If she wakes up at 7am then the first nap is 9am; if she wakes up at 8am (like today...thank you for our Sunday morning lie-in!) then it's 10am. On a weekday she'd normally have that nap in the sling on our way to whatever morning activity we're doing, but at the weekend things are a bit different and today I thought we'd head out for a morning run. I knew I needed to be downstairs strapping Angel into the Maclaren by 10am to time things well for her nap. There are a number of things I wanted to do before that:
- eat breakfast
- fit in some nappy-free time for her skin health
- catch up on social media
- express some milk for the milk bank
- get dressed
- brush my teeth
and this morning I seemed to mis-time things so that Angel started whinging and crying before I was anywhere near ready to go out. Since it's a Sunday my husband was still at home, but he was clearing up in the kitchen which I didn't want to interrupt.
I knew that the quickest way to calm her down and help her fall asleep when she got whingey would be to get her into the Manduca (the baby carrier). I suppose if I didn't have two floors worth of stairs to negotiate I would put her straight into the pushchair, but I do...plus the pushchair stationary is a bit useless whereas the closeness of the sling gives immediate comfort even if we don't go anywhere straight away. However, as I was in my nightie I couldn't strap her straight on (because then I would be unable to go out) so I gave up on points 3 and 4 on the above list and headed to the bedroom to get dressed, taking my whinging baby with me.
I put her down on the bed and started to look for my running gear only to find that it all seemed to be in the wash. Angel was not screaming urgently but was emitting plaintive bleating cries every 5-10 seconds. I hunted through the pile of clothes on the floor of my wardrobe, through the pile of clothes on the bedroom floor...nothing. Should I put a dressing gown on to go out to the balcony and see if there was something there drying, or just wear pyjama bottoms for running? In which case, which ones?
Angel's cries went up a notch in volume. She was feeling REALLY tired and somehow REALLY unable to recognise what she needed to do about it. This first nap of the day often seems to be the hardest for her and involve the most crying. There's a lot of controversy about whether you can/should try to teach babies to "self-soothe" alone or whether it's ok to actively intervene to comfort them, and I've found this blog really useful on this subject: he basically says that every time you comfort your baby and help them calm down with your assistance, you actually are showing them how to go from stressed to calm, so that's how they learn about calming down - you don't have to leave them to cry alone.
That's all very well, but what about now when I need to get those pyjama trousers, a T shirt and socks on before I put on the Manduca, the baby is crying and there's so many things I need to do before I'll be ready to help her fall asleep in the pushchair? There's something so uniquely stressful about listening to your baby cry when you're trying to do something else. I usually find the solution to this is to put the "something else" on hold and attend to the baby, but in this situation I needed to get those socks on, dammit!
I had a moment of "Oh my goodness just shut that baby up!!!" a flash of insight into why parents might shake their babies or throw them against the wall...*
Then I got the second sock on, grabbed the Manduca in one hand and the baby in the other and charged off to the kitchen to enlist my husband's help. Teeth...shoes...stairs...Maclaren...rain cover...by 10:05am we were on the road and Angel had a peaceful 50 minute nap while I had a very wet run to the river and back.
*please don't call social services! I would never hurt her.
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