Hello From the Nursery...

I'll be spending large chunks of time this week in Lexie's room as she gets accustomed to her crib. She's starting to fill a lot of her little bassinet (at least lengthwise), and, much as I like the security of having her right by me at night, I know it's getting to be time to move her into her own digs.

For now, we're just working on naps. The first one this morning had a rocky start. I put her down, all swaddled and sleepy, and she suddenly decided it was time to party. She turned on her 1,000 watt smile (see below) and started cooing like a champ. But I know that game. That's the game that ends with no real naps all day and a pissed-off baby by 7pm. We don't like that game. So I popped in the paci, and turned on some white noise, and we started playing the game where she spits out the paci and whimpers, seemingly just to see if I'm still here and waiting to pop the paci back in. After about 20 minutes, she actually dropped off. Now it's afternoon-nap time. She's not so good at afternoon naps regardless of sleep location, so we'll see how it goes. Right now we're playing the "drop the paci" game again.


Good times, good times.

I'm sitting in the room with her not just because I want to play her little games, but also because I worry about her. Her bassinet still has a special motion-detector monitor hooked up to it. It was this monitor that finally allowed me to sleep at night (instead of staring at her all night long to ensure she was still breathing). The first couple of weeks home from the hospital were really scary, and her breathing was noticeably uneven. When we left the hospital, we left without a hospital monitor. In spite of my repeated questions and requests, they sent us away completely unplugged, saying that Lexie's breathing was so great it would just be a waste.

When we got home, I was a nervous wreck. I credit this product with preserving my sanity: AngelCare Movement Sensor With Sound Monitor (see photo below). With this monitor, I could be sure that if Lexie did stop breathing for 15 seconds or more, I (or Steve) would be immediately alerted to the event and could take action right away.

The 15-second warning beep has gone off twice, waking me up in the middle of the night. I just had to lightly shake Lexie and she started breathing again. She probably would have been fine anyway, but who knows? Her breathing is much better now, but you can't be too careful.

Although Lexie is now over 5 months old, she's closer to 3 months gestationally. Babies between 2 and 4 months of age are at the highest risk for SIDS, and by some statistics preemies have 80 times the risk of full-term babies (although the exact stat depends on the study). So I'm not taking any chances. Once we're ready to put her in the crib to sleep at night, the motion sensor will move to the crib. In the meantime, I monitor her the old-fashioned way during the day.

I'm dreading putting her in her crib at night. I think I'm going to find myself going to her room at every whimper, at least for the first week or so. Even though it's not a long walk, it takes a lot more energy to go down the hall than it takes to pop myself up on an elbow, look down into her bassinet (pushed next to the bed each night), and assess the situation.

We need to start working on this now because I'm going back to work July 13. Lexie's nanny is scheduled to start July 6. I say "is scheduled to start" rather than "is starting" because I noticed (when I went to hide our nanny-seeking profile on the site where we found her) that her job-seeking-nanny profile is still active. I'm hoping she's just looking for interim work, versus looking for a better offer. Even if she does find something else, though, the job market for nannies is so bad that we shouldn't have *too* much trouble finding someone else.

At least, that's what we're hoping. Fingers crossed...