It is amazing how quickly you forget the problems you had with your baby. The Popster is 16 weeks old now but I only really think about her behaviour and routines in recent weeks - and they were good, in fact great, but now they're changing. She is returning to bad old ways and this has prompted me to remember what it used to be like.
In the early days there was no sleep and it was difficult to eat food. We had "fall asleep on our bed and then attempt transference to the basket weeks". To make sure transference would go smoothly and she wouldn't wake, we would let her sleep for about 20mins before the attempt to move her to the basket. It rarely worked though - as soon as her head touched the basket mattress she would start screaming and we would then have 20mins of calming down and getting her to sleep again. I'm sure she just pretended to be asleep just to toy with us.
Then there was Colic week! Hysterical crying for hours on end - and that wasn't just Poppy! One night after hours and hours of hysterical crying at 9pm I stuck her in the pram and went for a walk round and round the block. We had 15mins of screaming whilst I pushed and watched my breath in the icy air and then silence. Bliss. I couldn't just go straight home though, I had to make sure she was asleep so I wandered the streets for another 15 mins. Not a peep for 15mins so homeward bound I went. We got the pram up the steps and into the house. Shut the front door and then the screaming started again. Her timing is impeccable.
Then we had dummy watch. The Colic meant the Popster finally started taking the dummy, (mostly because I shoved it in her face every chance I got - and I got many!). It only took roughly 3 weeks of ramming a dummy in her gob before she started to realise it was good. In those 3 weeks she would have a look on her face that suggested "what the hell is that?!?!?! how dare you stick such a disgusting item in my mouth. Due to your outrageous decision to defile my mouth with such vermin I'll now scream for 1 hour precisely". Her acceptance of the dummy was both good and bad. Good as it was great at calming her down and helping her to settle. Bad, because she would constantly drop it when she fell asleep and get it trapped under her cheek. This would then wake her up and prompt crying. Either Jon or me would then have to run upstairs and reinsert said dummy, only to then repeat the process 10 mins later. This incredibly fun dummy dance would then continue for at least a couple of hours.
It all got good when we moved the Popster out of the basket into her own bed in her own room. The difference in size of her sleeping habitat increased immensely and she loved it! Plus her new bed had toys on. She had something interesting to look at instead of a basket wall. This is when The Popster metamorphosed into "The Amazing Popster". Her miracle super power was sleeping. She was so good at sleeping that I even asked the Health Visitor if it was a problem if a baby slept as much as The Popster. Her answer was the stock health visitor answer: "If she is feeding well and gaining weight than it is fine". Health Visitors are like IT guys. There is just one response in the training manual that covers all queries. For IT guys it is "Have you tried turning it off and on again?". For health visitors it is what mine told me. So I stopped worrying about The Popster sleeping almost all the time and shifted my emotion to smug. I would listen to the problems other parents were having and just felt smug - very proud of the little Popster and her sleeping super power. I would listen to stories of people rocking their babies to sleep for an hour, people taking it in turns with their partners to sleep in the babies bedroom, people never getting the chance to eat meals with their partners, people staying up all night. It all sounded so "inconvenient".
This was my experience: In the daytime, The Popster would indicate she was tired by rubbing her eyes and being a little bit grumpy. I would respond by picking her up and putting her in her bed. That was that. Easy. At night it was slightly more involved. Her bedtime was somewhere between 6.30pm and 7.30pm depending on the timetable of her feeds. I would do Bath, Boob, Book, Bed on one night and Boob, Book, Bed on other nights. This involved exactly what it sounds like. After the book I would put her in bed and walk out the room. We then wouldn't hear a peep from her until midnight at the earliest and 2am at the latest. This meant, Jon and I got an evening together. I could still cook and we could sit down and eat dinner together at the dining room table before retiring to the lounge and watch TV until bedtime. None of the horror stories I had heard from others.
Our lives appeared to have changed again now though. The Amazing Popster has left the building and irritable non-sleeping Popster has replaced her. Now it is taking up to an hour to settle her at night and return visits are inevitable. She is then waking frequently throughout the night. AAAARRRGGGHHHH!!! The only way I have been able to get her to sleep at night recently is after the 3 or 4 B's to then hold her facing outwards and dance around the room until I can't do it anymore. I then get to sit, holding her the same was, and rock her. Throughout all of this I sing - hence the title of this blog, (I bet you were wondering when I was going to get to the point!).
Now, I can't sing. I also have a terrible memory for lyrics. The only song I know from beginning to end is the theme tune to Home & Away. How embarrassing is that?? Very. (I haven't watched it for about 20 years either!). So what do I sing to The Popster? I need to have about 30-40mins of song material to get her to sleep. I have made up my own song, although not my own tune. There aren't many words in my song. It is basically a combination of the following: Pop, Rock, Poppy, Rocky, Poppity and Rockity. For some reason every time I sing songs to The Popster, never mind what tune I use, I always substitute the real words for variations on her name. For example, "What shall we do with the drunken Poppy...." or "Poppy, Poppy, Pop, Pop, Poppy"
So my questions is: "How long before singing the same song over and over for half hour at a time before I lose my mind completely?"
My other question is: "Where has The Amazing Popster disappeared to and will she ever return?"
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