Babies Can't Be Troubleshot

...at least not in terms of traditional troubleshooting. What calms Elise down one day can utterly infuriate her the next. As she grows, she starts to leave behind things like accepting being bundled in her blanket, just like she was in the womb. But if she's in the right mood, it seems to offer her some comfort when we put her in her bed to sleep, when she doesn't want to.

Back in the day, when her bellybutton hadn't quite sealed up yet, we had to give her sponge baths. This was a cause for concern, at least for her, and an excuse to excercise her tiny lungs and scream bloody murder. When it was time to wash her back, I had to lean her against my chest as I washed her. This would generally calm her down enough to stop crying instantly, as if she thought the ordeal was finally over. When the warm washcloth touched her skin, and then moved away allowing the convection of any cold air in the room to chill her again, it was back to lung aerobics.

Fortunately for Elise, her naval has finally sealed, and she has graduated to sitting waist-deep in warm water. She is generally okay with this, at least until she is picked up and moved to a towel for the drying process. Those few seconds of cold hitting her warm body cause her to resume her vocal performances until she realizes that there is a towel wrapped around her, and the towel really is warmer than she apparently expected. Last night, the majority of complaints came from her dad, who was experiencing for the second time the joys that come from trying to hold a squirming baby in one hand, cleaning her with the other, and all the while trying not to let her fall into the water and drown or fall out of the water and break her head. It's much easier when a second parent is present to hold the baby while the first one washes her.

While there was a moment of obvious discomfort for her upon leaving the warm water, it was quickly calmed with the application of a towel, and Elise decided to forego her nightly ritual of communicating at the highest possible volume. Dressing her, as with bathing her, prompted more complaints from parent than from child, as she happily resisted extending her arms enough for me to pull them through the sleeves of her onesie.

Feeding her presented no challenges, nor did burping her. But having discovered something recently, I wanted to experiment. When she was loudly resisting sleep the other night, I found that holding her against my chest (either with the front of her against my chest, or with her whole body facing sideways) and patting her back as if burping her softly, calmed her down enough that I could fold up her legs into the fetal position, and lay her in her cradle, where she would finish falling asleep. The difference this time was that I had her just over my shoulder. She remained calm, but fidgety. This wasn't going to help her sleep anytime soon. I moved her down, with her head against my chest, and continued exactly the same motions. The squirming ceased immediately, and she was out like a lamp within five minutes, even allowing me to fold in her legs before she zonked complete.

While I have had some small success with this strategy, I suspect it will fail to endure. Still, it worked well enough last night, and she managed to stay asleep until her mom got home and went to bed. That was when she decided it would be a fine night to wake up hourly, and keep her mom from getting any real rest. Thankfully for me, her mom decided against waking me up until at least the 5am session.