September's Twilight

September was a big month for Sadie-- she visited Starbucks and Target for the first time, crossed the state line into Wisconsin, went to her first shopping mall (Old Orchard), attended mommy-and-baby yoga class, and she began showing signs of real potential to sleep through the night. This is a great baby, I'm telling you.

At her doctor's appointment on September 24, we learned that she is 11lbs 11oz, which is so close to the magical 12lbs, where allegedly babies can sleep through the night. Not sure about that, but on September 26, Joyce and I put her to bed at 6:45 p.m. and she slept until 4:20 a.m. I went into her room about 5 times to be sure she was still breathing, but now that we know she can do that, her little wake up through the night tricks are not going to work on us. Ok, they totally still will, but we'll always have September 26th!

She also started liking the bath. Well, actually it's the shower and we get in there and hold her and scrub her down and she squeals with joy! It's so much fun to hang out with her as she is discovering the parts of the world where she can experience pleasure and joy and new sensations.

We are also learning some hard lessons as parents. Turns out that every person who has written a parenting books thinks that her or his viewpoint or cause is the most important. We invested in a sleep book that I am vowing not to read cover-to-cover because it's very rigid and will drive me nuts. It's also not interested in anything except sleep, so the author is basically like "screw the attachment parenting and screw the La Leche League, your kid must sleep or she will end up in an insane asylum." It's a little too doom and gloom for me, though I have peeked at some of the charts and suggestions and even tried a few. We usually try to keep Sadie up until 7:00 pm, but the book said try to have a bedtime a little closer to 6:00 p.m. Well, last night I tried it and it seemed to work great. Sadie went right to sleep at 6:15 p.m. and slept for six hours before waking up to eat. It would be nice if there was one solution that didn't require me to sit vigilantly waiting for Sadie to display the first signs of possible fatigue all day long and then stop everything to be sure she gets optimal, motionless sleep in her crib, but mama has needs to and getting out of the house (with and without Sadie) is really important to me and my mental health.

I was able to have a gigantic appreciation and gratitude attack for Sadie this morning during mommy and baby yoga class. There were babies there who were younger than our demure 9-week old Sadie, and some of them were fussing wildly like Sadie used to do. I remembered how stressful and upsetting it was to hear all that crying and to be unsure of how to deal with it in public. A baby friendly yoga class is as good as being at home, but it's still stressful to watch other mothers doing sun salutations while their babies coo beatifully by their sides as your own baby wails as if she is being tortured in some way. For her part, Sadie just looked around and watched me try to stretch my body for the first time since the C-section. When she got a little bit upset, I nursed her for 5 minutes and she fell asleep for the rest of the class. It was very helpful to see other mothers dealing with their babies at various ages and to hear stories about the weeks to come.

I think the yoga really mellowed Sadie out because when we got home we sat on the couch reading for a long time. She usually wants to be up on her princess perch, but she was content to sit on the couch and read US Magazine with me. (Should I lie and say it was Middlemarch or The Economist? It wasn't-- it was all about Jessica Simpson's life in shambles and MacKenzie Phillips' shocking allegations about her father's poor sexual boundaries.) Not exactly approved by Dr. Sears or the American College of Pediatrics, but damn, I just had to see those outfits from the Emmy's one more time.