"Poop!"

Apparently there’s a bath monster in our house now as well. A very unexpected monster, I must say, since ever since Nora grew out of the newborn phase, she has been a huge bath fan.

Last Saturday when my parents were babysitting, Nora pooped in the bath. This wasn’t a first. She had done it to Ken and I at least a few times; she did it to her Nana in DC in July; she had actually done it just a week earlier when my parents were giving her a bath. Like the vomit, the poop in the tub isn’t a family favorite, and so when Nora looked a bit like she was readying herself for poop the next night, Sunday, I told Ken I thought she was going to poop, we whisked her out of the tub and sat her promptly on her new toilet seat. I guess that wasn’t the smartest parental move, since now apparently there’s a monster called “poop” in that tub.

I had just gotten Nora a new training toilet seat last weekend. She has started to tell one of us every time she poops or pees and then takes us to change her diaper. This, to me, seemed like a sign that we should at least start trying to introduce the idea of the potty. And when I brought the new seat home, Nora was eager to jump on, clothed, and even grabbed toilet paper and wiped herself in all the correct places. (I guess my lack of privacy in the bathroom has taught her something at least…)

Back to the bath – every night since last Sunday – so a whole week now – Nora has cried at even the mention of it being bath-time. She used to take off running to be caught – part of an elaborate entertaining routine that used to encompass bath-time. Once forced into the water, she now whimpers, but ismostly ok while the water is running. She used to play and laugh and sing. And she was starting to do this adorable thing where she had Ken hold her while she floated on her back, super relaxed and happy. Now, the second the bath water stops flowing, she starts crying to get out and says, “Poop! Poop!” over and over. We try to tell her it’s ok, that if she poops it’s not a big deal, she can pee if she needs to (which she usually does). But nothing works and we end up just taking her out and having to calm her down before she’ll settle for bed. She clearly is afraid of pooping in the tub.

Tonight we tried giving her a bath in our bathroom, trying to divert attention away from any incidental memory she has of the poop and the training toilet. She wasn’t easily tricked. We kept asking her to sit down (she hasn’t sat in the tub for a week now) and telling her she was in the “special tub.” And I distracted her with the top of my mousse container and travel size shampoo bottles. She was so distracted that when she reached down to get the shampoo, her butt touched the water, and down she sat. And then she looked at us and said, “Uh oh, Nora.”

But then we had to suggest it was time to get out, she wanted to stay in and keep playing. So maybe the monster’s moving out?

The Sleep Monster

I read frequently about my friends’ woes with their sleeping, or non-sleeping babies. They post updates about lack of sleep on facebook, and on their blogs, they detail their sleep woes in private notes and simple conversations. Even though we know that we aren’t alone in the battle to get our babies to sleep, it still throws us for a loop and causes us to judge ourselves as parents when our babies won’t sleep the way we want them to.

A change for the worse in Nora’s sleep pattern sometimes makes me feel like I am doing something wrong as her parent. I judge my parenting skills by her ability to sleep 11 straight hours. And I know this is ridiculous. Her sleep says nothing about my ability to teach her the important things in life. It says nothing about her future moral self, work ethic or intelligence (at least I don’t think it does). But every time she has a slip in her sleep, part of me feels like I’m failing at something. I don’t judge other parents’ ability by their babies sleep. I don’t think, “Oh, her baby is waking up too much, what a bad parent.” I don’t think, “She is such a better mother than me since her baby sleeps well.” I chalk it all up to luck. Why can’t I do that with Nora too? Why does it feel like a failure for myself when I judge it as luck in everyone else?

This past week Nora’s good sleep habits fell by the wayside. She was sick and I was rocking her to bed so she wouldn’t cough herself into a vomiting fit. So then, of course, she wanted me to rock her every night. And it started taking 40 minutes to put her to sleep. We tried to “retrain” her to sleep on her own. She just pulled the usual Nora vomit trick. Ken and I decided that cleaning up vomit was less pleasant then losing some of our evening time together for the time being, so I rocked on.

When I was away Friday evening, Ken got her to sleep with no rocking. When we were both out Saturday, my mom got her to sleep with no rocking. A pattern emerged. She likes to manipulate her mother. Probably because I’m pretty easy to manipulate.

So Ken is in there putting her to sleep. I put on her pjs and brushed her hair and then I left. And she cried a bit, but Ken gets her quiet and reads her story and sings her song. He says she shakes her head yes when he asks her if she wants to go to bed. And then she goes, no crying (maybe a little) and no vomit. I miss her bedtime. I miss rocking her a little as she dazes out. I miss putting her in her crib and seeing her stick her thumb peacefully in her mouth. I sit on the couch feeling a bit like a failure. But I know I’ll be back in there soon enough, since nothing in the sleep department seems to last too long – good or bad.

I’ll see her at 5:30 am. When she wakes up too early. And until I am a bit more caffeinated, I’ll sit in the rocker, feeling like I’ve done something wrong to deserve such an early awakening. But when I go out into the living room with her, I’ll log onto facebook and read about someone else who has to be up that early too. And we can all suffer together with the help of the Internet.