3/11/13

Poo & Sleep - Two Necessities

When you have a baby, your world turns from conversations about last night’s activities or celebrity gossip to poo and sleep. Literally. I spend every day asking numerous times if Emma went poo, how much and color/thickness as well as nap times and lengths of each one. Why? Well, for our house, both of those things will affect our bathtime/bedtime routine and her overnight sleep.
Poo:
We learned the hard way that Emma gets dehydrated easily (which causes constipation). She’s on formula, and has been since September 13th. We started solid foods (baby food) on January 14th. From that day, we started to have poo problems. Either she couldn’t go, or she’d spend all day trying, to finally go in her sleep that night. I hated when she would go in her sleep too because it’s grunt, grunt, grunt, poo; all while she’s asleep. I’m awake at first grunt, so I’d lay there debating if it was a short enough time to leave her there until she woke up. The guilt almost always got me out of bed.
I know, I know. Babies don’t have to go every day, and can even wait up to 7 days before there’s a problem. But, I need her to go each day. Why? So she sleeps at night. I’m not kidding you, once she hit 7 months there was no more going in her sleep.  If she goes the whole day without potty, we WILL have a wake-up in the middle of the night and it will take anywhere between 30 minutes to two hours to get her back to sleep. No joke. And she never even goes until the next day!
At the suggestion of a friend we started prunes at dinnertime within the first week of solids. We did about one ounce up until she was sitting on her own, then we upped it to almost two ounces each night. This worked well to keep her regular (she’d go each morning), but it would still get to be super thick and difficult for her.
Somewhere around the end of January I took Em to see Dr. Murphy (her doctor) for her poo troubles. Side note – I actually had a long list of items to go over with him because I’m a bit of a nut when it comes to health issues. Anyway, he had told me to start giving Emma water. She can have up to 12 ounces a day total. We don’t do anywhere near that right now, but we started giving her water out of a sippy after each baby food meal and she’s up to around four or five ounces a day on average. Since we’ve started that, no more problems! (Until we have a day where we are out running around all day and her water intake is less).
I did want to mention something about the whole water toxic issue. The only time a baby can die from too much water is if they are not getting a sufficient amount of formula or breast milk. Meaning, those moms out there that try to save money by giving 5 ounces water with one ounce worth of formula to save some money are the ones at risk of losing their baby. It makes me want to cry to think about any baby not getting enough to eat.
So, long poo story short, We “push” water all day and we do prunes EVERY night. This keeps Emma going on schedule, and amounts to make Momma proud.
Sleep:
Emma’s first two weeks out of the womb were rough on her sleep wise. She’d have that falling sensation and throw her arms out (which woke her up) like five times a night. Oy, was that time hard on me or what?!?! Being a new mom with no close Mommy friends, I turned to my Twitter moms and low and behold there’s something called a swaddle. Hey, I got one of those at my baby shower from my cousin Billie Marie! The first night we used it was the first time Emma slept all night.
Well, as most of you know, my baby girl is no small baby. She was born big and grows so fast that she’s about the size of a one year old now (even bigger than some that age). At about 3 months we had to give up the swaddle. Most people would have stopped already, but it worked so well that I rode the swaddle-train until Emma would just stretch and break it open. So, there goes that. Lol, it was overdue anyway seeing as though she could just barely straighten her legs. Lol.
Because it worked so well for my Mom the one time she watched Emma all night (my Mom boycotted the swaddle), I put Emma in bed on her belly for bedtime. Side note – we ALWAYS give her a big bottle, and then hold her until she falls asleep, then put her in her bed. We don’t do the whole “Put them in bed awake to get them used to putting themselves to sleep.” To this day she still sleeps on her belly.
After about 2 weeks of no swaddling and belly sleeping, Emma started to wake up at night again. After night number three I started getting very frustrated. I talk to my Mom every day on my way home from work, and on the day after the third night of constant wake-ups, I told her that I was exhausted and it was taking its toll on me. She asked me a bunch of questions, including what type of blanket I used. I said “I don’t! Babies die from that!” She told me that I had to use one. So, that night, after the first wake-up (because I was stubborn) I decided to give the blanket a try, and voila! No more wake-ups.
FYI – I use a thick baby blanket. It’s thick cotton on one side (loop style) and a microfiber type on the other. The cotton side almost sticks to the bed and most of the time doesn’t move throughout the night. More recently Emma has been turning side to side so it has been shifting more, but it still works well.
About 3 weeks ago now, Emma started to wake up during the night again. Really only once a night. After a whole week (Wednesday to Wednesday), I asked my Mom about it. We were both stumped until I was explaining to her how I walked into the hall and I could see Emma sitting up in her crib playing, when she stopped me and said “How can you see her?” I told her that I have the nightlight by the crib so that I can peek in on her any time. She told me that was the problem; Emma was waking up and since she could see she thought it was time to wake up. So that night I tried turning out the nightlight when I went to bed, and we haven’t had any real wake-ups since (excluding when she had the stomach bug).
I keep joking that my Mom is the baby whisperer. How she knows exactly what Emma needs I will never know, but I know not to question her anymore.
So there you have it. The two most-talked about things by any Mommy, broken down and explained according to my baby, Emma.
Jenni

I got this picture in a text just today, with this message: "Mommy, I just went poo!"


2 comments:

  1. Love the pic-I get those too! I need your mom's number! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I was going to say the same thing, can she fix my baby too? The pic is adorable. She is so cute!

    ReplyDelete