Yay for Baby E!

Baby E is two months old today. Huzzah for her! She is developing more and more control over her neck and hands. She tries to talk a lot (it is so much fun). Lots of smiles. Sometimes she morphs into Fussy McFuster though.*

I realized that since Baby E is in bed asleep by 9 (9:30 at the latest), we can get a babysitter to just sit in our quiet house and we can go to a late movie or whatever! So that is what we are doing tonight! We're going to see Pirates.

And apparently there are some evil eyes pointed at me because Baby E sleeps so well. Ha ha Believe me, I am very grateful that she is an easy baby. There are a couple things that I've done to help her, though:

1. Swaddling. At first she would fuss through the entire swaddling process, then be quiet as soon as it was done. Now she usually quiets down when I start to swaddle her, like she knows what's happening and that it will feel nice once I'm done. On the rare occassions when Baby E naps without being swaddled, she doesn't sleep as long or as deeply.
2. Naps. During the first 6 weeks of Baby E's life, napping was very erratic, and not just because Baby E was a newborn. I didn't know how to put her down for a nap, or how long, or anything. Then I read Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child and learned that a baby under 4 months of age shouldn't be up longer than 2 hours at a time or the baby becomes overtired. Through a process of trial and error, I learned that Baby E does best when put down for a nap after being up for about an hour and thirty minutes. This has helped her sleep better at night because then she's not overtired from being up too much during the day.**

So Wednesday night, Baby E went to bed at 8:30. I went to bed a little after 11. 4 am I woke up to the sound of the smoke alarm intermittently beeping. No, it was not the battery, because our smoke alarms are hooked up to our electricity, and only have batteries as backups. And no, there was no fire. The smoke alarm is just retarded. I tried to fiddle with it, get it to stop, it never stopped beeping for longer than 5 minutes, then it would start back up. By 5:15, Baby E was still asleep and I was uncomfortably engorged and wide awake thanks to that stupid alarm, so I pumped for a while (5 oz in 6 minutes! the only advantage to being engorged!). 5:30 Baby E woke up. The entire time I nursed her, the smoke alarm beeped every 39 seconds (I timed it - nothing else to do while nursing in the semi-dark!). Baby E was back in bed by 6:30, and by this point I was so tired, I slept through the smoke alarm beeping until Baby E woke back up at 9:30 am. The point of the story is, Baby E slept from 8:30 - 5:30, and then 6:30 - 9:30. And I could have had a wonderful night's sleep if that bloody smoke alarm hadn't kept beeping!!!!!! It was like the smoke alarm knew how long Baby E would sleep, and just wanted to F me up. Grr...I couldn't get the blasted thing to stop. When Dh came home for lunch at 1 pm, he was able to disconnect it. Yeah, it beeped all morning. Stupid piece of crap.


*I call Baby E Fussy McFuster. Dh made a face when he heard me say it the first time, and then he said it himself a few minutes later. Try it. Just say, "Fussy McFuster." It's fun to say. You'll see.

**And some clarification: Sometimes Baby E sleeps great (yesterday morning - 3 hour nap), and sometimes not (yesterday afternoon - catnaps). Sometimes she just fusses for like 2 1/2 hours. Ugh. Sometimes she sleeps great at night (9:30 pm - 5 am last night!) and sometimes not (last Friday - woke up every half hour from 3 am on - that sucked!!!!).