Tools of the Trade

First, I gotta say that by the time Bill's grandmas see him again, they will no doubt be melted by his gaze. It is getting quite strong. Of note, they will get the gaze long before any fussiness ensues thereby cementing the full effect.

Bill is 6 weeks old now. He is sleeping sometimes 4 hours in a row after he goes to sleep, sometimes only 2. After that initial time, he sleeps an hour to 2 hours at a stretch throughout the rest of the morning. Mom has borne the brunt of this, but I've been trying to help as much as I can.

The biggest challenge has been getting him to sleep. In the evenings, starting around 7:30 or so he starts to get fussy. We check under the hood and change any wet diapers, give him lots of bouncing around, and feed him as much as Mom has available. Then we sometimes give him an extra couple of ounces of formula. Then we pull out the tools of the trade:

Besides the normal bouncing and breasting, we have:

1. The Dishwasher - This one is great because the noise is soothing and it has about a 45 minute cycle. We tend to get 2 hours of sleep out of it. It seems wrong to leave him in the kitchen, but the sleep feels so right.
2. The Vacuum Cleaner - This one seems like overkill. The noise is loud enough to drive our dog from the room, but then so is the screaming baby noise. This works, but sometimes you finish the entire carpet to find him still wide awake and attentive.
3. The Hair Dryer - This one is good. It has an extra high sound or a low sound. We can put him in his crib(less moving afterwards) and leave it running in the room for a few minutes.
4. The Calming Vibrations Chair - This is more of an early evening or daytime settle him down kind of tool. We haven't found it full sleep inducing, just calming. Who doesn't like a vibrating chair?

None of these tools is batting 1000, and at least once we have pretty much used them all in an evening. We are finding that you can put him in the crib while his eyes are wide open. While you may try to start the bedtime windup at 8:30, it really won't finish till 10:30, if only we could get better quality viewing from our Tivo.

There is also a general rule of avoiding "Change of State" actions. If the baby is happy sleeping in his chair, don't pick him up to see if he would be happier somewhere else. No sense in checking a diaper if he doesn't already say that there is a problem.

Time to go give the hair dryer a break.