mamajoan

Chorus rehearsal last night went okay. Isaac seemed to enjoy the singing part, but since it was the first rehearsal of the season, there was more talking (conductor discussing the music, others discussing various administrative crap) than singing, so he was a bit fussy. Every time he fussed audibly, heads turned all over the room. ;) Then he spit up a WHOLE bunch, right when I didn't have the burp cloth in place. D'oh! Then we had our break and of course everyone wanted to see him, hold him, etc. ... I must've answered the same two questions ("How old is he?" "What's his name?") three dozen times. When break began, my mom was holding him, and she was immediately surrounded by admirers, and I stood at the edge of the crowd feeling completely extraneous. ;)

By the end of break he had been held by so many people, and he was so tired, I could tell he would freak out if we stayed any longer, so we left. We went right home, and I had a peanut-butter sandwich and went right to bed. Whew.

Our nights, if not our days, are settling into a bit of a pattern. Between 9:30 and 11pm, whenever I'm ready, we get into bed together and he nurses us both to sleep. It's usually around three hours until I wake up again, and then usually I switch to the other side and he nurses us to sleep again. Then sometime between 5 and 6am, he starts with the bad-digestion behavior: grunting, kicking, flailing his arms. He'll do this for a few seconds, then fall quietly asleep for a few seconds, then repeat ad nauseam. I'm fairly sure he's asleep throughout the whole thing, but *I* can't sleep through it at all, so I lie there feeling frustrated and tired. Eventually the fussing wakes him up fully and he nurses some more, and then, depending on how late it is, I either get up, or sometimes manage to squeeze out a little more sleep.

(Once or twice I've moved him to his swing or crib to do the digestive fussing so that I can get a little more sleep. This has met with limited success. I still haven't quite figured out what to do about it.)

Today he's been weird. Well, I should say, different. ;) When we got to work he fussed and acted like he wanted to nurse but then didn't. I put him in the Baby Bjorn, which recently he hasn't been liking, but then I walked around a lot, and talked to coworkers, and he fell asleep. He slept through the morning AND through my entire lunch! (He almost never lets me eat an uninterrupted meal -- it's like he has a sixth sense of when I'm about to start eating.) After I had eaten and returned to my desk, he woke up screaming, and nursed a while. I could tell it had been quite some time since his last meal, because when I went to burp him after he nursed on the right breast, I noticed that the left breast (and surrounding blouse fabric) was soaked with milk. My breasts tend not to leak very often, except when one is very full and the other one is being nursed/pumped.

Anyway, so he burped and spit up a bit, which is normal for him, and then he fussed and wouldn't take the second breast, so I comforted him for a few minutes -- moved him around from shoulder to lap and back, etc. -- and then I thought he seemed ready to nurse more, so I sat him on my knee while I got the blouse open and the burp cloth into position ... and then when I looked back at him, he was asleep! LOL! He *never* falls asleep like that! So I put him down in the stroller (which is serving as a "chair"/place to put him semi-upright while I'm at work) and he fussed, without fully waking, for about fifteen minutes. Then he woke up and was fussy for real, so I picked him up again ... and he fell asleep in my arms again. So I put him in the stroller again, and he's still soundly asleep there, fifteen minutes later and counting. (I've taken to writing down on a little pad the time that I put him down, because my sense of time is so terrible that otherwise I can never remember. He'll wake up and I'm like, "okay, that was half an hour. Or was it an hour and a half? D'oh....")

Anyway, the point is, all of that is very atypical of Isaac. He doesn't usually sleep this much, and he doesn't usually *go* to sleep so easily, and he doesn't usually finish eating so quickly. It seems to me that he sleeps a lot less than he ought to at his age; the various websites say he should be sleeping 14-15 hours per day, and in his case it seems more like 10. But I haven't really been keeping careful track so maybe that's just my perception. ;) I do worry about it a bit, because he so often seems overtired, and being overtired makes him cranky and makes it harder for him to get to sleep, so it's a vicious cycle. :(

I'm happy to report, though, that the colicky episodes seem *knock furiously on wood* to have ended. Nowadays when he cries and screams, it's generally because he's either hungry or tired. And, as you'll have noticed from my posts of yesterday, he now smiles a lot. :) His smiles are the best thing in the world, ever. Seriously, nothing that ever existed on earth was ever better than those little smiles, or the little cooing/squealing noises he makes along with them. It just melts my heart every time.

I'm still a bit apprehensive about the whole living-alone-with-him-in-my-apartment thing. But my mom has been a big help. She came over two nights last week, bringing dinner, and took care of him for a bit so I could just decompress; and we stayed with her over the weekend; and yesterday, as I mentioned, she took Isaac off to her place for a bit. (That was too weird! I kept looking for him, or "remembering" that he was there, only he wasn't. And when I was driving over to get him, I kept trying to check for him in the carseat, but it wasn't there either!)

Everyone at work continues to be super-supportive. On one side of my office is a good friend, who has kids of her own and who has given us lots of stuff (like, a crib, and a rocking chair, and a porta-crib), so I don't worry about her being bothered by the crying; but on the other side is a childless coworker and I was a bit worried about her being bothered. So far she hasn't complained, although it might just be that she doesn't want to upset me, etc. But, another (male) coworker who also has kids said that he would volunteer to trade offices with her if she finds the noise too disruptive! Isn't that sweet? I'm really just blown away by how nice everyone is being. *warm fuzzies*

Oh, I also joined -- or, more accurately, started lurking on -- a message board at parentsplace.com for moms with babies born in June '03. I may not ever really become a participant, but it's *very* helpful just to read the board, simply because so many of the moms describe problems or issues similar to mine. When I hear other moms complaining (or sighing, or asking for advice) about a problem that I'm also having, it reassures me, because it means that it's probably normal. So, in a possibly weird way, other moms' bitching helps me be more relaxed about my baby's issues. :)

I'm still not totally sure how this working with the baby around thing is going to work out, but so far it's not a complete disaster, so I'm cautiously optimistic. :)

In other news ... uh ... who am I kidding, there isn't any other news. ;)