Ugh, life with a fussy, high maintenance baby has been difficult. It seems like everyone I know has "easy" babies. I'm so jealous. Part of it could be that we're doing things wrong (I'm not going to blame just her), and the three of us are still learning about one another. However, this is really excrutiating. Here are my thoughts tonight.
1. She has to be swaddled to sleep or else she slaps herself in the head, which wakes her up. Then screaming ensues. I hope she gets control of her limbs soon. Swaddling is a pain in the patoot. She hates it initially, so you have to endure her screaming. S and I are insistent that she will have to be swaddled until she's 20. Can you picture swaddling a teenager? Ha!
2. It's over 80 degrees today and for the rest of the week. What do you swaddle her with when it's so hot? We tried a sheet, and she gets her hands out of it immediately. Wrong material. So we're left with a thermal blanket, and she overheats. That leaves us with her screaming because she's hot or her screaming because she's woken herself up by slapping herself in the face.
3. The Social Security office messed up her name. So we have to correct her name. We go to the SS office with her birth certificate, and they say they need another form of ID for her besides the birth certificate. What!?! She's a month old. The only thing she has IS her birth certificate. It's not like she has a driver's license or credit card. We looked through all of her paperwork this evening, and we can't find anything with her full name and birth date that's "official." Ordinarily I'm okay with bureaucracy (after all, there's usually a purpose for it), but this 2 forms of ID thing when they messed up an infant's name is a bit over the top.
4. She's totally going to be an only child. Self-explanatory.
5. In my days stuck in the house, TV and visitors are my only companions besides Julia. One thing I discovered is that the bald bodyguard from the Jerry Springer show got his own talk show. How sad is that? I shouldn't even know who that dude is.
6. She will not sleep. We swaddle her, give her a pacifier, put on white noise, bounce, and she may sleep for 10 minutes and then we start Round 393. So she's up for 7 hours at a time with only a few 10 minute cat naps, crying for most of it, and then she crashes for 2 hours. Repeat.
7. Everyone gives unsolicited advice. A miniscule amount may actually apply to her and be helpful, and the rest just contradicts things I've read or other people have told me. Put her on a schedule, feed on demand, put her to sleep holding her, put her to sleep by herself so she learns to self soothe, get rid of her gas this way, get rid of her gas that way...
8. It really sucks that about the time she'll grow out of this (3-4 months of age), I'm going back to work. Just at the time when she'll be tolerable, I'll be away from her.
9. Miss Julia has "tongue issues." According to the lactation consultant, she needs physical therapy for her tongue. I find this extremely humorous. Am I supposed to call all of the physical therapists around town and ask who will help her keep her tongue in her mouth when she eats? Maybe I find this humorous because Julia's ability to cooperate with something being done to her is zilch. Imagining someone putting his finger in her mouth while she howls and gives her "you're killing me!" scream does make me smile.
10. I hate when I tell people she's going to be an only child, and they say, "Oh, you'll forget what she was like." I will not forget. I'm dead serious. She is going to be an only child unless we really, really think it's the right thing to do or it's an accident baby. People then say she HAS to have a sibling. Why does she HAVE to have a sibling? If you had to have a sibling, babies would be born as twins or triplets all the time. I think the notion is absurd, but that could be because I'm an only child. Or that I know people who have siblings and don't communicate with them, even as adults. The only way people who are objecting to the only child notion get to voice their opinion is if they will gestate the baby, get up with the baby at 3am, and pay for the baby.
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