Being Momma G: Day 17

Today came around sooner than I'd hoped. Today, I was going solo. Momma G is in da house. By herself. For Jonathan was going back to work.

The little man must have known Daddy was going back to work, so he did his utmost best to make sure Daddy got little to no sleep. Not only was Jonathan going back to work, he was also on day support. Which meant he had to be at work by 7am. Which meant he had to catch the 6am train from West Ryde Station. Which meant he had to be up by 5am to shower and get dressed and walk down to West Ryde Station.

After being unsettled all yesterday afternoon, the little man continued to be unsettled at night. By 11.45pm, Jonathan and I decided to give him a lot more milk than he should have been having. There was still a bit of expressed breast milk in the fridge from a few days ago, so we warmed up 90mL and gave it to Sean. The greedy little milk monster gulped it all down in 10 minutes.

It was around 1am by the time Sean finally settled down and went to sleep. Poor Jonathan had to be up 4 hours later, and at 5am, I heard Jonathan's alarm go off and felt him get up to get ready for work. Sean was still asleep, so I rolled over and went back to sleep. Sean woke an hour later, and thankfully, he fed in his sleep, so both of us were able to get a bit more rest.

Just before 9am, the phone rang, and groggily, I tried to answer the call. The call was from Margot from Camellia Family Care Cottage, who wanted to pay Sean and me a visit to see how we were doing. Family Care Cottages provide support, counselling and education for parents who are experiencing difficulties with infant feeding, crying babies, child behaviour, feelings of depression and relationship problems that are impacting on the child, with qualified staff who are child and family health nurses, social worker and lactation consultants. Saw Bee from the West Ryde ECHC had referred us to Margot, after we raised some concerns with Saw Bee about Sean being unsettled (and after she witnessed it for herself), and Margot had called to arrange a time for her visit.

Unfortunately, when Margot called, I was half asleep and not making any sense, so Margot said she'd wait until 10.30am before paying us a visit. As if right on cue, Sean woke up around 10.15am for a feed, just as Margot walked up to the front door.

Like a good performing monkey, Sean fed well and seemed happy enough after the feed. But when it came time to settle, Sean showed his true colours. Margot unleashed her arsenal of settling methods, some of which worked, and most of which failed to completely settle Sean. Almost as soon as Margot thought her work was done, Sean would wake up and show her otherwise. After nearly 90 minutes with us, Margot had to go, and Sean was still awake.

Margot's visit wasn't in vain. She did show us a couple of new tricks that we may try at a later time. The more techniques we have up our sleeves, the better we are equipped to deal with the long periods of unsettled behaviour, especially the late night / early morning stints.

Once Margot left, I picked up Sean and cuddled him back to sleep. It was the only thing that would work that day, and with Georgianna's advice fresh in my mind ("do whatever it takes to settle them as quickly as possible"), I stuck to the cuddling technique.

Jonathan came home around 4pm looking like a train had hit him. And it was only his first day back at work. Sean woke just before 7pm, just as we were about to have dinner. Even though he was so tired, Jonathan still cooked dinner (sausages and mash) and while I was feeding Sean, Jonathan cut everything up into bite sized pieces to ensure I could multitask with my limited number of limbs.

It's getting close to Sean's next feed now. We'll update you on how we go tonight shortly.