Oh, are babies supposed to nap?

According to this chart I found, one-month-old babies are supposed to sleep around eight hours a day, in addition to their nighttime sleep (also eight hours). So, basically, they should be asleep like all the time. Three-month-olds should sleep around five hours a day, broken into three naps. So, I figure Grady should be somewhere between the two. And... he so is not. When he takes a decent nap of an hour or more, I am always amazed and mildly concerned and don’t quite know what to do with myself. Usually he will doze for 20 minutes after nursing and then be awake again. In recent weeks, his naps have rarely exceeded a cumulative two hours for the whole day. (There have been exceptions... he was very sleepy around Christmas, for instance. The holidays will do that to a baby.)

So, because I am a parenting genius, it occurred to me that maybe I had a role to play in all this lack-of-napping business. I mean, at first I thought... he is a baby and they don’t have schedules and so he’ll sleep when he sleeps. Which is true, and I know some babies are more assertively sleepy, but it seems that Grady needs a little nudge. The world is just too dang interesting and delicious for him to sleep for long on his own. And by “on his own” I mean, “passed out in a milk coma on my lap.” And that reminds me that in the hospital they told me that the first 20-30 minutes of sleep after a feeding is a different type of sleep than real sleep. It’s a shallower sleep and it’s why so many babies startle back awake if you try to move them too soon. So Grady has, for the most part, only been getting spells of that shallower sleep, but not transitioning into real sleep during the day.

Anyway, I got to thinking about naps when we were over at our friends the Dubranglemyers’ house. Jasper and I had joked about Grady’s lack of napping, without really thinking hard enough about it to be concerned, but then we tried out their baby swing on him and he conked out for at least an hour. I was so amazed and blissed out by the freedom that I sampled some gin. (I really did! Mr. Dubranglemyer is a fellow connoisseur, mostly because I got him really drunk this one time. We seriously throw the classiest dinner parties.)

Since that day with the shocking swing nap, I’ve been trying to offer Grady more opportunities to sleep. I also read that a baby his age shouldn’t be awake for more than a couple hours at a time! Which I guess makes sense if you do the math on all those naps. I mean, it's a lot of napping to fit into a day! So now every couple of hours I try to offer him sleep, just, like, as an option, if he’s into it, no pressure, because I am so not a rigorous parent like that... This mostly means that I wear him and walk him around the neighborhood until he passes out, and then putter around the house for an hour or so while he sleeps. He sleeps! Which, incidentally, is why you’re getting actual writing on the blog. So, you know, you’re welcome.

Winterish

I know, I know, we really don't get proper winter in the Bay Area. But that's what makes us such enormous wimps about it. This morning, when we made it out to the kitchen around 8:30, it was only 30 degrees! When it got up to 40, Baby Grady and I bundled up in the Mobyish, donned our winter caps, and took a short stroll through the neighborhood. We strategically navigated to the sunny patches and soaked it up, because allegedly the rain is coming. (There's our "proper" winter.)

As it happens, Grady and I are both wearing winter caps made for us by our grandmothers. Because grandmas know the importance of keeping your head warm. And looking cute, of course.

My Mobyish is not as scary as I thought

There are a lot of things about babies that are scary. Even before they get here! First, there’s the possibility of miscarriage, then there’s will-they-find-something-bad-on-the-ultrasound?, and then of course labor. All genuinely scary. I also recently learned that breastfeeding is scary! Like, for a lot of people. Breastfeeding! Who knew! (I’m glad I didn’t.)

So, confession. I’ve been intimidated by my Moby wrap, which I will refer to as my Mobyish, because it is actually a knock-off, handed down from my sister-in-law, and I can never remember what she told me it is actually called. So, my Mobyish. Scary!

In case you don’t know, a Mobyish is just a long (like, REALLY long) piece of stretchy knit fabric that you wrap around yourself multiple times to create an origami baby-carrier right there on your person. The first time my sister-in-law showed me, as she was gifting me her well-adored strip of fabric, I was thinking, “That’s bananas. But thanks.”

So it sat for a bit, due to the intimidation and all. Then one day I checked out the instructions online and became a fabric origami-master right then and there. It was a lot more than I usually accomplish in a day, so I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. I slid my baby into his pouch and went to make some oatmeal. Until I realized we were all wet -- all of us! Baby Grady, me, and the Mobyish. My one and only diaper leak took place approximately 12 seconds after I became baby-wearing. This led to laundry, as most things do.

Finally, yesterday, I decided to give that gigantic piece of fabric another chance. I wrapped and tied like an origami ninja and slid that baby into my pouch. He was all cozy for a minute or two until his pouch-inhabiting led to hunger, as most things do. The only reasonable choice at this point was to wrangle a boob out through all the layers and try to connect it with Baby Grady. And wouldn’t you know, it worked. And I felt so rustic and Earth-motherish. Like a skilled tribeswoman ready to pound some grain while wearing and feeding my offspring. Tomorrow I may try carrying the groceries in a basket on my head. Because apparently maybe I can.