EASY peasy, little bit teasy

Is there anyone else out there that gets enormous satisfaction out of a rollicking great burp? I find the stability of our daily routine can be determined by the length and depth of a great, loud belch or two. Without, and nap times are almost certainly disturbed by an elusive one sneaking up and lodging itself, quite painfully, before little shrieks of discomfort allow it’s great escape into the ether. Our daily routine and the ratio of sheer chaos throughout are defined by just this: a long, satisfying and rather loud burp following a bottle. Sometimes it even takes two.

A parenting book that I took great delight in burning as we left Geneva once told me the following: If your child is prone to waking consistently after the same period of time into his nap, rouse him just prior to his waking, and this will re-set his sleep pattern, sending him deeper into his next cycle. As a new mum, I was horrified to read anywhere that I should wake my baby. After the whole episode verging on the olive oil (earlier blog), a sleeping babe was high on my list of lifetime’s greatest achievements. And besides which, the thought of rousing him from his long awaited sound slumber terrified me. With a few hundred more hours of practicing under my belt though, and a morning wiped clear of appointments, I took a step into the wild west of motherhood and added my own twist. Sleep Cycle One was rapidly approaching its ascent into full state of consciousness, soon to be followed by rollicking great burp with only minutes to spare. I bent down, heart pounding, arms shaky and gently but firmly scooped J up in a one smooth manoeuvre with a dash of gentle shushing and rocking thrown in. Holding him close, knees bobbing softly as I shush-rocked, I swept my forearm from his middle back upwards to his neck and Success! Rollicking belch set forth, job done. Roused just enough to smack his lips together in satisfaction, I placed him back in the cot and he rolled over asleep. I suddenly felt pangs of regret in having thrown the book into the flames – what else did this miracle children’s worker have to say, and what was the name of the book again?

If a sleep-deprived peer is needy of a possible handy hint on how to have their child sleep longer than twenty minutes, post a half marathon stint of getting the child to sleep in the first place, I am wary. Each bub is so different and I needed to experience sheer desperation before having the smallest ounce of faith in this tidbit of info floating around my weary head. Most mums would yell EASY at me, which is the recommended routine for young babies that states they should: Eat, (be) Active, Sleep/ (have) You time. As I was released out into the wild after the birth from a very regimented Swiss public hospital, the practice of EASY, which wasn’t really, had been bludgeoned into me for the first five day’s of J’s tiny life and so I was regimented about it too. Until the rocking to sleep after play time took its toll and I befriended the whole lawless bottle-to-bed thing. Retrospect shakes its head at me and tuts, and now it’s telling me Controlled Comforting would have down the trick. But retrospect lives in the past, so bottle to bed wins.