Be A Good Mom

A baby in roveralls.

I have been having a problem sleeping.  As the mother of a 5 month old, you might think its her fault.  Its not.  She has slept thru the night since 10 weeks.  My problem is that I am waking up several times a night.

I have read that quality sleep is defined as  4-6 sleep cycles, each lasting 90 minutes.  If the cycle is interrupted, the cycle starts over, so you never get credit for that interrupted cycle at all.   Check out this site for a really good description of the sleep cycles and some common questions.

A chart from that site:

So, the goal is to go thru those 4-6 cycles, especially the 2 or 3 cycles that hit stage 3 and 4 sleep (the “deep sleep”).   I don’t know what time of the night I am waking up….I wear glasses and finding them in the dark, looking at the clock and noting the time seemed a bit much of an exertion when your goal is to fall back asleep as soon as possible.   But based on what BAGD has told me, I suspect I am usually waking up between 12 Midnight and 2 am.  Assuming that I go to bed at 10:30 on average, I am possibly hitting those 2 stage 4 cycles.

When I wake up, I am pretty sure its not morning, but really could not tell you anything else.  I sometimes think I have woken up for a good reason, like I was about to fall out of bed (sometimes true, since BAGD pushes me to the very edge of the bed), or that BAGD said something (not true).  When I wake up, I am groggy and disoriented.  But mostly, I am MAD.  I am not aware of why I am MAD, but I am.  Its a really frustrating kind of anger too, because I don’t understand it.  Sometimes I cry a little.

Based on the chart provided on the website, I am getting enough sleep.  I usually get 8 hours.  But, since I am waking up during the deep stage 4 sleep, it doesn’t feel that way.  So, how do I get more deep sleep?  These are some recommended strategies:

1.  Get more sun.     Spending an hour outside a day helps sleep patterns.  Spring has sprung and I think this will be easier for me starting next week.

2.  Fall into a rhythm.  Go to bed at the same time every night.  Wake up at the same time every day.

3.  Sleep in a warmer room.

4.  Reduce caffeine.  Not an issue for me, but a good reminder.

5.  Reduce stress.  A nice goal, but sort of a foreign concept for someone as tightly wound as me.

I think I will focus on numbers 1 and 2.  Its a good place to start.

On an unrelated note, it is reassuring to note that Pookie and Geetle, age 5, seem to be right on track ,according to the chart.  They get 11 to 11 1/2 hours of sleep a night,  7pm-ish to 6am-ish.  They could get more, believe me.  But its their own choice, they are the first ones up every day, not BAGD or me.  Also, Pookie is wetting the bed, which is likely to occur during deep sleep,  so, if we were inclined to wake him up to pee in the middle of the night, we would want to do so between 8pm-9pm, 10pm-10:30pm and 11:30-12:00.

Finally, Giggles is also on track.  As a 5month old, she should be sleeping  16 hours a day, weaning down to 14 hours soon.  She sleeps 12 hours at night (yes, a full straight 12 hours, 7pm to 7am!), takes a 1 hour morning nap and a 2 hour afternoon nap.  So, not counting car naps, she is right on track.

Here is a very interesting article on teaching via the Socratic Method.   The experiment was to see if a group of 3rd graders could be taught binary math, using the Socratic Method.

Believe it or not, I liked this article and learned something.  Like a common 3rd grader, I usually zone out when the conversation turns to “exciting math facts”.  But I actually followed this…sort of.

Finally, here is my TOP 10 LIST of Reasons You Should Read This Article:

1.  There is a though provoking reference to John Glenn that really ties it all up in the end. 

2.  Apparently, Binary Math is easy to learn and really does make sense.   You never know where it might turn up in today’s society.

He may be only 14 inches tall, and he may have a celery nose because we did not have any carrots, and he may have kiwi eyes because no one has coal around the house any more…but he is still cool. And he stands to be the last snowman of this winter. Carry on little dude, carry on.

Well, first we colored eggs.

Pookie did not want to color eggs. He wanted to play with Uncle JoeJoe’s toy telephone. He was calling Doctor Baker, he said. Calling the doctor on Easter…that is probably at least the double rate.

Then we blew bubbles on the front stoop.

Then we ate ham, potatoes, green bean casserole, buns and veggies. For desert, I made cheesecake and Strawberry Jam bars. We also ate some of those White Balls.

Then we went back to Aunt Bean and Uncle JBs where Baby Belaina helped me take care of Giggles.

T-man, Aunt Kel, Geetle and Pookie played Wii Bowling. Then Geetle beat Kel at a Wii airplane racing game. Pookie is getting very good at Wii Bowling. Everytime he plays, he echos what we told him on how to do it “push it down, pull it back, push it forward and let go!” It really works, and is is quite the little bowler. Geetle is a whole-body Wii player. She is the one they invented the wrist strap for. When I say she beat Aunt Kel, I mean really. Kel was trying her best, at a game she had played before, and Geetle blows into town and beats her twice in a row, the first time she has ever played the game. But to win, Geetle needs quite a bit of clearance and floor space.

And, as always, Uncle JB gave us a little present before we left his house.

All in all, a fun day.

Here is the earliest picture of my 3 kids:

And here they are today:

For those of you who don’t know the story, technically speaking all 3 kids were conceived on the same day. They are all IVF babies, from the same egg retreival and ICSI fertilization. Geetle and Pookie were planted on June 9, 2002 and born on January 31, 2003. Giggles, from the same batch as Geetle and Pookie, was planted on January 31, 2007 and born on October 24, 2007. Between the time Geetle and Pookie were born and the time Giggles was born, Giggles and 6 of her frozen siblings were stored in a cryogenic environment. On July 7, 2006 Geetle, Pookie and I picked that cryo-tank up at the storage facility and drove it to my fertility doctor’s office. When the doctor told me I should go pick up the tank and drive it over, I was surprised and said “Me? Am I qualified to do that?” He said “Do you think Fed-Ex is qualified to do it?” So, I did it, with Geetle and Pookie trailing along behind me. For the sake of posterity, I took the top picture in the doctor’s office parking lot. Eerie, but cute.

We started working on Giggles in early Summer 2006. We had 3 failed IVF transfers before she went in on January 31, 2007. It was a lucky day (Geetle and Pookie’s birthday) and she stuck. Luckily for all of us, because we were down to just Giggles and one of the frozen kids left.

After we were well into the pregnancy with Giggles, we donated our last frozen embryo for research.

Some day we will show these photos to the kids and talk about it. We have never kept the IVF thing a secret. When you keep secrets, you imply that you are ashamed of something. We are not ashamed of it. I probably share more details about the whole process than most people want to hear. But, from Spring 2001 to Summer 2002 and again from Summer 2006 to Spring 2007, Clomid, ART, Artificial insemination, IVF, Lupron, Progesterone, “blood and ultrasound,” IM injections and baby aspirin were my life. BAGD has his own perspective to deal with. He has written alot about it, and you may want to pop over here and there for a summary.

We will tell our kids all about it when they are old enough to ask and understand.

Sometimes the ART stuff pops into my head when I least expect it. Most of the time I do not think about how the kids came to be. But sometimes I do. Then I remember that while people say some of the best things in life are unexpected, alot of the really great things ARE expected.

and hoped for

and planned for

and dreamed about

and labored over

and appreciated even more because of it.

T-Man is getting tubes in his ears today. He is not really worried about it, except for the sleeping medicine. From what I can gather, he is a bit afraid that the sleeping medicine might make him sleep too long and he will wake up old.

Falling on the floor at Target and knocking your tooth ALL THE WAY back into your gum.

And, of course, when you like showing it to people.

We’re tearing out 3/4 of our Uber-deck. When its done, the deck will be just that little part where the brown table and blue sandbox are. We are reclaiming a huge part of the yard. This deck was here when we moved in; we never would have built a dance floor sized deck ourselves. It was nice in the summer time for one thing…we used to put a giant inflatable pool on the deck, thereby preventing the pool from killing the grass. But we never used it for anything else. We will be glad to have more yard for the kids to run around in. Yard is a premium in the suburbs.

We are also building a staircase from the top patio to the lower deck. We fenced the yard last summer and it was my grand plan to make the backyard accessible from the main floor of the house, not just the basement.

I’ll take a picture of the finished product when its done. It will be quite a change. I know the kids will love it, as soon as the grass grows in!