Things That Go Beep In The Night

WEEK

3

In the past, a new week was marked on Mondays. Since Scott was born on a Wednesday, it seems more appropriate to move the week marker to Wednesday. BabyCenter.com continues to provide week-by-week coverage far beyond the delivery of the child; however, I still find it a little confusing to tell where we should be in the progression. If a child is born 2 weeks early, do you subtract two weeks from the development information? Instead of week 3, should we be reading week 1? Probably not. We'll stick with week 3.

Week 3's BabyCenter talks about post partum depression, colic, and pacifiers (aka binkies, soothers, etc). I think don't we have any of the first two, but we certainly have plenty of the latter (ie: pacifiers, binkies, soothers, etc). It's a good thing, too, because they are pretty easy to misplace -- given Scott's tendency to spit them out whenever and wherever he feels like it. I was interested to read that the American Pediatric Association encourages the use of pacifiers at naptime and bedtime, because it is believed to reduce the chance of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). That makes a pacifier double-plus good, since I believe it reduces the chance of crying and screaming at naptime and bedtime.

Speaking of crying during bedtime, I was up for an hour with Scott listening to quite a lengthy harangue at 4:00 this morning. He's usually quite good at falling asleep on his own, but something wasn't clicking on this particular occasion. I tried every strategy that I've learned so far with no success. Finally, I gave up and subbed off, letting R take the floor. She gave him a soother and he dropped off to sleep right away. I had tried the soother several times in the preceding hour (unsuccessfully), and I like to think that I had loosened him up for her -- kind of like when someone easily opens a pickle jar after you've been tearing at the lid for a while.

One thing I didn't try was the car seat, although I was nearly that desperate. We've started to suspect that the carseat is lined with some sort of sleeping agent, because Scott zonks out almost immediately after we strap him in, and doesn't wake up for HOURS. We took him to wedding receptions on Friday and Saturday night and he didn't budge through either one. In fact, Saturday evening he slept for almost 6 hours straight, even after the DJ started blasting "Mamba #5". Tonight I tried a similar trick by tuning the radio just a little south of a classical station and cranking up the static. He quickly stopped crying and went back to sleep.

Scott seems to like all kinds of music. This afternoon, for "activity time" R played the piano and sang a few showtunes (from "Les Miserables", "Jekyll and Hyde" and "Avenue Q"). He was completely mesmerized in my lap while she sang, but as soon as she stopped to choose another song he went into hysterics. I think it would be better manners to shout "encore", but he is still fairly new at this sort of thing.

While I enjoy a good musical number, I don't share all of Scott's audio tastes. The static thing would really bother me, I think. What really bothers me, though, are devices that beep intermittently in the night. Our cordless phones do that when they get low on batteries. They let out a little "beep-beep" every few minutes. It pulls you gradually out of your sleep as if it were dragging you by the hair. I absolutely hate it. We had a new disturbance lately, but in the same vein: the smoke detector battery ran low and started beeping every 30 minutes or so. Finally, I leapt out of bed, tore it from the ceiling and ripped the offending batteries from it's bowels, leaving the mess in the middle of the floor until morning.

When a man has been up most of the night listening to baby screams and static concerts, he does not want his sleep violated on account of weak batteries.

You should not cross such a man.