Well...I jinxed it...

You know I really should know better than to even think about Mabel sleeping well, never mind write about it and how wonderful it is! Last night was just down right awful! I estimate I may have taken in about three hours of interrupted sleep - and that was sleeping on the floor! I don't know for sure what was bothering her, she did have two very wet diapers. That cast is getting smaller by the day as she grows, when her diaper gets wet it swells up and really pushes on her belly. I've noticed there is a lot less room around her waist and legs. Also her little arms have bruises from her modified crawling, and I imagine her knee in the cast is probably raw or bruised since when she rolls that leg hits the ground. 9 more days...I just hope we have a more peaceful night tonight! It is amazing how four good nights of sleep can be undone by one bad one. Well, it is another day, we'll see. Oh, she's up again, an hour earlier than normal. Poor Mabel!

Rude Awakening...

So Mabel fell asleep a little later last night because Zack and I ate dinner a little bit later than normal. It was only a half an hour later that she actually fell asleep, and then shortly after we decided we should strike while the iron was hot and try to sleep ourselves. That was a little after 9:00. I have been hoping to catch up on some kind of sleep since our nights have not been good for a while now.

At 10:20 or so Mabel started to cry, I looked in the monitor and saw she was stuck on her side again. So I got up, went to her room to pick her up and reposition her. She was so sleepy and she just wanted me to hold her a bit, so I did. I sat down in the rocking chair and then I noticed...my arm was wet. Oh NO! Mabel was wet! I put her on the floor to change her and she seemed so relieved that I realized right away what was the problem. As I undressed her I quickly realized that the pee soaked her sleep sack, onesie, cloth outside diaper, inside diaper and gulp...the cast! It appears that she was in some kind of weird side position that must have created a gap in her diaper so when she peed it just got everywhere. Poor Mabel was not happy when I undressed her and she realized she was still wet and now cold. She was screaming! Gone are the care free days of thinking that when a baby pees on their PJ's and sheet that what makes for a rough night - the days are long gone of just changing her and washing her down and changing the crib sheet...oh no, now we have this stupid spica to deal with and that can't come off and that needs to stay dry - takes FOREVER to dry and most important not smell!

I wrapped Mabel up in a cozy blanket to keep her warm. She was really crying now, poor thing was probably confused as to why I wasn't just fixing this uncomfortable problem. I couldn't do this on my own, not in the state Mabel was in and with the amount of pee that I could feel, so I needed to wake up Zack. I got the hair dryer, put Mabel on the floor with three cozy blankets and Zack sat next to her and tried to keep her calm and entertained. She screamed for about 15 minutes and even tried to go back to sleep. I was elbow deep in her spica cast with that hair dryer just trying to get it dry...it takes forever! Luckily we have done this before with her first cast, I found the trick is to get your finger tips inside the cast and move the cotton and lining around so the air can really get in ther to dry out the pee. It is a major pain and really hard to do when the baby doesn't know what the heck you are doing! About 20 minutes in Mabel suddenly got excited and started to smile, giggle and dance. The good news for us is she wasn't screaming anymore and was happy and obviously felt better...bad news is she probably wouldn't go back to sleep easily...oh well one thing at a time.

It took about a hour and a half to dry the cast with the hair dryer on cool. I packed more cotton on that side of her diaper under the cast in hopes of keeping the diaper against her skin and maybe avoid this again...another annoyance and lesson learned was earlier this week Mabel had a leak, luckily then it didn't get on the cast just her cloth diaper and PJs...but the annoyance is we only have two cloth diapers and two sleep sacks that fit her! Last night I was at a loss...lesson learned, but in my defence I had thought to myself when she soiled her last PJ set that I needed to do laundry the next day because that was our only spare...I've been really tired and focused on so many other things so I forgot all about it. Trust me I won't forget about this!

Looks like I'll be starting some laundry this morning and possibly getting the hair dryer out to make sure everything is fresh in that cast. Christmas is next week and I can't have Mabel in a stinky cast when visiting the whole family! I just don't think you can make people understand how much work goes into keeping this cast clean and dry.

All I have to say is this is classic...I can't wait until this odyssey is over with! I stand by my last post of being sick of this cast! I wonder what stories we'll have about the brace? I can't imagine it would be this interesting!

Can't not pick her up...

Against most people's opinions, I can't let Mabel just cry in her crib when she wakes during the night. I know that when we did the sleep training before we learned that she needs to soothe herself and that we can't "rescue" her when she wakes. I know these things and what is happening right now is not ideal, but listen what is happening in general is not ideal, Mabel is in a cast. Just because she may not remember what it was like before the cast (maybe that is true) her brain remembers and thinks she can stand and crawl like a one year old. In the night you can tell her brain is trying to practice the skills it thinks she can do.

90% of the time when I pick up Mabel during the night when she cries she burps or toots. She has gas that she can't get out by moving around like she needs, that isn't her fault and it surely is a reason to cry when you wake in discomfort and you can't do anything about it like move or sit up. I'm not going to let her lay there alone or just pat her back if she needs help.

I know that this is creating a bad habit, Mabel is one now and the fact that she knows I'll come for her during the wee hours of the night isn't the best thing, but at the same time she knows right now in her hour of need and discomfort that I'll be there for her. There are too many variables to assume that she is just crying because she wants me. I know that she probably does just want me to soothe her sometimes, I know that, but sometimes she has a full diaper at 3am - now laying in the cast with the diaper all tucked up really against her with cotton right up against her skin is different sensations then a normal diaper situation - also when her diaper gets full of pee, it typically gets very swollen in the belly area between her and her cast pushing on her belly and she is laying on her belly so how comfortable do you think that is?

Last night twice I went to her room and soothed her while just rubbing her back and she fell back to sleep, the third time I tried it again. She did doze off while I lay on her floor shushing her like we use to when we sleep trained her, but she kept tossing and then got stuck sideways. I picked her up and noticed her diaper leaked all over her pjs. Luckily, and through sheer luck alone, the cast was not wet, but she was and cold and uncomfortable. Now, think of how I felt when I realized that was why she was crying, not because she wanted company but because she was cold and wet.

You are expected to take care of your babies hungry cries, your babies scared cries and your babies cries of discomfort, but told to let them deal with anything that leads to crying in the night? That doesn't make sense. I know Mabel can soothe herself. I know that if she cries and fusses a little she'll be ok, but I will not sleep train again her while she is in the cast. If she keeps crying right now I will pick her up because she needs it. When the cast comes off and she's not dealing with some of these issues then we will implement the sleep training rules we had before, but until then I'm going to help her.

Obsessed with sleep...

Ok, I realize that most of my posts are about Mabel's sleeping habits. I admit I'm obsessed. Ever since she was a couple of months old I had been analyzing everything that is Mabel's sleep. She was a terrible sleeper...well, she came out pretty sleepy, in fact we had to wake her up to feed her since she was four weeks early she just wanted to sleep all the time. We woke her every four hours to eat, that became a habit for her around two months - after that we were lucky if we got four hours of sleep in a row. Around three and a half months I was so tired and desperate and read pretty much everything I could find online (at the wee hours of the night) that I bought a book to help. "Good Night Sleep Tight: The Sleep Lady's guide to helping your child sleep". It was a no cry method, although there were tears on both our part and Mabel's part because we were changing things, like no nursing to fall asleep etc., but she did adjust great. We started when Mabel was about four and a half to five months and I even I kept sleep logs and in about a week we had Mabel sleeping about 10 to 12 hours a night without waking. Amazing. We had our night time routine down - everything. The only trick was we had to do everything the same and everything started at 5pm, so that limited us after work, but you know it was a sacrifice we made for a good night sleep and since she was going to bed around 6:30 - 7:00 it gave us some relaxation time at night.

That was then. Since the cast it has been a bumpy road. In reality we probably slipped up a little before the cast arrived, I tried not to, but when we knew of the impending cast I would nurse Mabel a little longer at night before bedtime - sometimes she would fall asleep on me. I knew it as "wrong" since it was a habit I didn't want to get back into, but I just wanted to cuddle her that much longer knowing that she would be in a hard cast too soon. After the cast as you know everything went out the window. Throw in the teething and now we are living in a circus of no sleep. Mabel has good nights and bad. Last night was not great but could have been much worst. She calls for me like she never did before, it seems like she is almost scared. I don't know if I read more into it than there really is, but I imagine sometimes she wakes up forgetting that she can't move.

So now at the wee hours of the morning I rock Mabel soothing her back to sleep and a huge part of me loves those moments together. I love holding her, comforting her, having her fall asleep on me, but I wonder am I creating a bad habit? I don't like being tired, I don't like Mabel being tired - we both get cranky, and now that she is almost a year is she getting attached to me holding her while she sleeps? There are not answers I guess, we'll ride this one out. We'll transition into the brace next so really even if I came up with a solution now chances are it won't work for long, so right now I'm going to savor those moments with her at night, they won't last forever even though sometimes after getting up for the third time before 4am it feels like forever. I do have rules, don't get me wrong. No nursing back to sleep. No bringing Mabel to sleep in our bed - I think it is unsafe and a really bad habit. OK, well I have two rules!

I figure if worst comes to worst after the whole treatment is over, the sleep training worked once and the book - well it goes up to kids age 5.

Teething with a spica...

Having the spica cast is no fun. Sleeping in a spica is also no fun. Teething in a spica - well you do the math. Mabel is not having it, and by it I mean sleep. She just can not sleep right now. I know it is a combination of two very uncomfortable things, her two new teeth that are coming in and the cast. She has done really well and I think in reality she probably doesn't remember life before the cast at this point. She probably doesn't even remember she use to roll around in bed, but one thing she knows is that when she wakes up at night she can't easily get back to sleep. She wakes and struggles to get comfortable and then cries. Lately it has been her tell tale teething cry, a long whimpery cry that she even does in her sleep, but when she is fully awake it turns into her frustrated uncomfortable "Mama I need help" cry. It makes for along night. Nature sure knew what it was doing by making babies so very cute - she is even cute at 3:25am (the time I've been up since BTW), she was smiling in her sleep as I rocked her.

Through the past few weeks my underlining fear is how this will effect her sleep long term. I have never been one to promote the cry-it-out method and personally for me I could never do it. We did sleep training, but it was a "no cry" method. There is no resource for a baby in a spica cast that can't sleep, there is not books, no doctor's opinion, no websites, nothing. If you google "baby won't sleep" you get hundreds of websites with tips, opions and experiences of what could help - you google "baby won't sleep in spica cast" you get little to no info about sleep issues while a baby is in a spica. I guess the quick answer is they are uncomfortable because of the cast, sure I could have told you that, but is there a solution? Is it really common? I imagine it is, but any tips? When I asked the nurse at the hospital they said just make her comfortable...wow that was helpful. When I asked the doctor he said he's not surprised she isn't sleeping well because of the cast. I guess that is why he gets paid the big bucks huh? I don't have any answers myself. Mabel sleeps on a pillow on her belly in her crib. When she cries I come to her and I pick her up and soothe her and reposition her slightly and she typically falls back to sleep. Sometimes it takes two minutes sometimes it takes an hour...either way I can't let her cry alone. I appreciate as hard as it is for me to get up in the night it is equally hard for her to wake up with a pain in her mouth and unable to move.

Anyway, she is teething I know that...bad combo...sleepy mommy...cranky Mabel...but still soooo cute and sweet. Tomorrow is her first Thanksgiving! We have that to look forward too! See the picture? Do you like Mabel's hat? Just like Papa!

It isn't always the cast...or is it?

The crying at night is bothering...I'll be honest. Is it the cast? Is it something else? The truth is a baby in a spica goes through other things too, it looks like Mabel may be getting two more teeth so maybe that has been her problem the last week or so, who know? I just wish I could be sure it wasn't the cast though, having that variable just makes it that much harder to know if she is uncomfortable because of that or something else...I mean by now she must be use to it enough that it seems normal to her right?

Sleep? I don't need no stinking sleep...

Well, last night was not all I had hoped for. Mabel fell asleep around 8pm and I put her down. She only woke about two or three times before we went to bed at 10pm...I know why 10? Shouldn't we had tried to go to bed sooner? I'm embarrassed to say that first of all I needed to finish Mabel's Halloween costume and second I wanted to watch my Thursday night programs...silly I know.

Anyhoo...Mabel wakes around 11 and settled back down quickly. She then woke around midnight and again settled down quickly. I find that if I pick her up and reposition her she tends to fall back to sleep quickly, sometimes I think she's just crying in her sleep and hasn't woken herself up yet. After midnight she didn't awake until about 2:45, I thought that was actually a pretty good stretch. I got up when I heard her cry and when I got to her crib I knew I as in for it. She was smiling at me! Oh no.....I checked her diaper and changed it. She seemed so playful and happy that I was there "visiting" her in the night. I tried not to talk to her. Stupid me I didn't tie my hair back so she just wanted to play with it - in my defence I thought it would be another five minute visit like before. Well, she did not plan to fall back to sleep. I tried everything, rocking, singing - well not nursing. I have a personal promise to myself that I know she can go through the night without eating and I'm keeping it that way even though I KNOW it will put her back to sleep. I'm not opening that can of worms! She would not go back to sleep. I kept thinking, what is keeping her awake? What is bugging her? Easy answer: THE STUPID CAST! Anyway around 3:30 as she continued to cry and fight sleep as I rocked her I heard Zack get up. He came in the room and turned the light on - in his sleep deprived and confused state he assumed it must be 6 am and I was either downstairs in the shower or pumping and it was time to get Mabel up and ready for her day. Poor Zack. Poor Mabel. Poor Me.

It is going to be a long day...