Hermes and Coffee

One of my 2015 goals:  travel 1000 miles by foot this year: 

Ugh.  At this rate, I am going to be doing 10 miles a day in December in an attempt to not fail.

It is so hard to just freaking get out of the house.  I don't know why it's so hard.  Whenever I insert a walk into the schedule, it just takes the place of playtime or naptime or fusstime... we just play or nap or fuss on the way until we get distracted by nature.

Stormy is much better on walks now that I'm using the stroller more instead of the ergo, since the stroller plus her harness keeps her from being able to walk in front of me, so she behaves herself a bit more.  The switch from ergo to stroller is also helping my back more... the boy is huge, fitting 9-month footie pajamas at 4 months!  So you'd think it'd be easy to just get out there and walk.

For the record, I did get out of the house with the baby this morning for a large Costco trip, fueled by the concern that we had no veggies in the house and Ryan was out of breakfasts.  I'm not TOTALLY useless.  It's the trips out of the house without a dire purpose that are the hard ones.


 What to do?

I've deduced that it's the doorway that's the problem.  Once I've passed the doorway and am propelling the stroller toward the green belt, I am energized enough to complete the 2 miles to and from the state park.  The problem is that the closer I get to the doorway from the inside of the house, the more prepped I become to leave the house, the more it feels like I'm watching myself be stuck on the event horizon of a black hole.  Time slows down and stretches to the point that moving past it is impossible.  There is always something that prevents escape.

Maybe the Greeks were right, and doorways are significant magical transitional places.  If I pray to Hermes, will he let me pass through?  Do I need to invest in a herma to watch over our door?  Maybe the dragon doorbell will do instead, if I finally put it up, since I'm sure the neighbors wouldn't appreciate me putting up a statue with prominent genitalia.

Maybe I should add caffeine back in, since I was doing so much better about morning walks when I had 1/4th of a cup of coffee in the mornings... the elimination diet is nearly complete, so I can drink it again soon.

Ok, that's the plan... Hermes and coffee.  As one of the busiest gods, Hermes probably likes coffee too.

Teething, viruses, and whining... oh my!

Torin has spent the last week hard-core teething.

Tooth buds appeared!  I've been checking for them every day for a month.

He also spent the last week with a cold, which I started 2 days after he did.  Given that colds have an incubation period of 2-3 days, I am guessing that he caught it at Pantheacon or the grocery store (despite all my precautions with hand-washing and keeping him away from strangers) and I caught it from him.  Yay!  Family bonding experience!  (Can you feel the sarcasm?)

The house has been full of non-stop whining.  Mostly Torin's.  His eyes are constantly glistening, and my ears are constantly ringing.  We make a sad pair, but at least we've been getting in at least one 4-hour chunk of sleep per night!  I have no idea if it's the sleep-schedule training or if it's that he's sick, but improved sleep is welcome while my body needs it to heal. 

There is this noise that Torin makes when he whines, a NNNNNG, NNNNNNG, MMNNNNNG, MNNNG sound through his nose that I interpret as a cry.  It's like tired crying but less intense and not coming out of the mouth.  It is, without doubt, THE most grating noise I have ever heard besides nails on a chalkboard and styrofoam rubbing styrofoam.  If I made that noise nonstop, I would have the most raging headache... I don't know how he can stand it.  The more he does it, the more my shoulders tense up, and I'm basically walking around hunch-backed from the tension.  Strangers and other more-experienced moms think it's cute (his noise, not my posture) and don't think it counts as crying.  My mom was over this weekend said that it was so cute because he "talks to himself" just like my brother did all the time.  Talking?  You mean the most annoying sound in the world that goes on for hours and hours on end and combines with sleep deprivation into a torture that drives me to the brink of madness?  Well, she's right, he does have a lot of complaining to do right now. 

The Last Meal

The night before the elimination diet, I made a little something special... deviled quail eggs!

Yum!

I know that seems totally random as a last meal before weeks of taste-deprivation, but I had quail eggs in the fridge because I was going to taste them to see if we liked them enough to raise quail one day.  To my tastebuds, they taste pretty much exactly like chicken eggs. 

They're super fast to hard boil, just 4 minutes.  Add just a touch of mayo, mustard, and a dash of smoked paprika, and they're perfect little deviled bites.

A black hole for sleep.

I still keep blogging every day, despite evidence to the contrary.  

It's just that I keep deleting what I write, or saving it in draft form to go back to later again and again and again.  Everything that I write sounds whiny.  I don't want my blog to be whiny!  Or it sounds too personal.  The blog is supposed to be relatively anonymous to internet strangers.  What to do, when only really personal things or whiny things come out of my brain?


Sleep deprivation is a weird thing.  

There's one level, the first dramatic drop of large amounts of sleep, where your ears ring and you feel a bit dizzy and the walls appear to calmly breathe.  The type of sleep deprivation where you know you shouldn't be driving.

There's a step further, where I get a sort of adrenaline rush that keeps me going, and I hallucinate that it feels like spiders are dropping onto my arms and hair.  Why spiders?  Who knows.  It's not scary.  After a while, I regulate and stop the hallucinating and just become a zombie.  I may be a zombie, but I can drive again and pretend to be normal.  And for some reason all the adrenaline makes it impossible for me to nap.

Then there's the long-term stuff, getting too little sleep over the days, weeks, and months... the kind that you can never quite come back from despite weekends full of sleep marathons, and you just kind of drag along, leaving bits of yourself behind.  When you do get more sleep, it's disorienting.


The 4-month sleep regression is a whole different kind of beast.

Imagine that you have a wee spawnling that keeps you up at night, sleeping in 4-5 hour chunks (so nice!), or 2-3 hour chunks, with a 1.5-hour chunk here and there.  Imagine that every time he wakes, it takes you 30-60 minutes to get him back to sleep, and another 30 for you to fall asleep.  You think this is sleep deprivation, it's a mix of the zombie state and the long-term stuff that makes you wonder if you can ever get back the energy you used to have.

On the surface, people say I look fine.  I have the glow of a happy new mother.  Thanks!  Glowing is awesome. 

Then Torin's sleep habits suddenly changed.  He can no longer be put down "drowsy yet awake"... if he's even the slightest bit not in his deepest sleep, he wakes up the second you lay him down.  He wakes after 1 sleep cycle and can't return to sleep, which means he's only getting sleep in 45-60 minute chunks.  Since it takes me 30 minutes to fall asleep each time, this means I'm only getting sleep in half-hour chunks.  I have been getting about 4 hours of sleep a night, give or take, but in half-hour bits over 12 hours in bed.*  Do you know what this does to a person?!  I don't.  I can't even write it out.

I reached a point where I was awake but literally could not move and Ryan had to bring me the crying baby to feed him, even though Torin was right next to me.  This scares me a bit, especially since I am alone half the nights... I need to at least be able to respond to crying.

I have become a black hole for sleep.  I suck it in at every chance, and you never see it again, it's like it never existed in the first place. 


Sleep-training a 4-month old?

And so something must give, because I'm finding myself becoming an angry person.  I'm not an angry person.  My kindness and empathy are traits that make me happy. 

Did you know that it's really difficult to read and make sense of books on baby sleep when you are sleep deprived?  For the love of all that is holy, read up on baby sleep BEFORE you have a baby!!!

Anyway, it seems like the general consensus is that first you must get the baby on a schedule.  Without a schedule that is aligned to the baby's rhythms, you can try to sleep train, but it will end in hours of crying until the baby's rhythm says it's bedtime.

I've gathered from several sources that the optimal schedule for a 4-month-old is:  7am wake, at least a half hour of morning sunlight (it's the brightest, to help reset circadian rhythm), 9am nap, 2pm nap, 7pm asleep.  His current schedule is:  7am wake, sleep on and off until 9, no naps, afternoon sunlight, 12am asleep.  They say that if you just get the bedtime early enough, everything else falls into place.

So that's my goal for the week.  I'm on day 3 of it, and yesterday he not only managed to get both naps on time (both of which were at least an hour!), he also fell asleep 2 hours earlier than usual.  AND he slept for 3 hours in a row, then put himself back to sleep without crying or being picked up for another 2 hours.  I had to check him to make sure he was still alive, because it's only the 3rd time he's ever gone 6 hours without eating.


The next step is either actual sleep training or learning to relax enough to cosleep (my current record is 1.5 hours), but I'm not planning to cross that bridge until Torin's acclimated to the new bedtime.

Maybe they're right?  Maybe a very early bedtime is the answer?  Wish me luck.


*The only reason I'm still relatively human is because Ryan makes sure I get sleep in the mornings whenever he has a day off.

TED update

Just heard back from the pediatrician... 

She contradicted the previous advice she gave me (that I shouldn't eliminate anything from my diet besides dairy, I'd specifically asked), now saying that she and the pediatric gastroenterologist want me to eliminate soy for 2 weeks before pushing formula.  That's fine... that's what I've been doing for the past 4 or 5 days with the Total Elimination Diet!

Wait.  9 days.  I'm on day 9 out of 14 already... not sure how that happened.  Time flies when you're not having dietary fun, I guess?  Wow, I can't believe I'm already halfway there, but then, I would KILL for some avocado.  DO YOU HAVE AVOCADO?!?  No?  Ok, you're safe for now.  For now...


I've mostly been eating the same thing every day.

• Usual breakfast:  leftover rice with hot bone broth poured over it, and a pear
• Favorite morning beverage:  mug of hot water with a splash of pear juice for "tea"
• Favorite lunch/dinner:  turkey zucchini fried rice smothered in gravy with a dollop of mashed sweet potatoes on the side.  Or the same fried rice wrapped up in a sweet potato skin.
• Favorite snack:  rice cake drizzled in lots of olive oil and a bit of salt.  Kinda tastes like popcorn, and I would go crazier without the crunch.  It's also easy to grab when my mind goes blank from hunger.
• Sweet tooth satisfaction:  opening a can of pears in pear juice and downing the WHOLE THING.
• Favorite afternoon beverage:  mug of strained hot bone broth (which is constantly cooking as I'm dipping into it and adding more water). 
• Fanciest food item made so far:  turkey gravy.  Using rice flour and turkey fat and broth, I managed to get gravy to actually work for the first time.  It's so thick and tasty!

Tonight I'm finally adding in millet, 'cause I had cooked so much rice at once that it took me this long to go through it.  Tomorrow, I try cooking some lamb for the first time in the form of lamb neck stew.  I still have braised lamb chops and turkey soup on the horizon. 


Yeah, but how does it feel?

Honestly, I feel like I'm starving.  Logically, I know I'm not.  I'm getting in plenty of calories in a near-perfect balance of protein/carbs/fat, I have sweet and savory and salty, there's soft and crunch, and I'm still taking the multivitamin.  I don't know why I feel this way, since when left to my own devices I tend to like eating the same things every day for weeks at a time anyway.  It is not easy, and preparation (having a huge batch of quick-to-eat turkey fried rice, pears, and rice cakes on hand at all times) is the only thing keeping me from raiding the rest of the fridge and pantry.

Ryan has been toughing it out on bachelor food so that I don't have to actually handle the tempting stuff or smell tasty things cooking. 


Any results so far?

Yes!

• Torin's diapers before:  green, mucousy, blood streaks, 8+ times a day
• Torin's diapers now:  yellow, mucousy, tiny bits of blood on occasion, reduced in frequency
• Kendra's asthma:  slightly reduced (must investigate this further)

The thing is, I don't think it's the diet that fixed the green and red (the blood takes longer to go away, since that is not technically diet, it's irritation).  The green dramatically disappeared immediately after starting "full drainage block feeding," and came back dramatically (and temporarily) with more blood when I messed up the timing over one sleep-deprived night.  I'll write on this further, once I have it figured out. 

In any case, the mucous theoretically shows some sort of food intolerance and is not affected by block feeding, so I'm continuing the diet.  I'm also curious about the diet's affect on my asthma, so I have more than one reason to stick to it.