Predictability
I've been trying to guide Autumn into a schedule. The end of this next week will mark the halfway point of my maternity leave and the control freak in me is hoping to make the transition back to work as easy as possible for the both of us.
Lately Autumn has been able to sleep up to five hours at night, which is great. The other night we put her down at midnight and she slept until almost 5 am. After seeing that, I had the bright idea of putting her down immediately after a 10 pm feeding and see how late she slept. Apparently she does not want to get to sleep any earlier than midnight, nor does she want to sleep more than five hours at a time. That night she gurgled and squirmed in the pack and play for an hour and a half before finally falling asleep. She then woke at 3 am for a feeding and went right back to sleep. I told Nathan we'll probably have to wait on the earlier bed time until we see she's starting to sleep more through the night. Hopefully that will happen soon because this schedule is going to kill me once I have to go back to work.
Nursing has become a bit of a challenge. If I don't get to Autumn before she launches into siren mode ("waaah waaah waaah waah!") she become very fussy and tends to yank herself off the breast. She'll be chugging along fine and then her little fist pushes me away. She then starts shaking her head back and forth, mouth open, wondering where the food went. She also has a habit of blocking me every time I try to get her to latch on. I don't understand this behavior at all because it's worse on one side than the other. I think I may have corrupted her latch with bottles and pacifiers, so another trip to the lactation consultant may be in order.
Last night we had a very harrowing experience with not wanting to latch on at all. For some reason she absolutely refused to latch on my right side. She screamed and pulled away which led me to start crying myself. Nathan urged me to calm down ("I can only handle one of you crying right now") and gave Autumn a bottle of expressed breast milk, which she had no trouble with. After she was fed and had calmed down, I tried latching her back on again only to be received with more screaming. I then switched to my left and she took to that side without a problem. We didn't have any problems at her 4:30 am feeding, but this morning at 9 am she refused the right side again. I ended up calming her down and moved to the living room where she took both sides without a problem.
The unpredictability of caring for a child is a bit disconcerting. I'm a scheduler. I like to be organized and know how I'm going to spend my time. Autumn has taught me that my time is not my own anymore. As I write this, she is starting to wake up and I may have another battle on my hands if I don't get to her soon. She starts with sniffles and random cries. Her face gets redder and more scrunched up until she wakes herself up into a tantrum or decides to go back to sleep. Apparently the latter was the more appealing option because she's quiet again. For now.
