doing it intentionally, and she doesn’t want to sleep unswaddled. So, if I don’t re-wrap her, she’ll just grow more and more restless, until she fully wakes up, and then not only do I have to wrap her back up, I also have to convince her to go back to bed.

Yep, parenting is often like wrestling with an octopus. No one tells you about these middle-of-the-night gymnastics, but exhaustion aside, it’s actually one of the more entertaining parts of parenting a baby!

From Boats to Trains

Very weird. For the second time since we’ve lived down here, I felt an earthquake. Now, I know to old pros out in places like California, this was small beans. But to a midwesterner like myself, any earthquake is big news.

The first one, a couple of years ago, was very subtle. I don’t know if it was the difference between being on the ground level (then) and being on the second story (now), but the first one just felt like trying to walk on a boat. The ground kind of rolled under me for a few seconds, and then it was done. In all honesty, had that quake not been confirmed by the news, I could have easily thought I was crazy, because very few people I knew felt it, and I could have easily passed it off as a moment of dizziness.

Last night’s earthquake was a little different to me. I’m sure part of it was because I was on the second floor of our house, and part of it was because it woke me out of a dead sleep, but this one was more jarring. There was no rolling this time, only shaking, and a lot of shaking. The windows were shaking, the walls were shaking, the bed was shaking (at first, groggy as I was, I thought it was a little girl shaking the bed, trying to wake us up), and my lamp wouldn’t stop shaking, even after it was over. The vibration must have been enough to set the lamp shade off at a weird angle, and once it started, it couldn’t stop.

Anyway, the fact that it woke up my husband, who I swear could sleep through a tornado, assured me that there was no way I was imagining it this time. When your mind is trying to sort out what it going on, it’s fun the possibilities you go through. Thunder aftershock? (No, not raining yet, but we knew rain is on the way, so it seemed like a viable possibility…) Train? (But we’re too far away from the tracks for that kind of shaking!) Low flying aircraft? (I’ll never forget the way the Sky Fox used to rattle our windows in our first apartment!) Explosion? (Not really sure where that one came from, but when you’re sleepy, your mind imagines all sorts of things.)

I think I should get an award for being the first one to properly identify the cause of the movement, but I suppose no such award exists. Funny, it never occurred to me to call the police department, but word on the street is that their switchboards were quite busy with calls from inquiring residents, trying to figure out what had just happened. I guess I just figured once my brain landed on earthquake, that’s what it was, and it was only a matter of time until the news reported it. (The nonchalant way my husband went right back to sleep also convinced me that it couldn’t be too serious, even if I was up for the day at that point!)

At any rate, I don’t see myself moving to California any time soon. 5.2 is enough excitement for me!