Transitions

When my son was an infant he would fall asleep being held or not at all.  And I found myself doing stationary leisure activities with a sleeping baby in my lap.  In the beginning he was such a light sleeper transitioning him from being held to his bassinet felt like it had an 80% chance of waking him.  Being sleep deprived myself I wanted him to sleep more, so that I could sleep more.  So I would nurse him to sleep, and then (when I was doing anything that made sense) promptly fell asleep myself.

When I finally came to the conclusion that I was done being a food source, my son and I had an overly emotional disagreement.  He cried and screamed when offered a bottle*, all the while tugging at my shirt.  I had to leave the room, and let my husband take over the first two nights so that we could all get some sleep.  By day three he was down with drinking from bottles, or at least had given up on me going back to the way things once were.  Though one thing that mattered more than I thought it would was the temperature of the milk.  Heating milk (enough for it to no longer be cold as opposed to actually being warm seemed to be about right for him) turned into a way to slowly teach him a bit of patience.

Teaching him to fall asleep in his day bed rather than in my lap for day time naps was tricky at first but extremely necessary.  What I ended up doing was taking the pillow that had been in my lap for him, and putting it into his bed.  This way he can still rest his head on the familiar surface without pinning me to my chair.  Which is a good thing, he was physically getting too big to fit comfortably (for either of us really) in my lap.

I still do all of my computer work in the same room as my baby while he sleeps, because it does a heart good to be able to glance up from what you are doing and observe something that warms your heart.  And I've got to say my baby is more heart warming to me than all the cats the internet has to offer combined. (I bet it's like that for most parents and their corresponding babies. Well minus the sociopaths, but who cares?  Not them.)

*It was a bottle of breast milk that I had pumped earlier, because baby steps for both of us right?  That and this isn't exactly something that you can stop cold turkey without being in pain.