Cup of Coffee

24 February 2016 – Fussy First Night

73 Comments

Thanks to everyone for their enthusiasm & kind words yesterday.

We're home from the hospital. The Poissonnier had a rough first night  sleeping (more like not sleeping) at home. She isn't yet comfortable sleeping in her room on her own, so we tried the Pack-N-Play in our room. She fussed a lot for Mrs. Hayes in the night while I slept. We traded at about six this morning. Mrs. Hayes is sleeping now and the Poissonnier is in her crib in the nursery, not quite sleeping and not quite fussing. I'm taking the break to make some coffee, both here and in the kitchen.

73 thoughts on “24 February 2016 – Fussy First Night”

  2. Those very early months are one of the reasons I was really gung-ho about that vasectomy (that, and the pre-eclampsia. Not sure my wife would survive another one.)

    1. The snip is made easier when you win the lottery the first time you play.

      I remember when Runner daughter was newborn and sleeping in our room; her snuffling kept Mrs. Runner up, and vise versa. When we moved her to the next room (don't remember hold old she was; days? weeks?) everyone slept (relatively) soundly. Oh, and naps are your friend.

    2. I lucked out in that Mrs. SoCal had a planned C-Section for Trey after having an emergency C-Section with Junior because his head was too big, so since they were cutting her open anyways, she had them tie her tubes.

    1. He made an up-and-under move on Ty Zeller last night that got me up out of my chair hooting and hollering. Very Kevin McHale-esque. I wonder if there is a vine of that play.

  4. A touch forbidden zoney, but I'm not making a political statement here as I find myself mostly conflicted about the whole mess. And yet,

    I laughed SelectShow

      1. Add a "width=xx%" attribute before the closing >

        So something like this
        <a href="url for image" width=30% />

        1. That's 30% of the width for that LTE so if you're deep in a thread on mobile, you get an image fit for ants.

              1. Yep. For people with editor permissions, there is something else you can add that ensures it won't overflow. I'll look into how to do that automatically.

  5. For the second, the wife opted to sleep in his room. It was less about protecting my sleep and more about making it easier for her to wake up, feed him, and slump back to bed. I won't lie, it is nice to get uninterrupted sleep.

        1. I don't remember where we got the idea, but after the initial week or so, when it's so much more "All Hands on Deck", and "You just had a C-Section* and need to not rip open those stitches", our method was two nights on duty, two nights off.
          That included the last scheduled feed at 11pm or so. If it was your night to sleep, you could go to bed as early as you liked. Two days without the overnight seemed to get both partners more rest and more recovery, and opportunities to indulge in sleep.
          When it was my night "on", I made sure I had something to do (my biggest problem was falling asleep while feeding), like TV shows on my iPod for later babies, and I watched Olympic curling or the overseas WBC games or whatver for earlier babies. EAR didn't really like that I brought the baby to the TV to bottle-feed, but she wasn't so horribly opposed as long as I kept the lights off and the volume low.

          This doesn't work so well if the mother is nursing. EAR found nursing CER to be quite painful, so after a month of her trying to gut through it, we switched to formula and bottles and used that for the next 3. She tried nursing HPR and LBR a bit, but only for a day or so in the hospital before considering that as affirmation of her formula decision.

          *EAR had 4, all scheduled. CER was transverse-breech. With HPR, because it was less than 2.5 years since CER's birth, they wanted him scheduled before he got to a certain age because with size there was a bit of risk of rupture. After 2 c-sections, they didn't give us the choice of VBAC. We were fine with that. I always knew ahead of time what days my babies would be born (barring early labor, which never occurred). My biggest fear was that since we are a 1-car family, I'd be stuck downtown at the beginning of one of those windows without bus service for two hours, and she'd have to take the kids and herself to the hospital while she's in labor and I'd have to panic around the office looking for a ride.

          1. After the peperoncino was born, I would often "save" the Survivor XIII stories to read during middle of the night feedings. (And also work on composing cheers, of course.) As a result, I'm perhaps weirdly fond of that season.

      2. That's why I tend to the oldest. She has to be involved in every feeding so no rotation for the overnight things.

        1. why do you think I've been encouraging my wife to breastfeed 🙂
          But seriously, this is why I've changed so many diapers. That's one thing that I can certainly do to pitch in.

    2. When the boys were babies, I was working swing shift at the newspaper, so when they were first born and I took off of work, I would still stay up late like I did when I was working. My wife was still breastfeeding, but I could still get the baby when he was crying, change him and take him to her in bed to be fed. When I went to bed, she would go into the spare bedroom and feed him in there. My schedule also worked well when she would go to work because I would be home during the day when she was teaching and she would come home (or I would drop him off at her work) when I went to work, so the boys never did go to daycare.

  6. Ugh, I still remember feeling totally lost (and sleeping far too little) the first night home with the jalapeño.

    Every kid is different, but I found this swaddle to be indispensable for all of us sleeping better for those first few months until the startle reflex went away.

      1. Ours is still in sleep sacks. They give him arm mobility, which he insists upon. Until that point, we were using the product that Pepper linked to, and she's absolutely right - it's indispensable, even for kids that don't have sleeping issues.

        2. They give him arm mobility, which he insists upon.

          Our near-4-year-old still insists upon complete mobility of every appendage, to the point that he sleeps uncovered most nights (I'd say >90%). Even if we sneak in and cover him once he's asleep, the covers are kicked off soon after. It drives his mother nuts, especially in winter.

          This has been a constant since day 1 when he worked his way out of the nurse's swaddling efforts pretty quickly.

                    1. well, 5, but who's counting? 😉

                      anyhoo, 80 inches should be sufficient, one might think. I'm just under 75 inches tall. But I hate having the sheets tucked in.

          2. Yeah, ours would get his left arm out of any swaddling effort, whether by trained professional or lockdown sack. He was...determined.

        3. He was in them until very recently, so a minimum of two years. We had added pajamas to the mix for winter but removed the sleep sack later because he was quite warm on several mornings.

    2. Yes to the Halos in general, but they got really hot as summer came. I found some linen-type blankets that made good swaddles without me worrying about the babies overheating.
      Had 3 white ones, 1 with printed turtles, 1 with printed bees, and 1 with printed owls, IIRC. Maybe 3'x3'? Fold down one corner about 4", that's where babies shoulders go. Then, like a burrito, right to left and tuck, up from below feet, and left to right and all the way around.

    3. When we had Elder Daughter, it was induced labor for 26 hours and then a C-section. Mrs. Twayn got a post-op infection and wound up in the hospital for 5 days so I ended up spending a lot of time with the baby, which was nice for me but very sad and frustrating for the new mom. I got very little sleep that week, way worse even than the very little sleep I usually got working the overnight shift at the TV station. When we got home, though, Mrs. Twayn had to deal with the baby at night all alone while I worked, and I got the benefit of six hours of solo sleep in the afternoons while the baby was at daycare.

  7. Was let out of work today because storms may happen*. I'm not complaining, but now I'm wondering if there is something I should be worried about.

    *uh, yeah, storms.

  8. Also, thanks for the message from the future, CH. It is good to know the Kids Are Alright tomorrow.

  9. The first two nights were the worst with MRZ. She was constantly fussy and couldn't be put to sleep. However, shortly after that, the usual techniques worked much better and she settled into a rhythm quite nicely. Stay strong, and you'll all adjust.

  10. I think I got a fair amount of sleep over the years with babies on my chest. It wasn't ideal, necessarily, but it was sleep.

  11. The lack of sleep that comes with children is probably the thing that gives me most pause. I do not handle stress well when I'm tired.

    1. It can be tough for a while, but it gets better.
      Family or friends willing to watch the baby for a few hours or a whole night can be a big relief as well.

      1. That would have been so nice. I think it would have been better for us to have had zero family around instead of the completely unreliable one we did have nearby.

    2. There were times I had to put a crying baby back in his crib and walk away for a few minutes just to keep my emotions in check. It can get very frustrating. Once I calmed down, I could deal with it better. This is of course when I was home alone with him.

    3. Having kids is without question the hardest thing I've ever done and I was somehow seriously clueless about how long the sleep deprivation would go on for. (Though that's not universally true! But the jalapeno didn't consistently sleep through the night until he was about 18 months and the peperoncino was a bit older than that.)

      Even if your own sleep deprivation is relatively short lived, keep in mind that you still have to live with the sleep-deprived mother. (I handled it better the second time around, but the first time was pretty ugly for a while.)

    1. What I really like about hanging out here is that we can still have differing baseball opinions. Yet, I'm pretty sure most of us fall on one side on this stuff.

    2. The amazing thing is I suspect this opinion on Joe is coming from head trauma. Only way holding that position makes any dann sense.

      1. "Joe Mauer sits out because of a hang nail"

        *Mauer grinds through 278 of a possible 324 games the last two seasons*

        "BOOOOOO"

  13. So thank you everyone who gave advice/references w/r/t buying a house. It was very helpful. I've come to the conclusion that if you already own a house looking for a new one may be enjoyable. When you are sitting on a ticking clock, well...

  14. Shecky proved once again he knows zero about baseball by proposing that the Twins bat Mauer 8th in their lineup despite the fact that even in Mauer's worst career season, he was still the Twins' second best player at getting on base, you know, the most important skill for a batter.

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