Was the answer that simple?

The past few nights with Dax my patience is done after about 30 seconds of screaming and flailing. I've quickly called in backup (aka Derek), and within 15-20 minutes Derek has our monster snoozing. We approach getting Dax to sleep from 2 very different ways.

His way: He puts a blanket over his shoulder, holds Dax against him and helps put Dax's head on his shoulder. Then while humming or quietly singing, he bounces up and down, often he'll say "heyheyheyheyhey" sounds weird, but it works. Roo falls asleep on daddy's shoulder.

My way: Pop Dax on the boob to let him nurse, then once he's done, keep him sideways in my arms and rock him to sleep while singing "the wheels on the bus" and our beloved Michigan State fight song (his daddy is so proud haha!).

My discovery today: Derek was gone all day and including bedtime tonight. I decided today to try his approach if and when Dax fought me for naps and bedtime. The naps took a little longer to get him to sleep doing the upright bouncing because I had tried to rock him for about 5 minutes or so before switching to Derek's approach. So, I decided tonight, as soon as little D was done nursing, I'd just put him on my shoulder and rock him upright. I kid you not, he was out within 3 minutes of doing that. Was the answer to our bedtime fights really that simple?!

Sleepless days, nights, and zero patience left

It's one of those times in our lives right now where it just seems that all the sh@t has hit the fan. Nothing seems to be going right or well, and every day feels like an uphill battle that never ends. I've done my best to try and keep a good attitude and focus on all the great and positive things we do have in our lives, but honestly I'm sick of trying to be positive, sick of dealing with crap, and sick of things not changing.

Dax is the perfect child, except when we're trying to put him down for a nap or for the night. Then this little monster unfurls, and he screams and screams and screams, and doesn't stop. Then, once he's asleep for the night, he wakes up 2, 3, 4, 5, sometimes even 6 times each night. Derek doesn't always hear him, but I do - I get up with him nurse/rock him back to sleep and try to keep sleeping myself. I'm exhausted. 4 months ago he was sleeping through the night, 10-12 hours easily, and then all of the sudden he stopped. I HATE bedtime now, I dread it every day because it is such a fight with Dax. He locks his body up, thrashes everywhere and screams like he's in the most amount of pain he's ever encountered before. Nothing calms him down except to take him out of our bedroom and let him keep playing. Usually this results in him not going down for the night until 9:30 or 10pm. The later he goes to bed, the more times he wakes up during the night. Funny thing about that, is that no one that lives with me understands this, so when I try to put him down earlier I get major flack (sorry hubs it's true though), and I am sick of it.

I have zero patience left, I love my son, I really do, but I'm exhausted. I have no idea what's wrong and why he's been doing this, but it's progressively gotten worse over the past 5 months. I feel incompetent as a mother, and irritated with myself for being so frustrated with a 9 month old child. I need a break, but can't get one because he's not ready to be away from his mom at night and we're still breastfeeding. I wish he could talk, or I could read his mind to know why bedtime has become the battle that it is. It feels like we have a toddler with all of the tantrums he throws at night. Here's looking forward to him being old enough to spend the night at my parent's house so I can get a break!

News Announcement (you may want to sit down for this)

....I am officially not going back to work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I would put enough exclamation points to show you how happy I am about that, but there would be about 5 pages of them and I don't want to lose any readers because of that :) Derek and I have spent a lot of time praying and wrestling with finances (yes wrestling, kind of similar to lassoing a bull I suppose) to see how this will work. Let me tell you, God is a miracle worker. This summer when I was looking at our finances to see if it was possible for me to not return to work and it was impossible. Our expenses required 2 incomes. I did the math a gazillion times this summer and nothing worked. A few weeks after I had Dax we sat down again, after lots of prayer, to see what was possible. Somehow God waved his magic wand, and with a little cutting here and there, it has become possible. We are both really thankful and I feel so relieved to know that I will be raising my son. I have another post with a picture to show off the awesome birth announcement/Christmas card that my friend, Sara designed for us. She does great custom design work (and is an awesome photographer too, she did our engagement and wedding pictures!!) and has super reasonable prices! More on her later :)

Breastfeeding Woes

If you don't want to read about breastfeeding, then you should stop reading now :)

I have been exclusively breastfeeding Dax and intend to do so for an indefinite period of time, but that's not the point of this post. When Dax was 2 weeks old, he ended up getting a bottle of expressed breastmilk due to reasons that I won't elaborate upon here. We continued to give him 1 bottle of breastmilk a day, Derek would give it to him at night while I would pump.

This past week, Dax has been extremely fussy at night when I would try to feed him. Then on Friday night, we made our first mistake and could not get the poor boy to calm down, and he would not eat from me. So, we lovingly warmed up a bottle of milk that I had pumped, and Dax ate as if it was the last meal he was ever going to get. That marked the start of a 3-day (or maybe longer, I'll know tomorrow) scream fest every time I tried to feed Dax. What Derek and I quickly came to realize is that Dax was suffering from nipple confusion and had developed a preference to the bottle. After talking to a few people and doing some online research we decided to go cold turkey with Dax and eliminate all bottles and pacifiers for an indefinite period of time. This has temporarily turned my happy son who never cries into a screaming monster when it comes time to eat. I learned a trick though - if I can get him to eat while he's sleeping or just waking up, he doesn't put up a fuss. Today has been much easier, but I don't think we're out of the dark just yet. This would be mistake #3: we introduced a bottle too early. Next time around, a bottle will be introduced around 4 or 6 weeks instead of at 2 weeks.

Mistakes

Tonight I would say that we made our first official "mistake" as parents. We had dinner with friends, so before we headed over we fed Dax-a-roo, got him all bundled up and headed over. I'm still a little uncomfortable breastfeeding Dax (even with a nursing cover) in front of non-family members, so we took some breastmilk and a bottle, and figured that 5oz of milk would be enough for Dax until we got home. That was mistake #1 - especially since Dax has been eating about every 1 - 1.5 hours this past week. We arrived around 6:15, and Dax was fed around 6:45. By the time we were getting ready to leave around 8:50 or so, I could tell that Dax was starting to get hungry, but I assumed that we could make it home in time to feed him. That was mistake #2, our 20 minute drive home drove me to tears, Dax was crying like I have NEVER heard before. We got home, I promptly pulled him out of his car seat, pulled out the girls and proceeded to feed him. I forgot to mention that he had tears streaming down his face, his face was ready, and he was sweating because he got so hot from all of his crying. My little boy wanted nothing to do with food, he was so upset it took about 20 minutes to calm him down enough to eat and when he finally was calm enough to eat he went to town.

Lesson learned, next time feed the baby, it is NEVER a good idea to think/assume that a 2 month old can wait 20 minutes to get home. I'm now happy to report that Dax is sound asleep and will hopefully get a full nights sleep out of exhaustion from crying.

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day! It's weird for me to realize that next year I will be a mom and celebrating this holiday! We drove in to Kalamazoo yesterday to spend Mother's day with Derek's family. Lisa and Dan (sister-in-law and brother-in-law) and their son, Zach, were in town as well! As much as I love Zach (he's almost 16 months old), I am overwhelmed sometimes by how much effort it takes to be a mom and a dad. To the point that I realize neither Derek nor I am fully prepared for what we will be experiencing in about 5 months. There is so much pressure to raise your childen properly, and I stress that the mistakes we will make will leave our children in lifelong therapy. I'm sure it will all work out and be fine, but it's just very stressful for me to realize that the life and care of an infant will be in my hands in 5 months and I am clueless. I can change a diaper but that's about it!

I have another ultrasound scheduled for this upcoming Thursday. I'll be about 17 weeks along, so I'm hoping that maybe the doctor will be able to tell if pee-wee is a boy or girl!! I was hoping to find out before I go to Romania so I could tell my sister, Kelsey, as a part of her birthday present. If I don't find out, we will know June 4. I have been feeling a lot better these days, with so much more energy. Lately I have had this weird desire to clean...and I hate cleaning! I think it's because I have more energy so I actually can take care of the apartment. Once I found out if we're having a boy or girl I will be able to decorate the baby's room.

We leave on vacation on Friday and I cannot wait to go! It's going to be great to see Caleb again and have him meet Derek! We have changed our plans slightly while we're in Scotland. Instaed of going to St. Andrews for a few days, we will be spending the second half of our week in Edinburgh. There are so many things we wanted to see Scotland, but that will need to be reserved for a second trip! The one thing I need to make sure I bring back are some Kinder Bueno Bars. They are my favorite candy in the world, and even though sweets aren't really my thing these days I know my sweet tooth will return and I will be glad to have them available. I usually have my parents pick me some up when they come back from Romania. I plan on stocking up. I don't know how I'm going to make it through working this week, I am so excited to leave that I wish we were leaving today!