Here's a picture of Little Husband dancing on his "T" rug the week after we returned home from the hospital. You can't see his chest scar because I took the picture with my phone, but believe me it's there. It's about five inches long and looks like someone scraped down the front of his chest with a ragged fingernail. Little Husband is oblivious to its existence, that's why we call him Tough.
I thought that Older Sister's perspective on this picture was particularly insightful:
"He really is strong evidence that people can make a choice to be happy."
Well said, Older Sister. Here's to my happy little baby. Now if I could only figure out how to get him to be that happy at four in the morning...
9 comments:
Have you tried a sound machine? Maybe some gentle, soothing sounds will help him stayed relaxed during the night.
My sweet sister in law. First is LH waking up to be fed or is it from discomfort.
If its to be fed perhaps he is going through a growth spurt. Have you tried to extend the feedings in between the day. For example LH feeds at 10am 12:30pm 3:00pm then perhaps prolonging his feedings 30 minutes so his new schedule would be 10am 1pm 3:30pm. I've also read perhaps after feeding there should be waketime for a little bit instead of putting right down to sleep after a feeding.
I remember how tough this was at night. I personally couldn't go more then 20 minutes of little Bear crying before I would go in.
I truly feel for you and your sleepless nights.
That's such a great pic! I love it.
I know that there are all kinds of approaches for dealing with sleeping issues. I don't know much about them, but I'm sure a ton of people can offer advice. I did want to tell you that I was talking to a woman in DC before our boys had their surgery. Her daughter was also a tet - she said that her daughter had a really hard time sleeping after the surgery and that they kept bugging their doctor about it. The doc finally talked to the surgeon, and she was told that for some reason, being on the bypass machine can cause sleep disturbances with some babies. It lasts a few months and just resolves itself. Not sure if that's what you're dealing with, but I thought I'd share.
Hope you guys are well. I've been meaning to email, but...you know. We are definitely coming to Texas this summer. Either in June or August - I'll let you know.
XOXO
That's really interesting about the bypass machine affecting their sleep. I would not have thought about that.
I think (and it's really hard to remember although I should be trying a lot harder) that with Will, we did a lot like what supermonkey is talking about. We definitely fed him a lot more during the day so that he felt more satisfied at night. We also shortened his daytime naps, but that's mainly because he was pretty much sleeping ALL. DAY. LONG. at daycare, so we limited his naps to 2 hours at a time. He was seriously sleeping for 4 or so hours straight, then at night was restless and starving. This was at about 4 months or so, I believe.
I am now starting to believe that Will being such an awesome sleeper at 5 months was more of a fluke than anything that we did, so I could be completely wrong but it's worth a shot, right?
I think "Babywise" was the book that I read that helped us get Makena on something of a schedule. It's similar to what supermonkey wrote. The one thing I will say is try many different things--keep trying until you find something that works. It seems that doing that with Kessler sort of breaks him out of bad habits. I swear, it's not so much that a particular method works, it's just that he's forgotten what he was originally doing!!
I'll tell ya too, when I was so exhausted I didn't think I could take anymore, I'd bring them to bed with me. I swore I wouldn't do it with Makena, but I was so tired. I didn't consistently do it, only when I felt I needed to. It didn't start a bad habit with Mak so I wasn't opposed to doing it with Kessler either. No bad habits for him either, but I was able to get a bit more rest.
Good luck!!
He does look very happy. Lucky you =)
He's also very cute, chest scar or not.
You can refer his scar as his Tough T Battle Scar. Thats what we call the scar for my other nephew. Without the Tough T, just battle scar. It will remind us all how much we should appreciate life itself.
Wow! This my first time visiting your blog and I have to say my jaw dropped, the tears flowed, and a tiny part of my heart broke for you. My little girl is almost 9 months and I can't even begin to imagine what you've been through. Never mind LH being tough, you must be pretty tough yourself.
Hang in there mama - you are truly amazing. LH is one very lucky boy. And he is gorgeous by the way - such a handsome little angel :)
Thanks, everyone, for all the great advice and for the sweet, supportive comments. Sadly, I've tried everything you suggested to no effect. I found TB's comment about the heart/lung bypass machine creating sleep disturbances to be particularly interesting---I wonder if that's what it is?
Jo, welcome to my blog!
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