Before Xander was born I heard all kinds of warnings about how difficult babies are, and how hard the first few weeks/months can be. I even wrote a post about this trend. When Xander arrived, I was prepared for the worst - minutes of sleep every night, crazy hormones/baby blues, never having time for a shower or a meal, etc.
So, we were pleasantly surprised when Xander wasn’t that difficult. He cries when he needs something, but when his need is met, he stops fussing. At first, this was a game of elimination - are you wet? No, are you tired? No, are you hungry? Yep! We are getting better a figuring out what he wants, and since he put himself on about a 3-4 hour feeding schedule, we generally have a pretty good idea of when he’ll want to eat. Even when we introduced bottles to Xander, he was amazingly easy. The first attempt was successful, and since then, he has never questioned any nipple style, or even the temperature of the milk or formula that we’ve fed him. This makes traveling with him much easier, since we can bring along some formula in a bottle, add water when he’s hungry, and keep going without having to find a quiet place and an extra 30-40 minutes to nurse him.
Don’t get me wrong - some days were pretty tough. Some nights he just wasn’t interested in sleeping, and even though he was clearly hungry, he was crying too hard to latch onto my breast. We definitely had our challenges, but the good stuff has far outweighed the hard stuff.
Last night Xander again proved that he is indeed an easy baby. Let me start by explaining that the day we brought Xander home, we had our bedroom set up with a bassinet for him to sleep in. When it was time for us to go to sleep, we set him down in the bassinet, and assumed that he would go to sleep, or at least lay there quietly. Boy were we wrong. So, that first night, we built him a little nest in our bed for him to sleep in without getting smothered by us or by bedding. We tried the bassinet a few more nights with the same result, and eventually gave up and let him sleep with us full time. During the day he will sometimes nap in his car seat, but we found if we let him sleep in his car seat at night, he would only sleep for an hour or two at a time, while if he slept with us, we could get in 4-5 hours of sleep at a stretch. Despite this “accidental parenting” that we had started, we still wanted Xander to sleep in his own space. I began to stress about the negative impact we were having on Xander, and wondering how we were ever going to convince him to sleep on his own - particularly when both Zach and I were back at work. Since I was worrying about this too much, I decided to let this be Zach’s project, since he would have 6 weeks to change the sleeping arrangements. Last night was the first attempt. Zach and Xander fell asleep on the couch around 9pm. I did a little housework, prepped the bassinet in the nursery for Zach and turned in around 10pm. About midnight, Xander woke up. Zach fed him, and put him in the bassinet, where Xander slept peacefully for 4 hours! I nursed Xander at 4pm, and then Zach put him back in the bassinet, where he was still sleeping peacefully when I left the house at 7:30am. I was so worried that the change in sleeping arrangement would be an uphill battle for us, filled with many sleepless, crying nights. Xander proved me wrong by simply accepting this new arrangement without complaint, and sleeping more peacefully than I could have hoped for. At this rate, he will hopefully be sleeping through the night in a month or two!
Another thought that crossed my mind this morning as I was marveling at how lucky we’ve been so far. A lot of times you’ll hear people say that if you have a difficult first child, your second one will be easy and vice versa. Since Xander is clearly an easy baby, it makes me nervous about what his future sibling will be like. I know it’s just an old wives tale, but still…
babies, baby, difficult baby, easy baby, infant, infants, motherhood, parenthood, parenting, parenting challenges, sleep, sleeping
I think that everyone knows how much babies enjoy making their parents sound like complete idiots when talking about what their kids can do. For example, Xander has this really cute “trick” where if you blow on his face, he sticks out his tongue, blinks quickly and wiggles his whole body - it’s really quite adorable (see picture). When I told my in-law’s about this, and then tried to show them, Xander just looked at me like I was completely insane. I think most parents have experienced this at one point or another, but it’s always frustrating.
